JEAN VENGUA

I met Jean Vengua through poetry but she's also an accomplished visual artist. I was honored that she chose to make two tiny chair paintings for my mini-chair collection -- I did a blog post on her paintings at my mini-chair blog, but here they are on a so-called "Tennessee Yellow Chair":

Thank you, Jean!

And do check out her poetry, too, including her award-winning book, PRAU!

JENNIFER REBECCA ORTUOSTE

I make books. Heart those books. And, usually, I develop a manuscript and then, if there's a publisher, look for an image(s) for its front cover. Well, I just received "Puñeta" by Jennifer Rebecca Ortuoste, and it is the first image for which I plan someday to create a manuscript. I love it so much I want to put it on the front of a book!

I not only love its colors but I love how Jenny subverted the art of embroidery to create such an edgy work! Y'all know what puñeta means!

I first saw  "Puñeta" through its appearance in the "Chromatext II" exhibition in Manila (Dec 2015-Jan. 2016).  I immediately ordered it, with the help of Philippine poet-novelist Krip Yuson (thanks Krip!). Anyway, I'm so happy to welcome it into la casa!  Had I done this work, by the way, I would have leaked blood drops all over it -- but La Doctora obviously is the like the rest of humanity: better than I at the domestic arts...

CHRIS OLIVERA

Chris Olivera. We live with four of his works, including two paintings:

We also have two pages from his notebook/sketchbook which I'm delighted to have -- they deepen the experience of engaging with his more finished paintings. It's like reading a poem, and then reading the poetics underlying such a poem. Except for jokey TMI references, I can't recall ever concluding about anything that knowledge is not a good thing. My son glommed onto those sketchbook pages when he first got to the house -- even a child can discern the liveliness of the work -- and they now hang in his bedroom.

JON D'ORAZIO

I begin this post with a detail from Jon D'Orazio's painting because the detail shows exactly what one sees at eye level. Contrast that with the second image, the painting itself whose photo I had to go to the other side of the room to take. That's why we sometimes joke that Jon must have painted this painting with a very long brush -- it's amazing how he painted the abstraction at close quarters for the image from afar. I believe this says something, not just about D'Orazio's painterly mastery but, also how he's so taken into heart all of his lessons from and training in Buddhism. Kudos, Jon!

We've lived with this painting for decades and it remains fresh.

It's ever so lovely to bear witness to someone else's lucidity and how such generates art.

FERNANDO BOTERO

My "Botero" is an inexpensive tourist tchotchke from the gift store of the Museo Botero in Bogota. But I treasure it because I love its image of plump books. Botero, of course, is known for plumping up his figures -- and while I love the book in all of its forms, I have a special fondness for PLUMP as in THICK books. I make them, too, like the book nicknamed BRICK with its 504 pages in a genre known more for less-than-a-hundred pages. Merely 504 pages? I shall have to work on exceeding that...!

INTRODUCTION with THERESA CHONG

On Sept. 11, 2016, I posted a note on Facebook that came to be the impetus for this blog.  I replicate that post here as my first post for this blog (there are older blog posts than this Introductory post because I moved over older "Living with Art"-type Facebook posts to this blog):

9-1-1: Tom woke me up with a jolt. He had been watching "Good Morning America." He rushed me to the television. We had just left NYC and, from San Francisco, we watched the first tower fall. For over three years, I had worked at the 103rd floor of One World Trade Center. Then the second tower fell. And we watched Charlie Gibson unable to see what was happening. We watched Mr. Gibson unable to process, thus see, the fall of the second tower -- a lesson again in how (1) people fail to see what they do not want to see, and (2) we see only what we want to see. Later, I made a scheduled class visit. I held up a newspaper's front page featuring "The Falling Man". I said that this image revised the image I have of my book BLACK LIGHTNING. I raised the cover of my book, which reproduced a painting by Theresa Chong. I said I could no longer look at my book cover or Theresa's painting (which hangs in my house) without seeing the falling man superimposed against its lines. Theresa had made her painting by standing the canvas on edge, thus, allowing gravity to dictate the fall of the black and white paint stripes. Gravity dictates ... so much. September 11--my Birthday for so many years, and still my *legal* birthday. A few years ago, my mother revealed that, actually, I was born on Sept. 10 but the village recorder the next morning failed to adjust the day since I'd been born at night. The revelation shocked, then brought extreme joy. I no longer shared the same birthday as the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And I was no longer a 9-1-1 baby.

"Black Lightning" (she renamed her painting after my book title) by Theresa Chong

Here's the cover to my book:

You can see--compare the above images with--the iconic photograph of 9-1-1's "The Falling Man" available at this article on Esquire.

STELLA LAI

We like to live with works by an artist in depth. Here are some of the works by Stella Lai. I admire her works, partly for reflecting how she successfully made up a character, "Puchaa," whose name amuses me for being Mexican slang for "Pussy." Perhaps my favorite is her installation "DON'T TOUCH ME" which is featured below with a detail photo -- I'll always fondly remember how she'd visited the house with two other artists and her dealer and all busily screwed in those little heads on the wall. Afterwards, she signed the wall directly -- a signature I also appreciated for its anti-capitalist element.