Field Report

Magnetized

Always one for a challenge, I decided recently that one way I could add excitement to my life would be to start my own business. Since I'd been having visions of baby blankets for quite some time, I ventured out into the organic cotton field. After much materials sourcing and industrial machine aqcuisition, Baby Magnet was born. Now the babies don't have to be cold anymore.

cyber studio sale

The universe is telling me to escort my old work out the door in order to make room for new ideas.
What a fabulous opportunity to have a truncated virtual retrospective.
Here it is, an incomplete seven year overview of my quilt work, available for purchase.

ideal neighborhood series
farmer's market
2006
11" x 11"
sold

neighborhood sketch series
community garden
2006
8" x 10"
250.

neighborhood sketch series
industrial district
2006
8" x 10"
250.

neighborhood sketch series
treasure hunt
2006
8" x 10"
250.

neighborhood sketch series
bridges
2006
8" x 9"
sold

lost in teaching land series
village map
2004
8" x 10"
200.

lost in teaching land series
roadside geology
2004
8" x 10"
200.

exchange series
faith in humanity
2001
11" x 11"
200.

rules of magnetism series
lost and found
2000
14" x 15"
200.

rules of magnetism series
other people's children
2000
15" x 17"
250.

Dimensions reflect unframed artwork. All artwork is framed.
Thank you!
agentwires@hotmail.com

Welcome to the world Madison Joey Elise Wesener

All the things you could say about new babies apply here:
bone crushingly precious, conduit for the universe, tiny ancient perfection.
My new niece, born 11-22.

Maps, Calendars, Haircuts

After doing a lot of work to convince all the right people in Portland that I'm an artist worth paying attention to (who knows to what end) I'm taking my artwork to Olympia to show it to people who already know I'm worth it. Hopefully I haven't been forgotten there. You never know. A year is a long time.
If you want to come see the fruits of last winter's labor, come to Bryce's Barbershop and check it out. I am honored to be sharing the space with Nikki Mcclure, who will be showing the original images from her latest calendar project.
Stop by! Get your hair cut! It'll be great!

(Show opens Friday, October 6th, and will be up for three weeks.)

The Autumn Report

Summer is over. TBA is over. The RACC grant deadline is gone. I am now free to sit on my couch and read a novel. So be it. Taking advantage of the suddenly stormy fall weather and the lack of immediate pressures, I have been lying around a bit for the last few days. It's given my brain a chance to process the many performances and art shows I was fortunate enough to see during the TBA festival. It's given my body a respite from the frantic rushing around I've been doing for the last few months. It's very good.

The TBA report:
Due to immersing myself in multiple performances per day over an eleven day period, my thoughts and ideas have been colliding and deflecting off each other, much like a cloud of tiny insects you might ride your bike through on a summer evening. I saw Laurie Anderson, heard stories from the Spalding Grey Project, walked across the stage of Vivarium Studios (a group of lovely French people), watched The Nature Theater of Oklahoma make a dance out of putting their hands in their pockets, and discussed statistics with the rice-piling Stan's Cafe (a group of lovely English people), only to name a few. TBA was a mind boggling overload of amazing performances, without enough time to process all the ideas that were offered. I fear that I came up short in my position on the press corps, if only because it will take me until February to make sense of all the things I witnessed. And February, in internet time, is something like a decade. Who will care in February? I may not have proven myself as the blogger with the most instant art critiquing finesse. But I will still care in February, in the dark of winter. Perhaps then my ideas will flow forth, having organized themselves into articulate, carefully formulated paragraphs. I look forward to that.

The Project Report:
After spending many leisurely months researching and stitching in the privacy of my kitchen, I was forced by my own ambition to push my project ideas onto the world. This summer I applied for a grant in hopes of getting support for my urban planning project. Ultimately, the grant was written. More importantly, I was required to put myself at the mercy of many people who offered their resources, gave me feedback, and discussed ideas with me. All I had to do was ask for help. I'd rather beat my head against a wall than ask for help. It was an excellent exercise for me.

Coming Up:
I will be showing work in Olympia at Artwalk, applying for a few more grants and shows, and eagerly anticipating the arrival of my sister's baby. Oh, and maybe I can spare a few more evenings to just sit on the couch and read.

