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Category: art
- a year of mornings
  
  Posted at 8:30 am by jasminedesirees, on August 11, 2015
  
  A few weeks ago I was sitting in a salon waiting to get my hair done, and I absentmindedly picked up a book to flip through while I waited. I was immediately captivated by the imagery in the book, which turned out to be A Year of Mornings.
  
  The book is based on this blog, where two women who had never met in person decided to collaborate to share one image of their lives, every morning.
  
  I am guilty sometimes of thinking that it’s only the big things in life that are worth sharing, but this book, and the images inside, immediately struck me as so beautiful and powerful, even though they were of nothing more exciting than the normal, every day struggle to get a family up, and fed, and off to meet the day. It might take a little bit more creativity and imagination, but that’s the point anyway, isn’t it?
  
  It only took me about 15 minutes to flip through from start to finish, but I had ordered the book before I even left the salon. I had been staying with my parents in Montana the week before, and spending a lot of time with my mom, who paints in her spare time. We had talked about working on paintings together while I was there, but I couldn’t think of anything that I really wanted to paint.
  
  The colours and composition of the images in A Year of Mornings were so inspiring that I texted my mom immediately to let her know that I had found my subject.
  
  I’m sometimes hesitant to buy books anymore, I try to live as minimally as possible (just don’t look in my closet), and I have SO many books in Canada still that I haven’t been able to bring with me (I have my own library, basically. It’s a sickness.) but I know this book will serve as a source of inspiration for years to come.
  
  Posted in art, books, inspiration, photography | 0 Comments | Tagged a year of mornings, blogs, books, inspiration, life, photography
- loveliness
  
  Posted at 10:24 am by jasminedesirees, on July 22, 2015
  
  A few lovely things for today, when I’m enjoying my gypsy summer (currently back in California), but also trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
  
  Source
  
  Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry, quotes
- warhol
  
  Posted at 10:15 am by jasminedesirees, on May 13, 2015
  
  My family came to visit me in Phoenix a few weeks ago, and we had a blast playing tourist for a few days. We went hiking, went to a hockey game, and checked out Top Golf (it’s reallllly fun, and I’m a reallllly terrible golfer).
  
  On one of the days, my mom and I had a girls day, and went shopping, out for lunch at Culinary Dropout (get the hummus!) and then to the Phoenix Art Museum.
  
  They were showing an exhibition of Andy Warhol portraits, and it was really neat. My favourite portrait was the Marilyn Monroe one, but not the one that you always see, with the really bright colours, this one was more muted and dark, and I really liked it.
  
  They also had a room full of silver balloons, a recreation of an art installation Andy Warhol did, I kind of wanted to run through it, but I held it together.
  
  As part of the exhibit, there is a video feed of Warhol’s grave in Pittsburg (you can check it out here), along with a quote from Warhol about death:
  
  “I never understood why when you died, you didn’t just vanish. Everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn’t be there. I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment’.”
  
  The Warhol stuff was cool, but the exhibit I liked the most was called “Fireflies on the Water” by Yayoi Kusama. It’s a light installation, you go into this pitch black little room, surrounded by mirrors, and thousands of little twinkle lights come on, in different colours and patterns.
  
  It’s a little hard to maneuver because it’s pitch black, and there are mirrors everywhere so it’s hard to see where you are going, but it’s absolutely stunning.
  
  Posted in Arizona, art, USA | 0 Comments | Tagged andy warhol, art, culinary dropout, fireflies, Marilyn Monroe, paintings, Phoenix Art Museum, phoenix museum of art, yayoi kusama
- a swinger of birches
  
  Posted at 8:30 am by jasminedesirees, on February 18, 2015
  
  Have always loved this poem. “So was I once myself a swinger of birches”.
  
  Birches
  
  When I see birches bend to left and right
  
  Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
  
  I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
  
  But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
  
  As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
  
  Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
  
  After a rain. They click upon themselves
  
  As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
  
  As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
  
  Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
  
  Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
  
  Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
  
  You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
  
  They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
  
  And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
  
  So low for long, they never right themselves:
  
  You may see their trunks arching in the woods
  
  Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
  
  Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
  
  Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
  
  But I was going to say when Truth broke in
  
  With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
  
  I should prefer to have some boy bend them
  
  As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
  
  Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
  
  Whose only play was what he found himself,
  
  Summer or winter, and could play alone.
  
