meredith cutler :: arts marketing :: artist

With all of the doom and gloom economic news filtering through my not-so-dark glasses and rock and roll damaged eardrums, it's no wonder that my bear-shaped subject below has taken to the bottle. Who will help him? And who will help the rest of us?

Above: "Bear Hits the Bottle" - Ives Street, Fox Point, Providence

For those of you in my neck of the woods, let's help ourselves by committing to vote for change on November 4th. The priority makeover our society desperately needs is a long-horizon goal, but we can at least do our best to put some better people in the driver's seat.

Art has finally slept...I had to slow it down a bit this week, given that my domestic unit has obtained the mysterious, mid-spring flu (plague). After a solid week of summer weather (the devil's trickery), the sky transitioned to cold, miserable rain for two days straight. With it pounding on my skylight, I awoke early yesterday morning with my bones rattling with fever and the evil one climbing out of my stomach. (Sadly, because of "once sick, never again" rules, it will be a cold day in hell before I am able to enjoy my husband's mushroom risotto.)

The truly "sick" thing about a household stricken is the dilemma: who will care for the ill if all are indisposed? Maybe this guy can help, he seems to be parked on the emergency defibrillator...

Above: "Bunny": First Aid Station, East Side/Mt. Hope YMCA, Providence, RI

It has been a light week for writing, due to the fact that I have had family in town and therefore the rare chance to show people around Providence, which I still feel that I am getting to know myself as a relatively new Boston transplant.

Locals may have seen me dragging my eerily resemblant mother and aunt down Thayer and Benefit streets (note: the latter relative = me in 20 years, the former = me in 30 years), with a very unenthusiastic 11-year old cousin in tow. It isn't family day without a stop at the gift shop, so after a brief stint at the RISD Museum to skim the concise and impressive Styrofoam and Evo/Revo shows, we hit up RISD Works.

I wasn't planning on any purchases, but my intrepid mother scouted out the sole copy of Dirty Wow Wow and other love stories, by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz. I had to treat myself to this sweet, little hard-cover book, which documents in neutral, portrait-style photography the well-loved, tattered and often humorously repaired softies and blankies of childhood in their "sunset years". With short, fable-like biographical essays accompanying each portrait, I find this collection in pleasing contrast to my "Lost and Found" cell-phone photo documentary series of abandoned softies.

Oh, and the dust-jacket cover art features the retro-pup "Le Mutt" (in this edition knighted "Rover" by his small person).

I was once the proud owner of both a "Le Mutt" and his paramour, "Fi-Fi La Femme" back in the good 'ol early 1980's. I recall that "Le Mutt" had a very weak ear, but that didn't stop me from spinning him by it like a windmill until it came off, catapulting the poor canine into outer space.

The city is a strange and often dangerous place to make a home, especially when pets and children are part of the equation. Still, there are advantages to keeping a domesticated animal in an urban environment...

Above: "Tiger" - Off Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY

I can't speak for the rest of you out there in the world today, but here on my spit of land it's positively arctic. The gear-piercing chill makes me feel sorry for the many stray cats that run wild in this dockside neighborhood of Fox Point.

Still, the stray cats hold a few cards over poor "bear-face-down-in-the-gutter" here; such as: body heat, real fur, life force, and that crazy lady named Meredith (who provides cat food and speaks to them in a high-pitched voice).

Below: "Bear: Face Down In The Gutter" - Fox Point, Providence.