The Coffee Bar (story by Vanna Vechian*)

O, how ever did I get stuck in the life I have...? Hush! Don't you whinge, woman!

I need a drug.

Coffee! Coffee!

I love to drink, but it is too early to do so, you know. It really is. I have to be careful.

I have not left the house today, nor seen anyone here. Again. None of my friends were interested or able to meet, sadly. That is: the few that don't have careers. I don't. My dear husband is away again. Should be back tomorrow, or the day after, I don't remember.

Of course I have a dynamite Italian coffeemaker at home, but I won't have the coffee alone. I need contact, if only to see warm living bodies. I dress for the occasion. A hat, a suit, earrings. A lady. Femme fatale. I want to be noticed.

I let the taxi drop me off just some place we happened to pass. 'Stop! Driver, stop!' It seems like a nice little establishment. Old shop front, two large windows, a door in the middle, a few scattered clients and a waiter. And a pianist, I notice as I enter, who plays French salon music – nostalgic, with the restrained energy of a tired dance master. The place is intimate. Nice. The smell of coffee is heavy, but just right for me.

But the waiter! He is ... He is a star. God! 'Yes, yes, a coffee please. Make it strong. Wait! Potent. And sweet.'

How can he refuse? I noticed he noticed me. It does take a minute or two before he comes back to me. Other clients present themselves at the till and he takes their pay. Only one other person remains, besides us and our friend the pianist - someone that has sat there scribbling all the while with intense concentration. A writer? He could be writing about me, for all I know. He has thrown me one single, but piercing and extended glance.

My waiter returns with the coffee. And a pastry. 'Courtesy of the business, madam!' And another coffee. 'I will join you, if you don't mind. I feel you won't.' The cheek! Yet I don't. Mind. Far from it. I keep my cool and smile. 'You are a cheek, young man. That is all I will say. Now then. Talk to me.' I will not repeat what he tells me. Only that he compares me to Anna Karenina, had she lived a little longer. Hardly a direct insult, as she died young. Should I mind that he finds me tragic? As long as he finds me attractive. He is amusing.

Is it he or the smell of coffee that seduces me? The writer remains in his corner and the pianist plays on as my waiter turns the 'Open' sign over to 'Closed.' To 'Open' on our side.

-----------------

I stretch out luxuriously and naked and truly satisfied and at ease on his bed in his room. His room is right above the café. The Venetian blinds filter the light. His smell remains, mixed with the masculine smell of coffee. So does the sound of his music, dance music of faded days.

I feel his seed drip down my loins.

He has treated me like the queen I am. Not as a servant, but as the young king he is. The homage is all the greater.

The queen dresses in front of the windows. Languidly, without haste, savouring the moment, deeply inhaling the scent of coffee.

She descends the stairs and renters the café. With a nod to the king, she strides through and leaves. Her yellow carriage is waiting.

copyright 2009 Vanna Vechian
***************************************************************************************************
* I asked my old partner-in-crime, Vanna Vechian, to write a "micro-story" based on these two new coffee paintings. I think she came through splendidly, don't you?

You can read more of Vanna's tales at her very own website: Vanna Vechian's Erotic Fiction .

As for the paintings, they are done in coffee and acrylic on paper, silk and velvet, with fur, coffee beans and glass beads.

Between the Whip and the Shield

Another of the coffee paintings, used along with the new letterpress molds.

Some interesting details are an actual bill of sale for a "Negro Slave", next to the Declaration of Independence as it appeared in the Virginia Gazette in 1776. And a small piece of a real, very worn leather whip, which came off the end of one I happen to have in my possession. (Artists collect the oddest bits and pieces, but the rest of said whip still functions quite perfectly. I'm just saying...)

I'm too tired to think of a narrative for this painting, but if you can come up with one, I will publish it here.

Acrylic and coffee on paper and silk, with Cowrie shells and leather. 28 x 38 cm.

At Sea

Earlier in this blog I wrote that, "Ideas Arrive By Ship" (see, January 7, 2008). In this case, although I have purchased a set of very beautiful wooden letterpress type forms, I do not possess a complete set of letters, matched or unmatched. Therefore, I cannot spell out words all at once with my gel medium impressions. I must either piece them together by using several molds of the same letter, or else come up with a different way to spell them out. In this case, I did not have an extra "c", and I do not possess a "y" at all.

Some ideas are better, and grow stronger, if they are made to set out on a voyage. To trade and haggle, bicker and dissent. Come to agreements, handshakes, and terms. Some words need to set sail and go trading, if they are to become what they are destined to be.

