Arts | Grass Oil by Molly Field

I have a fantastic friend I’ve never met and I recently learned that she has a relative who lives near me, so sometime in the not-too-distant future, I will be able to meet and hug and jump up and down like a schoolgirl with the Amazing Lillian Connelly at her blog, It’s a Dome Life (which she often says gets found in searches for “it’s a do me life”; I tell ya… some people…)

Lilly is an artist. I would like to say that she paints in oils, or that she’s mainly all about acrylics on canvas, or that she’s committed to watercolors, or pen and ink on parchment, but the fact is that she’s all of that. And more. She has won me over as an artist and as a friend; and her pieces that are collages, are truly, some of the most fantastic and whimsical stuff I’ve ever seen. Her colors are life-affirming; Lillian is what I would describe as an actively optimistic artist. She is fiercely happy and amazingly resilient.

The best part of what Lilly does is that she lets her darling now three-year-old daughter, Tiny-Small, get in on the action. My own mother was an illustrator and a water color artist and I’m sure she dabbled in oils because I’ve seen her art, but I was forbidden from touching her things or her pens and so I never got a chance to do what Tiny-Small is doing: growing with her mom as an artist herself.

We, these perusers of the internet, blog readers and writers, talk about relationships a lot; we have our “IRL” (in real life) friends and we have our online friends and then we have this special class: the friends we’ve made online who have patiently graced us with their trust, their humor and their wisdom in a way that no IRL person ever could.

Could it be the relative safety and distance of the internet that allows us to foster these trusts and relationships without fear? I don’t know, but I doubt it. I think for me anyway, it is a sincere and authentic meeting of the minds and true comity and friendship that engenders these relationships. Lil and I have spoken on the phone, she’s posted a video of herself and her Tiny-Small for me when the FeatherFish arrived and it melted my heart. We’ve chatted online or on our phones at least once or twice a week about ideas, art, writing, problems and it’s always a blessing. But I know this friendship is true because when I don’t talk to LC or my other online friends for a few days, I earnestly miss them. They are as important to me as the friends I have over my fence line, on the walk to school, or at the PTA meetings.

A few posts back, I wrote about the FeatherFish. Lil fell in love with them. The day prior to that, I wrote my poem about the microwave, the likes of which I have a soft spot for because my mom would write poems about food. My favorite poem of hers about food was one about linguine with clam sauce. My poem about the microwave is an homage written on the fly about the crisis we all go through at the dreaded dinner hour: what to make and how to feed the masses.

The long and short of it is that I offered to trade Lillian a set of FeatherFish for a collage made of my poem and we were off to the races. Three days later, I went to buy her FeatherFish and I wrote about it in this post; and she started her collage. About a week later I went for a row and I returned home to a package with my name on it and I was so excited when I opened it that before I could chance into something more presentable, I insisted my husband take a picture of me beside our set of FeatherFish holding the collage:

My hair is gross under that cap. There was no way I was taking it off.

But that photo doesn’t do the collage justice. Here is a better one:

she put my name first. that was totally cool of her. but she did way more work than i did.

The post that Lillian wrote about her perspective of how this whole thing went down can be found here. It’s all about how she lifted the images of me and my family from my Facebook page and then grabbed the appliances from somewhere else. This little blog post isn’t as lovely as hers, but I couldn’t let another day go by without my sharing how talented she is and how lovely she is and how grateful I am that she and I found each other on Twitter one night last fall. It’s been one of the nicest things to have ever happened to me.

Thank you, Lilly.

This is not a weekly “column” about my kids. This is a weekly column (there, I said it) about three things I think you’d like to know about, but even more so, it’s three things I’d like to share. Here’s last week’s when I wrote about wiper blades, hair color and love: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/three-things-thursday-1/

I’ve refined it since then: The three things will be attuned to three very elemental parts of ourselves — mind, body and spirit — we need to enrich to live fuller lives. I will try to keep these posts to less than 750 words.

Here we go.

Mind: Art.

Last weekend, my fam was in town. It was glorious to see them all. We went to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Specifically, we went to see the exhibit of Chinese dissident artist (and all around freakin’ badass) Ai (“aye”) Weiwei (“way-way”). He is a proud middle-finger upper at the White House and Tiennenman Square and has the shots to prove it. Weiwei was beaten for attending a protest in China and turned the resultant brain scans showing the injuries into art. His work is a giant (swear alert): up yours to the Chinese government and any government which oppresses. He has dropped a Han Dynasty Urn (crazy value of something like $50,000) just because he could and his expression is so flip about the whole thing I admire it. You can see an interview and a clip of the exhibit which aired on CBS here (the narrator’s voice makes me want to run and hide, so … uh, sorry). This exhibit is in DC until February 24… you have 17 days. GO NOW. Plus, it’s free.

