the ugly becomes beautiful

you thought you knew graffitti and then you looked at th The Mac

But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

-Auden

I was thinking on the unbearably slow (yet I bore it) drive home about my obsession with imperfection. How did this thought start? I was thinking about being tall fist, then about men who are revered in movies and music and how short they are (if you got me in a room with Tom Cruise, Marc Bolan, Kurt Cobain, Al Pacino, Ja Rule, Lou Reed, and the Marquis De Sade (woah, what a room that would be...), I would be at least 2 inches taller that ALL OF THEM!!!!!!), then about Pete telling me how his friend Mariah went through a period of time when she "dated male models", then about beautiful people, and the fucking weird easyness/hardness of their supposedly charmed lives.

Ugly is the most beautiful. I once read a quote that said; "Ugly can be Beautiful, but Pretty never..". My whole asthetic sense feeds off the juxtaposition of the beautiful right next to, and splashed with the ugly, the grotesque, the abnormal. I love skulls because I think they are the most remarkable peices of sculpture ever; smooth polished and appearing to be worn so by desert wind, they are the form distilled, calcified and hardened. Abbreviated. Hold a skull in your hand and you are holding beauty but you are also holding something that has rotted, something that is solid death.
I like the things that have decayed and now show their sculptural form, their bones, and their faded colors. The colors after the colors. Mykle brought me to a dried flower/weird shit supply warehouse South of Market today, called "El Fatastico", and we looked at dries lotus pods:



and dried lilies:



and I thought about the outlines of plants that I want to paint on my paintings.

Ugly is also sexy. There is such inhumanity in perfection- I can't get interested by it. When all of the visual media we are bombarded with is airbrushed and tanned and tweezered beyond humanity, it is the quirks that get us; the big feet, the hairy toes, the belly that isn't flat, the fleck of dark in one pale blue iris.


Some people dread the imperfection that comes from getting old, but I am interested in it. I have always been able to picture people as older, I think it comes from my experience looking at people's faces as an artist and someone who used to do life drawing classes upwards of 8 hours a week. I know where the muscles lie under the skin and I can imagine the way that gravity will take them.
I can imagine myself older, but I cheat, because I can look at my mom, and we share the same bone structure (a fact which I am very happy about. Thanks for the cheekbones, Mom!) Without this prompt, I probably wouldn't be able to; my own face is too familiar to me.

Strange segue:
In the youth-obsessed world of rock n' roll there are a few acts that make you feel good about getting old. Leonard Cohen for one: distinguished and with that gravelly low loin-ache voice, also Tom Waits: whom I think has always been an old man. Old Man style is pretty fly, I must confess I have major weakness for it. Not old man as in diapers and polo shirts and sweatpants but old man as in the Rev. Gary Davis:

The reason I bring this up is that some bands you see with older members are totally depressing, like when we saw The Fall, and some make you feel kickass about getting older, like THE MEKONS.
I want to drink tequila and be a Mekon and do AMAZING KICKASS paintings like Jon Lanford:

my calling, part two

"You've got to give kids really beautiful children's books in order to turn them into revolutionaries. Because if they see these beautiful things when they're young, when they grow up, they'll see the real world and say, 'Why is the world so ugly?! I remember when the world was beautiful.' And then they'll fight, and they'll have a revolution. They'll fight against all of our corruption in the world, they'll fight to try to make the world more beautiful. That's the job of a good children's-book illustrator."