Acrylic on paper and silk with 22k gold leaf. 16 x 24.5 cm.

See Shanties

Took a short drive to Harrison Township near L'Anse Creuse yesterday and spotted these ice fishing shanties on the now completely frozen lake. I haven't seen this in years. The lake hasn't been frozen enough to support the shanties and I think they have even been banned in some places as boating hazards when people don't remove them before the thaw. People apparently haven't forgotten the ancient art of ice fishing, and this is good to see.

3

Playing with words - literally - along with classical themes.

Acrylic on paper and silk. 21 x 32 cm.

The Buzz

Recently I have been making molds of old letterpress type. I wanted to say something about words, letters and speech, and remembered seeing discarded letterpress type scattered on the ground at Colonial Williamsburg. I wondered if the Print Shop there had a "hellbox" of discarded type, but they did not. Instead I was directed to look on Ebay by a young woman in period clothing. Somehow this didn't seem strange at all.

I purchased a set of wooden letterpress type of various sizes, as well as a complete set of tiny Copperplate. I also found some old hymn plates. I have no idea what I will do with those at this point but they were too good to pass up. In any case, I made impressions of the type using my gel medium method. I have found that the wooden type makes the best casts. The Copperplate, at font 6, is much too small to be seen through this method. but I have other ideas for its use.

This little painting is the first to be made with the new molds. It also features the impression of a fragment of a small paper wasp's nest. I used this because it was a repetitive and modular shape, like the Copperplate type which underlies the entire painting, but I soon also realized that the "buzz" of a bee or wasp could also be the "buzz" of news, or ideas. The outline of a human ear listens to the sound and tiny Cowrie shells line the edges of other letter forms crowding in from the right.

Acrylic on paper with glass beads and Cowrie shells. 10 x 19 cm.

Law and Art

We had our fresh hearing at the Wayne County Circuit Court on Friday. The Honorable Bruce U. Morrow, presiding. You can read all about it in the new Metro Times article:

Law and Art

I have to imagine that any ruling on this issue presumably will affect everyone in Wayne County, including well-established artists such as Tyree Guyton (the Heidelberg Project) as well as ordinary citizens who wish to decorate their properties as they see fit, and to express themselves according to their First Amendment rights.

Here's to many-faceted free expression!

"That a law subjecting the exercise of First Amendment freedoms to the prior restraint of a license, without narrow, objective and definite standards to guide the licensing authority, is unconstitutional...And our decisions have made clear that a person faced with such...a law may ignore it, and engage with impunity in the exercise of the right of free expression for which the law purports to require a license". Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1969).

Crescent

The boy entered the cool, quiet place in the evening. Outside, it was still very hot, but in here was blessed relief, surrounded as he was by thousands of blue tiles painted with swirling designs. He left his worn shoes at the door and began to wash carefully. He cupped his hands together and dipped them into the bowl of water to wet his brown face. He could still smell the freshly ground coffee he had helped to roast and bag all day in the shop a few dusty streets away. It perfumed his hands even through the water. He tasted the water and could detect a taste of the bean. He bent down again to scoop another palmful of water. Lifting his hands he saw dancing there the thin slice of the moon. The light was pouring in from an unshuttered window. He held the moon there, between his two palms and watched it tremble, as if it were cold.

In a dark, falling-down house in the middle of a muddy field, a small girl was hungry. Her mother lit a candle and placed a bowl of thin soup with some pork floating around in it on the table. It wouldn't be enough to assuage her hunger. She picked up a spoon to eat and noticed a reflection of the moon dancing in her bowl. The moonlight was pouring in from the window. There had been curtains once, but they had long ago been torn to nothing by summer storms. It didn't matter. There was no one around for miles. Her father rode at first light each morning in a battered pick-up truck along with seven or eight other men, all hanging on for dear life on the back, just to get to town and find work on someone's farm. The girl sometimes watched from her bed in the corner her mother make coffee for her father before the sky turned rosy. She thought of the coffee as almost a relative, so brown like her parents and so constant the presence of its smell.

The girl held her spoon poised above her soup, transfixed by the sight of the moon trembling in her bowl, as if it were afraid.

.............................................................................

This painting combines two of the recent coffee paintings. To make the connection between the two children I glued glass beads, abalone shells, coins and coffee beans in a rough crescent shape over the image of a market, other moons that resemble the shape of a coffee cup stain, and navigational charts.

The girl's dress fades into the plank walls of the shanty.

Acrylic on paper, with cotton, silk, glass beads, abalone shells, and coffee. 30 x 56 cm.

