Wednesday, April 30, 2008

an old baby


two days ago




yesterday




today

30 comments

  1. this red spoon is so very beautiful

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  2. Beautiful spoon, like an object for a special ceremony or ritual. Is this you pictured?

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  3. That is so excellent. The teaspoons on Qantas flights have a similar shape/feel to the spoon shape you are using. I have been collecting them when ever I fly (which has been a bit lately). I wanted to send one to you... would you mind if I did?
    Cheers
    Claire

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  4. amazing....even touching, fragile, breathtaking...Mien it's simply wonderful!

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  5. oh, gal, how totally LOVER-LY!! yes, yes, yes to your red spoon. and mien, i think that means that you are being true to yourself..the repeating of motifs and all. your particular version and vision of the world is just THAT....YOURS!! just as it should be. i know that you don't see yourself in the same way that others so.....but your work is beautiful and fragile and altogether YOU!! will continue to come see what you are up to....you are inspiring. even if you don't think of yourself in that way. YOU ARE!! blessings.....oxoxoxox

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  6. oohoohoh. it's so vulnerable and joyful all at once. both a voice and silence. I love the image of you interacting with it, the joy of blowing bubbles, a purge, a mask, a stream of voice,and then this little step of courage, you revealing your connection with it, a tiny bit of your physical self to us all even while still veiling yourself.
    red spoon that empties itself while filling itself.

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  7. i am tagging you fro seven random or wierd facts about you......from the badabling.blogspot.com blog on may 3rd!! go see on the third! oxxoxo wendy

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  8. :)). yay!

    Lasuza, it is nice to see you here, knowing of the wonderful comments you leave on Kruse's blog.

    hi Nikko, yes, it is me in the picture. i am so pleased that you see the ceremonial/ritual aspect in it.

    Claire, you make my day again!! :D.

    thanks, Uschi. funny/strange to me that the fragile-ness still comes forth...it has taken so much abuse and hard-handling.

    thanks, Wendy. you are going to make my head too big. ;).

    gosh Erin, you're doing to me again what you did when you left that comment on that forgotten gourd. an almost piercing self-realization? i don't even know what that means. but you sure hit it there somewhere...

    hi Yasu! thank you :).

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  9. cool spoon!
    i've been going to galleries in Chelsea w/a co-worker lately and it's inspiring me,
    all the wonderful creative art everyone (of course, inc. you) has to offer!
    so exciting :oD

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  10. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous!

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  11. such a curious and beautiful object :)

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  12. Awesome, girl! Those spoons rock and this one really stands out in a crowd! i think you are onto something! It has such a feel to it, let alone the vibrant red!

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  13. hello.

    thanks for your warm comment. I have been here to see your spoon images now four times. the first time, i tried to write a note and got disconnected--which was a gift. when i came back the second time, i only experienced, slowly each image and (i still can't explain) it really broke into me, moved me, deeply.

    There is so so much this touches on inside me on so many levels. The spoon as a hollow well, open and serving; feeling (like lips that speak from the skeins of life and possible language threads always waiting and available beneath the lip. Strands of possible creative vowel, vocalizations off the lip of the spoon/soulfullness/self/ a giving; available to be used (just as a life is), used as a tool (as we each are souls, uniquely sensitive to or willing to be available to offer up--Self; our creative.
    The blood of that power, in our hands, willing: these threads/thoughts/imaginative impulses. Unique to the soul/hand holding them (the self within).

    The kissing or breathing of or into the hollow, it is so life giving; shamanistic.

    Each a symbolic image--charged with something I think that is felt "presence" from the making of them. (yours) (intention)?

    Each image is its own aspect, opens more. Hollows into my own ...

    See, i can't really say it. am a bit too sensitive (maybe) by things on my own personal front, to feel rational about what this does to me yet. But (why do i want rational) its beautiful. thanks for the experience of your work. For moving me.