September = TBA

After months of sporatic public writing, the author of this web journal will now commit herself to ten days of dedicated performance criticism. From September 7th until September 17th, 2006, Amber Bell will participate in PICA's Time Based Art festival as a member of the press corps.
To read her observations, as well as those of her fellow press officers, please tune in to the TBA blog .

A month is too long (to be gone)

Yes, it is August. My supposed excuse for not writing my blog for this long is that I've been working on a grant application. I haven't touched pen to paper on the actual grant. It's taken me months just to finish artwork, take slides, and figure out all the monkey-monkey details. Like, for instance, where will I show my work next November? In order to write a high quality (or, as they say, competitive) grant, I have to know when and where I will show my work, as well as how I will be advertising the event. For a new-sy here in Portland, (can I still say I'm new if I've been here for a year?) it's a little intimidating. But I'm attempting to buck up and get my work out into the world anyway. I like a challenge.

Every moment that I can, I've been working on some detail of my art project. I spent my entire weekend creating this diagram of the eventual installation:

It was very satisfying to work on it, the whole way through. Until, of course, I finished it, and then I looked at the completed product and thought "Who would want to look at that?" Oh, dear. It's hard to have perspective on your own work. I fluctuate between thinking " My idea is the best idea of the new century," and thinking " this is the most overdone, boring topic anyone could possibly think of. Why would anyone care about this?"
Perhaps I should be spending a little more time swimming, and a little less time analyzing my own artwork. Pardon me while I go jump in a lake.

Life in Hyperspeed

I haven't been home much in a while. I can't really remember what I'm supposed to do here if I'm around for longer than an hour.
Instead, I've been racing at triple speed; taking four-day-weekend trips, squeezing five days of work into the remaining hours, and attempting a mammoth-sized art project complete with grant and exhibition deadlines. Good one, huh?
Living in hyperspeed has its advantages. As long as I never slow down, I can actually get an incredible amount of work done. If I just keep going, and then instantly fall asleep as soon as all my work is done (10:00pm is about right) then I can pull off 9 1/2 hours of job + 3 hours of project every day I am home. The reward is that I get to see my sister's tiny baby swimming around inside her belly, and get long weekends playing with my enchanted pirate nephew and butterfly fairy niece. I live for the kids.
Later, once I slow down just a little, I'll tell you all my collected thoughts about the frightening reality of megachurches, and about my favorite new organization, CUP. But for now, who wants to read more than a paragraph, anyway? We should be outside- it's summertime.

Lost in Mapping World-The Remix

I got out my sewing machine last week, and instantly left behind my ability to work verbo-linguistically.
It's all about spacial thinking now.

Lost in Mapping World

This weekend I decided I needed to stop reading and actually get started on producing something. The catch is, every time I try to put something down on paper, I realize I don't know enough yet, and I have to go read some more Jane Jacobs, or Christopher Alexander, or William H. Whyte. In fact, I could continue researching for a long time, and still feel like I barely understand anything about urban planning.
Nonetheless, I need make some art, because I am a maker. So make I will.

Block #1: It's hard to know where to start. With the theory, or with the design? Does theory come from action, or should it be the other way around?
It feels shaky to start designing a neighborhood without establishing rules to work by; on the other hand, it's hard to make rules without imagining a landscape on which to play it out.

In order to keep myself moving, I have allowed myself to casually, sloppily flip-flop between creating my own version of an urban planning theory and designing an ideal neighborhood.

Block #2: I think Jane Jacobs is right when she says that planning itself doesn't necessarily make a place work. I think Christopher Alexander is right in questioning the urban planning idea of establishing plans then filling in slots. Not to mention the fact that my imaginary citizens never had a say in designing the place they will live. So should I just stop? Should I forget about creating the ideal neighborhood, since it will inevitably be flawed anyway?

No. I view this project as a tool for more deeply understanding various ideas of urban design and planning. I consider it an investigation into the structure of places that work for people's well-being. Creating my own version of an ideal place is an important part of that investigation. Therefore, I will continue, with consideration payed to Jacobs and Alexander. The idea is not to be perfect. The idea is to keep thinking, and keep working.

Oh, and working is really fun, too. Me and maps and proportion equations were made for each other. Thank you Ed Murrell, for teaching me basic algebra.

Riding Around, Noticing

23rd and Clinton, on the traffic island.

