xtofuplays

Readymade Radio

2010-09-18T17:56:00.005-05:00

Hosted by: Bernadette Vielbig
You'll hear: Art
Tune In: Thursday, 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
http://web.me.com/freeartgirl/Site/Readymade_Radio.html

and check out her Art at
http://web.me.com/freeartgirl/Site/Home.html

2010-09-18T17:08:00.002-05:00

Closing Reception for the Memory Labyrinth
Please join me at Sunset on Thursday, September 23 •
I plan to walk the labyrinth in honor
of the autumnal equinox and the end of it's two yearinstallation in Holy Cross.

Peace - Christopher Scott Brumfield,
9/18/2010

Thursday, September 23 • 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Corner of Jourdan & Daulphine Streets in The Lower Ninth Ward
New Orleans, LA

The octagon shaped Labyrinth, 35' feet in diameter made out of
terracotta chimney flues, is patterned after a Classical 3 Circuit
labyrinth that first appeared on Cretan coins of circa 300 to 70 BCE.
According to The Labyrinth Society; "A labyrinth is a single path or
unicursal tool for personal, psychological and spiritual
transformation."
pictures at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83081&id=655416347&fbid=49023161347&ref=mf

today

2009-11-12T17:22:00.001-06:00

I can fasten on a beautiful day, as a bee fixes itself to a sunflower. It feeds me, rests me, satisfies, as nothing else does.... This is a holiness. This will go on after I am dead. Virginia Woolf

Summer

2009-06-17T12:10:00.002-05:00

So much to do.
Dog walking, swimming, building those shutters for hurricane season, but I really just want to read my book.

Mardi Gras Day Part 1

2009-02-26T09:52:00.003-06:00

This my chronicle of one group of Bywater girls and boys (known as the Crew of the Rampart Ramada or Casa D Bywater depending on which member you ask) navigating the St Ann Parade on Mardi Gras Day 2009. We encountered many other crews during the day, including, but not limited to, the Crewe of WooHoo, Crewe of Clouet, and The Crewe of Obama Mia!

At 7am the Skeletons go marching to bang on your house and create mayhem

I caught this Skeleton putting a hole in my trash can, accident of course

A bicycle Coffin

Mardi Gras Part 2

2009-02-26T09:49:00.007-06:00

In costume and well fed on Cheese Grits The Crewe ventures out.

The Grand Opening of the Family Dollar

The Obama Mia! Crewe

The Waitress from hell gives me a ticket. It says "get your own damn coffee!"

and the marching continues, only 6 blocks to the Quarter

Thw Williams Sisters Love on a Crewe member

Mickey and Minnie Keep the French Quarter clean!

Mardi Gras Day

2009-02-26T09:07:00.013-06:00

Traffic jam by the R Bar

and on we march

Refuel at the local market

Head and shoulders above the rest

There is still considerable debate as to Dolly Parton or really good Drag Queen.

Night falls and we continue on

The long walk home

Put the Float in the alley and warm up the Red Beans!
Happy Mardi Gras!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

444: anartprojectofsorts

2008-12-03T06:09:00.004-06:00

444 is my lucky number
one photo a day for 444 days
please join me
xtofu

Wind, water, light on a tuesday no less

2008-10-20T07:31:00.005-05:00

Walk by this place everyday. One of the little surreal industrial landscapes that dot the landscape of the Bywater. Sometimes when the wind is right and we have had rain it is one of the more beautiful places I see. The water has three different textures and life is Panoramic.

The Nicholson House Adventure 1983-2008

2008-08-09T10:37:00.008-05:00

Some news.
The Nicholson House is sold.
Developers bought everything on Nicholson, we were one of the last to sell. We did not live there anymore anyway and the house was falling apart. Mom found a new house in Magnolia Woods where she can retire, so all is well that ends well. It was very sad to lock that door for the last time.
I took some pictures before I left.

Wallace Stevens & Jennette Winterson

2008-07-14T08:08:00.004-05:00

THE BLUE GUITAR
Wallace Stevens
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You cannot play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’

And they said then, ‘But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.’

