Friday, November 3, 2017
I am still recovering from the mid-October evisceration of my computer files. I have managed to jot down a few of the notes I remembered from the first draft of my talk on Anne Sexton’s performances of her band, Anne Sexton and Her Kind. My notes for an application to do research on Wanda Coleman’s poetry have proved to be less eidetic.
I took my birthday off as a personal holiday and spent the day moving bookcases around my work room, and was able to move a display case in here, thereby freeing up my room for Linda to work on her paintings in the living room. Even in trying to recover from this disaster, it’s not just the timing of losing the files that is proving to have the wrong bounce of happenstance. We bought a new computer from the campus bookstore, and this afternoon I found out that a sale is going to take place in two weeks that would have saved me $500 if I had bought it then.
I walked past the art department’s galleries the other day and dropped in a show by Mimi Haddon, whose work reminded me a bit of the art on display for the Magical Mystery Tours shows that were organized by Josine Ianco-Starrels. The huge piece of red cloth in the second room was the subject of a one=page typed statement near the entrance. I could barely discern the words, but they jolted me into remembering one of the happiest dreams I ever had: a piece of red cloth gently palpitated from the ceiling above my bed. The dream occurred in the late 1970s in my bedroom in the apartment in Ocean Park. For several minutes in the dream of this piece of cloth, I was exquisitely happy. I was not anywhere that joyous while dancing by myself in the shifting spectrum of Haddon’s show, but I was able to forget the onslaught of recent misfortune, and I hope to see more of Maddon’s work soon. She is hardly a typical MFA student, for she has already withstood the suction of discouragement that causes so many young artists to submit the extraordinary attrition rate that sets in after leaving an educational institution. She appears to have been steadily busy since getting her B.A. in the mid-1990s, so she has a two decade headwind behind her now.
In addition to a front yard scene I saw on my way to work two days after Halloween, here are a few shots from Haddon’s show, as well as links to information about Haddon and Ianco-Starels.
http://web.csulb.edu/sites/beachmag/2016/08/alumni-profile-mimi-haddon/
http://mimihaddonart.com/about
https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/josine-iancostarrels-papers-6309
About Bill Mohr