No. 005
FIELDNOTES staining light may 2015
FIELDNOTES art through collection
Issue No. 5 staining light
Field Notes exists to document the expressions and art that collect over the course of our experiences. This issue is an effort to explore the spaces of contradiction, split selves and multiple truths within us. Much of our world exists in terms of opposites and binaries. While at times these categories can help us construct an identity and understand the world around us, at other times they are responsible for feelings of paralyzing uncertainty and an inability to reconcile what is “true.� Our beliefs sometimes ram against each other, yet again their fluidity hums within us in euphony. There is more happening within us than we can sometimes express, but it is crucial, at the very least, to try.
fieldnotesarts.org
contributors
matthew dwyer shannon keelan franzi ehmer albert lagrange peter giunta alexa masi carly goldburg eleni mutafopulos nikole jewell mollie o’leary
collected sketches eleni mutafopulas
collected poetry mollie o’leary through p. 09
stuck to the bottom of a shoe Listen for the broken sound. My heart peeps through a crooked window pane, wondering when I will be found. Pieces of myself fall like fingerprints on the ground. Splinters of a smile, invisible heartbeats, muted pain. Please, listen for the broken sound. A glass bandage covers the deepest wound. A ticket on the nowhere train, taking people to oblivion, never to be found. Even in the air, we can drown. Silver teardrops leak into my brain. Tell me, did you hear the broken sound? Time doesn’t stop; don’t turn around. A bouquet tied with a blue vein. Some dropped petals are never found. The void between I am and I was is profound. Take my hand, fill it with what you cannot explain. I know you heard it too—the broken sound. It whispered in my ear, stop waiting to be found.
peaches I watch as a man walks by, eyeing
is called “Yesterday’s Pick” with the rest
We will escape our cage of stifling
us. He takes out some change but will not
of the old fruit. We are a little
plastic and gather in compost piles.
pay our full expense. He bargains us
Wrinkled. Our fuzz is more thick. A man
We will grow together in strength and
close to seventy-eight cents, though we
scrunches his nose as if insulted
number. We won’t suffer quietly.
are priced at one dollar. Then he scoops
by our mortality-as if our
We will regenerate and rise up
up a curvy fruit. His sharp, hard teeth
realness is shameful. He turns away.
into the air. Open your mouth
bite with anticipation. The young
But we won’t make ourselves small for him.
and breathe in the future. We are here.
fruit steps out of its skin, revealing
At the end of the day, we may be
wet flesh underneath. He wipes his mouth.
dropped in trashcans and soon forgotten.
The next day I sit in a bowl that
but this isn’t our life. Look closely now.
dead planet
She sits in the waiting room for 17 minutes and stares at the dead potted plant. It is surrounded by yellow leaves. She sits in the dentist’s chair for an hour. “How often do you floss?” The dentist wipes her chin. The taste of metallic blood. A pale water stain on the ceiling and a film of dust, obscuring a family portrait. They are wearing identitcal white shirts. The radio plays a song on the way home with words that don’t make sense. She drives over yellow leaves— they break apart so delicately. At home, she watches the TV. It is talking about someone else’s life. Light continues to fade, and her life quietly peels away. Hour by hour, she sheds more layers, acquiescing to the ticking clock above her. A slow unfolding, like letting go of a hand. She wonders how it will feel to reach her core— the center of Time She hopes it feels like something at all
pendulum I want to be so much. My eyes are lotus petals, cradling the impossible softness. There are no edges. Just like me. Gentleness is crushing. I can only feel it through the fire. I am not someone or anyone at all. My tears do not cleanse me. I am afraid of so much. Look at the way the world turns, and nobody notices. My memories are satellites above my head. Blood red moons, circling. I want you. It is not simple. I think about that a lot, and what your hands say about me. The future slips through my fingers each day, but I always find it again a little down the path. I understand nothing except through what I feel. And I feel so much.
you can be whoever you want albert lagrange
You grow up being shaped by notions of rigidity and strict form. The scope is narrow and biased. Success and ideals are defined for you and anything other than that is outcasted, deemed as social blasphemy. You are rarely urged to take risks or go against the grain in any way as this would be a detriment to your well-being and reputation. Instead of instilling fear and insecurity, the goal should be the encouragement of individuality and expression. You need to be reminded that you can go anywhere and do anything you want. You need to be reminded that this Earth belongs to nobody. It is a mass of compounds suspended in space whose future is out of any humans hands. Its future is decided by Nature. You need to be reminded that you are Nature. You are a vibration of energy who happens to have cognizance and a terrestrial life, just the same as are the ones shoving fear and conformity down your throat; you need to be reminded of this. Hierarchy is an illusion, borders are an illusion, and time is an illusion; you need to be reminded of this. You need to be reminded that you can be whoever you want.
triptych
nikole jewell
mild velvet—the storm leaves a great divide: peat and pitch glycerine and lye the named and instinct the rose and tonic of whipping blood the forst and unfrost influence and seizure and you—all palms and bergamot— and me, hinge joint and ginger with all this time inside
predictive text matthew dwyer facing page
Typed only using predictive text, these messages explore the relationship we have with technology, and the aggregates of messages and concerns we express daily. A side effect of this prediction is the non-linear nature of the expressions. As it only accounts for grammar, the results are vague coherence and stream of consciousness ideas, unexpectedly jumping to new topics with the change of a keyword.