— Tony Millionaire

weddings and bookcovers

It was 107 degrees in Davis. Hot all over. Global warming and here we are driving a car, longing for bikes but glad of the air conditioning and quiet serenity of just us two, listening to books on tape (though I personally think it's a dreadful book....it's in a series that Mykle is reading "The Wheel of Time"), and not waiting for trains in dingy San Jose stations. The car is not ours, it's on loan.
Went on a visiting/wedding-attending roadtrip, combined with the usual tattoo apprenticeship in sweltering hick Vacaville. I was privy to conversatins at the tattoo shop about the number of guns certain swarthy tattooed dudes had in their garage. Apparently one of their friends was also raising alligators in their backyard and then got caught for doing it because a 6 footer escaped. Um...yep.
Mykle got to see the place though. No matter how TOTALLY FOREIGN it is to me there, all of the guys that work there are fucking standup guys. They are very straightforward, call everyone bro, and don't look down on anyone. I love this, as many of my intensely more-educated friends would probably label all of these guys as boneheads and rednecks and not even talk to them (which I understand, you know...all the talk of "fags" would drive most people off).
The wedding part of our weekend was the wedding of Stout and Tash. It was lovely and of course a big friend-reunion of the sweetest kind. Stout says, "Get married, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!"
Santa Cruz is a actually really hot right now, and all of the food and homemade wine wearied us so completely that Mykle, Pete and Lucia and I spent all last night laying prone on the floor of Mykle's folks' house, watchng "Heavy: The Story of Metal" on TV. Combined with recently reading the book "Fargo Rock City" I am now SO educated on the subject of Heavy Metal music as a genre. Ask me anything abut it, just dont ask me to like it. Haha. There is some stuff which I appreciate, but on a whole it's SO ridiculous (to use a Jordan Smart word) and so vapid. It's me, I'm one of those NO FUN shoe-gazers that likes Eliot Smith and Tool**.

I'm at the bookstore right now, my Sunday night shift. We are overrun by flies, and young bearded men who drop off their portfolios and make a beeline to the philosophy section. I swear I think I can now judge what section people are going to go to by their style. People going to the culinary section are easy to spot, since if they are young they usually have burned and scarred arms from being student at the culinary academy! Older white men looking for the military history section similarly easy to peg. They wear meshcaps with a braid on them, like plaid button-up shirts, and are usually REALLY tall. Bespeckled middle-age women with short cropped hair and book bags want Gardening or Lit. If they are wearing purple and/or still have long hair they want poetry. Young slightly bohemian couples (esp. of Indian or Latin American/Spanish descent) want Math, and aren't scared away by our section in the least.
Oh, such generalization! It helps pass the time...

OK, look at this Rushdie bookcover:


I just sold this book and was completely taken with the illustration. Here is the illustrator's website, it's all whimsical collage, and it's really impressive.

Lynn Hatzius
***

Also good in the department of book design is John Gall, who doesn't have his own website (!!!) but who does the exquisite covers for Haruki Murakami's books with Chipp Kidd. I know it's scandalous and very uncool, but I don't really like Murakami. I do like the IDEA of him, and the fact that he writes about unicorns, but I can't get it. Why?!!

If you go to Murakami's website, and click on "Art" you get a gallery of the covers, stony music, and an interview with both book cover designers, which is wonderful for nerds like me. And YOU!

A Doll i found that sort of looks like me.
HERE
Attention Michelle!(from here):
Doll's eye






** I would like to point out that I love Fleetwood Mac and Jane's Addiction, both of whom rocked, but kept it light and fun. Ish.
I also seem to be developing an affection for Motorhead, largely because of their incredible style. (No umlauts on this computer, sorry)

*** I realized this is the same person that did the amazing semaphore alphabet. Woah.

And there was much rejoicing in the land of Kai

I sit on our lovely couch to write this post, due to the happy fact that Mykle, (my darling, DARLING!) bought me a new hard-drive and installed it while I was at work yesterday. I have twice as much storage space, and i get to start afresh without the detached brain that made my laptop into a stationary computer for about a year. No high-pitched jangling whine, no 4 or 5 cords always having to dangle off the side of it....no, I am a free woman again, with my sexy, sticker-encrusted medical-white technology.

We are going through a bit of a sunny spell here in SF, after a mini-roadtrip of misty rain and clouds. Seattle was beautiful and grey and vivid in a very Austin, Texas type way. We stayed with our wonderful friends Mike and Nevada ( who live about 30 ft from train tracks, and sit on their back stoop in the evenings to watch the frieghters pass...) and with our OTHER wonderful fiends Rosey and Tom (who we spent a great deal of time with hula-hooping in their living room...). We seem to suddenly know and love people in Seattle, so I think we shall travel there again sooner rather than later. Seattle is artsy in an unpretentious sort of way, and stretches far over many little wooded islands. We went to the lochs and to vintage stores. I love vintage stuff, but do not possess the 50's silohuette. (I believe that every age has an ideal body-type, which the clothes produced in that era are more or less tailored to. I personally have a 1970's body type, and do not fit into the clothes of today very well, which are geared for the Brazilian-supermodel-prepubescent-girl body type that is popular now. Women seem to need to be one straight line from the shoulders on down, a skinny cyclinder which does not include hips, just very high breasts and long legs. This body type makes me think of banana-torsos. Body types that fit into vintage clothes are considered petite today. It seems like most women in the 50's had a size 5 shoe. Ouch!)

