Someone has pointed out to me
That I haven’t posted in quite a while.
And what could possibly be more flattering and validating than to have my absence noted?

So, flattered, validated and stll partially absent, I write a Cold Tuesday Evening update. As I type I’m wearing a scarf indoors and it smells of last night’s bonfire. I have a fantastic southerly view out of my studio window, the sill of which I’m propping my laptop on because it’s the only spot in the apartment where I seem able to pirate a reliable wireless connection of late.

But that’s not really the kind of update that belongs here. I designated this thing as a blog relating pretty exclusively to art and art-making, and haven’t wanted to slide off into the personal or the mundane but here, reader-dear-reader, are a few things I have been busy with while not writing about art and art-making:

-Helping to renovate my new office and the whole of the Grant Building where soon essentially Everyone I Know will be working, designing and letterpressing. This work, the painting and scraping and patching of it, is turning out to be vastly more satisfying than the same sort of work was in my past experience, as in my past experience the massive rennovation projects (of a potential gallery space in Newport and a 3,000 square foot warehouse “apartment” in Pawtucket) were mine and mine alone and the physical toil was accompanied by financial demise and the cold burn of a growing conviction that I was making a huge mistake. This time the mistake is not mine. But the office will be.

-Ransacking a load of antique typesetting books that I found as joyously as forgotten cookies when I became a Card Carrying Member of the Pawtucket Public Library, where they have All These Books and They Just Let Me Take Them Right out the Freakin’ Door For Free. Books on birds and books on trains. It's fantastic.

- Biking.

And about the biking.
I don’t think I can getting away with calling bicycle riding art.
It creates nothing but thighs and a fast shushing sound on sandy patches. And if I tried to claim it was performace, the shocking number of car doors that have been opened quite nearly into me of late assure me that no one is watching.

Still, I can justify slipping some cycling talk into the envelope of Art Blog by interspersing my writing with some photos I took this morning, and by reminding everyone of the the bike portrait project I've been working on for a few seasons (and wish to continue, if you’d all come out of the woodwork and model for me).


I will have to start a bike blog. There are so many things to be discussed, from the power of vanquishing the hills of a Connecticut farm tour to the feeling of queasy weightlessness that overtakes one when the sun goes down too early and one is still powering up the Cranston path. And, of course, the bad things that can happen between a cyclist and a seat. I have questions about this.

Anyone out there who remembers me from a time earlier than spring may be surprised at my pedaly dedication. That I can do 32 flat miles in two hours, that I earned a real live t-shirt for a ride in September and that I own clothing made of special wicking fabric. I agree; it is startling. I have always loved rolling down hills on things and I have often thought better of driving, but I have never been an athlete.

For now, just a few words about my morning commute. Because I am hungry for it as soon as I wake up and I miss it as soon as I’m done, and I’m sure that somehow it informs the graphicals I design and the letters I press and the wood that canvases my blank spots. I’ve recently eschewed the leafy luxury of the east-side route to work in favor of a Charles Street / Mineral Spring / Lonsdale Ave one.

Anyone who knows these roads knows them but anyone who doesn’t needs only to understand that these are dense, industrial and intermittantly defunct streets filled with textile mills and diners, brick and manufacturing and hair cutting joints targetting specific populations from every country in the developed and developing world. Riding this route gives me a lot to look at, and I find that by the time I’m at the studio after this haul I am well-stimulated and image-laden and I feel as if I really live as a part of The World. A high-geared ride through an area like this is an experience not unlike the experience I’m trying to recreate and investigate with my artwork.

Fragments of dialog and narrative in the form of layered signs and murals, boots, the arc and flit of powerlines, scaffolding, glances and tracks. The omniscient feeling of being unknown and in motion. Overheard radios, the promises of warn-away slogans in white on terracotta, the unfinished business of someone looking at me through morning eggs and window glass.


Also proud, gray birds move through all of this like silent referees.

My ride essentially gives me the benefit that all travel, be it international or accidental, offers. A chance to pass through a scene with the magnified focus and perfect attention to detail that we offer up to the strange and fleeting.



This commute route is about fifty percent super-upward battle and fifty percent downward spree, and by the time I’m homestretching to the studio my legs are warm and painless and my resolve is eerie and irrational and I could, I think, make something.

I wrote this short thing about my history and new relationship with this route (which coincidentally relates to my history with huge renovation mistakes) and how I would like to feel like I have done a variety of things on purpose. You read it and then I let you go, promise.



I bike to work the longest way ~or~ why the girl becomes an athlete who had always thought that things were flying apart.

Now all you do is ride and, having ridden, repair. At night you like to think in terms of preparation and at morning you are ravenous and ready to do again what you’re about to do, again. You ride simple struggle early and are justified by strain.

See? This is for you who have always been in need of justification: at the top of the hill you will gasp hard and it turns out it does not matter. Like precedent and what other people are up to.

You re-route, you choose industrial and you gear high for the tight stretch through mill and bale, rail crossing and brickbest. You sweat-coast by steamstacks, between buildings that you may once have lived in. Places where you patched and rattled, spackled and spent and looked out of the windows by which you now pump, all pedal and packed.

You take heart in the vicious uphill and blur what views you once withstood, comforted by the idea that no route this strenuous could be taken by accident. Claim intention through muscle and metabolism but understand: none of it was ever anything but planned. Y

ou have chosen everything thus far and after all it keeps on coming. Like history and reasons to eat.

Also. You enjoy feeling vigilant for turning boxtrucks and glass but your gaze, loosed, still flicks faithfully back to old store murals and landing birds and it is the same as always; nothing catches your eye that is not a sign.