A New Decade, Beth Risdel, & Joan Didion

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I like the sound of a new decade. Where was I for the last one? My last year of high school. Both close and far away: we age & we don't. You know?

Goals for this new decade: have adventures & steer of clear of the mundane (i.e. DO NOT BE BORING). Got it.

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Beth Ridsdel.
Homegirl, you are a fierce artist. Rawr.

These pieces are stunning.
Who would think to do something like this.
Solid gold.

She says:

"This work was an installation, set up as a lab experiment in progress, complete with scalpels, lab coats, needles and a microscope. Piles of dicarded, cut-up craft objects lay about the desk, some with their innards seeping out, others rearranged, Frankenstein-style.

By doing this, I was turning a table full of craft objects into an artwork in its own right, it had a point beyond the technique, beyond the things themselves."

viaviavia

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“If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.”

Joan Didion, “On Self Respect”

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