17 May 2013
Los Angeles California
"Self Portrait," © Frau Kolb 2013
Yes it is true that I HATE to clean. I get angry, very angry, when I clean. I get mean. I am vicious. Merciless. Ruthless in my aspirations to perfection! I do not relent until das HAUS sparkles!
I mean it.
My anti-intellectual Jehova Witness mother LOVES to clean. She loves nothing more than to disinfect and purify in flowing waters all manner of apparatus. “MY, my!” Said my German boyfriend then (husband NOW), “Your mother’s house is super clean,” the first time he visited. Typical of my husband is to be spot ON! 100% correct in his observations. Unlike the others he wastes not time talking trash.
“Why do YOU TWO have so many books???” She would whine, complaining of my father (a resolute intellectual, proud of his learning, immersed in aquiring more and young attorney in Dominican Republic when they met and I his offspring, a chip off the old mahogany, a little NEW YORKER book-reading fast talking bike riding brat). “They get so dusty!” She would moan ass she wiped the books with moist cloth towels. She did all the washing by hand. She care(s)d about, "the environment." She hand NO THING better to do than WASHING. She certainly did NOT read.
Except for the FREE literature from the Jehova Witness's and nutrition books. MOM was a health NUT. Thank goodness! She taught me how to eat right and without that knowledge I would not be beautiful svelt ME. [Thank you, Mommy, for being so clean (which impressed my husband) and taking good care of me. Thank you for NEVER feeding me canned crap or frozen dinners.] A psuedo yet passionate vegetarian she used to call the meat section in the super market, "THE MORGE."
From an early age, I collected paper and books. I love paper. All kinds of P A P E R! Handmade, however is my very special favorite. I love libraries. I live for both… somehow. I write in journals. I have all my life. So… I have boxes and boxes of boxes I have written and books I have bought. Books I have read and books I intend to read. I have collected books my whole life. Books are my grounding sanctuary. I feed my spirit by reading. I even read TONS of self help and spirituality books which have helped me figure out a style of being that WORKS for me. I call it, "The Vacation Approach." It is how I live my LIFE.
YET… For over two years I had my books in boxes. Fearing that we would have to move away from our happy home in Los Angeles. Yet, it turns out that somehow my loving husband’s first promise of “California,” keeps proving to be the golden truth of our LIFE story. Anyway… last week, I took the books out of the boxes and seeing them AGAIN is like being born again from a deadly slumber.
Ah! The number of ordeals… the PA I N! The Heartache! I’ve had so many crash and BANG bad times with people in the last few years… IF the core of my LIFE were not LOVE I’d lose faith. Fortunately… I have my dear old friend, my true LOVER and Partner in LIFE and Marriage, MY BIGGNESS. Hartmuth Kolb is steadfast and true. WE fit together like puzzle pieces. He likes my books and appreciates that I am always reading. NOW in this tower of printed pages I have my home, where I cultivate peace decorated with the fruits of LOVE harvest over many a year and preserved with care as a sanctuary from the noisy world of NEWS and life and filled with wonderful books brimming with adventure.
IF you have been putting off Spring Cleaning, taking care of domestic chores. S T O P!
It is time to get your books out of boxes and remember what you are made of.
Warm regards,
Frau Kolb
Frau Kolb Celebrates: Angelina Jolie's Choice to Have Preventive Surgery at Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills
Watercolor on paper © by Frau Kolb, 2011
How dare I compare myself with Angelina Jolie? She is a Hollywood goddess, right? Who the hell do I think I am to mention that Breast C A N C E R connects more women than one can imagine? We sisters that have faced the HORROR the Horror of fear and decided to take action in preservation and honor of our health can move forward in life to embrace all the joys of being here NOW!
Angelina Jolie is one such woman, stepping up to the world and announcing that one has choices, options, and that making decisions is NOT easy but that one can create a worthy life through making active health choices rather than avoiding preventitive measures. The concept that one can avoid facing the death threat of cancer by having the surgery before the cancer is NEWS to me! I wish I had known that I had this option. After nursing my two children I'd have certainly considered taking the same bold step as Jolie. Since I had the same genetic mutation of the Brca1 and Brca2, which made my cancer POP out of no-where and grow---super aggressive and fast---to stage three, which has a 50/50 prognosis, I'd have done nearly anything to avoid the harsh and frightening realities of chemotherapy and radiation. The point really is in being aware that one has options, choices to make, tests to take. I wish I'd known about the gene. I did not. Yet…
Breast cancer and its horrorific treatment with chemotherapy was… well only bearable because of some basic life choices I had in place, which made it so that during treatment I had the strength to write a list of 100 things I loved about MY CANCER. The un-published book, "Cancer with Style," is the journal of embracing LIFE, LOVE, ART and Adventure as a strategy for life in which I cronicalled the ups and downs of embracing life as a means of addressing the breast cancer crisis.
