eli hansen

http://www.thecompanyart.com/pages/elias-hansen/

the rag rug

The Rag Rug by Ted Hughes

Somebody had made one. You admired it.

So you began to make your rag rug.

You needed to do it. Played on by lightnings

You needed an earth. Maybe. Or needed

To pull something out of yourself -

Some tapeworm of the psyche. I was simply

Happy to watch your scissors being fearless

As you sliced your old wool dresses,

Your cast-offs, once so costly,

Into bandages. Dark venous blood,

Daffodil yellow. You plaited them

Into a rope. You massaged them

Into the new life of a motley viper

That writhed out of the grave

Of your wardrobe. Like the buried wrapping

Of old mummy non-selves. You bowed

Like a potter

Over the turning hub of your rich rag rug

That widened its wheel,

Searching out the perimeter of a music-

The tongues of the loose ends flickering in air.

Issuing like a fugue out of the whorls

Of your fingertips. It calmed you,

Creating the serpent that coiled

Into a carpet. And the carpet

Lifted us, as it turned and returned,

Out of that crimson room of our cardiac days.

It freed me. It freed you

To do something that seemed almost nothing.

Whenever you worked at your carpet I felt happy.

Then I could read Conrad's novels to you.

I could cradle your freed mind in my voice,

Chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence,

Word by word: The Heart of Darkness,

The Secret Sharer. The same, I could feel

Your fingers caressing my reading, hour after hour,

Fitting together the serpent's jumbled rainbow.

I was like the snake-charmer - my voice

Swaying you over your heaped coils. While you

Unearthed something deeper than our verses.

A knowledge like the halves of a broken magnet.

I remember

Those long, crimson-shadowed evenings of ours

More like the breath-held camera moments

Of reaching to touch a falcon that does not fly off.

As if I held your hand to stroke a falcon

With your hand.

Later (not much later)

Your diary confided to whoever

What furies you bled into that rug.

As if you had dragged, like your own entrails,

Out through your navel.

Was I the child or the mother? Did you braid it,

That umbilicus between us,

To free yourself from my contraction or was it

Pushing me out and away? Did you coil it,

Your emergency magic operation,

To draw off the tangle of numb distance

Secreting itself between us? Or was it

A drooled curse

From some old bitter woman's rusty mouth

That stays awake when she sleeps - her malediction

Spellbinding tiered labyrinths of confusion

Into the breadth of a hearth-rug? The coils,

Impassable, became a mamba, fatal.

Its gentle tap, when you trod on it for finality,

Would alter your blood. When I stepped over it

Would alter my nerves and brain.

I dreamed of our house

Before we ever found it. A great snake

Lifted its head from a well in the middle of the house

Exactly where the well is, beneath a slab,

In the middle of the house.

A golden serpent, thick as a child's body,

Eased from the opened well. And poured out

Through the back door, a length that seemed unending–

Till its tail tapered over the threshold,

The deep-worn, cracked threshold, soon to be ours.

That was after the whole house, in my dream,

Had capsized. And a perfect replica

Double of the house–the well-world's own

Upside-down reflection duplicate–

Had swung uppermost, and locked upright

Under its different stars, with an earthquake jolt,

Shaking the snake awake.

The rag rug

That had heaped out onto your lap

Slid to the floor. There it lay, coiled

Between us. However it came,

And wherever it found its tongue, its fang, its meaning,

It survived our Eden.

metaphysical still life

here are some (not so great) photos that i took of a book of morandi paintings in the library...

the first painting is called "metaphysical still life with three objects"

knot

dan estabrook

(via the shallow depths)

rope remake

a sculpture of a piece of rope; made from wire and fabric

martin puryear

necklace sculpture

i made this necklace sculpture as part of the interview process for a job doing store display at anthropologie (i got the job!). i really enjoyed making something that was purely decoration...

the beads are made from chicken wire and papier-mache covered in scraps of silk and lace

ry rocklen

Rise, 2009, 
found mattress, fiberglass, Aqua-Resin, glue, glass tiles, grout

Open Window, 2009, 
found curtain, metal, two-part epoxy putty, thread

"Ry Rocklen has always had a soft spot for the worn and ripped, the flattened and deflated urban detritus he finds accumulated in thrift stores and cast off in back alleys. A found mattress, curtain, sweatshirt, and rubber ball receive a second life and are petrified as lavishly handcrafted aesthetic objects in “House of Return,” Rocklen’s current exhibition. Rise, 2009, a mattress bent upright at the waist and meticulously inlaid with rows of glittering glass tile, stunningly conflates a cushioned heft with a hard, faceted surface. Bulging tummy folds humorously anthropomorphize the tilt of its slouching posture. At the opposite end of the gallery, a shredded white satin curtain worn with old age and too much sun is installed (with the help of a putty-covered armature) as a billowing structure of splayed, undulating ribbons, casting a twisting web of overlapping shadows onto the carpeted ground. But as much as Rocklen’s elaborate sculptural alterations to found objects revitalize the weary and return refuse from the brink of oblivion, they also scrutinize the contingencies of matter’s decomposition and express a sense of wonder at the accidental textures and forms to be discovered in states of decay. At their best, these works cover secondhand goods with new skins that reveal their latent character while hyperbolizing the potential Rocklen perceives when he encounters a damaged object on the sidewalk by chance."

— Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Artforum

http://parkerjonesgallery.com/exhibitions/view/bry-rocklenb-house-of-return/

i really love the way the artist has "petrified" and transformed these found objects. there's something so wonderful about using objects with a history of human contact- this is one thing i miss when making all of my pillows by hand...

remakes

i'm beginning the slow process of remaking every object in my apartment.

new work

sunday afternoon

matthew ronay

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/matthew-ronay/

http://www.hideamongthetrees.com/

eva lofdahl

eva lofdahl (via the best time of day)

palette

this blog is partly an experiment in documenting the (slow, awkward) process of making my current body of work- i'm not sure if it's helping or slowing me down, but it's been interesting... anyways, i've ditched the green and grey and finally decided on a palette...

1. sheila hicks (via atswim-two-birds), 2.sri threads, 3. camilla engman, 4. flora vagi (via the best time of day), 5. federico hurtado, 6. ?, 7. alma allen (via an ambitious project collapsing)