Below are just some of the photos I took. I could grab photos from the site, but they are too austere; they don’t have people in them (I think he would prefer having people in the shots). Some are blurred because we couldn’t use flash.

He made a snake out of 5,000 backpacks, similar to those worn by the children whose lives ended in an earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008 when school buildings collapsed on them due to shoddy engineering and government corruption. Despite the fact that you’re in another country, you can’t shake the feeling that you are on hallowed ground:

This backpack reptile winds down the ceiling of the gallery for another 75-100 feet.

Aside from the snake was this, a wall emblazoned with a poster displaying all the victims’ names, ages and genders in a spreadsheet. As you walk beneath the snake and view the wall, a recording of the names read by various voices of surviving loved ones plays in the background:

note the empty cells nearest the camera.

I was struck later, upon viewing my photo that he left empty cells open in the spreadsheet; a reminder of our own mortality and the lives not yet lost due to the corruption. The recording lasts 3 hours and 41 minutes and plays continuously. The placard beside it said:

A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world: no matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.

Another installation in the exhibit, “Straight” was a collection of 38-tons’ worth of rebar from the site that Weiwei re-straightened himself after the catastrophe:

“The tragic reality of today is reflected in the true plight of our spiritual existence: we are spineless and can not stand straight.” –Ai Weiwei

“Cube Light” – my video. This particular piece is amazing; it’s close to 12’x12’x12′ … you can get lost inside the cube from outside it. You’ll see my camera lens experience the same phenomenon; it doesn’t know where to focus. That munchkin chatting in the background is my nephew.

It's gorgeous and it sucks you in. As much as I wanted to say, "Well, I guess anything can be called 'Art' these days, I was eventually humbled to believe that I was in the presence of greatness.

It’s gorgeous and it sucks you in. As much as I wanted to smugly say, “Well, I guess anything can be called ‘Art‘ these days,” I was eventually humbled. I was in the presence of greatness.

In this picture above, shown for perspective, is my loony and awesome brother lying on the floor showing his artistic genius. I don’t know what his pic looks like, but I love taking pictures of people taking pictures of the same thing I am.

Body: Apps or Alarms

I don’t like being woken up abruptly. I don’t know who does. I have a progressive alarm clock. The difference between a standard WAKE THE HELL UP!!! alarm clock and a progressive one is that the progressive one gently rouses you. They all operate under the same standard: don’t traumatize the sleeper. For travel, I also downloaded a progressive alarm clock app for my kids to use when they wake. If you have a Droid, go to the Google Play app market and download, “Nature Sounds Alarm Clock” and it should be free; if you have an iDevice, go to the App Store and download “Progressive Alarm Clock”; I paid $1.99 for it. Two words: Life Changing.

http://www.now-zen.com

Or if you’d like one in person, they can be lovely (and pricey), go to Now and Zen and check them out. I have the brass bowl on a cherry stand and I love it. Not cheap, I saved my milk money for two years for it and I use it for meditation timing; my cleaning ladies like to put the hair ties and change from my dresser in the bowl. nitztagrbikfragalratzen…. By the way (wei), I get paid nothing nor am I compensated for any of these items I share with you.

Spirit: Apologies

Mad props to national chain Noodles & Company for their accountability last month after I was treated like burnt tofu at their restaurant near my home. I shared that blog post with them (highlighted in red above), they sent me an email, then they called me, and a few days later, I received THIS in the mail:

This was lovely: a cutting board, a water bottle, some free meal cards and a tote bag made from recycled billboards. Let's have mad respect for Noodles, y'all.

This was lovely: a HANDWRITTEN thank you card, a cutting board, a water bottle, some free meal cards and a tote bag made from recycled billboards. Let’s have mad respect for Noodles & Company, y’all. That’s awesome.

They thanked ME! Last night, we cashed in those OOPS! cards and here is the result (caption) in an email I sent to their area manager:

“Garry, Tonight was like the old nights. NOODLES IS BACK!!! The penne rosa was fresh, hot, abundant and delicious. We couldn’t wait any longer to use the cards, sinus infection or not. I hope you see the smiley face in my EMPTY bowl. Thanks again for everything. Love is in the air. Molly

The thing about apologies is this: they work. What works more? apologies and action. Noodles & Company proved that they are sincere last night. I’ve written about apologies here. Don’t bother making an apology unless you’re ready to back it up. Then it will be good for everyone’s soul.

Well, I went over by about 300 words. Captions. Sorry.

Thank you.