The Aesthet

card weaving

2011-06-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

(Picture of my cardboard-tapestry loom) This photo was taken by a fellow hobbyist friend while we were playing around. If you're wondering why there isn't new stuff on my blog it's because I've gone in for the gamut of weaving and spinning. I've decided to try to make my own fabric after a becoming frustrated with how long it takes to make an embroidered "back-drop." Perhaps this will pose a solution, but most likely it will just dissipate my growing lists of interests until I'm running around like one of my chickens. The idea for a "make-shift" loom was inherited from my clever mother-in-law, an avid and expert weaver herself. Just warp the cardboard and begin to draw your threads over/under/over/under.

2011-06-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

This Tarot Bag was an attempt at counted cross-stitch which just turned into a kind of cross-stitch inspired bag. I didn't have a sewing machine so the bag itself is hand-pieced together which was really difficult for me since I was working with scrap upholstery fabric. DMC floss used again. I was trying to use fewer techniques and focus on the variety and color of the cross stitch itself, a concept I borrowed from black-working.

2009 Basic bullion embroidery

2011-06-01T06:00:00.001-07:00

During the winter I made these pieces while stationed with the Marine Corps. This piece was from a scrap fabric with some DMC floss. The stitches are varying bullion stitches all cramped together fairly tight.

I didn't have any formal training but I relied heavily on the "Embroidery Bible" which I highly recommend for any amateur. It was a real lifesaver. This piece was given to my little sister who had it framed, which really lent it a polished air.

dream sequence

2008-11-26T11:42:00.000-08:00

In my head I heard a voice narrating the dream. Though I had the dream this summer, I can remember most of the verbal details. The voice said something like this:

" In the years of Anmar, Lord of Earth, King between east and west Elysium, among the north and south Nethers, the Queen of Heaven looked down at her altars and was pleased. When she came to the high house of Anmar and looked to Anmar's sister, Ekklu, she saw how beautiful she was. Ekklu, in the custom of maidens, was a high priestess of her order. The people loved Ekklu and came to the palace offering sacrifices in her name, asking Ekklu to bless their daughters and dance at their harvests.

This greatly angered the Queen of Heaven, for Ekklu's nurse, in a drunken boast, declared that no babe so beautiful, not even the mother of the Queen of Heaven herself, had ever been weened, much more at her own breast.

Enraged, the Queen of Heaven struck the land with famine and turned the rice fields into blood. The land cried in anguish until Anmar summoned his high men and consulted with the priests. The priests divined through threaded weights the purpose of the goddess.

The Queen of Heaven demanded that Ekklu be removed from her office, defiled and beaten until death.
Anmar did this, though Ekklu's followers threatened to rebel. So favored was Ekklu among the people that the land went into mourning again and the sun did not shine until the Queen of Heaven ordered her brother-god, Shkilah, to burn again.

Ekklu's lover, a eunich by the name of S___ [I can't remember his name], went to to Shkilah in protest. But Shkilah, won over by his sister-goddesses' beauty, refused to see him and three him into a dungeon where S___ despaired.

The Queen of Heaven, pleased by the expedient obedience of Anmar, gifted him with seasons of the moon. She instructed him how to read the tides, when to plant the harvest and how to date the time. This made him and his land powerful, beyond the other nations. In time, he built ziggurats and observatories in her honor. Their technology leaped and abounded as crafstmen perfected fishing boats into war vessels and created aquaducts, roads and irrigation systems which extended far beyond the city.

But Shkilah's heart softened and he vowed to avenge the wronged Ekklu. He slew every unborn child in its mother's womb and caused the young virgins to become barren"

[the narrator's voice began to disintegrate when another narrator took up telling the story. His version went something like this]

"the mythological tale surrounding the Heavenly Queen and Anmar dates back to the Syro-Phonecian ruler, Ammen-katuk, a descendant from Tozletac and Ammon-Ra. Though Ammen-katuk was a stepson of the previous ruler, Ammen-ka, he ascended to the throne as the sole-surviving male heir. His position was disputed by the priests and councilors so much so that Ammen-katuk decided to secure his claim by intermarrying with his step-sister and fellow-ruler, the princess Elammi. Elammi, however, was a cult-priestess to the moon goddess and sworn to eternal maidenhood and lifelong service. She refused Ammen-katuk.

