mmartah

more on WHY COMMUNITY IS F'IN VITAL!!!

2008-05-04T23:53:00.002-05:00

because without it we might not live!!!!!! my sense of urgency with needing to connect and re-establish and maintain and nurture all these relationships is because ALL THE THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT ARE WRONG NEED FOR US TO WORK TOGETHER. ain't no leaders here that can save us! we need each other!!!!!!

Black Agenda Report on Iowa and Prisons!

2008-05-03T17:51:00.002-05:00

BLACK AGENDA REPORT ON IOWA AND PRISONS!!!

from Adrienne's blog:

"Check it out, everyone, UPRISING radio did a show this morning that featured a segment on Iowa and prisons!

Click here to listen to the show!!!!

If you just want to hear the segment on Iowa, click here!

Glen Ford of The Black Agenda Report lays it all out here!!

What's the call???"

more to come later!

art show announcement!!!

2008-05-02T01:34:00.003-05:00

click on image to see larger

carrots!!

2008-05-01T22:32:00.003-05:00

are really good!

Building Community thru Soil!

2008-04-26T21:16:00.008-05:00

Some friends and I volunteer at an after-school program called Puertas Abiertas at Horace Mann Elementary. We started this thing we call Gardening Club, where a bunch of kids from 3-6 grade get to learn about gardening! This year we are focusing on Three Sisters Gardening as a way to introduce major concepts and plant some easy-to-grow, magical plants. The Three Sisters are Corn, Beans, and Squash. They work through symbiosis and are called companion plants. Our gardening club is one of the most fun things I do every week!

The kids are as magical as the plants, and my co-teachers are incredible!!! i'm so glad to be doing this amazing project!

the SEdiment of Culture

2008-04-17T20:31:00.006-05:00

i had a thought today on why so much of my energy, time, and resources get funneled into things involving social interactions and community. i have a dangerous inability to withhold myself and claim time and space for my own needs. i have an insubordinate level of passion that is only satiated by directly involving myself in the struggles directly in front of me, or the ones that won't lay off my heart and mind. i worry a lot. a lot. i stay up late worrying, trying to think up ways to resolve conflict, articulate and communicate better, brewing over poorly handled interactions, suffering relationships, neglected regions of my community, and my own shortcomings as a person, a friend, a lover, an "activist", an artist, a community member...

i don't think i like the idea or the term "activism." i don't really consider myself to be an activist so much as a person who cares enough about the community and world she is in to work hard to try to improve things. Activism is a stupid idea because it suggests that some people don't have to be activists, there are others around who specialize in that field of knowledge or interest somehow. Activism becomes a hobby like horseback riding; some people do it all the time some people aren't into it. This is not a useful or helpful way to conceptualize the actual work that needs to be done in our homes and communities and environments. The work that needs to be done is necessary, it is immediate, and it effects EVERYBODY. i think it is a dangerous approach to assume making positive social and political change is not work that is cut out for every single one of us. There is so much that needs to change, we all need to step up! Anyway, activists risk deluding themselves with thoughts of self-importance, conceptualizing themselves as THE needed ingredient for our revolution. Maybe it's the whole "ism" thing.

But back to my problems with over-committing and over-obsessing with activities and projects that are community-based and revolve around social networks. Sometimes i just become so involved and submerged in whatever project(s) i have going on that i'm no longer making deliberate choices and freely associating myself, and i lose sight of the bigger picture, and my sense of immediacy and urgency consumes the life out of me until i lose myself in fits of despair when it's Thursday and the revolution still hasn't come.

I think i also have a fascination with live cultures. there is a connection between involving myself in the 'live culture' of community-based projects and my fascination with fermentation, which is, of course, working with live cultures! Hooray fermentation! I think becoming a fermenter has really helped me on things like patience, understanding the really important lesson that i can add all this stuff and input, but really it is not up to me; after i've said my piece or done what i can, i have to just sit back and wait. This is has been really hard for me to understand with the community-based thing. I think i'm really used to being this kind of leader who gets it her way a lot because she thinks she's right and is passionate and has ideas a lot. Learning to not only have patience but trust is sooooo incredibly difficult for me. Fermentation helps. Especially my sourdough. I think i have developed a really special relationship with it because i've struggled SO much to get it to respond the way i wanted it to. I've learned trust and patience very thoroughly with my starter!!! But, after all this time, while i still get frustrated waiting for it to bubble again, when it does bubble up we make some fucking incredible bread. I'm still working on trusting my friends and fellow workers. That's a whole lot harder.

Feeding off the Waste of our Ancestors

2008-04-15T20:56:00.005-05:00

The bacterias and yeasts and other microorganisms are already present in our lives. They traverse the air, our clothes and skin, furniture, pets, shelves of books, hands and faces, floor boards, light bulbs, food, bathroom fixtures...
But when i set out my jar to ferment, something magical happens. These powerful microbes are called forth from the air and from the environment. They take on new purpose as they come to populate the jar. One type of microbe comes first, preparing the jar's environment for its predecessors. Others follow, feeding off the waste products of their ancestors, continuing the process of transformation.