One of my favorite websites in Jennette Winterson.com.
Sheis a fantastic writer and on her poetry spot she reminds of poems that I had forgotten or new ones.
I am trying to live in today more, to really be present in my life.
It is not something I am good at.
Peace&Art
Christopher

Irma Thomas

2008-06-08T11:23:00.003-05:00

Heello all!
Went to see Irma Thomas at the Wednesdays at the square concert this week.
Irma live is one of the great joys of New Orleans.
Peace&pottery
Christopher

Sam

2008-06-08T11:18:00.003-05:00

2008-06-06T08:53:00.002-05:00

Hello All!
Very good poem for you this morning
Christopher

THE GALLOPING CAT

Stevie Smith 1901-1971

Oh I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good
So
One day when I was
Galloping about doing good, I saw
A figure in the path; I said
Get off! (Be-
cause
I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good)
But he did not move, instead
He raised his hand as if
To land me a cuff
So I made to dodge so as to
Prevent him bringing it orf,
Un-for-tune-ately I slid
On a banana skin
Some Ass had left instead
Of putting in the bin. So
His hand caught me on the cheek
I tried
To lay his arm open from wrist to elbow
With my sharp teeth
Because I am
A cat that likes to gallop about doing good.
Would you believe it?
He wasn’t there
My teeth met nothing but air,
But a Voice said: Poor Cat,
(Meaning me) and a soft stroke
Came on me head
Since when
I have been bald.
I regard myself as
A martyr to doing good
Also I heard a swoosh
As of wings, and saw
A halo shining at the height of
Mrs Gubbins’s backyard fence,
So I thought: What’s the good
Of galloping about doing good
When angels stand in the path
And do not do as they should
Such as having an arm to be bitten off
All the same I
Intend to go on being
A cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good
So
Now with my bald head I go,
Chopping the untidy flowers down, to
and fro,
An’ scooping up the grass to show
Underneath
The cinder path of wrath
Ha ha ha ha, ho,
Angels aren’t the only ones who do
not know
What’s what and that
Galloping about doing good
Is a full time job
That needs
An experienced eye of earthly
Sharpness, worth I dare say
(if you’ll forgive a personal note)
A good deal more
Than all that skyey stuff
Of angels that make so bold as
To pity a cat like me that
Gallops about doing good.

May in the garden partII

2008-06-03T11:14:00.001-05:00

May in the garden

2008-05-25T09:43:00.001-05:00

2008-05-18T09:18:00.002-05:00

Night Blooming Cereus in the garden.

2008-05-18T09:03:00.001-05:00

Black Eyed Susans and Mimosas.
Life is panoramic.

2008-05-18T08:56:00.002-05:00

My first harvest of new potatoes. Grown in a pot as our soil is funky.
I am starting on big raised beds as soon as school is out, because I have personally had enough of paying four dollars a pound for tastless tomatoes.
I believe that America needs to seize this oportunity to bring back the victory gardens of the forties. We would used less oil and resorces and be in better health.
Pease&Pottery
Christopher

2008-05-18T08:49:00.001-05:00

I call this photo
old time religion

Jazz Fest

2008-04-30T14:14:00.002-05:00

Jazz Fest was Amazing!
At one point I was listening to Irma Thomas sing while standing in 2 feet(yes 2 feet of water)
I met two wonderful women who had my same shoes...
The rest is dirty feet history
Christopher

Last cold snap of the year and Walt Whitman.

2008-04-16T07:33:00.004-05:00

Hello!
New Orleans has been wonderfully cold this week.
I love it! The long blazing heat of summer will be starting soon.
Jazz Fest is coming and everything is in bloom. By far the best time of year to be here. The beauty of today and the tension of what is to come.

