I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. (T.S. Eliot)

The last two months have been hectic. I am not the sort of person who is charming when things are hectic, so this blog post will have to serve as a general apology to everyone I know. I love you all, despite my furrowed brow. Fortunately for my situation, there is coffee all around me. And some lovely projects have come from that delicious reality:

1. Little Amps coffee shop opened, and I painted the exterior sign for the shop.

The developers, WCI, decided to use old floor boards as the base structure for the design, and that gave the overall aesthetic a rustic feel. I was really excited about this project, because having this be such a public piece forced me to be more focused that I... tend to be. Also, I have a big ole crush on the family who runs Little Amps, and I was glad they'd decided on a handmade, charminglysmudged aesthetic for the face of their shop.

2. ALSO I was commissioned to make some coasters for them. I make a LOT of coasters, and I usually err on the side of Just Strange Enough To Stare At. But for a setting that would be catering to People Who Are Not Necessarily As Weird As Me, I wanted to be as classically ambiguous in my design as possible while still making something that looked like I made it. For constructing the coasters, I used tiles that had been wrenched off the floor of my friend's basement, and, paper I'd bought for a Euro in Florence. Half of that sentence makes me feel super fancy. So, make sure to stick your pinky out before you return your cup to one of these babies.

Bring them all back to life (Feist)

I've had approximately one jillion conversations about found poetry with approximately everyone I know since the Palimpsests show. Redactive poetry, or humenent poetry, has been a favorite method of writing since I learned about it in college (from my professor, the lovely and talented Matt Roth. Buy his book.)

We set up a station at the reception for people to tear out a page from a wrecked book and find a poem from it. If they left it in my Superhero lunchbox (thanks for that birthday gift when I was twelve, Rachel Laribee), the poem would then be in the running to be included in the internet-publication of the larger Palimpsests art show. (I will confess to you, here on the internet, that this interactive bit was a blatant ploy to take attention off myself at the reception. I'm not sure if you've ever been the artist at her own art opening, but it is SHOCKINGLY UNCOMFORTABLE. And this was a great distraction from me and my questionable new haircut.)

We got some GEMS at the Palimpsests opening, and since, I have continued reaping poems from any willing party in my path. I set up a station at the coffee bar here, passed out pages at backyard wine and cigar parties, and took my lunchbox on family vacation with 22 extended family members. (Guys. A condo of Laribees is a sight to behold.) Each time I have conducted this experiment I have been delighted by the results.

This project continues to develop. I have hatched a plan to collect a book of poems from the far corners of the nation. If you want to participate, send me a note and I will send you a page from a wrecked book. Find a poem, sign your name, send it back. (I'm looking at you, Ben Thorpe, Julia Sanders, Ashleigh Hill and Jordan Windholz and Juli Lindsey.)

Pardon me. I need to go buy a scanner.

Put a Plug On It**

** My affection for this lent me to go with a really dumb title for this blog post. DON'T CARE.

I'm one of the competing artists for this contest, in which a bunch of us will paint our own designs on fire plugs through Olde Uptown in Harrisburg.

The image to the left is my design, to be painted on the fireplug at Delaware and Third by September 16. The title, obviously, is Yellow Plugmarine.

I chose it for a few reasons:

1. It's just very difficult for me to not act upon a pun when I think of it. For example, I almost just wrote "act upun", but I thought it wasn't worth the risk.

2. Fire plugs really ought to be yellow.

3. Everything really ought to resemble a submarine.

4. I like referential art, and I like that this design is almost inescapably cheerful.

I have no idea how voting works! Do it if you'd like, but it's whatever. I'm just glad for beautification projects happening in this dear, dear city.

Palimpsests Show

I am a one-song bird, admittedly. I really, really love palimpsests (as I've said before. Thank YOU, borrowed writing from before), and that is the theme of the art show I am sharing with my dear, dear friend Evan Cameron. It opens this Friday at the Yellow Wall Gallery at Midtown Scholar. (It's not nepotism. I promise.)

The process of the show started while making author portraits out of the cardboard (cardboardtraits?) being discarded from the Midtown Scholar, my workplace. The image of the author (to the left: "You will find that we are all, as I said before, bugs in amber" (or, Kurt Vonnegut), 2011) is meant to appear in surprising, rudimentary ways while self-referencing the canvas.

Oh hey. Here's my artist statement and some images from the show.

When I was in a film class in college, we used the idea of palimpsests to describe the jarring experience of watching an actor play a role outside of what we were used to. He can carry a lawyer’s briefcase, but John Wayne will always be squinting into a cowboy’s sunset. It makes this new story he’s telling a bit smudged. A bit more interesting. In these palimpsests [author portraits in pen, paint and bookstore cardboard; poems found and circled in cheap novelty books], it's important to me that the original manuscript is visible despite all the scraping. The Making New, the Redemption part of it only works if you can tell that there is a different and earlier story having been told.

