The Joshua Tree was complex, yet open, free, grounding, fragrant and humbly exquisite. The silence was magnificent. Fell deeply in love with it.

Joshua_Tree-Medium.m4v Watch on Posterous

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maybe the shadows
of shadows
under my eyes
hold me down

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As a canvas is transforming, I took close-up pictures to record the process and at the same time to use as imagery in my new collages. I don't take imagery for granted. There is a lot of interesting stuff to use and share in mixed-media.

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Magnolia Pictures
Directed by Chris Malloy
 

The perfect documentary for me to watch last night in my slight anxiety about all the things I need to do...or ought to do. A very grounding film putting issues in perspective and in the light. Inspired me to simplify my life even further and rethink my actions and what's important to me—finding the needed balance. Inspired a new trip with my family.

Excellent watch and beautiful glimpses of Easter Island and Patagonia!

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The first time I saw a moonrise I was 28 yrs old and it was by accident. I was sitting on a Long Island beach, waiting for 4th of July fireworks. The sun had just set and it was getting dark. All was rather typical, until the approaching moonrise startled me, as I had to ask people what it was. I was much more impressed with the moonrise than with the fireworks!

If you've never seen a moonrise to your knowledge, put it on your must-do list. You won't regret it.

On this occasion, on Miami Beach, it was like a dim sunset with all the rich blackness of the young night sky and speckled with stars. Quite a sight! Before it happened alI I saw was black, until the moon emerged out of the ocean like a smudge of fire and illuminated it. This picture doesn't do the experience justice.

Below, when we first see it, is it is caught in between distant clouds on the horizon.

You can look up moonrise schedules online here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/moonrise.html.>

Moon love to all! ; )

"The time is perhaps not altogether too green for the vile suggestion that art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear, and more than the light of day (or night) makes the subsolar, -lunar, and -stellar excrement. Art is the sun, moon, and stars of the mind, the whole mind."

Samuel Beckett

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vote via pattyblanco.artistswanted.org

THANK YOU EVERYONE! I've made it to the public artists page which is now open to folks from all over the world for viewing and voting their favorite artists. So many talented artists! Here is a link to browse all the artists! http://pattyblanco.artistswanted.org/atts2012collection

I'd so love to have my artwork showcased in Times Square, in my most dearest city and hometown, so please consider voting for me, if you feel inspired and like my work! ; )

FYI - You may be asked to login via Facebook first to vote, in order for it to register, keep it organized and fair.  Then click "Collect me". If you see a number after clicking then you know the vote went through.

Many thanks!! XO,

Patty

 

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Two days ago I was shopping for groceries with my little man at our infamous market, a cherished place we are lucky to have around here with its inspiring offerings, boasting gourmet quality. Maybe there's a bit of bluffing going on, but I accept it very gratefully.

Checking out at the cashier I had a very nostalgic moment. Two cashiers away from me, as I'm swiping my debit card with my son wildly climbing the counter in jungle-gym mode, and I tell him to retreat, an older elegant woman catches my attention. She has lovely silver hair in a bun and black clothes and she raises a bag of vegetables very curiously and asks, with a terribly thick accent which I couldn't identify in it's briefness, "Do I come just like this? Do I come with nothing?" The cashier, naive and cool in his young stance and confused says, "I'm not sure what you mean," while glancing over at a neighboring confidant taking notice. Again, she asks shaking her vegetables to the other, "Do I come with nothing?" He nods in a similar ripe cluelessness. With low patience the woman turns slowly and walks away with her vegetables back into the bustling of the store as the two men make no further effort to inquire in their slothful state of youth.

Now, if I had not lived in Italy I would have been just as confused and wondered about this lady's wits, but this did make sense to me—I think. I attempted to enlighten the trendy young man who was my cashier, who also witnessed the scene, "In Italy, you weigh your own fruits and vegetables, get a ticket and give it to the cashier," I explain. "Really?" he asks in semi-distracted wonder, as he packs my groceries, and as I pack another bag myself, another practice picked up abroad. In fact, in Parma I had to bag my own bags and buy them, too.

Oh, and I almost forgot about the fun of putting on plastic gloves, before daring to touch any vegetables or fruits! Didn't I feel like a vulgar American? And to think the vegetables were dirtier than me?

A simple incident of chaos, but invaluable in my cache of cultural experience and in this case, a sort of translation—clarity. How often we misunderstand each other in seemingly senseless dialogue and actions that are just a matter of cultural differences.

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Hello friends,

I'm participating in Art Takes Times Square and I would love your vote!

Visit http://pattyblanco.artistswanted.org/atts2012 and click "Collect Me" at the top of my profile page.

THANK YOU with love! XOXO

Patty

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Working with transfers is always exciting because you don't always know what you're going to get, especially when working with old magazine leafs from the late 60's. Image transfers are part of the layering process in some of my paintings. There are many techniques, but I use an acrylic gel medium, water, a brush and a whole lot of numbing finger rubbing!

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Heard this in the studio this morning. In 1989, Terri Gross (Fresh Air/NPR) interviewed Adrienne Rich, a contemporary feminist poet, about her life and work. She died last week. Rich discusses poetry, mothers and daughters, coming out, relationships and more. Interesting interview!