The first solid choice: a great husband. It looks like Angelina and I share this decisive factor at the center of our lives. ONE needs friends, family, and warm fuzzy feelings about living in order to hang on. The next key: great doctors, shop around. Jolie and Frau Kolb both opted for the Pink Lotus Breast Center of Beverly Hills. Kristi Funk is a great doctor and really treated me with the respect and caring one expects in the doctor of one's choice.
Artist, Terri Amig, posted a mention, a reminder, to me that NOT all women are so fortunate. This is true. However, health concerns are testing grounds for rich and poor, alike. Yet, without health insurance… I think one's options would be limited. Yet, I'm aware of at least one single (yes she's gorgeous) woman that made smart choices regarding her health and had a lot of fun despite dealing with breast cancer without health insurance. She rallied her friends, family, and committed herself to a medical treatment, which worked for her. I commend her and all other women to be proactive about their health, their lives. Get check-ups. Get tested for the gene. Make decisions. These steps might be imposible to impliment with the same level of panache and glamour assoiciated with Jolie. Yet, IF you are determined to take care of yourself, you can and will make sound choices. By asking questions, visiting public librairies, and doing internet research you are very likely to be able to amass a fortunate of viable options available to all that seek out their own well being.
We all have options. But the willingness to step forward, be brave, and take charge is the height of mastery and I must say I admire Jolie. I always have and as the years pass she only more wins my admiration for her bold decisive nature and continual commitment to being an example of forward thinking open minded savvy which is now legendary. Yet, it is vital to remember that we are all the STARS of our own lives and must find the strength to LIVE, to accept responsibility of our quality of life and to embrace being able to make, even difficult, choices.
So ENJOY your power to make choices, get informed, and be as bold and powerful as any celebrity in your own estimation and proclamation!
Much Love,
Frau Kolb
Skip Snow's Project ART EXCHANGE at Blackstone Gallery with Todd Gray and Frau Kolb is now available Here and on YOU TUBE!
Llynn Foukles: ROCKIN' The Hammer and SOON NYC!
(Stay tuned for more updates on Llynn Foukles and his upcoming exhibition in NYC!)
Last night I had the pleasure and privilege of tripping into the museum on whim and walking on on the super-star artist, Mr. Llynn Foukles giving a talk to the Hammer's Museum Fellows.
I slipped right into the group and I got a good scoop, good taste, a sampling of Foukles's unique personality: bristling with sparkling genius, totally frustrated with others for not being geniuses, like him. Yet, delighted with himself for being so superlatively gifted as to be a little scary. In other words, a formidable person capable of lazer slicing a faulty concept to its quick.
Listening to him to talk about his work, I quickly realized the gulf of experience between this great artist and myself. HIS TECHIQUE is all consumming madness. IT IS PURE craft, requring muscle, brains, and relentless WORK!!! (Honestly, I do NOT have the raw LOVE of labor, clearly revealed by Foukles's discussion of his rumaging in the world of found-object and eerie transformation of the real-life taxidermic cat or rubber dildo installed in work that inhabits the same general space (wall) of a painting and tricks the casual lazy viewing into beliving it is cute, fun, and almost silly cartoonish work. Hah! The joke's on anybody that falls for it!
Foukles's work is aggressively loaded with message. DE-PROGRAM yourself! DE-CODE the lies taught to us, collectively, by big corporate sponsors and specifically, the DISNEY empire which in Foulkes's accurate yet imaginative representation of a gun-dreaming American society is the source of much evil. The recent work shouts.
His coded visual messages have evolved to this intensity of volume over decades of indefatigable work.
Geez… Foukles is to a life-long semi-professional "hobby," artist like me, Frau Kolb a demi-god.
