guest books and swag for Bug Dreams and Stretchblood, Tyler’s and my show

photo by Jim Escalante: http://jimescalante.photoshelter.com/

acageofovulatingfemales:

The Mandrill Saw I

Relief roll etching

Brittany Kieler

2012

I’ve uploaded some recent scans of very new stuff! I’m excited to be finished with my BFA show and, as always, a little scared to put images of my work on the internet. Too late.

showcards are done! thanks to Tyler’s skills with the eraser tool in photoshop.

I’m hungry, poor, and tired. conditions are right for an art show. 

acageofovulatingfemales:

Brittany Kieler

Preparations for the upcoming show in May with Tyler Green (http://www.crabvomit.blogspot.com) are being made. Slowly. Here’s a little fella, an unexpected etching that I made a couple days ago. I’m going to try melting beeswax over it to change the tint and texture of the paper. I’m sure my telling you this means a lot to you.

It is these sorts of everyday banalities on which we thrive.

to the Cat

You

with the last two inches of your tail thumping the ground,

with your matted belly fur, which smells of deodorant-litter,

are purring, like a machine

with four twig legs

and stuffed-animal-paws.

coming up from behind while i’m at the table,

running your paws over my bum while i type

meowl-ing like a crazed old woman in a mini-skirt

holding an herbal cigarette between her cat canines

licking the dirty fur, chasing the shadows made

from the light of the stove.

racing to one corner to stop and gaze intently

at the wall

and then again to another corner, another wall.

now i hold you like a carp

above my head,

as i do every day

when bored,

and as i’m letting you down you squirm and fart,

your claw catches on the tablecloth;

we are trying to move onward, trying to set you free,

but the claw lingers in the plastic,

like a deranged hatchet.

stuck forever in the doldrums of life,

wishing for freedom when the front door is open,

and then smelling the fresh air,

you,

with a wince,

hurry back inside

to pur at my feet,

to twirl in a spiral pattern,

to play with dust bunnies on the bathroom floor while i pee.

NATURE-FEARING

Ina May Gaskin has me thinking about a new phrase. 

the fastest this cat ever moved

From July 2010, from an unfinished story:

“Yesterday I made him do multiple romantic things without his even realizing. At the top of the hill, we looked over the trees across the lake and huge sky. At the house, I fell backwards on the couch and he sat down beside me while the moment of back-stretching chaos passed. Then we poked around each other’s faces on the sofa and I kept my head in his lap. I touched his bristly chin with my forefinger. We wrestled and held hands and his hat fell off; this ended with my being held upside down in the air by my ankles and the cushions being pulled off the couch like a nest falling apart. Next we stood up and I put my arms around his neck, we kissed, and biked away.” 

selection from old, old writin’s. haven’t been looking up enough artists lately, but I have been sorting through old thoughts.

“I return home and am nothing but a hazel-eyed waif. I stare at the computer. It glares back. The room is dark but for its steady gaze. I know that it resents me, just like the woman at the bar, because I am young, or because I am old; who knows. Time is relative, like all other formulas. There are lizards in my pocket. People tell me that I know a lot about animals, but I really know only about dogs, and only the breeds that are listed in the D volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica; and for that, only the version that my grandmother owns. Otherwise, I’ve got a sprinkling of knowledge about the stars. I’ve walked beneath them with friends, observed them just like anyone else has with my father, of course you’ve met him, looked for the Big Dipper with him.

She didn’t leave before I left, the woman. I bet she is still there, glossing her lips with beer and hoping that someone will walk in to say goodbye to her again. I can’t imagine what it’s like to go to Dijon—or any other place. I have been nowhere else in my entire life. I have never left this room. I have never left this chair. One time I tried to rearrange things and things got put back to the way they were before by maintenance. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be apart of maintenance. Always fixing shit, making tallies and such. Must be difficult work. Although, there’s something to say for being a mother.”

Liz Armstrong skins an owl

This article from Vice had some cool, albeit rather sad, photos of a dead owl.

I would guess this photo cred goes to the author of the article, Liz Armstrong.

I am going to start treating acageofovulatingfemales like a blog again. Hopefully this will help me gather my ideas for an upcoming show in May. Slapping stuff up on the bedroom wall isn’t working so great anymore because work is scattered between school and home.

The title of the blog, “a cage of ovulating females,” is a quotation from the PBS documentary about female contraception called The Pill (2003):

“Getting the pill to market would require approval from the Food & Drug Administration, and that would entail a large-scale human trial. In exasperation, Katharine McCormick, asked, ‘Where can we find a cage of ovulating females?’

Puerto Rico had a network of birth control clinics and no Comstock laws. Pincus called it ‘the perfect laboratory.’”

acageofovulatingfemales:

Udara Module, 2012

acrylic serigraphy on birch

Brittany Kieler

a handheld teaching instrument for all ages and periods

Photo by Jim Escalante: http://jimescalante.photoshelter.com/