"I think that it is perhaps that tendency that we have to try to correct the mythologies that we feel have harmed us, the mythologies that deny the strengths and the powers that women have passed onto women, that mothers have passed onto daughters. And these are very real, and we know that they are very real. But at the same time, there are other stories, and I feel as though there needs to be a corrective to the corrective, if you will. We tried in the early years of the feminist movement to look under and behind the myths, the legends that always depicted the stepmother as cruel, the bad mother, the myths in popular psychology of the evil mother, the evil mother-daughter bond. We tried to correct those, and in so doing, I think we unearthed a great deal that was real and important and useful. To idealize, to sentimentalize, to mythologize that — those powers, those strengths, those teachers — takes us into yet another place where I think we are disempowered."

INTERVIEW: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=fal...

MARCH 30, '12 STORY: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/30/149678681/adrienne-rich-on-the-powerful-powerle...

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My son's feet are not only gigantic (we almost wear the same socks!), they get insanely HOT. Not just in the bath, but at many other random places and times, even in bone-chilling winter! Don't get it. And he tells me he likes being cold. Don't get that either. Can anyone else relate? Does your kid take a bath with his feet sticking out of the tub? I love him so!

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"I know a man with blue black eyes and a blue shirt and a beautiful belly. He told me there was so much to believe in and I must memorize it so neither of us will forget. He showed me a fall, a winter and a part of spring and in the summer there were orchids. He showed me a fear and a hope and a twitter in the park. I saw his painting through a glass by the ashtray. His name and past I don't know—I see his eyes and I love him."

Excerpt from 'Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter' by Patricia Albers
pg 155

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via pattyblanco.artistswanted.org

It's a bit confusing I must admit. Why did they make it so! You become a judge 1st by clicking to vote and signing in with FB or some other, and then just click on the pg again (no direction right?), so on the next page click on my artwork again to choose the artist (me hopefully) to vote for now that you're a judge ; ), then you finally arrive at the profile page with my pic, statement and 6 artworks. At the top of the page click "COLLECT ME" by the STAR. Once you click you should see a number by the star. DONE! THANK YOU!!

If anyone has the patience and willingness to do this, you're an angel and deeply appreciated! Hopefully, it'll make you feel good!

Also, you can click on any of 6 the images to see them larger.

THANK YOU so much to those who like my work, did the clicks of time
and helped me out on this fun project!!  ; )  You're the best!  XO

Patricia

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Today I am breathing against the grays,
like the cold glass and metal inside the hospital,
the core of everything—that still reality.

I can feel the smooth vastness,
whirling outside—empty.

Too many knocks on the door,
to chop down my tongue,
erase my view.

For true words are like glass,
scraping skin off bone,
shaking the ground mad.

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"Mommy, I made something for you!"
"Wow. I love it. Who is this?"
"It's you!"

What a remarkable resemblance. I love how he incorporated my earrings. Where did he find them anyway? So creative and funny.

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At the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea last month to see Magnus Plessen's exceptional work. Obviously, the opinion of selfish parents who drag their poor 5 yr old to such rotten places. No toys, no children, really boring people, no bathroom (and liars), and artwork bound to give nightmares. We are bad.

Here's a link to Plessen's exhibit:

http://www.gladstonegallery.com/plessen.asp

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"I knew your parents before you were born!" Jack declared to my nori-munching five year old as we sat at the sushi bar reminiscing, proud of our son's similar fanaticism and watching Jack in his Friday night, 7th St. glory. He was our East Village god of sushi. We were there all the time when we could afford it and were on a first name basis with him, though we wondered if Jack was really his true name. Although it had been a few years since we had returned, he remembered us and greeted us with a wistful smile. And Tom, our waiter, was still there too. Perfect. The first thing he said was, "It's been a long time!" It was incredible. So heartwarming. It felt like time had not passed by at all, except we had expanded – not always the case in such attempts at memory lane. It was a very endearing black-hole in the vastness of time and in the ever-changing world.

We are always teaching our young, vivacious descendant about who we are and where we came from, our many homes. If you've gotten around as much as we have — like a new home, neighborhood, state, country every couple of years in a 16 year stretch — then you understand the feeling of your many homes. Even if you didn't love one so much as the other, you still feel a part of yourself there or at least a ghost of you. But when you have a deep fondness for it, the comfort of that place and all the knowings, always feels unchanged, even it has changed a bit. And, if you really have an attachment to it, a yearning, you feel you've never left that place at all. You need to return to it at some point, maybe ASAP. That's how New York City and Nyack are to me. But travel is indispensable. I wish for more of it, a lot more — even with ridiculous flying phobias. Thank god for bloody marys.

So, here we were on a Friday night, rejoicing this parallel home with Jack meeting our son for the first time and filling us in with news that he is ready to move on, open up his own place. Maybe next time he won't be here, but at the moment it was the perfect moment, so much so I had to stop myself with thoughts of knocking on old doors. The drive all the way from Nyack was worth it and so was the people watching. Can't beat NYC wilderness!

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