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  14. Dear Mien, Was here yesterday but too tired to comment, just a look if you’ve posted something, enough to feel pierced by your red spoon and all its different incarnations.
    The first pic is the most immediately heart-rending to me, that spoon-creature seems skeletal, the thread ‘trickling’ out, it’s in its last moments, spent. In the next one it feels more wholesome to begin with, I’m thinking of cough tinctures now, the spoon hovering in front of the child’s lips while mom waits for her to open her mouth, with a drop hanging from the spoon’s underside. But then the idea of taking your spoon into my mouth makes me retch, it’s not an instrument of healing anymore, or maybe just a different one, it could now caress one’s skin…
    The one you’re holding to your mouth (the same!) – erotic and torturous, linked to body and speech, to ingesting and pouring out, it could be a comforter or a gag, something delicious, something threatening… The way you hold it makes me think of a kind of silent protest, by somebody who is forbidden to speak and now loud and clearly expresses herself. Can’t help thinking of the monks in Burma and Tibet and imagine masses of people standing in the street, holding replicas of your spoon in front of their mouths… Or anyone in the world who is not being heard.
    And then the sweep in the last image, makes it look more like a painting to me, made with generous brush-strokes. It’s beautiful work, beautiful in the best way, life-beauty, which includes vulnerability and uncertainty and challenge and maybe even something a bit monstrous.
    Thanks so much for your last comment, I woke up this morning thinking that maybe I should delete the post as no comments at all and I thought I might be doing myself a disservice by posting baby-step poems. Glad you liked the writing. It’s strange to do something that excites me so much and simultaneously still feels so much outside of my control.
    (By the way, you’re right about the mouth in the mask, that's what it is).

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  15. hoppy birfday darjar

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  16. hoppy birfday darjar

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  17. Hello again

    I've been visiting your blog for many hours and days - loved all your work with tangerine skins, avocados.

    The spoons are whimsical, fragile and strong. Bound. Skeletal. Prima donna ballerinas.

    I really enjoyed your spoon collection. I don't like eating dessert with big spoons. Recently in a French bistro I asked the serveur to bring me small spoon with my big chocolate ice-cream. He promptly disappeared and came back with a tray bedecked with a white linen napkin upon which he had laid, from big to small, all the spoons from the restaurant cutlery service.

    Size and shape change the way we experience the world.

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  18. placental.

    clotting hairs, blood-lichen.

    woven into itself
    and through.

    epiphytic.

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  19. Exactly the color of a wild pineapple flower I once saw in a jungle in Borneo.

    Love how the cords become the sheet curves into the cup and around the stick. Shape-classifiers.

    And that rainy waterfall of redlets, a khipu waiting to happen.

    But never so tamed as all that.

    Santa's wild spoon-guitar.

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  20. So beautiful to see... and I am thrilled to have found my way quite by chance to your blog.

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  21. Wow Mien, Here's comment Number 22:-) You know I've been making pots lately? u know, i love the spoon, i feel like i have a sister in my thinginess...

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  22. such wonderful work! so frail but intense in the same time. and the pictures you took of it are also fabulous. I'm glad I discovered your blog, I have to take time these days to explore everything. and your photos on flickr, I've just been there, and it's stunning!

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  23. Ooh, I love these. I've been working with red thread this week too.

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  24. gosh thank you all for such overwhelming flow of feedback. i had hoped to be able to catch up on everyone's blogs and respond there sooner but i am always so slow with things...

    before anything, i want to give credit to John for the title of this spoon. i kept asking what it looked like to him and then finally he saw something and said, 'you know what it looks like to me? an old baby' and that's when the whole thing clicked with me. so thanks, Darling. :)*

    hey Gracie, i want to go check out some gallery shows with you too. maybe next time i'm in town?

    Thank you, Lindsay! Carson! :).

    hi Paula, thanks to you, this series of spoons got started!!

    dear Mansuetude, it touched me deeply that you take the time to express all this. i love what you wrote about it being a hollow well, 'breathing...into the hollow', and how it 'hollows into my own'...something to ponder on further...

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  25. Extremely beautiful... allows so many associations.

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  26. confused about where i should continue responding...i guess here is better than anywhere else for now as i am still trying to catch up on newly discovered blogworlds...

    Marjojo, i am still thinking of what you wrote, especially the image you gave me of those monks and people on the streets all holding the spoon to their mouths, chanting softly, finally being heard...and the air would be so strongly scented too because the red spoon smells like cinnamon...

    and where have you been, smelly one?

    Lasuza, thank you again. Prima donna ballerinas, yes...and old ones too...

    Santa's wild spoon-guitar, gosh Conor, i love that and all of what you wrote of clotting and being woven. and redlets. i would like to make prints of what you gave me.

    thank you, Gracia, for finding me so i can find you as well. so many treasures where you are.

    A.W. i want to see your pots! always so good to see you here. :).

    thank you, Roxana, for your words here. i am still exploring your world and what a beautiful one it is...

    thank you for visiting here, Stephanie! :).

    Kristy, i'm very curious to see where you will with your red thread!

    thank you, Hineshm. :)).

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  27. I see a child fighting to let go, release itself into the world (freedom), yet pain...your work speaks so much.

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  28. Happy to have found your blog through Cally. Best wishes...

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