This is not a trend piece.

The other day a friend and I were trying to decide what fashion cues would typify the 00s when they finally reached their creaky, exhausted conclusion. She suggested that maybe excessive and expensive colorful eye make-up might be it. I thought back to pictures of myself from the past couple of years and, trying not to seem hurt, brushed her aside. Maybe, I said, but I don’t know.


With only a year left in this decade, what do you think is going to stand out when people start having inevitably dreadful 00 themed parties? More than ever before fashion seems lawless and open. Trends seem to be taken less like precise rules to be observed by all and more like cues, absorbed into the greater fashion consciousness.


Maybe it’s just that I and my peers are finally old enough to recognize all of the different elements that have made their way into fashion. Or maybe it’s the internet, allowing people to find inspiration from all over the world and shop in an entirely new way. Street fashion blogs like the influential hel-looks.com, which showcases unique and interesting looks that have been spotted on the streets of Helsinki, have softened the stigma of dressing “weird.” Online community Wardrobe Remix encourages members to reconsider the clothes they own and the way that they wear them, urging new and experimental styles.


Has fashion changed at all? Is it my imagination or my youthful ignorance? What do you think typifies our autumn decade? I think it’s that sleepy, disheveled look arguably “perfected” by Mary Kate Olsen. Lots of loose layers all held together by weirdly placed belts and pantyhose. Maybe it’s that absurd fake hair that peeks out from underneath one’s own homegrown hair, curled or straightened into glossy, plasticine submission. Most likely, though, it’s leggings, worn under increasingly short dresses until finally we collectively yawned and accepted that some people were going to wear them as pants and we were going to have to make peace with that.


Maybe it really is excessive, expensive and colorful eye make-up, and I was a victim. Sorry, everyone. Hindsight, etc.

*The photo is of make-up I did for my friend Andrew when he was going to a mask themed party. We didn't actually wear make-up like this or anything.

Those delightful Mayhem String Band boys.

In the dim cherry light of the bar, he closes his eyes tight, leans forward on his narrow little feet and coos about the woman who left him hanging. His fingers are so fast on the strings of his banjo that they seem impossible, even though he stops every few seconds to shake his head at some imagined mistake. He leans so far over the bar that he could rest his head on it, and I'd pet him, run my fingers through the bark darkness of his curls until the sun rose, until he wasn't whimpering drunk anymore.

He straightens up again, offers me some Crown Royal. When I decline he offers it to Sarah, then Caroline. Caroline blushes, shakes her head. "I'm good," she says.

"Come on, baby," he says. He seems to think that maybe a sip of whiskey might close the gap between him and the ladies surrounding him. All the men sitting between us just laugh.

"No thanks, I'm okay!" Caroline smiles at everyone.

"It makes you feel comfortable," he says, "like you're on a comfortable couch full of cushions." He lifts his right hand to the bar and shifts his weight. "And also, like you're about to vomit."

What once was lost has been found and sold.

A few days ago, at Art Walk, I saw an exhibition of "found photography" at the Stoneworks gallery downtown. It was a good show, but I'm not sure how I feel about "found photography" after seeing a show of found prints for sale.

The artist had found a photo album in a thrift store or something that was full of family photos damaged by the adhesive in the album/weathering/etc. The show was just blown up prints of those pictures, apparently unedited. One was arranged to show the edges of two photos, with the adhesive photo sheet showing between them, and that's the only sign of the artist's hand.

I think that's a valid thing to exhibit, because just by taking something and bringing it into a fine art context, you're changing it into something new, but also, he was charging hundreds of dollars for these prints. He didn't take the pictures or influence their damage, all he did was find them beautiful and interesting, blow them up and hang them. I liked the show and loved some of the pictures, but the sale was a little much.

It's not quite like found art/found objects to me, because photography is all about composition and processing. These are images where these considerations have already been made and you just found them. It's like claiming a found poem. "I think this poem is beautiful! I'll publish it, claim it, sell it!" The original creator probably thought it was beautiful too. It's not fair to assume authorship of something finished that ultimately can't be removed from its context, is it? Unlike Hirst's work, etc.

Iron Orphans.

I was sitting around a table outside the Thirsty Hippo with some friends and some kids I didn't know. My friend Melissa was telling me how she met her boyfriend Loren, and it was ridiculous. "So then I moved to Texas, and this ex of mine was calling me every day, was obsessed with how over we were. One day when I wasn't there he just showed up!" One of those stories.