After enough time has elapsed, the fermentation is complete, or has reached a pleasing state. Fermentation never really ends, we just have to choose how sour we want our food before we harvest it. Wait long enough and the sour becomes putrid, different microbes rule out the beneficial bacteria and yeast, often mold hails in to claim a spot in the ecosystem. But if we keep feeding the culture with fresh food, the beneficial bacterias and yeasts return; the mold can be submerged under layers of culture before it has a chance to root down. The churning and fresh additions sustain the culture, allowing the micro-life to repopulate and produce a healthy environment.

mix a sponge!

2008-04-13T11:24:00.008-05:00

My sourdough starter is often the bane of my existence. I have such difficulty sustaining its well-being. A healthy sourdough starter should bubble and blurp like this picture below...
Or maybe not...my starter occupies one of two extreme states: either it is bubbling over making puddles of sourdough culture that my cat likes to eat, or it is stagnate and uninterested in leading an active life. Usually i'll spend a week or two getting it to bubble to the stage seen above, then i'll quick mix a sponge, which looks like the picture below.

A sponge is just 2 cups of the starter mixed in with 4 cups of flour, 3 cups of water. This "sponge" then ferments another half a day or full day, stirring every few hours. I found the longer i let it ferment, the deeper the taste of sour, and the bigger the bread becomes.

After emptying most of my freshly bubbling starter into the sponge, i replenish it, meaning i add 2 cups each of flour and water back into the original starter. The next couple days the starter goes completely nuts, splurging forth and leaving puddles everywhere, making a very sticky and sour environment of my room. I try to take advantage of the additional splurges by mixing more sponges to be made into bread, but then the starter dies down despite my feeding it, and the cycle repeats of diligently feeding it for 1-2 weeks, unpatiently awaiting bubbles, trying to woo it back into hyperactivity.

The above sponge is just plain rye sourdough. I have some favorite mixes i've tried so far, including chocolate sourdough, fake-coffee and caraway sourdough, molasses sourdough, or any combination thereof. I've only used rye flour so far, which is what my starter is made with. I'm considering starting a buckwheat starter for my gluten-free friends...

Smeared ecology of my heart

2008-04-03T22:42:00.013-05:00

I recently visited Atlanta, then out to Lithonia, GA to visit some rock outcroppings. I am mesmerized by the lichens, Diamorphas, mosses, and scraggly weeds that form eco-systems on these metamorphic rocks.
"Arabia Mountain is known as a rock outcrop and a monadnock. A monadnock is an isolated hill standing above the surrounding area, in this case wooded Piedmont land. Many rock outcrops lie east of Atlanta. Most are active quarries. Stone Mountain, Panola Mountain, and Arabia Mountain are being protected by local and state governments. Four hundred million year old Arabia Mountain is the oldest of these three monadnocks, 100 million years older than its granite cousins. Arabia is famous for the swirling rock pattern characteristic of "Lithonia gneiss," which looks especially beautiful on foggy days. Arabia Mountain was formed when rock was pushed upward toward the earth's surface, but still lay underground. As Stone Mountain and Panola Mountains were formed, Arabia Mountain underwent a change and the original granite rock was metamorphosed into gneiss (nice) rock."

"Arabia Mountain is home to two Federally protected plant species, several other rare plants, and plants that are unique to these granite outcrop environments, such as the brilliant red Diamorpha or Small's Stonecrop. The granite outcrops, fields, forests and wetlands at Arabia host a diverse selection of trees, shrubs, mosses, lichens and flowers that can be enjoyed year-round. Beautiful flora you'll find here include Sunnybells, Sparkleberry, Yellow Daisy, Fringetree, and Georgia Oak. "

from ArabiaAlliance.org

Fermentation and the Globalization of Discontent

2008-03-25T15:45:00.004-05:00

I am spinning this post title off of Adrienne's class (visit class blog here ). This year i started a new obsession, that being fermentation. I love the process. I love the products i can create. I love the concept, i love what it does for me, i love how it interrupts other patterns of my life and creates new rhythms, i love the idea of transformation, death nearing the edge of new life...

So, i've decided to develop a semester's worth of art on this topic, using my fermentation processes as a way to dig deeper into political, social, philosophical, emotional, and personal connections.

I will upload photos and thoughts on this project as they occur.

A final show will go up in mid May at Bloom County to display the work. Opening/closing dates and times to come!

why is it so difficult to find artists who are willing to engage and confront systems of domination and privilege?

2007-08-28T22:40:00.002-05:00

'nuff said. iowa is so rich in so many ways when we start digging deeply into it. our soil has nutrients from glaciers, one of the two places in the world with this kind of nourishment available. and yet, i don't feel sustained. i am horridly disappointed by my art class today, i don't "get it"--why is this masturbatory, self-indulgent, privilege-denying, usually-drug-induced, narcissistic, woolen-eyed art-making so popular? i'm being very vague, i know. all i can say is i went to my first Intermedia II class today and left feeling a severe lack.