16 Days of Bloom: Day Two

“A Portrait of A Portrait”

I love the yellowed pages of this 1961 edition of Ulysses. It has so much character. Out of scraps I had left over from a previous project I created a classic silhouette portrait of Joyce. What I love about this piece is its fragmentary construction—Joyce worked with such fragments in creating Ulysses after all.

There’s a bit of whimsy to my portrait because of the tiny cartoon thought bubble (in which Joyce thinks of a single word, Ulysses). My thought bubble would probably read “Ulysses!?!...).

Made with canvas, 1961 American edition of Ulysses, mod podge, and black pen.

14 more days till Bloomsday!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Thought I would share one of my Valentines with all of you. It was designed and crafted by my good friend Marshall Estes. Isn't fabulous?! Hope you all had a lovely day!

Happy Belated Birthday Mr. Joyce!

I have been a terrible blogger so far this year. My doctoral exams are imminent and that has taken priority over my creative urges. Given that I have been snowed in now for a few days, the urge is too great to be ignored. Guess that groundhog saw his shadow after all!

I have put together a treasury of James Joyce related art and artists on Etsy in honor of Joyce's birthday two days ago. Follow the link below and see for yourself! There is Joyce inspired jewelery, photography, stationary/paper art, pop art, and even wall hanging for wine enthusiasts!

Enjoy!

Link to Etsy Treasury: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4d4c7af565528eef501dcb19/happy-belated-birthday-james-joyce

Ulysses Quotation Necklaces

Ulysses Quotation Necklaces

Made with paper (taken from a 1961 Random House edition of Ulysses), findings, eyelets, and chain. The quotation is taken from the last page of the last episode of Ulysses and reads:

"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Measures 10 inches in length and available for purchase on Etsy.com at my shop--just follow the link at the bottom of my blog.

The second necklace's quotation is from the "Ithaca" episode: "Womb? Weary? He rests. He has traveled." Measures 9 inches in length.

The third necklace is perhaps the most memorable line from "Ithaca"--asks "Where?."

"Calypso" on Canvas

"Calypso" on Canvas

I am currently studying for exams, which, of course, means that my need for creative outlets has tripled with the amount of stress. The silver lining is I am creating more Joyce art.

Combining my love for print with canvas-in the midst of re-reading "Calypso"--I tore out the first two pages of a 1961 Random House edition of Ulysses and transplanted them onto the canvas.

I also cut out some of my favorite dialogue between Molly and Bloom from this chapter (on the "transmigration of souls"). Next to these lines I drew a symbol of parallax (the infinity sign in red cray pas).

Parallax leads me inevitably to "Penelope." The lines written in pale pink ink and dusky brown are from the final lines of the episode.

On the top of the canvas resides a
plain white plaster square to symbolize the blankness and potential for June 17th, when Molly and Poldy wake up.

On the opposite side is a woman's silhouette cut from another page from "Calypso." She emerges from the page smiling and already formed. She is, like every woman, a paradox--simultaenously an innocent and faithful Penelope and Dido; a treacherous Circe, Calypso, Siren, and Helen; as well as godess-like, Hera and Aphrodite; and of course, parallax itself.

Just another fun bit of Joyceiana! Let me know what you think!

My Solid There

I've been at my kitchen table sketching and decoupaging paper all week in between reading. Tonight I revisited a summer favorite, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife and rediscovered something I had forgotten. She writes so beautifully of creating art:

The compelling thing about making art-or making anything, I suppose—is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed of armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I can make is small magic now, deferred magic. Everyday I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving. (248)

Thought I'd share something that I had found again and also post some pictures of my latest experiments. I've been dabbling with decoupage, paper, rubbish, and little scraps of magazine print culture!

7 Eccles Street

Perhaps one of the most beautiful and organic pieces I have created...here is "7 Eccles Street":

I just returned from my first trip to Paris (which was disappointing in a few ways but largely I loved the art, museums, belle epoque architecture, the bread, and of course walking into Shakespeare and Company as is a rite of passage for any young Joycean). The wonderful part of my trip, other than spending time with my mom, was going to all of the flea markets. My favorite one was Porte Vanves where I found several pieces for this necklace: the buttons, the watchface, and of course the fabulous antique keyhole which I salvaged from a box of rusty quelquechose.

The 7 is obviously placed in the necklace at the edge of the left hand set of beads and buttons. I mounted the letters E-C-C-L-E-S- onto the vintage buttons I found and bent the abbreviation for street out of wire. I, of course, turned the watchface's date to read the 16th and my personal favorite detail is above the watchface--James Joyce's initials spiraled out of wire atop the Protean mass of beads and wire beneath. I hope you enjoy what I have created--honestly after finishing it, very, very, very late last night I could not help but awe at it a little. It has quickly become one of my prized works.

Bloomsday Celebration ~June 16th 2009

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past"

~James Joyce, Ulysses, "Scylla and Charybdis"

Tomorrow is Bloomsday and this year I have celebrated it through my other love, jewelry-making! For the James Joyce Quarterly I have created two Shadowbox centerpieces for their reading event and they are displayed above with pride. Also, here are some random Joyce inspired creations! Enjoy them, please check out the rest of my collection below! Thanks, Sam. Have a fabulous June 16th everyone!

"Proteus"

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawreck, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs" (U 37).

I call this piece Stephen's stream of consciousness. I fashioned and manipulated wire into quotations from the episode that I thought were important to Stephen's character: "modality," "snotgreen," "dogsbody," "mother," "death," and "water." For Stephen keys are also integral and thus symbolic. The feather is representative of Stephen's ambition to become a writer, an ambition he has given up in Ulysses, but voices in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There is also a small silver charm of a dog's body! The chain is tangled, just as Stephen's thoughts are jumbled, and the reader's experience of reading his thoughts is too(at least on my first try!). The pictures are somewhat difficult because this piece was the hardest to photograph clearly...how very Protean!