Walt Whitman talked of speaking to the next generations with his poems.
This morning he spoke to me. Feeling tired and lost, yet hopeful, as one does this time of year, I turn to Song Of Myself. I first read Song Of Myself poem while in middle school. I did not understand, but I got enough to know that I was not the only person who felt lost, hopeful, and angry all at the same time. I am thirty seven this year and has been feeling like time is running short. Here is what Walt had to say about thirty seven.
Song of Myself
by Walt Whitman
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Peace&pottery
Christopher

2008-03-13T14:33:00.004-05:00

I love springtime.
March in New Orleans is magic.
Christopher

War is over if we want it bad enough

2008-03-12T11:55:00.001-05:00

For all the people who died this week in the wars of man.

STILL FALLS THE RAIN by Edith Sitwell
The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn.

Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:

Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us---
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain---
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,---those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear---
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---
Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain---
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."

2008-03-08T14:08:00.003-06:00

Hello all!
I am sitting at The River Gallery today being a gallery sitter for one of the shows I curated for the NOLA Fired UP! ceramics conference. The conference was a huge success and I think there is still a cloud of ceramic joy hanging over the city. The photo is at The Fire On The River Event. I built a tee pee/volcano/paper Kiln (with a lot of help from my friends).
Peace&Pottery
Christopher

2008-02-23T19:11:00.002-06:00

Things I learned along the way
as of Feb. 23. 2008
1. never agree to be chair of anything
2. fax machines actually are for playing with
3. when things are too much take a walk
4. art is a necessity
5. dogs are one half of happiness
6. cats are the other half
7. food taste better when eaten off of clay
8. coffee

peace&pottery
Christopher

Rainy days and thursdays

2008-02-21T07:45:00.004-06:00

Hello all
Making art, preparing for the NOLA FIRED UP ceramics conference, trying to be a decent teacher, and wondering why the american people still have not managed to impeach bush. He really is a mad man. Questions, questions.
Reading the last volume of Derek Jarman's diaries SMILING IN SLOW MOTION. Quite a beautiful book, sad as he deals with his illness (aids), and yet full of hope and humour as he continues to paint, make films, and write. Inspires me to complain a little less about my life. I am having a hard time finishing the book because of how bad it is getting for him (an artist going blind, my worst nightmare) and it makes me sad. For those of you how do not know Derek Jarman, he was a filmaaker, writer, painter, gardener. I had seen one of his films (edward II), but was not really taken his art until my friend Sharkey gave me a copy of the book DEREK JARMAN'S GARDEN. A beautiful book that has become one of my favorites. Now I am finishing his last book and am wondering what to read next. I have a pile of fiction next to my bed, but am not in a fiction mood. Maybe I will try and track down more of Derek's movies.
peace&pottery
christopher

A Sunday in Febuary

2008-02-10T08:14:00.000-06:00

Experimenting with meditation for the first time.
Not something I had the paitence for up until now.
4 days of ten minutes trying to meditate and my resolve is increased, as is my abilty to relax.
I will keep you updated.
What brought this on I hear you ask?
I read this book
You're Not Old Until You're Ninety
BEST TO BE PREPARED, HOWEVER
by Rebecca Latimer

The book is like reading about your Grandmother trying meditation and all sorts of ways to understand the self.
How cool is That.
Christopher

Salsa

2008-01-13T17:14:00.000-06:00

2008-01-10T17:07:00.001-06:00

bywater afternoon
listening to a caliope play its a wonderful life
the produce man singing i got mirlton, i got yellow squash
everything in the entire world is in lowercase
kate bush on the high five
dogs in the doorway
life is panoramic

2008-01-10T07:08:00.000-06:00

This morning we have one of those crazy New Orleans fogs.
Rainy and Horrible.
I love it!
Christopher

new years and birthdays and such

2008-01-01T15:13:00.000-06:00

"time marches on and eventually you realize it's marching across your face"
Dolly Parton

"where indeed was our anger"
Harvey Fierstein

"I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket"
The Indigo Girls

Wondering about my place in this big old world. How do I feel about a year that took my cats and saw a return to teaching high school. A year that saw America slide futher towards a culture of war and materialism. I watched New Orleans limp back to life as our children killed each other. I watched the rich get richer and civility decline across every part of american life. Men with hearts of pure evil claimed to speak for god and children blew themselves in his name.
So where do we go from here.

