FAUNA: An Art Show

While I was working on FAUNA, the art show Margaret Gallagher envisioned, celebrating our urban wildlife, I had some strange encounters with animals.

"The witch didn't feed the little children she kept in the oven, 
but she fed the wild animals that came to her door." 
 (painting, centerfold of zine)

One was in a dream:  a ladder led up to a loft where a badger lived, but as I climbed up, I saw a shadow slinking back and forth, a panther, sleek and stealthy against the blue black night. I can't remember much else about the dream, but the sense of the big cat's movement and the color of the sky were visceral and stayed with me for the rest of the day.

One night as I worked in my garage/studio, a raccoon walked by. When he saw me, he growled fiercely, arching his back and then tiptoed away. It was just like I had drawn earlier in the day, a skunk on its tiptoes. I thought I was making stuff up; I'd never seen an animal on tiptoes before.

In my zine I tell the story of the wild animals next door. As I was working on it, I'd look out my kitchen window and there they'd be: the skunks eating out of the cat bowls. The coyote waiting to be fed. The crows, the stray cats, the raccoons. My neighbor whispering sweet nothings to them all. Life and art separated by a window screen. 

We had a wonderful time at our opening for FAUNA, with friends coming out to Perhspace, with enthusiasm and support. Margaret and I appreciated the warmth that filled the room. Until the show was hung that morning, I had no idea if it would work. I think we were both a little surprised when it did, the different styles complimenting each other and making a bigger whole. Here are a few pix from the show (photos by Tom Harjo):

Opening night

 (click on photos to enlarge)

My other neighbors who don't feed wild animals, and Greg

Wheat paste crow and skunks

(notice the tiptoes)

 
Coyote print with chine-colle, with Craig and Aaron

Margaret's sleeping coyote
(photo by Margaret Gallagher) 

FAUNA will be up until October, although by appointment only. If you're interested in coming by or know anyone who is, please get in touch with me by leaving a comment here, or email, lottobrand127@gmail.com, or fb: https://www.facebook.com/charlotte.hildebrand.14. I will arrange to meet whoever would like to see the show.

Art work is for sale, with 40% of the proceeds benefiting the California Wildlife Center. My zine is for sale as well...oh look, there it is below! Let me know if you'd like to buy one.

(silkscreen crow on butcher paper, cover)

Coyote Man

Sitting at my table, with the windows wide, I hear my neighbor talking to the coyote, who has suddenly appeared in her backyard. "Come here, come here, my beautiful boy!" she murmurs. But I don't believe her; it's not a boy and she knows it. The coyote started coming around a few years ago, after her husband died, looking for handouts. I never thought about it before, but of course! It makes perfect sense. The coyote isn't a boy, it's her husband. 

My neighbor used to feed the wild animals at the edge of the forest during the war. As a young girl, she left bread crumbs behind, when the family was forced to flee as refugees. Here, on the edge of the city, she feeds the coyote, skunks, possums, stray cats, raccoons. She feeds three fat crows perched on top of her garage, carrying on like the Marx Brothers. They hop around, cawing ceaselessly, then down to the ground next to the bowl of cat food and chase the cats away. These crows are as big as dogs; the cats don’t stand a chance. 

At first i thought my neighbor must be feeding all the animals cat food, but the more I observe her, the more I think it's real meat. Tonight, for instance, i could swear she fed the coyote a steak, specifically a rib-eye. Her husband used to love those steaks.

After dinner, my neighbor comes out with a mat and places it on the grass. Come here, come here, she begs her husband and pats the mat. I think she's going to lie down, but she steps away. I turn my back and when i look again the coyote's lying on the mat licking its paws, giving my neighbor moon eyes, following her with his gaze around the yard. They're bonded to each other in a very deep way, these two. This man and wife.

At 7pm, the lights go out, another brownout up here on the city's edge. An hour goes by, it grows dark, I can't see a thing. Then as my eyes adjust, I see some shadowy figures take shape next door. The skunk that comes around this time of night, and the coyote a little off to the side, dancing around each other. Coyote sits still and watches the skunk freak out, with its tail straight up in the air. Skunk keeps one eye on the coyote and one on the food bowl. I’ve seen this dance before, the coyote letting the skunk come and go, not at all interested.

Perhaps the coyote has already forgotten his wild ways, although, if it’s true he's my neighbor's husband, he’ll rip your throat out faster than a surprised skunk can spray, faster than crows can caw, faster than a coyote can turn into a man and back again. I wouldn’t call that exactly tame. You can never be sure with wild animals.

Sketch for new show

(click to see full)

Foot-Dangling

"I wasn't doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot-dangling."

And so, Raymond Chandler's 1936 short story "Goldfish" begins. Marvelous! Who admits to foot-dangling? We're all in such a rush. And rushing around, doing all the things we need to do, does seem to be our MO these days? How to do everything we want to do in a given day, week, life? While running late yesterday, I made a list of how to economize on essential tasks, and not waste any more time.

1) Brush teeth while doing exercises. Comb hair while meditating (optional).

2) Save putting on clothes and shoes until you're driving; tie shoelaces while stopped at red lights, slip on pants upon reaching destination.

3) Don't bother to use articles while writing, such as "the," "a" or "an." Abbreviate words: abt, ard, btw, prob, tmrw, def, mtg, and abrvte.

4) Save New Yorker articles for cross-country flights. Make sure you go East at least twice a year so you can read the long ones.

5) Wash face once a day; clothes once a month; sheets only when standing (them standing, not you).

6) Facebook. A terrible time-suck. Decide strategy on how to proceed: peek, scroll, blurred focus, pin-point, or actually take time to read? NPR. Same. Does one really need to listen to stories about silver spoons or Moscato wine more than once?