Here he is:
The Muse and Frau Kolb Hit The Hammer Museum to See LLynn Foulkes
Los Angeles, California
18 April 2013
It was yesterday, or the day before, that I saw the Llynn Foulkes, exhibitition for a second time. It was THAT GOOD! A really meaty show, with plenty of ideas for me to chew on. Work that resonates on many levels and is as complex as it is straight forward and simple, using techniques that range from hyper-confident cartoon to full on mimetic, evocative, realism (in spurts, mostly during his earlier career). Work well crafted, yet not about THAT, creating an impression of effortless playful productivity and thus, leaving a good taste behind, making the brain salivate. Almost like the first visit was an appetizer. This second one, I took longer deeper looks. I let myself unwind in front of his larger canvases. I let myself think about Foulkes technique(s). I allowed myself to experience AWE. The seamlessness of pseudo… the butchering of pork, the wall sized post cards… the mixing of singage, the expertly made home-made looking frames! The clear and the immediate, the obtuse and the hinted… ah!
This time THE MUSE, Ms. Maria Rose Crane met with me for lunch and art. Unlike our visit to the recent Carravaggio Exhibit at LACMA, we managed to make it to the exhibit, without Frau Kolb exploring the horizontal angel at the Hammer... Perhaps, because the Muse is off-the-sauce, on a cleanse, which is a very appropriate activity for a LA MUSE to indulge in abstinance, in order to enhance the radianance of her already remarkable skin.
Inspiring isn't she?
Well...
This piece is a second in a series of museum visit with THE MUSE!
Where shall WE, Frau Kolb and Maria Rose Crane POP UP, NEXT????
We shall see…
Much love,
Frau Kolb
Skip Snow's Project ART Exchange: Intervention III
By Frau Caridad Kolb, Camera Dr. HC Kolb.
This is really exciting. I'm getting ready. Charging my batteries. Figuring out this NEW MIKE. We are moving briskly, now. We are going to do the fourth intervention indoors rather than on the street. I look forward to seeing who shows up to exchange their identity with Mr. Snow for one of his signed original works of art. As usual he will only have six paintings to exchange. I predict their will be a frenzied demand for the work as our following grows with each intervention/exchange in Skip Snow's Project Art Exchange.
In this latest documentary, the third in a series of six street performances, by artist Skip Snow, with fine art photographer Todd Gray and Frau Kolb in the role of playful reporter gathering information SOUND faulters. It is distorted, muffled, jagged, jarring, and moving toward music. In other words, don't expect to get the story from the sound. This documentary is visually driven. So watch. Allow the cacophony of sounds to wash your brain of filthy thinking.
Now...
The city, the camera, the people, talking… everything creates an imprint, an impression. Life is NOISE! Listen to this piece, watch it, and enjoy the wind, the child dancing, the exhaled breath of urban night, the rattle, the never-ending roll and rasp of it. Enjoy the chickens clucking. The geese. Think of flocks. Think of turkeys. Birds. Beasts. Friends. Machines. Artists. Street. Bask in the simple, messy, loving pool of images strung together and forming a telling, a sample, a audio visual record of an evening devoted to exploring Art Exchange with Skip Snow and Todd gray.
Watch these two videos, of the first two performances,available HERE and on Skip Snow’s Site, www.projectartexchange.com, NOW!
Also on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRGN_dWBGcU
YOU might enjoy watching the first intervention three times, simultaneously. Why not?
Thank you,
Frau Kolb
Awesome NEWS: The Talkinggrid continues to grow! Alternate News for artists from artists works for YOU!
Exciting!
Da BEST NEWS is: Frau Kolb finished the short digital film, "Exchange; Intervention I," with Skip Snow.
This is a standing invitation to join perpetual art celebrant, Frau Kolb: artist, art commentator, art documentarist/digital filmmaker, on a splendid trip to the FAR OUT reaches of the uncharted orbits of remarkable people creating intelligent art work, today. Come into close contact with select contemporary artists via, Frau Kolb's unique understanding of art based on an intuitive grasp and sustained by lifetime of unwavering focus. Allow the Talkinggrid to be a site you frequent for intimate art encounters of unexpected poignancy. Talkinggrid is a site where you can sample a little of the immense spread of ideas, political realities, experimental methods, exotic and ordinary materials, meticulously planned yet apparently spontaneous performances, and ever-expanding technologies which distinguish contemporary art, now.