I've always been a sucker for a wink.

Okay. So anyone who's talked to me this year knows how completely and utterly I've given myself over to Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise.

This is Katchoo.

As a piece of fiction I've been thoroughly enjoying for the better part of a year, Strangers in Paradise has me on the edge of my seat. What fun! As a piece of visual storytelling it seems to be reaching a sort of perfection. It's breathtaking. And funny. I was of course smitten from the start. But this last issue was a real zowie. Four solid black pages spoke profoundly without saying a word, not the tiniest scratch was implied on the perfect pages - just blackness. Like aweful deep space, terrifying in its possibilities.

And the wink. This wink nearly shred me to bits. I would show you the two frames before and after this one but it might spoil it for Those Who Do Not Know Yet.

So I wrote to Terry Moore today and this is what I said about #86: I've always held a deep appreciation for a well placed pause in poetry, in art... SIP has had this in hand on so many occasions... The possibility in those black pages holds infinite breath and life. That said, it was the wink that did me in. What an awesome acknowledgment of a beautiful, complex and mutual friendship. There's so much love in a wink like that. It's easier to bear the parting with such astounding love.

Since it's my personal goal to get you all addicted to Strangers in Paradise I cannot explain some of the details. But what inspired me to say all this, right now, is what I said, taken out of context.

(I've also been reading Margaret Atwood's Writing with Intent.)

Occasionally I write something that goes out into the world very near to the way I actually mean it to. It makes me feel happy.

Setting Up My New Domain, Easy Cheesey!!

www.reverentstrange.com is in the house!

It was easy and cheap, just like me. I decided yesterday that it's time to get this going. Poof go the barriers in my brain. I get so in my own way all the time. I'd like to make a toast to not getting in my own way anymore. Proust!!

Second Trio

A Few Words To My Brother On Father's Day

You're such a complicated person. So beautiful and so messy. A skinny little fucked up kid inside the body of an ogre with an unbelievably awesome laugh that transforms you. I wish that you could let go of some of the anger inside you.

You're not fooling anyone. Except maybe your son.

First Trio: Show Me The Way To Endless Joy

Family Snapshots

I've been searching for and trying to download a single picture by a photographer who's work I deeply respect and admire...Turns out her work is heavily gaurded, protected and otherwise off limits to the pilfering masses and since that obviously includes me, you're looking at my awesome nephew. Since the day he was born he's been teaching me how to make the photos I love the best.

Alongside all the fancy art books I have on my bookshelves are my photo albums. A few of the albums are fancy pictures from trips abroad, but mostly they're family pictures. Some of these pictures I flat out stole from my mom (remember: amateurs borrow, artists steal), but most of them are probably just like yours: random get togethers, the occasional oh-that's-a-strange-picture, sleepovers with cousins, holidays blah blah blah...

I've looked at these photos a gajillion times. I never get tired of them. These are the kind of pictures I want to make for the rest of my life.

Miscellaneous Futility, Fucking Unrealistic

For a fixed water sign, I'm fucking emotional.

Al and I saw a double rainbow yesterday. Made me feel black inside. Things are not working in me the way they should; feels like my brain is stuck in a kind of three year loop - replaying the same garbage over and over... the details vary just enough to confuse me.

If I was a nun in a past life that would explain a lot.

It's always the same run around with me. All these projects around my apartment, taking up space, reminding me all the time that dust is a skin cell pile up.

I feel stuck and frustrated. For a supposedly creative person, I suck at multitasking. I'm too hedonistic and lazy to put in the long hours. If I can't have it my way I don't want it. I wanna have mad sex 24 hours a day, I want to work like a madman to pay off my debt and never work again. I wanna make art and use my days for the sole purpose of eating, fucking and drawing. I wanna live on Hana.

I'm really fucking pissed off that that's not my life. I'm really fucking pissed off that I'm a fucking average, apathetic, distracted and unfocused fucking lazy goddam American. Even if I manage to create something worth looking at what's the goddam point?

Making art is not easy for me. Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there, you know it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.

Design

When we first spoke about designing Connie's photography website, she mentioned that there were several design elements from the Strangers in Paradise online store which she really liked. (danger: blinking graphics) The tab interface is intuitive and the use of various sized images also appealed to her. We will be using similar elements to build her site.

Color

I have been looking at changing the appearance of this blog. The solid tint of the current background and crisp box around the title give this space a clean Spartan feel, but sometimes color can really move you. The fun thing is we can change the appearance as frequently (or as infrequently) as we like. One of my favorite designers who releases her templates under the GPL and I am considering modifying her "Thirteen" template for use here. What do you think of "Thirteen" or her other work?

Effort

Creating and maintaining a website requires several things of its owners including a project vision, time, energy, technical know how, personal motivation, attention to the project and commitment to making it happen.



