Daily – Page 66 – Stephanie Sicore

June 10, 2006

My Toys Are Your Toys

I made this aluminum starfish at RISD when we were told to design a toy. I’d just returned from a weekend at Narragannsett, where I’d found a scattering of beached brown sea stars. Inspired by the way they clung to my hands (I’d never before felt one) and their bumpy texture, I immediatedly brainstormed a way to recreate one (or a scattering of them). And because I couldn’t get enough of the oily sharp smell of metalshop in winter, I HAD to make one out of aluminum. My favorite memories from school there are from this project.

And what a pang I felt when I looked up this morning to find Ford playing with it! He was whirring and buzzing it all over the house, pretending it was an omidriod robot, for HOURS. It was so rad. I almost cried.

June 6, 2006

SPC: Pop Art: week 1

Summer is saturated with mass-production. The sun destroys anything left outside. So after lingering twilight, chasing fireflies and each other around the flowerbeds, toys stay outside night and day. Our home has stretched out onto the lawn. Plastic toys will only last a few months in this climate.

This is an inflatable swimming pool that I bought last summer. I also bagged sand toys, beach balls and a Slip and Slide, but these have all been shuffled into the other toys, buried in sand and punctured by piercing UVrays. This pool has lasted longer than I imagined, knowing when I bought it that it would destruct by Fall, like summer plastic tends to do.

It’s beginning to get a fair amount of use, now that we’re baking our way towards the double digits. And every day we drain it, like I’m doing (with Ford) in the photo above. I don’t have time for stylized puns on Pop art. Take this as a nod to mass production. We like it. Well, maybe not, but it’s convenient and cheap and beautiful when you’re short on cash. And who isn’t, when you majored in Industrial Design in school?

And you can see more Pop art self portraits here.

Speaking of mass-produced: balloons. They are in high demand at our home. Chas loves them. We can drive by Blockbuster (our fallback now that all of our Netflix movies have gone awol) and Chas will scream for boobahs. BOOBAH!!?!? BOOBAH?! BOOBAHH?! like some heroin addict. JUST! ONE! FIX!!!
We brought home two of the Blockbuster balloons with us on Friday, and Ford picked one up to practice the properties of static electricity.

So he rubbbbbbed the balloon on his nappy hair a minute and then I watched him hold the balloon over a small mount of sugar. The sugar flitted excitedly on the table. “A sugarstorm, mom!” He passed the balloon over a pile of punched paper holes: “Dancing dots, mom!” and then he passed the balloon over an ant trail in the kitchen: “Mom! Check it OUT!” And, sure enough, the ants were flicking up onto the balloon. Can you see them? They’re tiny pharoah ants (otherwise known as ‘Piss Ants’ by my father in-law, the entomologist). Science is so funny.

May 24, 2006

The Child Naps A Lot

It’s not fair that Chas can nap like this without me. But Ford will have none of it. He meets my exhaustion sometimes with sandpaper to my nerves, and I could just cry. So I’ve started taking vitamins more regularly, and with exercise and a little more sleep I’ve built up a better defense against the afternoon slump. Damon has introduced me to blackberry sage iced tea in mason jars. And I’ve taken up painting the sleeping babe.

I signed up for an encaustic painting class. A while back, I mentioned Amy Ruppel and her wonderful buttery paintings. I love this texture. It’s what I’m craving, more fat. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn for years, it’s just been hard to find an instructor. Lo and behold, they have one in Austin at the Laguna Gloria. So I cancelled our Vegas plans and am now sitting primly on the edge of my seat, waiting for two weeks to pass so I can start playing with oils and beeswax.

There are no more caterpillars. I keep waiting for a second generation to spill out of the trees but they haven’t arrived. I jogged along the creek today. The white rocks are dry now and milk-green where water trickled down only weeks ago, runoff from uphill. The pools where the big fish swim are coated with pollen and dust and milkweed tufts. Every big patch of sunlight holds a surprise along the trail. I’ve learned to ignore the scattering spiny lizards and squirrels. At the last minute, before my foot falls on them, they dart into shadows, bark and leaves flying behind them. So I ford through the little forest community, knowing it will all unfold before me.

Unless it doesn’t. My foot descends on a fat snake. Like the recoil of a shotgun, I yank back with so much force that I pull a muscle in my chest. But the snake is safe, motionless, and only as I bend down to study it does it slink into a rotten tree stump. Who knows what else I’ve narrowly missed?