We stopped in Portland on our way home, and visited Mykle's oldest friend Nate, who has a beard now, and lives in a barely furnished flat and studies high mathematical theory and science fiction (the reader for the sci-fi class looks particularly good. Early sci-fi was nothing to shrug at. Those books by Delany, and Lem, and Bester, and LeGuin were able to speak about political and social issues that other books weren't. But I digress AGAIN!) Mykle says Nate is a warrior monk. The boy doesn't even own a towel.
We also stayed with an Antarctican couple, friends of Mykle's and now friends of mine.; Michelle and Sean. Who are a photographer/cupcake-baker and a blues musician, respectively. They live in a 2 bedroom apartment covered in interesting art with lime-green walls...spacious, inspiring and only fucking $635 bucks a month!!!! They deserve it though, if anyone does. Besides me.

I am a eyeball on feet and I am telling you to Look at.....

Look at this ball of yarn, by Lexi Boeger, found in the new issue of Knitty:


Look at this illustration, by the illustrator that I am basically SO JEALOUS of that I can't even bring myself to tell anyone about his work. Sam Weber



Look at this handmade jacket by Dainty & Dirty, which is one girl working out of San Francisco. I basically want it more than anything. It is printed with wrought iron hearts and keys. Too bad it's $200! Durn!

Vay-Kay

Sort of unexpectedly we are going to Seattle tomorrow. Myklee, as many know but not all, is going to Antarctica again***, and I wanted to take a little romantic roadtrip with him before his departure (August 2oth, yes he's going early).

Wish me luck on surviving the measly paycheck from taking time off. I'm gonna cancel my hard-earned Medical Insurance (I pay $142 a month for NOTHING), and get that poor-kid insurance that only covers you if you are mangled in some horrible accident.
And now on to the subject of cars!::

We are borrowing his parents swanky car, which with totally ruin our stony-traveller cred, but IT HAS AIRCONDITIONING!!! We have suddenly, friends all over the states, and I can't think of moving in one direction without visiting those we love.

This trip (week long) also delays me working on my paintings for the show at Delta of Venus. Kids, I have a lot of art. You've all seen it a million times, but is it wrong to show it AGAIN in a place where no one has seen it?? Tell me what you think. The Delta is in Davis, and I think the only people that have seen my stuff knew me in Santa Cruz (Garrett, Bro, Amelia etc.)...The emphatically wonderful Chris and Jessica Forever (that's their couple last name. It's like Lauren and Orion when they got married c hanged their last name to Elenzil, and how I'm going to convince my future husband to change his last name to Evelvenin. Don't worry, I am still going to keep Kai Smart as my working artist name.) have been buying me those little triangular shelf things, as I am going to have my dolls and monkeys up (first show EVER!).

Want to see something else I like?:



**FUCK ANTARCTICA!!!

Oh my goodness!

Scared Kitty
Originally uploaded by summerpierre.

My friend Summer and her cat mask. I had to share. Look at her eyes. Jesus!

I love masks and have made a lot of them in my time. The most exciting one was made ON ME, in ceramics i at Santa Cruz High,where I had my face cast in wet plaster. The teacher dumped a huge bucket of it on me (I was the demo person since I had taken the class before) and later I developed two black eyes from the weight. I had two drinking straws in my nose, an old fashioned bathing cap to cover my then waist-legnth hair, and I imagine a more claustrophobic person would have panicked.

The detail that came out in that mask was amazing, every pore, every hair in my brows, my lips slightly flattened from the wieght of the plaster. It looks like I am asleep, or like a death mask, if you think about it. The cast itself resembles a big crusty white shell, and I think it's somewhere in my parents basement. I hope it isn't broken now that I think about it...16 year old me with my eyes gently closed, forever captured.