NPR story on Moscato wine, 
appearing right after the defeat of the Voting Rights Act.

NPR, is this all you had? Really?

7) Do things you want to do, eliminate everything else (if you figure out how to do this, let me know).

8) Decide which political cause(s) need your attention: Guantanamo? Texas justice? (Last week, Texas executed its 500th death row inmate.) Florida? NSA? (According to Assange on Snowden, our government is listening in more than Nixon.) Egypt? Rest of Africa? Civil Rights? Education? The list goes on and on. What to fight? There isn't enough time. I just want to do my art! By the way, have you noticed how "art" contains the word "RAT!?"

9) Forget politics, try punching bag.

10) Write blog only when you have something to say!

 

Sally, Charlotte (with Monkey Doodle) and Janice

This summer I'm taking a printmaking class at Art Center—above, my first photographic print!—and getting ready for another art show. Although my blogging has slowed down considerably, The Rat's Nest will still be here to announce new work, make lists, report on neighbor (coming up), the occasional philosophical blather, and sometimes, like today, just for old time's sake—not a waste.

Going into the Tunnel

If you had caught me in the middle of last week, you might have seen a beat-up, deflated woman of indeterminate state of mind, (wandering around with dirty hair and hands) wondering what in the hell she was doing painting huge rats and half clothed women for an art show, taking place in a tunnel, no less: why why why? I asked, as I slogged through masses of butcher paper and mistakes. What good could possibly come from this? Shouldn't I—the thought seriously crossed my mind, as the exhaustion wore on— be doing something useful with my time?

 

Not that I'm unfamiliar with this state of mind, but it almost stopped me, and boy am I glad it didn't. Not only because I wanted to work with artist Margaret Gallagher, who curated the Tunnel Art Show, but being part of a local art exhibit in North East Los Angeles turned out to be a gas! Seeing the people who filed through the tunnel on Saturday night was worth it alone. There was the art crowd, the college crowd (Margaret just graduated from Oxy, with a degree in art), the friend crowd, but there was also the Cypress Park neighborhood crowd, who probably never thought of going into a tunnel on a Saturday night, but seemed generally excited about what they were seeing. A lot of discussion was taking place under Figueroa St., when you get right down to it (down to it, get it, underground, hah!).

Thank you Cypress Park neighbors for participating in this event! Thanks to Yancey at Antigua Coffee House for his original idea to open the tunnel that runs from Loreto St. to Nightingale Middle School for local artists each month. (Here's an article about it.) And...Thank you Margaret!

Margaret Gallagher

curator of the Cypress Park Tunnel Art Show

 standing in front of her paintings

And, especially thank you to Molly Ruttan, my trustworthy, risk-taking, wheatpasting friend, who has helped me on almost every one of my street art ventures without uttering one complaint (and she's not even getting paid!). Thanks Molly, I couldn't have done it without you. 

Wheatpasters to the end!

 GOING INTO THE TUNNEL

(photos by Tom Harjo)

 Molly and Charlotte pasting...

Margaret at top of stairs

 

If you missed the tunnel art show, look for it as part of the NELA Art Walk, every second Saturday. For those of you who'd like to see the wheatpastes, the tunnel's closed, but you can view them from street level, on both sides of Fig. They'll be around for another month.

(And I almost forgot, thank you to Jocelyn Grau for her generous contribution!)

Ode to NYC

I'm back from New York and getting used to the streets of L.A. again, but I'm still in the city in some way, still in the grip of tulip mania, thinking about the colors, variations, multitudes, which are hard to get out of my head. Here's my ode to the city, and my gratitude for being there this spring!


After nine eleven
the ballrooms lay empty,
the streets slick with tears
Sideway glances/suspicious stares



   (street art across from B.A.M.)

But the city, now, this spring, 
this year,
is full of tulips
Tulips, tulips

everywhere!     

A kind of 
Tulip mania (without an effect on prices*) 
Someone— was it Bloomberg?—
planted tulips
from Battery Park to Morningside
from west side
to east side,
     
in rows, in lots, in tiny garden boxes 
And in one bright moment,
they all popped! 
You could hear the sounds of
cameras clicking, tourists gasping, petals dropping



Multitudes of tulips 
(and the High Line)
expunged the past
They, not Liberty Street, beckoned us
(but be forewarned, if you go on the High Line, it's hard to walk!)
Oh, NYC,
this spring, how you celebrate yourself!
     

* Tulip mania, the first recorded speculative bubble, when the market for bulbs went haywire and then collapsed. 

~~~~ 

And a new Rat's Nest Comic, straight off the presses!

 

Tulip City

It's spring in NY and nothing could be finer!

 

Tulip sniffing at Barrow St. Gardens,

at St. Luke's in the Field

(Tulips in this post spotted on the High Line, in Chelsea, West Village and St. Luke's, but they're everywhere!)

••••••

And Readers, please take a look at the new Rat's Nest comic, done a few days ago, before coming to New York: ratsnestcomics.blogspot.com

Faded pictures

I started this blog to somehow cope with my empty nest, but despite my attempts, the facts remain: you raise your kids, they go away, their youth stretches out in direct proportion to you getting older, and just as you find solace with your creative life, you're back to facing the same old demons, whatever they may be. Good thing no one tells you this at the beginning. Maybe that's what my mother was trying to say when she said, so forthrightly (and she wasn't always so forthright), if given a choice she might not have had kids.

I thought about this all weekend, just to match the mood of the cold and rainy, gray and overcast days, and then as i was rummaging through the fridge this morning, I noticed them— faded, partially hidden pictures, pinned on the door by magnets, of past trips, of past happinesses, faded and almost gone. But not gone, like a memory lodged inside the brain. So, not empty either, when you get right down to it.

 Joshua Tree

 Mekko and Ben

In London on Abbey Road with the kids