I am going to stand on my toes, look it in the face, and smile, and laugh, and scream, and dance, and sing.
This sweet old world will not be cheapened by the presence of evil.
It is good to finally know that.
Resilience may be what 2007 taught me.
I wish for the world as much love and peace as can fit,
and I hope I can help to refill the well by the way that I live.
peace&pottery
Christopher

A poem by Dylan Thomas

2007-12-14T07:49:00.000-06:00

Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightening they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that goodnight.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that goodnight.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Edith Sitwell

2007-12-14T07:32:00.000-06:00

"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd."
Edith Sitwell

"Edith Sitwell was a shock-trooper of the poetic avant garde, a champion of modernity who revelled in the use of shock tactics to push the boundaries of poetry, angering traditionalists in the process."
Joseph Pearce

"Rap music was invented in England by Dame Edith Sitwell in 1922 when, perched atop a stepladder, she recited the poems of Facade through a megaphone over the musical accompaniment of her homeboy Sir William Walton."
John Moore
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/01/post_25.html

2007-11-24T08:44:00.000-06:00

Guten Tag!
I am in Heildeberg at an internet cafe. Enjoying Germany so much, having a hard time on the European keyboards (letters in different places), and getting ready to come home in the morning.
I miss my people and my dogs, I do not miss New Orleans. So much crime, so much pain.
No snow this trip, but lots of cold.
Pictures around Heildeberg and the castle with Stacy.
it sure is
Christopher

Jetplane

2007-11-17T12:05:00.000-06:00

Hello all!!
Leaving for Germany in the AM.
I will be there for one week and I am already thinking the time is to short.
So much to see. I am ready for some snow and to be able to walk around the streets at night with no apprehension.
xxxxoooochristopher
The picture is my family at my opening last august.

ART

2007-11-13T07:27:00.000-06:00

"The 20th century, in the footsteps of the 19th, has difficulty with the notion of art as ecstasy. Yet that is the traditional notion and I believe it is the right one. It is quite easy to live at a low level of sensibility; it is the way of the world. There is no need to ask art to show us how to be less than we are. Art shows us how to be more than what we are. It is heightened, grand, an act of effrontery. It is a challenge to the confines of the spirit. It is a challenge to the comfortable pleasures of everyday life. There is in art, still, something of the medieval mystic and something of the debauch. Art is excess. The fiery furnace, the freezing lake."
Jenette Winterson from
ART[OBJECTS]

Rainy monday pics

2007-10-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

Beauty and Magic

2007-10-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

Something to think about

2007-10-06T11:13:00.000-05:00

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the
voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the
path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source
of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone
lives in fear."

-----Harry S. Truman

Here is also something to read about Emperor b and his war on poor people.
You can email it to anyone who thinks Reagan was a nice person.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html?em&ex=1191816000&en=e1acc53c196cd0ce&ei=5087%0A

Sad Post

2007-10-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

I am trying to wrap my head around two holes in my life. I lost two of my best friends in the last three weeks and am having a hard time adjusting to the new reality of my home life. Darin and I had four animal friends in our home, our two dogs and our two cats. I know the risk of writing about anything that could be deemed sentimental. I don't care. I try live my life in light and love. The rest of it doesn't really matter.
Sage our oldest cat was 18 when he died of kidney failure on Sept 14th. His death was very painful and I feel the emptiness in the space beside me in our bed every night. During the last year or so, Sage had taken to waking me up in the middle of the night, so that he could talk with me and I could pet him. I think that he knew that time was getting short and wanted as much love as I could give him. I felt the same way. The day that he left us I laid on my bed with him on my chest and felt the smallest pur. Sage lives inside of my now.
We used to call Sage the punk rock\rock and roll kitty because he lived with a death metal band. At a dinner party in the 90's he ran into the middle of a room full of people with full dinner plates and freaked out. He jumped from plated to plate and was gone in seconds. We all sat there with laps full of food, laughing an uncomfortable belly laugh born of surprise and confusion.

