ohhhhh, Gehry

...in honor of my sister's up-coming visit to Seattle (can't wait!),

here's one of the landmarks we plan to see...

photograph by Tracy Yarkoni Odell

The Experience Music Project building,
by Frank O Gehry
photograph by Tracy Yarkoni Odell

{side note: me and O Gehry go way back...

see the couches his work inspired me to make...}

'Gods', Holier Than Who?

Just finished my Chapter 2 illustration for the book I'm writing, tentatively titled:

"Gods, An Epidemic: An Epic Comedy Drama With Apocalyptic Tendencies"

Each chapter is based on a major arcana card of the Tarot- of which they total 22 cards out of the 78-card deck. As a whole, they follow the basic hero's journey from "The Fool" to "The World".

Here is my version of "The High Priestess" 

The High Priestess, from wikipedia:

"Knowingness – Love – Relationships

Wisdom – Sound judgment – Serenity

Common sense – Intuition

Mystical vision – introspection – otherworldliness

… intuitive knowledge. The water that flows from her gown is the 

collective unconscious…She is not merely the mistress of hidden 

wisdom, she has read the words and knows their deeper meaning. 

Generally, unlike The Magician, she does not explore the world in 

order to master it, but in order to understand it. That understanding 

often leads to the temptation of mastery...

She is also associated thematically with The Moon. She can 

lead to deep wisdom, but can also lead to madness…

When she appears in a spread, she typically counsels the Querent 

to seek new paths and hidden paths to wisdom. She can also be a 

warning to interrogate the lessons of the unconscious. It does not 

always lead us to wisdom.

She also warns the Querent to question how he or she has divided 

up the world; to test the judgments made in the past against the 

world as we have come to know it.”

Want more?!

Chapter 1, 'Le Magicienne' illustration here...

Chapter 0, 'The Fool' illustration here...

Start reading 'Gods' here...

cheers,

tracy

Ghostly feet, a Secret Angel Man and other oddities from Ireland...

finally, pics from trip to Ireland last year... enjoy!

view from the plane, streaked with rain

first sight of green

lovely pub details...

threshold of the Hi-B pub
they say you're nobody till you're kicked out the Hi-B.
which we were ;)

blarney castle.
yep, i'm a sucker for castles.

check the ghostly feet on the right -
i do not recall anyone being there  {{creepy}}

secret angel man watching from his perch in an alley 

gentleman begging for change under statue of james joyce

just bizarre. i call it
"Mother Mary Full of Change"

i felt great comfort in finding lifesavers
placed randomly throughout the city streets.
{is this for after the pub-crawl?!
or a figurative gesture, as in - here you go mate,
life may try to drown you, but help is always at hand?!}

in the taxi

cheers,

me

Back By Popular Demand...

More of my book, Gods, An Epidemic: An Epic Comedy Drama with Apocalyptic Tendencies {working title} and a new illustration for the same:

details of drawing:

Chapter 1

The Magician

Eve woke up with that indecipherable feeling of being simultaneously hungry and nauseous. “I’ll never drink again.” She swore as she half-walked, half-hobbled to the bathroom. After having a most glorious bladder relieving session, she made her way to the kitchen, hunched over and slow, like a decrepit and abnormally tall turtle. Passing her passed-out friend on the living-room sofa, she made no attempt to shuffle quietly; misery doesn’t so much love company as beg for it in a rather demanding tone.

She noisily poured herself some ice water, which she drank down in one go, then talked herself out of curling up in the corner on the floor in favor of attempting to make some breakfast; in the hopes that she was more in the nourishment-lacking state of gastro-intestinal things than the puke-your-guts-up one. To which end, she turned on the stovetop burner, plunked a pan on it, wrestled with the bacon packaging before popping it in the now too-hot pan, but then realized (horror of horrors!) the coffee wasn’t brewing, so got distracted and annoyed by the unclean pot from yesterday, which she washed out and began to count the number of scoops of coffee when she realized she hadn’t put in the rest of the bacon and the ones already cooking were beginning to burn because she’d turned the burner on High, and by the time she’d dealt with the Battle of the Bacon, she’d forgotten how many scoops she’d already put in the coffee filter and had to dump it out and start over, only she missed the trash can and half of the grounds ended up on the floor at which point she turned off the stove and opted for the curling-up-in-the-corner-on-the-floor option, in the hopes that the breakfast fairy would come and save her.

