vORtEx

Poetic soul, sculptor's sensibilities, abstract thought process, sensual underpinnings, visionary meanderings... I am in a vortex of discombobulation. The equation for making art work with a monetary outcome eludes me. I need help!  Any suggestions that this universe will impart would be welcome. Please write: d_alanna@ yahoo.ca  Thank you.

Kazakhstan Residency

Getting materials for my work, here in Almay requires going to a construction bazaar. Each vendor is independently competing for your business. Here is where I bought expanded mesh wire. I did not speak, as my host, curator Yuliya Sorokina, asked me to NOT SPEAK, having done so while at the previous vendor... the price was adjusted accordingly.

My driver, Shokan, is a stunt driver, when not driving me around for materials. His driving on the streets of Almaty makes me feel like I am driving in a movie scene, like that in the Bourne trilogy... It was suggested, that because he has been driving with such confidence, the chances of an accident are greatly reduced.

Here is the 'store' where plaster was procured. Here, they call it gyps, and as I was requiring the material for sculpture, they assured us it was just for that purpose. Using it, I found it to be full of sand and rocks, as well as a match-book. Not ideal.

This is the gallery space at the State Museum of Art in Almaty Kazakhstan, where my work will live from 30 October - 11 November 2008.

Crafting Memory

http://www.flickr.com/photos/embellish4art/show/

Crafting memories, prying them from the jumble of images that dart and skip, viscous fluid of blinking eyes brings sounds and smells that tingle and tremble ears and nostrils. Lateral sequences can be extracted from 'global thinking', but the curse of ordering excerpts in time and space directs mindful censorship to edit out discomfort, where flashing imagery allows generous dwelling on lost and found syncopated feelings; all.

Bashing. Crescendoing recollections of touches forced to join with word phrases, waiting, vacant spaces of time to calibrate the emptiness with feelings... there is an attempt to push or playfully awaken associations. When coherency forms, new perceptions can emerge. Sometimes new images are created, not what existed, but what might have happened -should, could, would. Desires. Regrets. There, pictorial scenarios can be more powerful than what has transpired.

Backwards and forwards, those meanderings flow. Future probabilities, presence, presumption, peace intermingled with exasperation, exasperates the creation of memory.

Most importantly, for me, is the vast omnipresence of spirit that occupies me, charging up to shape and form structural dimensionality through this 'crafting' process. Sometimes, time and circumstance allows me to explain this loveliness in to sculpture, and I am grateful.

Slideshow of Work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/embellish4art/show/

Listless

When I returned to Vancouver, just 6 weeks ago, sitting on this waterway seemed an appropriate reacquainting act. The restlessness of hands occupied with the tasks of everyday living are not yet finding materials that make this artist functional.

A studio is secured, and is currently housing remnants of other's lives; sorting, discarding and repacking are the daily activities. I can see the floor, now, and am hopeful that by months' end I shall resume my work.

Beginnings and endings. Begin again.

End with a new beginning.