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

"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!

Joyce Pendants and Bloom Necklace

"Over the Bloom" Necklace...for those of you who are over the moon over Leopold Bloom!


These pendants were made by my mom, Cindy Extance, who taught me how to make jewelry. For her part this Bloomsday she created pendants of iconic Joyce images from the snapshot of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses on a playground to the famous picture of Sylvia Beach and James Joyce outside Shakespeare and Company (which I will be visiting this summer!).

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!

"Calypso"

"Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high. ---Mkgnao!...Mrkgnao! the cat cried" (U 55).

"Calypso," where we first meet Leopold Bloom, is full of so many rich images it was difficult to create just one piece for this particular collection series; however, I decided upon something simpler since several of my pieces were more involved and perhaps less wearable ("Proteus" is a prime example of this!). Bloom making breakfast, with the mewing of a persistent cat, seemed a nice place to start! The necklace quotes the "Mrkgnao!" of the cat and symbolically represents Bloom's morning. The charms I selected all are symbols presented in this episode which reverberate throughout Ulysses: Bloom's keylessness (i.e. the key charm), his Jewish heritage (the Star of David charm), his alternate identity as Henry Flower and flowers in general (the flower charm--in full bloom might I add!), and last but not least the tea kettle, which we return to in the end with Molly's monologue in "Penelope." A very wearable piece!

"Lotus Eaters"

"Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that....Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness" (U 71).

Brought to you courtesy of Henry Flower! These "(f)lowers of idleness" rest lazily on your neck and adds a sense of Victorian elegance and romance. It is the most classic, clean design in my Ulysses collection.

"Keyless Citizen"

"What comforted his misapprehension [Bloom's]?

That as a compentent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void" (U 17.697).

The most whimsical and humorous in my collection, the "keyless citizen" is made up entirely by two materials, paper and chain. To my great depair, I would not find real keyholes, it is an odd material to come by if you are not a locksmith, so I improvised and created the keyholes from paper which I treated with a deconstructing paint process to make them appear more like real keyholes. Keyholes...but alas no keys. Poor Poldy!

"Penelope"

"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 abother and then I put my arms and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." (U 18.760-768)

I constructed the gray freshwater pearls around the metallic flower (it is unbelievable difficult to locate a rhododendron bead--I guess I will have to mint my own next time!) to represent the Moorish wall of Molly's memory/fantasy and strung pearls that were exotically colored. The "yes" in the necklace is shaped from wire and the key represents just one interpretation of Ulysses's ending: Molly and Bloom together again. This is my favorite piece in this collection. I think it captures some of the beauty of "Penelope."