Alexander's New Theory of Urban Design

Not so new at this point (nineteen years later), but still interesting to think about.

It's so good when you get to be faculty and have your students venture on an experiment that you made up. Christopher Alexander (of A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order fame) did just that. He had this theory that he wanted tested. So he got a group of students together, and they tried it out. Then he worked with a few of them to publish a book about it.
Alexander's theory (better described in the book) consisted of One Big Rule and seven detailed rules that back the first one up. Here's a quick overview, then some commentary:

The One Rule:
-Every increment of construction must be made in such a way as to make the city whole. To "heal" it.

The Seven rules that follow describe how that can happen:
1. Piecemeal Growth-Development takes place piece by piece over time, and is determined by what the community needs.
2. The Growth of Larger Wholes-Cultivate the centers. (more on this later)
3. Visions- Every project should come from heartfelt vision.
4. Positive Urban Space- Every building must create coherent and well-shaped public space next to it. The buildings are there to serve the public space, not the other way around. The public space is more important.
5. Layout of Large Buildings (I didn't take notes on this rule. It was lots of technical details.) The diagrams of the buildings were interesting to me, though. The layout was supposed to take into consideration the public spaces within the buildings, and allow the floorplans to be formed around them.
6. Construction- (I really didn't take notes on this one. Sorry, guys.)
7. Formation of Centers- (this is the "more" I promised earlier) Every "whole" must be center within itself, and must also produce a system of centers around it. So overall, projects themselves are centers, and as more projects are added, larger centers are created.

Okay, maybe my notes are a bit sparse, and I have to admit that the diagrams and photos in the book were essential to my understanding of the theory.
The process that Alexander's students went through was this- they visited an actual site in the Bay Area, then created a theoretical development based on the site. They drew up plans, made proposals, and once the proposals were accepted, made models of the projects. All this cool visual information is in the book. The basis for the acceptance of the proposals was whether or not they followed all the rules.

Here are my thoughts on this theory:
I really like the idea of building projects piece by piece. I like that it permits the residents of a neighborhood to determine what they need in their own place. It seems like that creates a relatively natural construction process (rather than a muddy gash of construction like those new fangled suburbs they have these days. You know, the ones with drainage ditches the size of swimming pools?)
I really am fascinated by the idea that buildings are primarily designed to form public outside spaces. In the book's photos, it is very clearly seen that this creates a puzzle of oddly shaped buildings. 90 degree angles are hard to find.
I found the last section of the book (a critique of the experiment) to be very engaging, and it reconciled a lot of the questions I had while reading. (i.e "Come on, would this really work?" "I don't know, it seems awfully idealistic, to just make up a town. Oh, wait, that's exactly what I'm doing in my own art project.")
I found it extremely helpful when Alexander broke down current development ideas, describing how they worked against his theory.

zoning-imposes fixed rules with no concern for the emerging whole.
planning-tries to create the whole by establishing plans, then filling in slots.
real estate theory/bank lending policies-define the highest, best use of property according to profit.

How simple, really, the goals of the structures that get in the way of innovative thinking.

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces: My new favorite movie

I just watched my new favorite movie for the second time. I'll happily watch it again with anyone who wants to come over and fire up the dinosuar VCR with me.
Here's the story. Back in the 70's in New York City a smart guy named William H. Whyte convinced the planning commission that if his team could determine what makes good open spaces work, they would change the zoning laws to require that those elements be part of public plazas.
Whyte's team, The Street Life Project, got to work. They selected plazas and parks that were well used. Then they set up cameras. They made diagrams. They wandered around and collected information about how people used the spaces. They documented the act of people eating lunch, shaking hands, moving chairs, and talking to themselves. Then they sorted through it, producing quantitative results. The final outcome was that the city accepted the research, and wrote a new zoning resolution for open spaces that reflected The Street Life Project's conclusions.
There are many endearing things about this project. Whyte identified a solvable problem. He figured out engaging ways to find a solution. He worked within the system to make change for the better. But the best thing about this project is that it is a scientific study about the art of hanging out on the sidewalk. I happen to love hanging out on the sidewalk. So I was pleased to be given cold, hard facts about what the optimum concrete lounge experience would look like. Here's what you need to have:

SITTING SPACE
Not just any sitting space. Long, wide ledges and steps are better than benches. People like to have a choice. They like to be able to move their chair if they want.
RELATIONSHIP TO STREET
Open to the action, but slightly away from the street. Definitely at street level, and no fences to trap people inside.
SUN
Not neccesarily direct sun, but natural light of some kind (even if it's reflected off of skyscrapers).
WATER
The kind you can actually dip your feet in if you want to.
TREES
Need I say more?
FOOD
The social interaction is good. Squeezing the tables together is better than spreading them out.
TRIANGULATION
Give people things to talk about with each other. Strangers will meet on common ground to discuss a weird piece of art or watch a juggler.