On October 1st we lost our little girl, Millie. Darin and I had been at the gallery taking my show down. When we got home the neighbours told us that had found her in the street. Millie spent a little time in our garden, but had never gone out to the street in the 3 years we lived in our house. My mom said she was looking for Sage. I hope they are together. The dogs have been sad and we are trying to learn to live with the absence of our cats. The Chairs that they are supposed to be asleep in, the unused sunbeams, the cans of cat food that are still sitting on the shelf. This absence is so profound and raw. I want to find a way to let go of the violence of Millie's death, because it is haunting me. I know that she will become a part of me, after the pain is gone. Millie had a bad attitude and loved to bite feet and hiss with the best of them. Clifton and her used to have hissing contests in the kitchen. Back and forth like dueling banjos. She used to run around the house at night with her toy mouse meowing so loud as to wake everyone up. She was full of a character that you couldn't ever be sure of. Somtimes she would pur and somtimes bite.

My friend Malia wrote this poem about sage...

Song of Sage

My chronicle follows ancient Silk Roads

My name is spice and wisdom

With a lineage of the pharaohs

I am a creature of time and space

Perhaps I am self-absorbed

Is there a creature as fascinating as myself?

While a speckled lad I fed richly on

The flavors of my life

Skating on polished floors I

Chased dust-diamonds in sunbeams

And leapt to the sacred music of the faeries

I basked in the drone of midnight Philosophy

as my boy and his

Companions discovered the great mysteries

I know the answers lie in ear scratching and whiskery kisses

I tolerated the others because

They make the boys happy but

I maintained my dignity

One must have standards. My

Cultivated vocal Harumph is sublime and evocative

My place in the home is unquestioned

Once there were two I burrowed

Deep into their warm warren

Basking in the soft cobwebs of

Dreams and deep breathes

Our nest floated around us like a cloud

Like my name I am old and

Sleek with understanding

My belly is full of the delicious

Taste of living and

I have been content and satisfied

When my body grows too small

I will float on a sun

Dappled stream. I will never

Leave you my boy. I will always be here

I have always been here

I am a tapestry of dust and sunlight

Can you see me? I see you.

Harumph!

San Diego

2007-09-29T01:01:00.000-05:00

I am in San Diego for my friend Stacy's wedding. What a wonderful and beautiful city. I am continually amazed at how beautiful my country is. The wedding is in the morning at Bali Hai(world famous tiki bar) and I am excited about the adventure that is afoot. Sometimes I am so grateful for the life that I live that I can only smile. Tommorrow is about my friends Stacy and Scott and their beautiful life together. The pictures are of us bumming around San Diego, Stacy posing at the Tiki super store, and d and I at the Pacific Ocean.

The sadness of today has been the news from Burma. I wish I knew how to help. I think about the monks being gunned down in the streets and it just seems to much to process.
May all the hope and prayers of all the good people in the world be with them tonight

So I end this day with hope for the future and all who live it.
Peace Christopher

The Blue Hour

2007-09-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

2007-08-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

The Blue Hour
Featuring new work by Christopher Scott Brumfield
Palma Gallery
828 Howard Ave
New Orleans LA 70113
504) 598-2276
palmagallery@bellsouth.net
White Linen Night
Opening Reception Saturday August 4th, 6 to 9 pm
Through September 29th

The Blue Hour/l'heure bleue
The Blue Hour is an exploration in ceramic sculpture of Memories and Collections. I make collections based on my interest in pattern. Pattern in the way a person arranges the bits on their dresser or in the way they arrange words when they tell a story. There seems to be similar patterns in all things. My sculpture is an attempt to see that pattern. I chose ten parts of my life that I know well and made a sculpture based on each one.
Peace
Christopher Scott Brumfield
www.christopherscottbrumfield.com

I want to dedicate this show to the memory of my grandparents: Richard Caswell Meyers and Rosa Mae Meyers.