  One by one he subdued his father’s trees
  
  By riding them down over and over again
  
  Until he took the stiffness out of them,
  
  And not one but hung limp, not one was left
  
  For him to conquer. He learned all there was
  
  To learn about not launching out too soon
  
  And so not carrying the tree away
  
  Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
  
  To the top branches, climbing carefully
  
  With the same pains you use to fill a cup
  
  Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
  
  Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
  
  Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
  
  So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
  
  And so I dream of going back to be.
  
  It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
  
  And life is too much like a pathless wood
  
  Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
  
  Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
  
  From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
  
  I’d like to get away from earth awhile
  
  And then come back to it and begin over.
  
  May no fate willfully misunderstand me
  
  And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
  
  Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
  
  I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
  
  I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
  
  And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
  
  Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
  
  But dipped its top and set me down again.
  
  That would be good both going and coming back.
  
  One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
  
  -Robert Frost
  
  Posted in art, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged a swinger of birches, birch trees, poetry, robert frost, writing
- and the moon and the stars and the world
  
  Posted at 7:32 am by jasminedesirees, on January 27, 2015
  
  Still have one more post to share from our Mt. Rinjani adventure, but for today, some Bukowski. I shared some more passages of his that I like here, as well.
  
  Long walks at night–
  that’s what good for the soul:
  peeking into windows
  watching tired housewives
  trying to fight off
  their beer-maddened husbands.
  
  – Charles Bukowski
  
  Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged art, bukowski, charles bukowski, poetry, quotes, writing
- loveliness
  
  Posted at 8:33 am by jasminedesirees, on January 8, 2015
  
  A few lovely things for today, our first day back to reality. We are officially Arizona residents, and are starting to wonder what the hell we were thinking, so right on schedule, then.
  
  Posted in art, inspiration, loveliness, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, dave grohl, inspiration, loveliness, quotes, writing
- for women who are difficult to love
  
  Posted at 10:00 am by jasminedesirees, on December 17, 2014
  
  Came across some of Warsan Shire’s poetry last week, and immediately spent the next four hours reading everything I could find, and then ordering her book on Amazon.
  
  I have a crush on her, for real. Like, it’s a problem.
  
  Excerpt:
  
  “you can’t make homes out of human beings
  someone should have already told you that
  and if he wants to leave
  then let him leave
  you are terrifying
  and strange and beautiful
  something not everyone knows how to love.”
  ― Warsan Shire
  
  Posted in art, loveliness, poetry, quotes | 2 Comments | Tagged loveliness, poetry, warsan shire, writing
- the female of the species
  
  Posted at 8:26 am by jasminedesirees, on December 4, 2014
  
  This poem has kind of been stuck in my head since my sister read it to me last year. I like it because it’s funny (also, accurate and factual), and it reminds me of her. The last stanza is my favourite.
  
  The Female of the Species
  
  WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
  But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  
  When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
  He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
  But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  
  When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
  They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
  ‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  
  Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
  For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
  But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other’s tale—
  The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
  
  Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
  Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
  Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
  To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
  
  Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
  To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
  Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
  Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!
  
  But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
  Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
  And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
  The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
  
  She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
  May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
  These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
  She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
  
  She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
  As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
  And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
  Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
  
  She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
  Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
  He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
  Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
  
  Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
  Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
  Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
  And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!
  
  So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
  With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
  Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
  To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.
  
  And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
  Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
  And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
  That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
  
  – Rudyard Kipling
  
  Posted in art, poetry | 2 Comments | Tagged poetry, rudyard kipling, the female of the species, writing
- loveliness
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on November 20, 2014
  
  A few lovely things for a rainy day spent back in California, hunkered down under the covers and eating pomegranates like it’s my job.
  
  Source
  
  Posted in art, loveliness, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, bukowski, loveliness, quotes, robin sharma
- graffiti
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on November 10, 2014
  
  On the way into Byron Bay coming south from the Gold Coast is a huge graffiti mural on the backside of one of the buildings. I saw it the first time we arrived in Byron, and was immediately obsessed with it.
  
  I kept telling myself I’d get over there to take pictures of it, but I kept putting it off, mostly because the traffic coming back into Byron on that road is kind of a nightmare.
  
  It wasn’t until we were driving out of Byron for the very last time, on our way to sell our car before jumping on a bus to Brisbane that I finally was able to stop and see it up close.
  
  It was even more stunning up close, and made me feel sad and talentless. I can’t even draw a straight line (not really sure why people say that, if I could choose something to be able to draw, I would probably aim a little higher than just a straight line), and I am violently jealous of people who are artistic.
  
  Posted in art, Australia, travel | 1 Comment | Tagged art, Australia, byron bay, graffiti
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