Good Morning

Sunrise over a half-frozen lake. January 12, 2009

Spark

One hand holds a quill pen; the other fires a flintlock pistol. The percussion from both echoes like horses' hooves or a thundering surf.

This painting presented a challenge in obtaining the molds. I used my own hands holding a paintbrush and a toy flintlock pistol - the type one would use when dressing up as a pirate. Since I work alone in my studio, there was no one to assist in placing the Amazing Mold Putty around my hands, but I managed anyway. After the molds were set, I filled them with gel medium, as discussed in the coin demonstration (see entry: "To Coin a Phrase" 3/4/08.)

It took FOREVER for the deep molds to dry and finally I got impatient and pulled them out. The trigger finger on the pistol mold was still quite wet and goopy. No matter, since I like the rough and imprecise accidental results and I simply formed an approximation of a finger in more gel medium and allowed this to dry free of the mold for a couple of days.

I glued the pieces onto my usual Arches printmaking paper and added some text from a reproduction copy of the Virginia Gazette in which the Declaration of Independence was published for the first time. I placed this text into the body of the horse. Four other tinier horses were destined for the waves (a recurrent theme of mine.) They swim over tea which rests at the bottom of the sea. A white feather worked into the gel created an almost-real quill pen.

It wasn't quite enough, so I added a sidebar of reproduction Colonial money and some feathers to give the sleeve of the pistol-holding hand some visual length. There is a pale face silhouetted in cork paper over the money. The lines of this small face flow into the lines which describe the waves.

Click on any photo for enlarged view.

Acrylic paint on paper with 22K gold leaf, feathers, cork and tea. 60 x 30 cm.

"X" Marks the Spot

17th-century Virginia gravestone after a rainstorm. No other markings left visible.

Norfolk Salute

My son receiving his Petty Officer Leadership Academy certificate from Captain Kelly M. Johnson, USN Executive Officer, Naval Station Norfolk. To earn this certificate he had to attend POLA training during his Christmas holidays. There were extra benefits to such a sacrifice, however. He was made team leader of his section. He was flown in a C2 cargo plane during aircraft carrier landing practice ("Touch and Goes") and spent New Year's on the carrier. Shopped at the NEX and experienced camaraderie with Petty Officer candidates from all over the country. Carried the US flag in the color guard during the graduation parade across the base.

Now, how cool is that?

"... for a bit of colored ribbon."

Last weekend my son became a member of the color guard for his United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps unit. He was also honored at the Annual Award ceremony and luncheon for two other contributions: fund-raising and perfect attendance. Congratulations, Sweetie!

Snow Problem!

We were supposed to have our appeals hearing today. But Detroit was socked with a huge snowstorm. Twelve inches of really heavy stuff. The world is only now digging out. We did make it all the way to the courthouse, only to be told that it was closed and to report there on Monday instead. The storm was magnificent. And impressive enough to take some pictures on our way downtown.

A detail:

And more snow on its way tomorrow night...

Burn After Reading?

Today the Detroit News and the Detroit Pree Press announced that they will cut their home delivery to only three days a week. They are the first major newspapers in the country to make this decision. Newspapers will still be published daily in small, abbreviated editions, but will only be available at newsstands and retail outlets. Only the Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions will be delivered to homes. Online subscriptions will also be available. But it isn't the same as picking up the paper from the front porch and reading it with one's morning coffee, is it?

Oh, yes, the newspapers will be shaving about 200 jobs from their payrolls at the same time...

In my extremely modest little neighborhood where my studio is located, the situation has become really dire. I have lost most of my neighbors and every house around my studio house is empty. There is no life on the street. The inevitable result of all these foreclosures and inability to come up with rent money is that some homeowners and landlords simply resort to arson to rid themselves of an unwanted house. I am afraid it will become hard to tell which homes have succumbed to furnace fires, faulty Christmas lights, or the bad economy. This home met its end sometime last week.

Brush With the Law

From the newspaper that brought down the Mayor of a major American city by virtue of its thorough investigative journalism...

From one of this nation's oldest newspapers, established in 1831...

I bring you, at long last, the article in the Detroit Free Press:

Is It Art?

(photo by Susan Tusa)

Limitless

"The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep."

~Paul Strand

True Realities

"Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them."

- Max Ernst

Mîgwetchiwiiwewin

As Thanksgiving approached, I realized I had really no Fall painting with which to decorate my house.

And we have so much to be thankful for, in spite of our small problems. Even the problems are at least interesting. We will have a new hearing at Wayne County Circuit Court; it is currently scheduled for December 19. This will be our appeal of the guilty judgment against us in our Municipal Court over my outdoor paintings.

