Monday, May 26, 2008

black spoon


thread over wire, paper, hair & wax, 6cm hollow





I thought that i would keep on wrapping it up, leaving strands and strands of thread hanging down, like that of a black widow in mourning. But what is a name for a mother who lost her child? I accidentally burnt the center when trying to smooth out the wax surface. I think i will melt some more away and start over.

18 comments

  1. Nice axis opposition of the bowl and handle.

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  2. ooh, haunting, mien.

    In Central America there is a legend of a mother crying over her drowned children. They call her "La LLorona"- the weeping woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona

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  3. stop making scary objects darjar

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  4. I chuver agree. Chuver do.

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  5. like dark little mushrooms- earthy black - inbetween life and death.

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  6. are you sure you;re not with one foot in the shamantic? its always a sense of quiet, of i should honor your work with a stilled awareness.

    the color tensions are very elegant to me. love them. the handle is like a canoe for some reason, and i get a sense of vessel, floating and yes, (your words or not might make me think it) but i see black hair of a woman, the long strands of life, encoding a tool to offer, to self or other, to dig for answers (in self or other) to feed and to hold womblike here. its even more intimate than the red in some way, because the black for me pulls me into sacred space or ideas of the creative non space where all is emergence.

    peace to you. nice day.

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  7. is that my hair?

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  8. oh love love love
    both conceptually + aesthetically

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  9. "But what is a name for a mother who lost her child?"

    Broken.

    Your work continues to be deeply beautiful. It really does reach into spirit places.

    (thanks for the lovely words about my blog and work!)

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  10. I have visited your spoon over and over now.
    I would like to hold it in my hand...let the long threads softly touch the underground....swing it through the air and catch some wind in it...all in slow motion.
    It's got something very haptic...
    it's amazing art Mien!!!

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  11. Oh, your spoons are becoming more and more amazing!
    When are you going to exhibit them???
    Thanks, Bridgette, I didn't really understand the La Llorona thing. I have a tree image named that that I plan to post someday. But, si there a word for a mother who has lost her child? I mean in English?
    Anyway, a most amazing spoon!

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  12. Cat, it's mostly my hair, maybe a few strands of yours mixed in there somewhere from my other hair experiments. i still have pictures of yours to post up but right now kind of need a break from this...

    Michael, Chuver, i like it that you guys find it scary, gross.

    Thank You All for your thoughts and connections!!

    Mansuetude, i am surprised that it came across to you more intimate than the red one. i did not intend it to be but there were moments when it became too much for me to work with. too gross, too dark.

    Carson, Tau, i am not sure if you guys would still like it if you saw it in person. it is not pretty at all.

    Uschi, i like that - of the threads touching softly to the ground and swing with the wind...

    Paula, your Llorona tree sounds very intriguing...

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  13. this spoon captures darkness and grief so well, I think too about being forced to eat something hated, a dryness in my mouth and gag as it goes down. a bitter aftertaste, astringent, drier than sorrow, the strain of a throat crying out for a lost loved one. I think about the shape a mouth makes with that cry captured only by the invasive lenses of photojornalists at disaster sites, here, a vessel for those snatches of cries. looking at it is hard, working it must have been dark.

    also, the movie The Grudge comes to mind.

    glad you are printing again.

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  14. Oh, oh, Oh!!! Your site was recommended to me by Paula @ Molokai Girl - she thought I'd love it. She is SO right! I am SO lusting after this spoon. Wonderful, wonderful stuff & I live your blog & I will be back & gee, well, just THANKS!!!

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  15. hello redredday:

    i think you are hot today, am i right? this heat is opressive, but i hear Boston will cool off tomorrow so hopefully you will get some air.

    the colors of this, the soft heathery grey and the thread's thinner soul, that is what makes it more intimate for me--the red ones are brighter, power, also the Stop color; but a plasticity and a thicker chord too (i have a thing about plastic i am working on...)

    so the darkness, that is another issue--in your soul, the process of empowering expressive emotion outward (that darkness you talk of, that feeling of not almost wanting to be there with it) isn't that power... isn't it a duende... isn't that what we are afraid of too but must in a way find the vibration of to let a work live, too?; the power of life and its marriage to grief or unknown feeling so deep, almost trembling and warning within us... i don't know... i have only so little thread of knowing what you are trying to say, but i feel (energy moving there).

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  16. Beautiful - i especially like the photos which make me think of a charcoal drawing.

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  17. found some hair(looking) bowls here
    http://deborahvaloma.com/
    reminded me of your clay wails(whistles) and the spoons.

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  18. I love the idea behind this piece, so powerful and elegant at the same time.

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