Legend has it that Ammen-katuk, struck by his step-sister's beauty, sent gifts to her daily and that she, befitting the custom of high-priestess, sent them back. Other legends say that Ammen-katuk never met his step-sister and that his proposal was merely decree. Whether Ammen-katuk's interest in Elammi was political or romantic, scholars agree; she was an essential asset for Ammen-katuk's heir-ship to remain secure. Some scholars suggest that Elammi, envious of the throne, desired it for herself and denied Ammen-katuk for her own ambitious reasons.

Whatever the case for her rejection, it was not well received. Ammen-katuk ordered her arrested, but due to Elammi's position as the priestess of the moon-goddess, she remained protect by commoner and noble alike. In order to undermine her popularity, stoked by her faithful renouncing of Ammen-katuk, he decided to frame her with one of his knights and question her credentials as a maiden-priest.

In folk lore, the knight who was imprisoned with Elammi for fornication was actually her childhood lover who was castrated for wooing her out-of caste. A eunich, legend has he devoted himself to the moon goddess, vowing to be near Elammi forever more. Thus, the accusations of Ammen-katuk that his sister had a lover, and therefore, had no right to be priestess, were unfounded.

Whether framed or found-out, Elammi was forced to marry Ammen-katuk, essentially raped on her wedding night and then killed. Once again, folk legend claims that her blood was required to spill for the floods to fertilize the spring crops and that her death was brutally enacted. It is not know whether Elammi was offered as a sacrifice to the moon-goddess; what is known from farmer's alamanacs of the day, is that there had been famines for several years. Historians speculate that these famines were the cause of civil unrest and ultimately a complaint against Ammen-katuk's accendancy. The practice of the time was for the king to atone for the land's infertility by wedding a woman, then offering her to the gods after the wedding night, thus killing her and any potential offspring from the union. The act symbolized fertilization and was supposed to provoke tidal flow and crop production. If so, it would stand to reason that Elammi became a scapegoat politically and a sacrifice as well. Ammen-katuk, a shrewd ruler, killed two birds with one stone by wedding, then killing his sister.

Elammi's death, however, did not satisfy the people. Her following was large and formidable, even after her death. In order to pacify the people, Ammen-katuk released ancient knowledge regarding the moon-cycles. Given the lunar calendrical system, the people quieted their protests against her death and Ammen-katuk's claim...."

ink & pen, 2008

live sketches

2008-11-26T11:33:00.000-08:00

quick and live sketch scenes from a strip-club/brothel, 2008

For Emily's Rose

2007-04-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

a certain light fell on her kitchen sink
and bathed the afternoon's tea
in a hue of grayed ink and saffron,
which, falling down like fingers on keys
held the vulnerability of sound in a china cup.
reminiscent of yesteryear
when sadness had been an illness
too strong, the pain of loss always present, yet never tangible, she wandered through days
looking behind curtains and winding thread in listless balls.

THE MOST REAL THING

2007-03-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

The Most Real Thing: Elysium and Panel No. 2

Multi-Media: graphite, charcoal, ink, pastel, mudd, petal(s), blood and urine

approx time: 79 hours

Elysium

2007-03-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

panel no.2

2007-03-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

detail(s)

2007-03-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

The Rudimentary, the Repetitious

2007-01-24T22:29:00.000-08:00

Brain revisited

2007-01-20T23:51:00.000-08:00

story line for mental depression.

the flying souls

2006-12-05T14:38:00.000-08:00

woodcut

2006-11-30T23:40:00.000-08:00

hippocamus & amygdala

They Picked Humans to Put in Vases

2006-11-30T02:45:00.000-08:00

mediums- ink, oil, water, human blood

all work by Deborah Slagboom

classical sketches

2006-11-30T02:38:00.000-08:00

the atheist

2006-11-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

thomas mann

2006-11-30T02:15:00.000-08:00

Death in Venice, Thomas Mann

vines, detail

n.winds detail

masquerade inkwork

2006-11-28T03:20:00.000-08:00

poetry for rlstollar

2006-11-28T02:51:00.000-08:00

Soul meets Body

2006-11-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle

Be Kind Series
Details of Impressions of the Soul