Art can be spontaneous, and I believe that a website can be a sort of art project. A website can be many things: a business endeavor, a hobby, a collaboration, a promotion of a person, a place or an event. A website can be a joke or a public resource.

Contrast

Connie has resisted technology while I have embraced it. I spend much of my leisure time with a computer or other pieces of technology. I wonder if I may have missed out on other things because of my attraction to technology. We are a study in contrasts in this regard and I am certain that our differences in this area will help to create more interesting results.

Unspeakable Behavior

Okay. This computer stuff is oddly exciting for me. It is important that you know I'm considered a ludite in some eyes. I don't have tv. I barely have a computer. I almost never answer the phone let alone check my voicemail. Let's see, no vacuum cleaner... Technology challenges me on every level of my existence and for most of my life I've resisted it's presence in my space.

Intentions

Connie sent me an email last night seeking some clarification on the process of making a post here. She wrote:

Apparently I created the blog account by accident yesterday - either the computer here or the site was having trouble so I wasn't sure I even created an account.... nor do I have any idea what my name or password or any such thing is...
So, how the heck do I post to the blog?

This means that the next post you see here will most likely be hers.
A note about some if the images that I have been posting here: Several years ago Ms. Vandeveer published a series of zines under the title Looking for Anne. As a way of introducing Connie and to make the site more visually interesting, I plan to continue to post some of these snippits of her older words and images.

Yesterday I played with the appearance of this site for a while and I set a series of glyphs as the background. I was not 100% happy with the results so I moved back to the current appearance. The best thing about this Blogger interface is how easy it is to change the appearance of the site without worrying about changing the content.

Tools

I sometimes spend hours browsing the images at Flickr. Your Yahoo account will sign you in. It sets the standard for online photo repositories.

A basic tab interface for website navigation is located at Dynamic Drive.

Specificity

Connie and I had an excellent telephone conversation this evening. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of thought and detail that she has put into this project already. Ms. Vandeveer talked to me about her vision for her websites, and we concluded that there are two projects in her mind.

• A professional and polished website showcasing her photography and her philosophy of image making. The purpose of this site will be to display her photos and solicit new work.


• A website that is more free form, encouraging collaboration between herself and several of her contemporaries in various art forms ranging from visual arts like photography to healing and meditative arts like yoga.

We spent some time hashing out the appearance of her photography website, and she mentioned to me that her company will be operating under the name Reverent Strange Photography. Connie has a variety of images that she is proud of taking, and she wants to narrow the field of roughly 200 images to a more usable set of about 75 photographs. Connie articulated that she will categorize images into groups such as portraits, living spaces and more experimental images. We discussed web elements and the tabbed interface that she wants us to use for navigating the images on the site, as well as other overall appearance issues. I was very pleased to hear how much detail she brought to the table regarding the layout and sizes of the images. It was clear that she has spent a significant amount of time thinking about these issues.

We also agreed that this blog is a good starting point for her collaborative website and I encouraged her to sign up for a Blogger account and to make a post here. She agreed, and I believe she will join our narrative by the weekend. In addition Connie will call Office Max and Kinkos to find out what the cost would be for having 75 images scanned and burned to CD for use on the Reverent Strange Photography website. In addition she is working with her friend Shanna to develop her logo and business card. After working very diligently to pay off her credit card debt she said that she was not excited about charging costs to her credit card.

I promised to look into the web interfaces that she had pointed me toward and to look at the coding and scripting. I am considering AJAX scripts such as lightbox to help display some of her content although I didn't mention that in our conversation. We also agreed that although we might exchange emails and words here that we would speak on the phone this weekend.

I am very exciting to be working with Ms. Vandeveer.

The Beginning of a Wonderful Collaboration

Connie contacted me recently and was enthusiastic about creating a website for some of her work. We have been playing phone tag recently, but below are a few snippits of our email conversations.

I look forward to this creative process with a woman I have the utmost affection and respect for. This process started on January 7 of this year when Connie wrote:

I'm ready to take you up on your offer to start my website, you still up for doing it? I have the layout for my business card but I don't want to print it because I know I'll want a website/email thing to go with it. Whatcha think?

I responded very positively the next day and we have been playing phone and email tag since. I was excited to get her most recent email where she wrote:

I just did an initial sort/stock of every photo in my house.... Funny, I feel as though my life has just flashed before my eyes. Turns out I have more than enough photos to get started:) I was actually a little worried.

So, I have ideas...lots of ideas. Mainly what I'd like to say right now is that I'd really like this to be a collaboration - truly - between the two of us. I'd love for our ideas to fuel and build on each other. I want the website to reflect our friendship as much it shows my personality and my photography.

I'd like to put work on the website that friends have done so I'd like to have links to their websites (the few who have them). I'd also like to have a link to some of my favorite photographers.

I know I'm really excited right now and many of my ideas will never see daylight or are too big for this project but the juice is flowing.

With our eyes open wide and ready to begin the adventure we start this blog.