I want to thank my mother, Rosemary Meyers Brumfield, and my partner, Darin Michael Pierce. I couldn't do it without you.
To everyone else who helped me see this adventure through, especially my crew, I wish you all the love and happiness this existence has to offer.
And to everyone else, thanks for looking.

Blue hour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The blue hour comes from a French expression (l'heure bleue) which refers to the hour experienced between the hours of daylight and darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light at this time of day (also in photography) and because in the summer this is often when the smell of the flowers is at their strongest."

There Was Glory In Them Eggshells

2007-08-06T10:46:00.000-05:00

There Was Glory In Them Eggshells is about being told to sing "glory in eggshells deo" instead of "Gloria in Excelsis Deo” in my high school choir. The piece is about trying to understand one's own identity as a member of a group, whether on a soccer team, in a congregation, or at a festival, we all have role to play. Walt Whitman said "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars." The substitution of animals for human forms is about this commonality and equality of all life.
I found the Stairs at the Habitat for Humanity warehouse. The Rabbit has been poping up in my work for a little while now. They seem to be a marriage made in Bywater.

Blue Ward

2007-08-06T10:37:00.000-05:00

Blue Ward is about the notion of a city. I made a city out of clay, including public art, old city walls, animals, and a power plant. There are little bits of New Orleans, little bits of Prague, little bits of Heidelberg, and little bits of Nicosia.

Blue Ward is my favorite piece in the show. Looking at it reminds me of they way I experience good child hood memories.

2007-08-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

Clifton's Children is about our relationship to things that are creepy. We like to be scared. I find the combination of little girls with owls on chains pretty creepy, but some of the folks at the opening on Saturday found the idea comforting. It is dedicated to the memory of my friend Clifton, because he would have hated it and I am trying to get his attention.

2007-08-06T10:27:00.001-05:00

Self-portrait In Blue represents the ongoing exploration of my own body and its aging.

Look at Me

2007-08-06T10:23:00.001-05:00

Look at Me is about a day when the media took one lunatic's manifesto and used it to terrify America.

Meditations On The Spine

2007-08-06T10:17:00.000-05:00

Meditations On The Spine is just that. It is made out of clay, glass, and old window screens that I turned into a little blue grid.

Trade Deficit

2007-08-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

Trade Deficit speaks of Louisiana buying Mardi Gras beads and crawfish from China, when our trade deficit with that country is hurting our own country. I found the crab trap in the trash mountain that formed on Press Street in the Bywater after the storm. The Buddhas were slip cast and they spent two months in my fountain to get their patina.

Christopher's Garden of Earthly Delights

2007-08-06T09:17:00.000-05:00

Christopher's Garden of Earthly Delights is about my garden. It is my favorite place on Earth, and if asked I will brag shamelessly about its virtues.

Purple Mountain Majesty: Stars and Rockets Forever

2007-08-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

Purple Mountain Majesty: Stars and Rockets Forever is about a country that has lost its way. I hope we find it soon. The mountains and stars are made out of clay, the rockets are fabric prints on canvas.

The Gates of Babylon

2007-08-06T09:06:00.000-05:00

The Gates of Babylon is about language. I combined letters and symbols to explore the patterns of language. The gate explores the relationship of public writing on the evolution of culture. I found the wooden Shutters in trash piles and the ceramic pieces are made out of Clay, vermiculite, and glass. I am interested in the way the shape of language seems to mimic the shape of the body.

2007-07-23T16:36:00.000-05:00

I miss Europe,
I do not want to be back here...
xtofu

2007-07-15T09:19:00.000-05:00

Howdy folks!
D and I went to Europe for a month to move my Mom to a new apartment. We also found time for a week in Cyprus, a few days in Prague, and some play time in Heildeberg. Life is very good and the adjustment to being home is always an issue. I love New Orleans, but it was hard coming back to the US. The world is in terrrible shape. I am by nature an optimist, so I hold out hope that we will figure this out....
These pictures are the view from my mom's old house in Heildeberg on the mountain.
Peace and health
Christopher