The project was brilliant. The movie of the project is also incredible. The film footage meticulously illustrates the elements, and William H. Whyte narrates with a crisp sense of humor. Oh, and the 70's fashions are to die for.
You can believe me, but you should also watch it yourself. If you live in Portland, you can get it from the library. (You'll have to put it on hold, though, since it's currently in my living room.)

ADDENDUM (part 5/4)

I have a confession to make. I realized this morning, after railing on New Urbanist planners for their high and mighty dictation on the design of other people's neighborhoods, that I had forgotten to consider or mention an important aspect of New Urbanism. One of the practices of New Urbanist planners is to hold planning meetings with people who live in the places where future development will happen. Thus, in an ideal planning process, community members are part of the discussion, and their wishes are considered in the final design.

Perhaps it's easier to write extreme, rash essays complaining about things that are not perfect. Perhaps I am still outraged that New Urbanists like Peter Calthorpe are selling out by creating wasteful design schemes such as palm-shaped islands in Dubai.
New Urbanism does present a lot of good ideas, and I don't mean to write off the whole philosophy just for its flaws. I am gaining plenty of useful information by researching New Urbanism, and I am appreciative of what I am learning.

I still feel velcro-stuck on the disparity of privilege in our society. There are people who have the power to design a neighborhood. Then there are people who are lucky if they can have a job and walk to a grocery store in their neighborhood. I realize that the issue of inequity is far greater than the business of neighborhood planning. The issue is ever-present, however, in the process of figuring out how to fit everyone in to the spaces we all share.

WHAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT AFTER ALL? (part 4/4)

On a more grounded note (more grounded, at least, than digging new ground out of the bottom of the ocean), I would like to revisit some of the simple elements in order to create a healthy, livable community. Remember back when I noted the outcomes of 'ideal neighborhood' interviews? People often mentioned things such as being able to shop close to where they lived, having parks and community gathering places, and having accessible public transportation.
Angela Glover Blackwell , who founded the economic and social equity organization PolicyLink , suggests these necessary neighborhood components:

Supermarkets
Parks and Open Space
High Quality Schools
Homes near job opportunities
Public Transportation

Although they are almost precisely the same elements, somehow when Blackwell lists them, they lose the fancy designer edge that New Urbanism lends. They become basic needs of living, without the architectural renderings. Blackwell is working to strengthen communities of color and low income communities. She doesn't have 80 acres of unbuilt Florida coastline at her fingertips. Somehow, the lofty design firms lose some sharpness to their integrity when it comes down to actual racial and economic equity.

I just began reading Jane Jacobs' book The Death and Life of Great American Cities . In its introduction, Jacobs calls upon people to notice the difference between how a city is actually working vs. how the planners say it should be working. Considering Jacobs' suggestion, the overly planned portions of a city may still be dead places, whereas ignored neighborhoods may actually be vibrant and lively.

On the other hand, it seems like the overly planned neighborhoods , the ones that get the attention as well as the resources (the transit stops, grocery stores, parks, etc.) seem to come by those amenities relatively easily. A neighborhood that simply needs a grocery store, however, may have to work extremely hard to get one.

I will now go back to my question "Is quality urban planning just for rich people?" I don't think I'm ready to commit to an answer, however. Rich people may have access to their own beachfront property on a manmade island. They may get more choice in where they live. Rich people just plain get more of everything. But I've seen enough transit-oriented development in my research to think that it's not only rich people who benefit from from quality planning projects.

More importantly, considering Jane Jacobs' idea, being rich or selecting from the choicest picks of urban development does not guarantee a person the utmost in a livable neighborhood. The colored pencil flourishes of an urban planner are not neccesarily required in order to create a vibrant community.