{continued...}

{if you'd like a refresher, start with: The Preamble; 

then: Chapter 0, The Fool}

cheers,

me

fire, water, walking trees and other things...

{me in the cascades}

cheers, 

me

Shark Infested Waters

A friend turned me on to a magnifico way to share tunes & playlists -- Grooveshark{!} -- it's free, and doesn't infringe anybody's copyrights, for those of us who care, like me, cause I'm an artist & stealing sucks.

Come hear what's in my ear with my playlist "...lately..." 
{you don't need an account to listen}

If you do sign up, come post your username here in the comments so I can 'follow' you and hear what rocks your world ;)

cheers,

me

Visual Culture

Bacterialized “Petri Glasses”  -or-  A literal Culture of the Visual

an interpretation by tracy yarkoni

First let me begin with a confession: the rust on my ‘art speak’ is enough to make a tetanus-shot-happy-shootin nurse squeal with joy. Second, I hadn’t realized this lamentable fact until reading Mitchell’s article.

But I digress, before I've even begun. My apologies. I will give Mr. Mitchell the benefit of the doubt that he was not intentionally trying to alienate and torture me personally; but that he really wanted to share with the world his critique of this fascinating concept called “Visual Culture” -- a subject which he taught for almost ten years, at the time his article was written. Also, he promises to describe his method of “showing seeing”, but only at the conclusion. I am intrigued by the idea, and like many-a-news program that I never meant to watch, I determine to stay tuned through all sorts of horrors, be they bloody, boring, or bloody boring, to get to the good part.  ...continue...

after the deluge...

{last december}

...Gods, An Epidemic... (a work in progress)

Chapter 0: "The Fool"
illustration by Tracy Yarkoni Odell
the fool symbolizes potentiality;
the pregnant pause, when anything is possible

working title:
Gods, An Epidemic

tagline:
An Epic Comedy Drama with Apocalyptic Tendencies

A novel in progress by yours truly {{me}}

detail 1:
the club/heart/spade/diamond fusion denotes the fool's potential, the wild card;
the lily represents spirituality and the fool's appreciation of beauty,
its white color speaks of innocence and purity of thought and action

the plan:
Wrap this up and send it off to publishers before I head back to University in the Fall (fingers crossed on both counts), posting chapters and illustrations here for your amusement.

detail 2:
the fool is seemingly unconcerned or unaware about walking off the cliff's edge,
a supreme act of idiocy/trust/faith, the first step of any adventure;
the dog can represent animal desires or the call of the 'real world' biting at her heels

sidenote:
Each of the 22 chapters corresponds to the major arcana cards of the Tarot - basically, it follows the hero's journey from 'The Fool' to 'The World'; so I'm kind of starting out of order here, with the Chapter 0 illustration of the fool (what? zero is a number too. don't hate on 'zero') but giving you the Preamble to read instead. Nevermind, a little chaos is good for the soul...

detail 3:
 all the possessions the fool might need for the journey are few,
symbolizing the significance of the spiritual over the material

{All comments/critiques gladly welcome!}

Gods, An Epidemic

In Hebrew there is a one-letter difference between

the words “wonderful” and “f ****d.”

…

Liminality is walking the line between two states of existence;
In other words, it is the holding of that aforementioned letter for ransom. 

…

Preamble

Gods can be forgetful too. You try living forever, and see if you’re memory doesn’t overload and short circuit once in a while; and not the kind of memory lapses that result in missing a dental appointment either. No. Think bigger. Wider. More… infinite. Brain farts of colossal proportions.

