Erik and Laura-Marie Magazine: March 2007

Erik and Laura-Marie Magazine

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Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

Zine maker, writer, activist. I like listening to good listeners. Email me at robotmad (gmail).

Thursday, March 15, 2007

turning 30 #40

I was so scared. It’s not death, because I know how death can strike at any time. It’s that people think 30 year olds should have a real job and know what they’re doing—I don’t have a real job, or know what I’m doing.

(And women are officially worthless at 30, no longer prime real estate, not that I ever was—and I don’t think about those things, but I can’t wash off the bad residue of my culture no matter how hard I try.)

However, on my 30th birthday, I received a wealth of kindness from family and friends. I got so many emails, cards, and messages of goodwill that I was moved almost to tears. My parents sent flowers. I feel supported and loved as I enter my 30s.

In my 20s I was so busy finding myself and healing from the pain of the past: I was turned inward. But now I feel secure in who I am, better able to engage the world as a full person, and ready to take care of myself.

Another of my favorite things about growing up is how I’m able to be close to people of any age. My closest friends range in age from 16 to 72. These people enrich my life.

The place where you turn 30 is a good place. Age is only a problem if you make it that way. If you’re blessed to have your health, it only gets better. As you grow up, you can find within yourself the resources to grow up.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

art #40

I like art to make me see things in a new way and make me think, but it can be beautiful at the same time. I like new kinds of beauty, resonant. I like some conceptual art (and made some as an undergrad, like the installation piece Bathroom of Love).

I like bookarts and collage, altered books, letter-pressed cards. I love mail art. I got my first artist’s trading card (ATC) a few months ago and was absolutely tickled.

Most large public sculpture looks ugly to me, an eyesore and wasted space. Public sculpture is obtrusive, and my eye can’t avoid it the way I could avoid a painting I didn’t like. I feel the urge to climb on things I shouldn’t. But well-done sculpture is very pleasing, something three-dimensional and very much in space.

I have a hard time appreciating modern building architecture, but I love almost any bridge, cathedrals.

I love everything by Frida Kahlo, and Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings. I like Chagall’s dream paintings.

I like religious--old Christian art, paintings of Mary, anything of the Virgin of Guadalupe, stained glass, headstones, angel statues in cemeteries. Christian religious art does fabulous things with light. I also enjoy Buddhist and Hindu art for the evocative images.

I like murals, graffiti, art in unexpected places. Old ads, old ads painted on the side of a brick building.

Folk art, outsider art—photography. Folk art from Latin America. Chicano art. Quilts. I have a weakness for photos of old condemned buildings, especially hospitals. Antique black-and-white photos of people, especially groups, a picture of the whole class at school, the expressions of the children and their old clothes.