My work almost always involves the repurposing of something else, and it’s in this process that I

am trying to find meaning. Here, I used discarded bits and overlooked scraps of this bookstore to

continue telling stories. The authors I’ve chosen are layered in my life in ways I can’t even quite

tell you about. The dime novel poems force a new meaning to make room for a cheekier, sleuthier past.

There was another life that I might have had. But I am having this one. (or, Kazuo Ishiguro)

Liz Laribee, 2011. $45

Good behavior is the proper posture of the weak. (or, Jamaica Kincaid)

Liz Laribee, 2011. $45

If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve. (or, David Sedaris)

Liz Laribee, 2011. $45

I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
(or, Aldous Huxley)

Liz Laribee, 2011. $45

With your face sketched on it twice

Tomorrow closes a month-long show at Garden Fresh Market in Harrisburg. I had drawn and tacked together a series of maps of the city on things I'd found roadside. I chose maps because I like the way they can tell a particular story. All of these labeled boxes alongside one another trap that story into a very specific time frame. I HOPE I'm not alive when something called Loving Handz Family Care Center goes belly up, but for now I've seared it into posterity (as far as it reaches from one tiny show in one tiny town by ten tiny fingers). By being a map, these pieces insist upon seeing coinciding realities existing at once and in community. They show how the proximity of disparate, even strange in their juxtaposition, entities are the architecture for a diverse city. They show what we care about. It's important to me that the art I create dictates what I care about most. And these days, that's Harrisburg. You can see the rest of the show here. (Interested in purchasing? Prices are negotiable.)

And now welcome to a segment we call This Person Has Surpassed Me, in which I catch wind of someone doing excellent work and would like to tell you about them. Today's guest is Evan Cameron, who is a dear friend and fellow Reclaimer Of Tossed Away Things. His exhibit is the one following mine at Garden Fresh (which, coincidentally, features the best sandwiches of all time.) The invitation reads that Evan "will be opening an art show featuring both visually rendered and redacted Found Poetry that has been lacquered, mounted and roughly framed with reclaimed fencing. These small, rough-hewn moments of emotion are meant to inspire further thought. Many of them seem to come at the middle or end of a longer account conveying an impression of narrative as faint as the whitewashing each piece is bordered by. The collection will be on display at Garden Fresh from January 21-February 20." See you there, kids.

Repurposed Christmas

Guys! A project!

Bottom Drawer Art sells %100 repurposed cards. For every purchase you make, I will send a card* to a person in need**. I am borrowing the Toms model (http://bit.ly/cVZ5dT ).

*Faith is important to many of us. That is why the card I send will be religiously neutral. You know. Otherwise it just gets emotionally messy.

**I've chosen to send cards to patients in Harrisburg hospitals, because being in a hospital is depressing, and, I live in Harrisburg.

To view cards and order, click here.

A dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards

The project: an alternative Christmas tree.

The materials: a castaway and broken lamp stand; one twig, steel wire, ornaments

from youth.

The source: I found the lamp stand sticking up out of the dumpster on James Street.

The story: My goal in this project was to indulge my seasonal sensibilities. Yes I want to be listening to this. Yes I want to be drinking this. Yes I want a gaudy centerpiece that involves wires and birds and baubles (see future blog post). And this blog post's yes takes the shape of a Christmas tree. (Sidenote: During algebra tests in middle school, my gross friend Trevor would always dare me to Christmas tree the test, which meant to zigzag the answers all the way down the Scantron page.

This was only one reason why I took algebra twice.) As I'm getting older, it's becoming dearer and dearer to me to make intentional choices for simplicity. I love Christmas trees and am happy that you have one, and I would like to come see it. But it doesn't make much sense for me to buy one this year. We have limited space, no dollars, and a small habit of being clumsy (mostly in the form of walking into whatever is in the room. The combined forces of Liz and Actual Tree will only end in a zany and tangled mess.) I knew I valued the symbol more than the traditional shape, and that led me here.

The How-To-Do-It:

1. Find a base you don't think is ugly. This year it was a lamp stand. In years past, I have used elegant, fussy vases. The only difference really is that this year's tree is free standing.

2. Find a twig on the ground. It will be there.

3. Assemble your tree. If you're using a lamp stand, you will likely have to whittle the twig's end down so as to make it fit into whichever groove you've chosen for it. This will be easy and fun. Everyone loves a whittle.

4. Look in your basement, your drawers, your trash for a few ornaments. They will be there. When you discover that you have ALMOST enough ornaments,

5. Tangle together some steel wire, add a loop, and hang them from your branches.

The cost: $0 (castaway lamp shade) + $0 (twig) + $0 (ornaments from youth) + $0 (found steel wire and borrowed pliers) = $0