Like, forgetting that you exist.

…

Gods make sense of things. The natural state of our universe is complete chaos. Things naturally don’t make any sense at all, until a god gets a handle on it. The earth really did used to be flat until a god figured out that it didn’t make sense.

Gods and Goddesses are, as a general rule, immortal. But they can hardly be expected to maintain the same form of existence in perpetuity. It is incomprehensibly boring to be infinite and all-knowing all of the time – one must do something to while away the hours, and what better way to entertain oneself than to experience life as a mortal? Little else gives life more value than death itself; or at least, the certain knowledge of impending doom that shadows all living creatures of non-immortal persuasion. The promise of death kills boredom and meaninglessness like nothing else can; except perhaps for falling in love or having really good sex. The gods had a firm handle on the love and sex thing, so it was only natural that Death was their last bastion of intrigue.        


{{Click Here to continue...}}

NOBODY FREAK OUT

NOBODY FREAK OUT
(photo by rachel wright, 2010)
[mucked around with by me, 2011]

This has been my favorite phrase for a while now. It all started one day, with my family riding in the car down a highway in Israel. To our right: desert. To our left: desert. Ahead: desert. Behind us? Yep, more desert, and an occasional mountain or two. And lo and behold, a road sign approached us from the right. It looked just like the kind that tells you to slow for an upcoming curve, or to watch for falling rocks - only this one was rather existentially challenged and/or challenging (we haven't really decided yet.) I wish{!} I had a picture. It was a simple triangle shaped sign, trimmed in urgent-red, with a single, large, black exclamation point in the middle. That's it.          No words.           No other supporting imagery.        

Considering the signs intrinsic *emphatic-ness*, we felt it was probably in our best interest to figure out what, exactly, this sign could be warning us about; and with the hope that we'd do it before the thing we were being warned about found us:

1. warning: falling punctuation - be careful what you say and hear, as random commas, semicolons,  question marks and such could insert themselves into the conversation creating severe communication chaos; for example: Pass me! that bag of rasp-- berries oh a camel where's?! the cam;era, when you need. it oh! i never! lik,ed camels raspberries. are too seedy?

2. warning: rampant paranoiac activity ahead - entering an area, or vortex, where anything and everything could happen - so just watch out, you know, generally - for everything and anything; you have been warned. be warned. go forth in a constant state of being warned. may the warning be with you. the warning is strong with this one... {ad nauseum}

3. a road-sign makers cruel cruel joke - maybe they sometimes sit further down the road just to watch people's perplexed faces as they drive past; wringing they're hands and laughing maniacally 'mwah ha ha'


4. Or maybe it was a simple piece of advice - that in a world of uncertainty (the proverbial, infinite-in-scope, exclamation point that we all live in) - one should remember to keep calm. Know that there will be exclamation points around you, and the best thing one can do - is to not only remind yourself, but everyone else (in an !emphatic! tone of voice):

NOBODY FREAK OUT


Which brings me nicely to two of my favorite songs of late - that juxtapose so nicely as to completely refute what I've just said, that I felt it necessary to post them here - because it reminds me, to never be too serious about anything because once you think you've figured something out, the opposite of that thing will present itself to you... rather boldly... and wearing a smirky grin.

{warning! contains some strong language}





and because the funny thing about writing a blog - is that there's no one to stop you -- I'm going to negate myself again:




1.17.11, update

Found a pic of the sign:

And found out that it means: "dangerous place"
So our musings still apply.


But more intriguingly, is this new perplexity of a sign:

Notice, though, it's not a dot, its a hexagon.
Beware floating hexagons!
or... 6-sided things in general!
or... you are now entering the 6th dimension...

I'm glad we didn't see this sign; though it would seem to connote less possible danger - it's exactly that discrepancy between something seemingly innocent, yet required a warning sign all it's own, which makes this sign truly the more nerve wracking of the two.