Once I made this orca mom and baby incense holder for the pregnant wife of someone I was dating because they were calling their baby Free Willy. I thought that wet sock lint on my bath tub ledge looked like an orca at the time.
My favorite things found in @publicdomainrev
1. One of those things you turn in a contraption and it makes a tiny movie. This one is of a zebra running, a monkey swinging, and maybe a @babybelus going through a hoop.
2, 3, & 4. These were magic lantern slides a guy who was actually an astronomer, but also a theosophist made for lectures about the universe. The notes were lost so itâs now unclear what he was trying to get across.
5 & 6. Book called âErotic Cameos from Antiquityâ not sure what this means. Whatâs a cameo here? What and where is this antiquity?
7 & 8. A family scrapbook. Every spread was amazing but these two especially so. All the relatives in the tail feathers and a whole page for the family cats.
9. From a book of early x-rays. Cameo jewelry under inspection.
10. This was called something like the -First Color Images of Fish Ever-. You can tell by the fishâs faces they were still figuring out how to draw them.
Not-Quite-Sleds of Prospect Park a portrait series.
Sled (Slide) 4, Orange Sled. These two guys found this sled during the last snowstorm. It was already broken and left for trash. They used it for a bit and collected any pieces that fell off. The guy on the left said when they got home he consulted his friend who was a structural engineer, he was wondering if it would be best to tape all the pieces together first and then tape them back to the whole, or to tape each piece individually back to the whole. She said to tape them each individually. But the next day, when she wasnât drunk, she said she had it wrong and that they should have done it all the pieces first and then taped that piece onto the whole, but it was too late.
I once found an Amazing Sea Sponge
and carried it dripping red sewage smelling water all across the lobby of the hotel, through the middle of twenty Orthodox Jews, my uncle among them, in prayer for Chanukah.
It was a long lobby but I finally got it to the elevator and then into my room. It smelled literally like the worst thing in the world and it wouldnât stop bleeding everywhere.
After ten minutes on the shower floor hemorrhaging into a mushy red pile of its own primitive organs (Iâll mop it up later), I wrapped it in a white towel, carried it down the hall, into the elevator (three not-quite-kids in flip flops, two drunk women from Orlando), through the long lobby, out the revolving door, out to where I tried to hide it under some bushes. Maybe it will be better tomorrow.
Super Sticky Slug
First in a series of pieces based off @kaykasparhauser âs dreams.
âLast night I had this dream where we were looking at this giant sort of clear black and yellow super shiny slug that was on a curb on the street and it was picking up everything it crawled over because it was so sticky and I tried to pick it up with my metro card and it started sucking the metro card into its body and it was sooooo strong and I lost my metro card and in the dream it was November 27th and for some reason I had just gotten an unlimited metro card so l was bummedâ
Sometimes when Iâm walking around I feel like everyone is stuck together, sliding down the sidewalk on invisible tracks, gluey and colliding.
Even if youâre a snail (shell-protected) or an armadillo (armored) or a porcupine (spiked), little bits of everyoneâs lives still attach to you. But the soft, slow, sticky slugs of NYC build their own exoskeletons from the detritus the really-fast leave behind.
Sculpture clay, underglaze, Kay Kasparhauserâs dream, glaze
Ian, the subway attendant at my stop, sometimes makes his booth into a free library. I met him when I noticed he had Beloved, which Iâd been wanting to read.
I asked him for it and we chatted. He told me that when the supervisor comes he has to take the books down and pretend heâs not up to anything, since they donât like anything âout of the ordinary.â He said the curation of the books is important. They are all books heâs read and thinks other people should read too.
Sometimes his co-worker puts a rose in the window. Every morning there is a new comic on the white board. Sometimes I say hi and we talk about books and sometimes heâs really busy helping someone with a heavy object or getting someone through the emergency door or making sure people are going on the right train.
