My name is Pam, and I am in a Bad Mood.
If you’ve read Sex in the Fifties, you’re probably aware that I’ve been in a Bad Mood since that first hot flash in June 2006. I’ve heard that hot flashes can continue for 10 years. A very bad mood indeed. Continue reading
I was waxing my way through Summer Pierre’s fab blog called An Accident of Hope (gotta love it), when I mired down in the post “30 Things I Feel Oddly Passionate About.” Of course that got me to wondering, what would be tops on my own list of odd passions? Of course I’m passionate about my family, art, respect, and a crucial pair of gladiator sandals from Anthropologie, but those hardly qualify as odd. And I’m passionate about things like open cabinet doors, spiders skittering towards my legs, and combing my hair before answering the phone, but I’m just going to go ahead and file those under OCD. When it comes to the quirkiness that makes me me and makes you you, what are the defining idiosyncrises? Shall we give it a look? Continue reading
Love or hate The South, it just doesn’t get much lovelier (or haunting, haunted, seductive, or psychically altering) than this. I took the above photograph along a back road on Edisto Island. There’s no resort around the bend; in fact, Edisto Beach doesn’t boast a single hotel. Rent a cottage, a cabin in the woods, or snare a beachfront campsite and stare into these trees for an hour or a day, and tell me your soul hasn’t been abducted, pinned and wriggling to the wall.
Apathy Kills . What Does it Mean to Act like a Lady? . No Skin off my Back . Inhumanity . Drugged Up Food .
Silence will not Protect You . Blind Eye . Blatant Abuse . Guns in Schools . Poverty . Not My Problem .
Greed . Genocide . Out of Sight, Out of Mind
This mosaic was created in response to an art show at Ciel Gallery based on protest songs. I loved creating it, as it perfectly ties together my love of folk art and my ever-burgeoning social conscience.
You might notice a bit of errant red paint on the artwork. I could have cleaned it up and opted to leave it as a reminder of the many caught in the crossfire while working for peace.
Italian Smalti, Alphabet Millefiore, and Paua Shell under glass on Wedi Board, by Pam Goode
Continue reading
I’m using again the fabulously illustrative art of Patricia Helsing, because it so perfectly sums up my thoughts over the past week. No doubt it was inspired by John Donne’s famous quote written over 400 years ago, but in this age of Every Man for Himself, It’s All About Me, What About My Needs, and Dog Eat Dog, what is our current concept of the Self in relation to Others?
If you’re a Lostie, and I am, you know that Other is a synonym for Evil. Continue reading
Well, she’s done. “My Mother Lived and Died” is 11″ x 23″ and uses Shell, Coral, Pearls, Transparent Smalti, China, Pyrite, and Ceramic. I made it as a stab in the dark at working through the death of my mother, but of course really as a way to order my mind around the concepts of life and death in general. The mosaic traces the concept of life from the central birth motif, through the varied passages of life, to the climb up the final mountain and release Continue reading
I’m having a heck of a time getting the colors to photograph as they appear to the eye. Today I’ll work on a bit more fill and the cutting of more transparent smalti to place around the edges as surf fizz. I’m considering a couple of new titles. The working title is “My Mother Lived and Died,” which works for me. but maybe “Life: In Short.” “An Offering of Soul.” “Journey of the Soul.” “Fragments of a Life.” Or maybe “Even Mothers Die.” We’ll see. Comments welcome.
I have a strong emotional attachment to this piece, and of course that clouds my judgment. Objectively, it’s easy for me to look at it and think it’s just a collection of pretty things arranged in spirals. Not bad as pretty things go, but I’m always looking for more, and I wonder if it’s possible to create the “more” in an emotional piece. Because I don’t look at the art as an art teacher — I look at it with my heart. With no formal art background, it probably takes me a little longer to figure out what goes wrong with a piece. But I’m not one to disparage working intuitively.
Tibetan monks will create a sand mandala like the one above in Atlanta beginning Tuesday, October 16 until destruction on the 23rd. Whereas most mosaics may use several hundred carefully cut pieces, the 5′ x 5′ sand mandalas use millions of grains of colored sand. The good news is that the grains don’t need individual gluing. The bad news is that this exacting work is back-breaking, and takes three to five days to complete. And, you know, you can’t hang it in a gallery. The event is free and open to the public, and more information is available here. His Holiness will speak free to the public on Monday, October 22 at Centennial Park.
Hickies and Hot Flashes, Oh My! My thoughts for today, simply by clicking on the link in the column to the right.
The best news I have lately is that I’ve begun working on my current mosaic in earnest. I tend to be a slow starter in so many things, but I’m working with thinset for this one, and a “wrong” tile is so much harder to pry loose, so, in my world, this involves many, many hours of staring while the art muses arrange things in my head with absolutely no help from me, Continue reading
Pam Goode Writes 