2007-05-23T13:12:00.000-05:00

Hello All,
I have grown my tallest sunflowers yet.
All I well in the big sleazy.
Peace Christopher

2007-04-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

Greetings!
April is a wonderful month to be in this crazy city. Everything in the garden is thriving, the weather is beautiful, and Jazz Fest is coming.
I started a new job working for the New Orleans recovery school district, teaching art. More on that when I have figured it out a bit.
Peace
Christopher

2007-03-27T08:13:00.000-05:00

Life is short
art is long
christopher

2007-03-09T10:06:00.000-06:00

Hello, Guten Morgen, and Ahoy!
I wanted to make an official announcment that I have a solo show that opens on Aug. 4 2007 at the Palma Gallery here in New Orleans.
www.palmagallery.com
I wanted to give anyone who wants to com e at least five months notice.
Love to you all!
Peace
Christopher

2007-03-09T09:40:00.000-06:00

Hello Universe!
Spring has arrived in New Orleans. I am spending all of my time in my back yard making art for my show in Aug. and working in my garden. I am reading a lot of May Sarton and Ludwig Wittenstein these days as it seems to fit the mood of sunshine and melancholy.

"The Delight I take in my own thoughts is delight in my own strange life. Is this joy of living?"
Culture and Value by Ludwig Wittenstein

"I live like a baby
Who bursts into laughter
As a sunbeam on a wall,
Or like a very old woman
Entranced by the prick of stars
Through the leaves.
Just as the fruit gathers
All the riches of summer
Into its compact world
I feel richer than ever before,
and breathe a larger air."
Gestalt at Sixty by May Sarton

2007-02-26T09:18:00.000-06:00

Hello all!
I am back from a week in New York and I survived Mardi Gras. Lots of singing, dancing, and general merrymaking on Mardi gras day. There is a walking parade that starts around the corner from my house called the Crew of St Anne. St Anne may be the best thing in the whole wide world. The pictures are of a group of women dressed as a king cake !!! and then a crowd shot to give you context. The last picture is me in New York on the Avenue of the America's.
Peace
Christopher

2007-02-09T16:29:00.000-06:00

Hello to all of the folks out there. I am Going to a Mardi Gras Parade tonight!!!! I am very happy because I forgot about it until I got home from the studio, so it was a nice little surprise.
The first picture is of a few collage paintings in my studio and the second one is of my new haircut.
I am going to New York next week to interview for teaching jobs. I am very excited about the trip as I need to refill my art batteries and see some new stuff. I love the energy of the city and seeing my friends who live there.
I have been listening TO anna ternheim alot. She is a fun little singer from Stockholm (I think), anyway its great stuff.
Music is still a vital part of my life. many of my favorite things have lost their intensity as I have aged, not music. (not Asparagus either)
Peace
Christopher

2007-02-06T13:42:00.000-06:00

Our first beautiful, breathtaking, day full of sunshine since before Christmas. That is alone something to celebrate!
I returned to my for my first real work in weeks. I don't know why the time after my birthday/newyears/christmas is always a time of turmoil, but as life seems to go in cycles, I should just expect it every year. Reading May Sarton's journals for the last month. They haunt me in a very real way...

2006-12-19T09:22:00.000-06:00

Greetings on this lovely (grey and Addam's family like) Tuesday in December. I am finally done with the Holiday markets, I sold lots of pots, and am ready to get in my studio and make some sculpture!! I have a solo show coming up in Aug of this year and I need to get to work.
The artists in my neighborhood had an open studio this weekend. I participated on Sunday only. So I set up lots of art on the patio and made lots of food and I think 7 people came all day long. I guess in was not a sucess in the traditional sence, but it made me sit down and relax for the first time in a month. So I read and hung out with my dogs and ate many peanutbutter/chocolate/oat cookies. I am putting some new pictures up, from the sale I had since very few people saw itI hope this post finds you all happy and healthy. The chair is my reading chair. One of my favorite places to have coffee in the am.
Peace
Christopher

Crazy, Crazy World

2006-12-18T12:29:00.000-06:00

One whole month since I wrote last and there has been a great deal of change, work, grief, and laughter. I might write about it at some point, but for now I would rather start with today. I am at work at my friends shop and there is nothing going on... The French Quarter is grey and hazy today and I have been thinking of the way our lives change and how much of do we actully control. I will be spending a few days in Baton Rouge for Christmas and I guess I can't wait. Peace Christopher

2006-11-15T10:48:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone!