On Monday I will be interviewed by the Detroit Free Press about the issue. I'll let you know when this article comes out.

So for my Fall painting, I chose a Native American theme again. I had just been to the local annual pow-wow. It was very sparsely attended, due to the economy and the distances from which many Indians must travel, weighed against the amount they think they might earn as vendors there. While it was a little bit sad not to see the same people we see year after year, it was still good to see some of the faithful and the most dedicated dancers with their gorgeous costumes.

I used an old Edward Curtis photo as my pose and some of my own photos from the pow-wow to fill in the costume details. The zigzag wooden forms which frame the sides of the painting are stair supports (called "stringers") from Home Depot, painted turquoise blue with Native-inspired medallions. I am in the process of varnishing this painting and it will appear in front of my house by Wednesday. Just in time for Thanksgiving. And my guests.

Acrylic on wood. Image size, approx. 66 x 122 cm.

Little Queen

Shyly, she gazed at the strangers from behind the sumptuous silk curtain. The smell of roasting coffee filled the air. Her mother would soon bring out steaming cups to welcome us...

Gently tear away the curtain. All of Africa is in the gaze; in that aroma. Gazelles frolic across the Serengeti and a leopard rests in a acacia tree near a river...

...And a small girl is queen in her mother's kitchen.

This is the first painting I have developed from my series of coffee paintings (see below.) I finally got a chance to use a piece of papyrus I had been saving - the sole reason being that it had a fly stuck in it. That fly has traveled all the way from Egypt! And now it rests in my painting.

The gilded coffee beans remind me of scarabs, or large, worked pieces of African gold.

Acrylic on paper with silk, coffee, coffee beans, papyrus, glass beads, 22k gold leaf and one dead fly.

25 x 32 cm.

Yes We Did!

"...democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

Vigil

HOPE

A Second Cup?

I didn't quite get to to point of manipulating my new coffee paintings this week. I decided I needed to do some more to build up a stash of paintings to use in my collages. I feel I am only now getting the feel of working with the coffee, as it really does have a nature all its own.

I thought you would nevertheless enjoy seeing some of these new little paintings on their own, before they are placed into larger works. I have also purchased some coffee beans to use in the planned collages. When I say, "planned" I mean only that I plan to use these materials. I do not have any particular arrangement in mind as yet.

I painted from some vintage and fine art photos. The photographers I used included Edward S. Curtis and his famous photos of Native Americans, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston. I found that Imogen Cunningham is the easiest to "springboard" from, and the paintings I produced based on her photos seemed the most different from their original source. I doubt that one could pick out the original photo from my painting, as it has changed a lot in the process.

Same thing for Edward Weston, but his photo compositions are frequently so austere that one sees only a pose and hardly the personality of the photographer. So the painting seems actually more mine than the photo is his, due to the fact that my own touch at least inevitably has something of my own signature.

The Edward S. Curtis photos came through more as himself. I attribute the sepia tones of the coffee to this , as so many of his photos (all of the ones I have ever seen, in fact) are sepia in tone. The ethnographic details are also a dead giveaway.

A man from Margaret Bourke-White's famous photo of South African miners... Has kind of a WPA feel to it. I think.

And a nude from Miss Cunningham...


Okay, next week, for sure, I start putting these paintings through the collage process.

Manifesto

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says, "Shit! She's awake!"

- Author unknown

Coffea arabica

This week I have been experimenting with painting with coffee. There are quite a few websites devoted to painting with coffee. Many of them display work which is quite lovely. But I don't look at a simple painting in an unusual technique as quite enough. For me, it is an element in a painting which should speak in some way which heightens the subject matter with which I am dealing.

As you have been able to see from my past paintings, I am speaking much about those things which are commodities of one sort or another. Things which can be traded. Among these many commodities are tea, gold, fur, tobacco, cowrie shells, and even humans. I like to put these actual objects, and more, into my painting/collages for their evocative qualities and their histories. Well, okay, I don't put the humans. I'm satisfied to put the mere representation of humans into my paintings. That is, after all, my real subject: the human condition.

I hadn't worked with coffee at all, and it is a beverage with a definitely rich history, much of it Arab and African. The fragrance of it is familiar, warm and comforting. It can signify hospitality in a lonely place - pretty much all over the world.

So this week I worked up a few paintings in coffee, to serve as elements in next week's painting/collages, very much in the same spirit as I cast many coins in my gel medium technique. I used a variety of photographic sources - primarily vintage. I don't consider them to be complete works in their own right, although they could certainly stand on their own. But you may enjoy looking at them as they are, nonetheless. They were done very quickly, and there are more than you see here. This is a representative sample. Coffee samples, as it were...

