Bloomsday Challenge: June 16th at Last

"Where?"

Happy Bloomsday! My creation today is one of those "Joycean" coincidences (those funny and ironic happenstance moments when Ulysses intrudes upon your own experience). I felt a bit like Leopold Bloom, "weary" from my daily travel, deferred and delayed 4 times by the airline, when finally I arrived "Where? ." home.

I've made a similar version of this necklace a year ago, last Bloomsday, and so I feel it only right to end with "Ithaca." This necklace is a more dramatic version of my earlier design. I hand shaped the wire, used a found piece of onyx, and finished it off with pieces of gunmetal chain.

I hope you'll tune in during the coming months for more Joyce inspired creations. You can also subscribe for notifications when there's a new post! Next week I'll be releasing a few of my new designs and sketches.

This challenge has been an enriching experience! Can't wait to do it again next year! Hope you all had a wonderful Bloomsday!

“House of Keyes”

I took this quite literally—I had initially thought to make this piece as installation art but when I laid the keys out I like the variety of directions which I could not have done if I installed the keys on a wall like I planned.

So here you have it! Bloomsday is tomorrow and I have something special in mind. I’ll be posting late, as I’ll be travelling during the day on my way back to Tulsa from the North American Joyce Conference. I’ll be sad to leave the beautiful gardens of the Huntington Library and all of the friends I have made over the last three days. What a week!

Only 1 more day till Bloomsday! How will you be celebrating?

Bloomsday Challenge: Day Fourteen

"The Almosting Parallax"

I reinterpreted Molly and Bloom's positions in bed, and instead of a ying-yang image, here is one where they lie in an incomplete parallax. Made with chalk and paper.


The Joyce conference has inspired more than just my academic/writing ideas--I have three new Joyce inspired designs. Tune in next week for a preview of the sketches.


Only 2 more days till Bloomsday!

Bloomsday Challenge: Day Thirteen

"Cyclops!"

Blogging in a hurry today as I've been at the Joyce conference well into the night. I have for you, "Cyclops!" This necklace is made with a page from the 1961 American Random House edition I have been using, jump rings, mode podge, colored pencil, and wire.

The eye is linked with a shamrock--symbolic of the citizen's cyclopian view of the world.

Only 3 more days till Bloomsday!

Bloomsday Challenge: Day Twelve

"Circe" Series (say that 3 times fast!)

Blogging in a hurry today as I am off to Pasadena in just a few hours for the North American James Joyce Conference. Here is my creation for today--a series of mini-canvas oil paintings that capture a few funny moments in "Circe" where objects are personified through the utterances they make!


Only 5 more days till Bloomsday!

Bloomsday Challenge: Day Eleven

Steampunk Joyce Postcard

Thanks to everyone for stopping by my blog, and as a thank you I made something that you can print and share with all of your fellow Joyce enthusiasts! It's a Steampunk Joyce inspired postcard.

I've put a little history of Bloomsday on the front. You can download a pdf here. When you print it out, just feed the same page through the printer twice to get both front and back images and cut along the lines!


Only 6 more days till Bloomsday!

Bloomsday Challenge: Day Ten

June 10^{: “}Bloomusalem”

This necklace is inspired by a passage from “Circe”:

BLOOM

My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.

Though my version of “Bloomusalem” does not look anything like “a colossal edifice, with crystal roof, built in the shape of a huge pork kidney,” it does relay the idea of a new community blossoming (U 484). Sorry for the pun—I think this passage echoes Bloom’s walk to Dlugacz’s Butcher Shop in “Calypso” when he sees the advertisements for “Zion” and wanders through a Waste-Landian space. Rather than a grey world surrounded by corpses and death, in “Circe” there is a birth of a new homeland even if it’s only imagined. This phrase has always stuck with me and I have finally actualized it!

Only 7 more days till Bloomsday!