The picture is of my garden looking back towards my house. It is where most of my art is made (weather permitting).

In the day since my post, I have had an outpouring of support from friends all over the country about the new work and I cannot thank you for it enough. Sometimes making art feels like pissing into a hurricane and it is nice to know that I have so much support! The new work is much more involved in narrative than anything I have done since high school and I was nervous about showing it. I want to end with a quote that I think sums it up.
Poetry is the deification of reality.
Edith Sitwell
I am trying.
Peace
Christopher

2006-11-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

THIS TIME

THE DREAM'S ON ME

MIXED MEDIA MEMORIES
IN PORCELAIN AND WOOD
BY CHRISTOPHER SCOTT BRUMFIELD
GOLDRING RIVERVIEW GALLERY
NOCCA RIVERFRONT

2800 Chartres Street, New Orleans, Louisisana

November 9-December 14, 2006

Opening Reception: November 9, 6-8 pm

Gallery Hours : Mon- Fri, Noon - 6:00 pm

http://www.christopherscottbrumfield.com/

2006-11-14T10:38:00.000-06:00

Happy Tuesday!!

I can not believe it has been a week since our political landscape changed so completely. It certainly been a good week to be a democrat for a change. The picture is a very sweet picture of my puppy dogs. I make most of my art on my back patio, so the dogs sit in the doorway and watch. Here is another one of our Garden.

2006-10-25T08:42:00.000-05:00

I got back on the potters wheel yesterday for the first time in 13 months. I guess it is just like riding a bike. Made a bunch of tumblers, I am substitute teaching at nocca this week and loving it.
The weather is glorious, cool and dry, and my new work is coming along.
I love art. The picture is of one of the new pieces, it is not finished, just a little preview. I am having a show of the new work soon, will let you know.
peace
Christopher

2006-10-23T09:11:00.000-05:00

Woke up to the first chilly day of the year in the big easy. I won't say cold even though I feel like it is but that is just the Louisiana in me talking. Saturday night I went to my friends Matt and Sara's wedding. It was in a beautiful mansion in the garden district. Great night, lots of old friends .
This morning I will be making art and trying to get organized for the Nov & Dec art markets.

Rain

2006-10-19T15:12:00.000-05:00

Rainy October in New Orleans. The dogs and I went to the dog park early today because it raining quite hard and we would have the park to ourselves for a change. I can't remember an afternoon I enjoyed more. The temperture is perfect and the clouds are thick and just above the treetops. The only people out are the bums by the poboy store(Frady's) and those that walk to work. I ran today for the first time in a few years and it felt like waking up. I think I'll do it again.
I am going to my studio to unload a kiln in just a little bit. Lots of new little porcelain bits to look at and arrange. The new work is about leaving. All kinds of leaving: dying, moving, war, estrangement.

New Orleans?

2005-09-11T10:41:00.001-05:00

Darin,the cats, the dogs, and I are staying in Baton Rouge.
I am glad to be ok.

The Picture is a painting by my friend Susan that we are staying with. It is the view of her yard that I see every morning.

peace

christopher

What do people really know about New Orleans?
By Anne Rice

Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?

The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.

This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city. Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged.

Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.

Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.

The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed.

Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy. Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.

And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs.

Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii.

I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"

Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds. Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?

Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.

What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.

And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees. And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.

I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.

They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs. Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

dogs cats art heat

2005-07-25T10:43:00.000-05:00

listening to music (the gothic archies)
sitting at my crappy job (The arts council of new orleans)
the dogs are good (the picture is of sam)
the cats are crazy (fat and happy)
making lots of art (really)
it is really hot (....)
peace in our time

christopher