Some dude walked up and started talking to one of the kids I didn't know. He was asking about her sculptures and whether he could buy one, and I started picking up little clues from what he was asking. I got excited. When he wandered off I asked her if she'd shown an installation of cast iron babies hanging from the ceiling a few months ago, along with some of Spence Townsend's amazing paintings. She had, and I went on forever chattering about how much I'd loved the show.

There'd been about twenty of the babies, different sizes, hanging as though they were parachuting down. In the gallery light you could see the slim strings that held the babies up, but if I squinted or removed my glasses I could just have seen these little iron orphans falling like snow.

I talked about the show for weeks after I saw it. I'm angling to buy one of the babies. Where am I going to hang it? I've been thinking about what I'll do with it for awhile, but I feel like I need one of them. Cast iron baby!

The Pitiful and the Revered.

So Amy Winehouse exists. She’s kind of a situation if ever there has been a situation, you know? And I think she’s got to be a sociological study waiting to happen, between the way she chooses to image herself and the way she behaves, to say nothing of the intersection of the two. A real piece of work, Amy Winehouse.


Amy Winehouse (who I’m considering a sort of Celebrity A here; she could be Celebrity B, she could be Robert Downey Jr., etc.) is definitely a member of a power elite. Or a sort of power elite, anyway. She doesn’t have her finger on the button, but she’s arguably beautiful, she has a lot of money (ten million pounds, it was recently revealed), she has a significant fan base that she has some influence over, etc. That gives her a lot of control over her own destiny, and I’d definitely say she’s transcending “the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women,” to borrow from C. Wright Mills (and his book The Power Elite). Prison is one such transcended environment: strip her of her success and thus her wealth, and you have a poor Jewish hoodlum, outrageously styled and killing herself with drugs. Because she was given a stage to share her talents, she’s a rock star. Take that away and she’s a junkie who would surely be ignored and put in jail.


A modern celebrity doesn’t appeal to any narrow set of people, and Amy’s no exception. I’m not someone who feels the need to sentence every celebrity into the part of a role model because it won’t do anything to help art, as sad as that may be to say. (Though the rebellion against the position of “role model” isn’t doing a lot for art, either. Bald expressions of sexuality have become stand-ins for legitimate expression, and as a result it seems to take less and less to impress the general public. A little eyeliner and a dude might as well be the Elvis of our time. Until the next such dude, anyhow, and it seems they’re makin’ them things every day.) That said, sound decision making never hurt anyone, and Winehouse, like a host of other celebrities, could use some. By choosing not to seek help for her laundry list of problems—“fail[ing] to act, … fail[ing] to make decisions”—she hurts not only herself but the culture around her and the participants in that culture. The media has damned Amy at every turn for her destructive behaviour, but they’re giving her coverage anyway. She’s everywhere with her “cool style,” her abilities, her outrageous behaviour, and oh yeah, that’s bad we guess. So very bad, but anyway, that eyeliner. How does she do it?


It sends a message. And really, while Winehouse (and other careless, slippery, destructive celebrities who waste, abuse, or otherwise pervert their influence) is the one making an ass out of herself, the media—another powerful elite—is giving her heaps of help along the way. I guess when you think about it that way, she might have her finger on the button after all.

Nothing You Wanted to Know.

I'm not one of those people who emphasizes or even really invites newness, but I do sometimes relish it when it's forced on me. I hate moving, for example, but I love to see my new bedroom take shape from my imagination and the scraps of bedrooms past. I hate to feel like my appearance is not totally in my control, but I love getting a pretty new haircut. I guess I like newness but what I'm really afraid of is loss. What if something goes wrong and I lose something that makes me who I am? What if I look ugly? What if everything gets broken somehow? That's the stuff of my nightmares.

Anyway, the newness of this blog is kind of exciting. I've been posting things to my LiveJournal for a really long time now, and over there I've got a little network of friends and others I admire who I know will at least see new things I've posted. I like that comfort, but that also means the environment is stale, and new people aren't likely to just accidentally find the stuff I'm sharing. So we're full circle! I'm scared to leave the easiness of a familiar old system, but excited to be playin' with a new one that's more accessible.

Hey, y'all. I'm Alice. I cuss a lot, but I'll try to mind my mouth for the time being.

* The picture at the top was taken by Sumner Baggett. The one beneath it's mine.

Oh, you pretty things!

Don't you know you're drivin' your mamas and papas insane?