The ceramics teacher (Mr. Levi, if I remeber correctly) had done a facial cast of a surfer girl named Beth, and when she died surfing at Lighthouse Point a couple years after she graduated from high school he gave the cast to her family. I wonder about what her family felt , seeing her face in such 3D form, peacefully captured in youth.

This cat mask looks Oaxacan to me. I love the colors that they use in their woodcarvings- vibrant, primary, and life-affirming.

infatuation with the calculation

*
I would like to request one day off for sleeping and being at home.
Of course I would be taking care of projects (of which there are a multitude), so I would be busy anyway, but still...I need some time in the bean bag chair, to see Michele for longer than 15 minutes, to appreciate by now-clean drawing table.

I was ecstatically hung over on Friday, after a day of buyingabike/findingoutmypaycheckbounced/hangingoutwithpeteandlucia/seeinggarret'sshow/beerdrinkingwithkidsandnewandoldfriends... I usually am hungover on public transportation. Where I pretty much always get hit on. It's cool though, because the sun was bright and hot and I lay on the grass at the Emeryville train station, listening on my $7.00 walkman to a GREAT tape that my friend Graham made me (I was about to call him at this point of hungoverecstacy, just cause I was so happy and the combination of a tape with the MC5 and The Murder City Devils is SO SUBLIME), or working on my new drawing practice; tattoo flash. So I had a great getting-hit-on experience and the guys were really sweet and goth. Yay goths! I have a great affection for people who wear all black all the time (being the only color-wearing member of my household), even though Mykle says his default setting with goths is appalled hatred (or something to that effect).
I draw daggers and hearts and bloody eyeballs and roses and snakes and spiderwebs. I am putting off starting to learn to draw tribal designs (vomit!!), and am focusing on interpreting the old-fashioned Sailor Jerry flash in the KaiSmart style. I will also have to learn to draw flames and japanese waves. I can pretty much draw dragons and koi. Grinning skulls with jester hats are also pretty much under control (hahaha).

I had dinner with the Girls in Santa Cruz last night, and it was a dream as always. Zina lives in a corrugated tin roof bungalow on the edge of a neighborhood, right before the lane turns from paved to dirt. Jasmine grows over the door and the fencing is made from sculptural bamboo. She has a giant vegetable garden and a big yard with trees and a picnic table. The inside of the house is covered with textiles from Latin America and China in the distinctive Zina color-scheme of bright red and yellow and black and deep turquiose blue. Her walls are adorned with vintage advertising posters from China for soap with birds on it, or a health tonic with a winged horse logo.
Zina made chicken cacchiatori (I really butchered that spelling job) and we drank wine (they did) and gin mixed with water with lemon and mint in it (me, pulling an Orion) and I laughed so hard I stopped breathing at one point.
I guess I did have some kind or relaxation and wonderfulness in my weekend anyway.



I have been coerced into starting a "Kai Smart CD of the month club" for Aimee and Zina and Rosey, cause I am the most musically voracious one of us. Actually, A and Z say that they haven't bought a CD in years. Looking through their CD stashes and seeing all the burned ones labeled with my handwriting....well I am the person that the music industry is worried about. Arrest Me!! I am bankrupting musicians! Actually, I don't download music off of the web, I buy the real new CD, so I think I probably shouldn't get arrested.
Anyhow, the first is the new Kate Bush Album; Ariel, which is one of my top three purchases in the last year. Oh god it's good. The things that make it especially good;
the fact that it's a double album, it has a song where she sings about pi:

"Sweet and gentle sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination
For numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation
Of PI"

and I want to listen to it during nearly every mood I get in (Kai's moods: either really happy and not as happy and a little bit stressed out. I'm a simple girl. Haha)
I'm going to try and stick with the CD thing. God knows I have a big enough collection of stamps. Maybe some months I will make mix CDs, or mix TAPES. Though I must be the only person in the world who still listens to TAPES. I feel like I should horde them and await the time when no one carries the cassette anymore. The indie-rock apocalypse.


Am I a huge nerd for liking this t-shirt?:blog shirt

*That top image is the cover of "Misery is a Buttefly". I love the cover so much I am going to buy the CD. New. From a store. This is the power of art and graphic design. It makes you buy something you could download for free, and puts food on the table of the starving musician.