Bookbinding in REHAB

Published on March 12, 2010. 0 Comments

It took one hour a week for almost six months to get this project completed. Sometimes I thought it would not happen, but now I can rejoice because we did it! The basic premise was to do a bookbinding group with the residents I counsel in a year long residential substance abuse facility. In the end, they made twenty four one-of-a-king journals. During that that time many clients came and went, but through the help of all of them the final product came out great!

here are some shots taken during the process.

Dance Anarchist EAP (a leaf falls) EP

Published on February 12, 2010. 0 Comments

So I have been dabbling in electronic music making for my own healing and I am now – unabashedly- releasing my first EP. When I finished this project (including an limited edition CD of one) I realized that it’s not always about creating the most superb masterpiece ever, but instead I have a strong feeling, a weighty feeling, that any superfluous project finished is encroyable in its own right.

This short, <20 minute album, is just a few random songs I made messing around in my kitchen tagged onto the title track. While not truly "musical" I composed the title song as a response to my feelings of being repeatedly inspired by Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies. The official title, "9 year old fighter pilot shot down over Nam (a leaf falls) guilt regret shame fame", is from a poem I wrote and also a poem written by ee cummings.

9 year old fighter pilot shot down over nam ( a leaf falls) guilt regret shame fame by Dance Anarchist

So here it is – my first EP:

you can download (a leaf falls) by clicking this link

Meta-analysis: ARTORBUST, INC – what it is – no grand narrative here

Published on February 1, 2010. 0 Comments

My first semester of grad school (I’m half way finished the degree now) equaled a real homecoming. Instead of just creating a world, I became part of a world that had already been created, a world I now know as expressive arts and expressive arts therapy. That first semester and every semester since has been – but not limited to – a mix of experiential learning, interpersonal relationships, intrapersonal relationships, and lots of ambitious reading. It has been the equivalent of learning a new language; I understand what is happening because I have been living in the arts, but now I have a whole plethora of words and phrases to explain what is going on. The funny thing is that you would think this would make it so much easier, in fact the opposite is true. Each nouvelle experience, network, etc. leads towards more uncovering until you get left in a pile of academic literature brow beating Cartesian dualism, poststructuralism, and the eventual path of existential phenomenology! This is good, but the fact of the matter is that I do the work daily. I utilize the arts in healing for myself and for the clients I work with in a residential substance abuse treatment facility. This is the first time on this blog that I have written about my work. The rumors are true; I am a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor in the state of pine trees (Maine). The goal is to help as many people as I can. Just like they say in AA, you can’t keep it unless you give it away. And I do.

Despite all this rambling disclosure I really wanted to mention one certain essay from that first Fall that hit me and hit me hard; it was an essay about being an artist-in-residence and the idea that by creating and making your own space for expressive arts and healing, people might watch and see and eventually start their own process of healing. At least that is what I remember; if you want to read it, do so and get back to me, eventually I will reread it to see how much got lost in the muddiness of my cognition and phantasies and projections…

Allen, P. (1992). Artist-in-residence: An alternative to “clinification” for art therapists. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 9 (1), 22-29

So ramble on parce que, je suis artiste. I just had a client say to me that I contain multitudes. How did he remember that Walt Whitman quote? I had typed it onto a piece of paper and given it to him one day months ago when he was really suffering being. And out of nowhere he pulls a classic “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I?”

ARTORBUST, INC is not polished and shiny. ARTORBUST, INC is in the trenches doing the work, living the ideal of artist-in-residence, artist as healer. Freud said psychoanalysis is about finding love and finding work and that is just what I am trying to do.

Please enjoy the short video and this work-in-progress… become a share holder someday!

YouTube Preview Image

NOTE: the whining in the video is our little dog Salvador Dali

Projects

Published on January 24, 2010. 0 Comments

bookbinding in residential substance abuse facility (Lesley Community Of Scholars presentation March)
hundreds and hundreds of little hand made journals
life in a year
la musique
finding more shareholders
finding artists

Change in technique

Published on December 9, 2009. 0 Comments

For the last ten years I have been using the same steak knife to cut paper. A couple of months ago I bought a serious paper cutter and today I tried it out for the first time. In the time it took to listen to the sweet sweet Animal Collective – album Merriweather Post Pavilion:

YouTube Preview Image

In that short amount of time (~60 minutes) I was able to finish what was going to have taken at least a month to complete. The steak knife makes for a softer edge but sometimes you have to compromise. This is going to be a series of approx. 500 books so gonna be working enough?? (let’s see I might be lucky to finish by fall, 2010)
Here are some pictures from my studio which is a real mess!!!!

That is approx. 6,000 sheets!!

The liminality of travail!

Published on November 22, 2009. 0 Comments

These rituals break the week in two and make me feel less overwhelmed
These rituals break the week in two and make me feel less overwhelmed. 2009.
Triptych.
Acrylic on canvas,
each panel, 14 x 12 in.

This is the first post of the rest of your posts

Published on November 20, 2009. 0 Comments

Lily and I decided that using the ARTORBUST official website for personal pictures was weird and that is why we moved the personal blog somewhere else. We can email the address if you want:) This website should just be about ARTORBUST, INC.

From a letter by Franz Kafka:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? …we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.