An Asian woman:

A poor sharecropper's daughter:

...and a boy praying above.

If you would like to try coffee painting yourself, it is a very pleasant way to paint, because of the delicious smell which lingers in the studio, and because it does seem to respond to one's directions very well.

Use instant coffee - I used Medaglia d'Oro instant espresso coffee, which is too expensive to be using as an art material, but I only wanted a small jar and I figured espresso might give good darks. Make the "brew" very thick - don't be afraid to use a lot of powdered coffee - much more than you would normally put in a cup to drink. As you work it will become thicker and stickier. This provides your very dark color and it is a bit shiny. You can also boil it down a bit, if you want it even darker.

Next week I will put these paintings, and others, through their paces as collage elements and we will see what happens.

Coffee on paper. Sizes from 12 x 16 cm to 16 x 25 cm.

Horse Race

I've already made up my mind about this election and no one can sway me. But it's altogether too close for my comfort. It's a horse race! And that's what this painting is all about...

You have the decision as to what direction the country will take...

...and you have issues over a woman's body and her private choices...

(Yes, that actually is supposed to be a small female torso in the photo above.)

In all, it's a fine mess. Typical of American politics since the country's inception. I even left visible the raggedy edges of the French paper I use and the tattered threads of the small American flag I found on the street (I seem to remember it was after July 4th) and collaged onto this painting. I even liked the rough wood of the deck on which I photographed it.

The cast shapes are made of paper, from the same molds in which I made the gel medium forms. It works almost as well, except that the paper wants to relax back into lumpiness, unlike the gel. This gives the painting s a very rough, ungraceful look, which I think is well suited to the subject.

Vote early, vote often!

Acrylic paint on paper, cotton, silk, tobacco and postage stamp. 25 x 32 cm.

Serving God

No, it isn't art-related. But I couldn't resist this one...

Judge dismisses Neb. lawmaker's suit against God

By The Associated Press
10.16.08

LINCOLN, Neb. — An unlisted address is proving to be God's best legal weapon against a mortal but tenacious Nebraska state senator.

A Douglas County District Court judge has thrown out state Sen. Ernie Chambers' lawsuit against God because the Almighty wasn't served a legal notice. And the judge doesn't seem to think it's possible to find the Almighty's front door.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Marlon Polk wrote in his four-page order on Oct. 14.

Just over a year ago Chambers, the longest serving — and maybe the most powerful — state senator in Nebraska history, sought a permanent injunction against God. He said the Almighty had made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are poor or have the means of billionaire Warren Buffett of Omaha.

But the judge ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers, who is not returning to the Legislature next year because of term limits, said yesterday. "A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience. Therefore, God would have actual notice of that lawsuit."

"Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the decision and said he hasn't decided yet whether to file one.

During a court appearance in August, while sitting a few feet away from an empty table reserved for God and God's attorney, Chambers argued that courts and the U.S. government already routinely take notice of God.

Courts swear in witnesses with an oath that includes the phrase "so help me God." Plus, the Pledge of Allegiance describes "one nation, under God," and U.S. currency proclaims "In God We Trust."

Chambers regularly skipped morning prayers during his 38 years in the Legislature and often criticizes Christians.

Hula Rula

Kuhi no ka lima, hele no ka maka.

"Where the hands move, there let the eyes follow."

- Hawaiian Proverb (A rule in Hula. And not a bad rule for Art. Trula.)

Poltergeist

Mine is a truck possessed by mischievous spirits.

While driving my '99 Ford Ranger, my windshield wipers suddenly come on for no reason and copious amounts of washer fluid are squirted nonstop over my windshield. Consequently, I can't see to drive. My window is now squeaky clean, but that doesn't help me get to the studio.

Fortunately, there is a Ford dealership within walking distance and I expect to get my truck back sometime today. After the exorcism. But until then, there is no new Art to be seen here. Sorry.

Technical difficulties.

Please stand by.

Crazy Quilt

I didn't have a great deal of time today so I simply began to piece together fabric at crazy angles on a small piece of Arches paper. It began to remind me of a crazy quilt, those quilts which were all the rage in the late 19th-century. Later, during the Great Depression, saving scraps of fabric became pretty crucial and feedsack and suit quilts became the fashion. One can still see examples at flea markets of quilts pieced together from men's suits. The colors are often somber and warm, but they are handsome.

My crazy quilt is a portrait of the times, in this country and others, in which everyone is stitched together into one bigger piece of work. We must be frugal, with every scrap saved and reused.

Acrylic on paper, silk and leather. 16 x 25 cm.