F*ck It Friday... A Poem

The Lattice
By Jenna Reimer

Unable to escape the lattice;
A net that remains a barricade
From all that is out of reach.
I peer through the mesh
Where crisscrossed shadows
Paint the floor of the other side;
Bleak Figures lurking amongst
This grounded darkness
Dash like a running hare
Leaving no trace of its presence.
Time running like the muddied waters
Of a February river
I cannot see through the murk.
The lattice is far too high to climb,
Too long to trek, too deep to dig.
To have these hands, these feet,
These eyes, this tongue
Are fruitless amid such uncertainty.
If I have learned anything in this life
It will be that there is no lucid light,
No clear shadow,
And an endless knowledge of doubt.

Say Whaaaa Wednesday... Beauty in Flames

I must go to this festival immediately; there is nothing more gratifying than seeing giant flames engulf a vacant sky and dancing around it like the free loving hippie we all claim we don’t want to be. Burning Man is a yearly event held in northern Nevada in the Black Rock Desert where thousands of people celebrate the summer solstice by burning strikingly large wooden sculptures. The ritual began in San Francisco in 1986 when a man burned a 9 foot wooden man, along with a wooden dog, on Baker Beach as a “spontaneous act of self expression.” Eventually this idea leaked into the Black Rock Dessert and became an annual event where thousands of people would showcase spectacular pieces of wooden sculpture.

This is where the innate hippie inside of me really gets excited and wants to rip off her clothes and dance around a bon fire naked to the music of The Grateful Dead on acid; yes, you read that correctly. I love the idea of “outsider art” coming together to create a visionary retreat of inspiration and creativity. Yah it’s kind of hippie-ish and I am sure there are some far out characters there who are still advocating issues that the contemporary world has long outgrown, but to all their own right? It’s those people who are great to hang out with because they lack the pretentious attitude of most of us modern people.

How marvelous it must feel to stand amongst a burning sculpture amidst an anxiously intoxicated crowd in a desolate dessert where the spirit of art and freedom are lucidly one…. Wow I need to stop now, the hippie lingo is starting to come up.

(Ecstacy by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito 2009; Fire Of Fires by David Umlas, Marrilee Ratcliffe, Community Art Makers 2009)

F*ck It Friday... A Poem

Tree Figure
By Jenna Reimer

A tree stands before me;
Barren branches crowding a marked sky,
Unmoving below a merciless twilight,
I sit beneath it within the shadow of a wind.
Knowing all the things I have known once
Disappear into an entreated bliss.
The tree’s boughs grow into my breast,
Swallowing my limbs of fickle fury.
I was a tree among the woods.

Say Whaaaa Wednesday... Naked bodies, Two Dimension and $100 Million Dollars

Don’t you love when people who are dead are still racking in the dough? Last night, Pablo Picasso’s painting Nude, Green Leaves and Bust set a world record when it sold at a New York auction for $106.5 million dollars, making it the most expensive piece of art ever sold in history.

The portrait was painted in 1932 and depicts the artist’s lover, Marie-Therese Walter, a woman 30 years his junior and mother of his daughter. Although the picture appears to be serene with the nude Marie-Therese reclining in a wakeful bliss, the relationship between Picasso and Walter was anything but idyllic. Picasso’s rapport with this younger woman has been said to be fueled by secretiveness, taboos and limitless sexual boundaries. Marie-Therese was believed to be seen as an obedient object to Picasso. Their relationship continued throughout the years but took a toll on both Walter and Picasso. In 1973, just days before Picasso’s death, Marie-Therese hung herself in her garbage.

Now enough on the pathetic fallacy conjured up by art critics. Cubism is really appealing to me; I find its two dimensional surface of certain objects and sceneries to be quite successful in rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective and modeling. I always thought pure imitation was rather mundane, almost too similar to a photograph or of a naturalistic scene I am able to envision without creative thought. Cubists present a new reality free from the constraints of customary texture, space and color. However I do understand the critique of such contemporary art; it does have less merit in the technical aspect of painting, but that raises the question of what type of credentials are assigned to a piece of art that makes it art. Should a painting that took two years to create be more significant than one that took fifteen minutes? I am not sure. I enjoy looking at either one and don’t feel I need to create certain standards based on the technical merit and time it took to create the piece. One thing is for certain; I’d paint anything and everything anyone would want if I knew it would be sold for over $100 million dollars.

Serene Saturday... A Poem

To Sleep
By Jenna Reimer

I must sleep – though my body will not allow.
Waves of wind draw shadows of dead leaves
Strewed about my window,
Drifting in a breeze singing of tomorrows;
Leaf upon leaf, leaf upon earth.
Birds cry in the blustery breeze
Thundering crossways that once held them
Suspended in the air.
An untamed chill steals my essence
Falling into a bittersweet place.
The roar of a furnace, the fleeting traffic,
Heavy feet treading the walkway:
It lessens my limbs and softens my brow;
All to release me into a feathered slumber.
An opened door rattles and swishes
In the final spray of that very wind
Who disturbs the resting.
My eyes fall into my mind, my mind
Falls into a troubled state of dreary;
Lips slightly open, enough for a breath of wind-
Let me dream while night goes by,
And never goes by.