don’t do this to me shannon keelan
This piece explores the duality of the highly emotional and highly emotionless self.
baby blue baby blue baby baby blue blue
alexa masi alexa alexa masi masi not so much afraid of myself but afraid of never coming closer to the truth, of never taming it, of never packing it into all of my aching living and breathing— my baby blue, my heart in husky denim, my voice slapping against my skin as I sat in the bathroom and wondered if on my ninth birthday I would wake up and find myself as something else, closer and closer withal. not afraid—never of myself, but still afraid. not so much a deep space but a single thistle of light, eddying, purpling, and blowing right past me— not so much afraid of its sting, its candy bite, but afraid of it slipping away, ribbons of tadpole light like ribbons out of my hair and so left undone, and so left unbecoming, unbelonging into something else: closer, farther, the fear of truth and nothing to fear withal
sayer
alexa masi
virginia wakes me with blushing light second-hand through the windowshield to leave my body untouched. i didn’t feel that it was a question. virginia watches me for three highway hours and i hold my arm out the window with the other splaying towards the radio, riding crucifix style. i didn’t feel that it was a condition. primordial hurt in a passenger seat that would seem self-evident but has been covered up: bugs hitting my glass body, a mausoleum of tiny, grimy endings but i didn’t feel it was an absolute. original heated body still fresh from a clay oven, still tendon-red from gnawing its way out from between a chokecollar of ribs, but now motionless through the air while carving high-speed in hot steel through the air, not feeling that it’s anything but wondering if those sirens are for me.
collected artwork franzi ehmer through p. 23
garden green
peter giunta
It might be impossible to plant a tree And then lie down over it and wait for it to carry you to heaven. It would take approximately 1 lifetime And your progress would be measurable. It is based on the simple assumption that trees grow up, rather than down As God, in one of many forms, is the star of HGTV’s Intelligent Design. How intelligent, to create these service elevators And how clueless we have been Toiling away with our little dialy inquisitions, Taking the stairs. We must not waste time inquiring in the lateral. It is too late for you, so quickly now. Have children, do the decent thing and leave them in the yard.
peter giunta
black cane at lunchtime The inside of your head is a pub, Often much too crowded. You wonder why sinuses exist If not to remind you of how hard it is To force your ideas through the nose. It gets harder To remind you that we must not blame disease. It eats and commutes And starves. You stopped eating because you didn’t want to feed it Or because you can’t stand the idea that Little Debbie hasn’t aged a day. You want to be emblazoned on a microwaveable box So that people will envy your immortality And yet you also want to be popular among the elderly Because they hold the secret to life. Learning cribbage anew each day, Concerned only with the location of their cane In the hour of lunch.
collected photography carly goldberg
through p. 29
FIELDNOTES art through collection
additional artist information
franzi ehmer www.franziehmer.com https://www.facebook.com/franziehmer.art Franzi Ehmer is a German-born expressionist figurate painter from London. Her early and intimate works surround the essence of restriction. Her artworks depict the restrictions in the mind, body and movement, along side society, culture and religion. Exploration of the theme begun with personal narrative and self-reflection leading to the facades and hidden boundaries inflicted by exterior forces. Tackling oppression and discomfort for communities and individuals is a growing passion for Franzi, and is represented in a number of her works. Rich in psychological nature and twisted images, the viewer is lured into a world of realization and appreciation. Her current works encompass abstract ideas and mix media processes. In contrast to her abstract focus and studies of the interaction between colours and shapes, her detail orientated eye has been caught by the medium of tattooing and is currently building a portfolio heavily incorporating dot work and line work. carly goldberg carly.goldberg22@gmail.com Carly Goldberg is a lover of bad jokes and baked potatoes. Somehwere between the two, she dedicates the rest of her time to the music industry. nikole jewell
nikolejewell@gmail.com leash-baby.tumblr.com
shannon keelan shannonpdk@gmail.com Shannon is a Boston based artist getting her bachelor’s degree in communications and theatre. You can expect a website of some sort when she gets her act together but for now you can email shannonpdk@gmail.com if you’d like.
albert lagrange amialbert@me.com strangescope.tumblr.com Albert LaGrange is a film photography who’s goal is to capture the things you can’t remember the next day, the way your body language changes when the person you think about at night enters the room, and the places you go when you are sick of your hometown. mollie o’leary olearym@kenyon.edu Mollie O’Leary grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts, an urban town south of Boston. he is currently a sophomore at Kenyon College in central Ohio. She plans to major in English with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in Philosophy.
FIELDNOTES art through collection
inquiries // submissions
fieldnotesarts.org editor@fieldnotesarts.org
SUBMIT: Issue No. 6 Field Notes is always seeking art and written work, under the broadest of definitions, from as many willing voices as possible. If you have put yourself and your experiences into some printable form, please do not hesitate to send it our way. Issue No. 6 will be centered around beginners - an experiment in expressing yourself outside of a form you’ve already developed skills in. This prompt is relatively simple in direction, however can yield an infinite number of possibilities. The only requirement is that whatever you submit should be in a form or medium you are not well-versed in by any stretch of the imagination. More detailed information on the prompt, submission guidelines, and due dates can be found on our website. To ensure your work will be reviewed and accepted in a timely manner, please submit no later than September 1st, 2015. We look forward to hearing from you.
field notes issue no. 005