Recently in Body Category

shapelock is this wonderful new product just out on the market that is malleable at warm temperatures that most hands can tolerate. then, when it cools, it becomes hard. AND you can reheat it to reshape it and make it into something else when you're done using it in its current shape.

so, I visit a friend of mine who has just bought a 1-lb bag.  I see he's used it to cap his half empty bottle of wine.

then I see he's fancily held his toast tongs together with a strip of the stuff.

and then next to some paper plates, a can of beans, a plant, a Fry's receipt and his glasses, I notice a part of the body that I usually crochet is shaped out of his new favorite material.

we have a short anatomy lesson that it's missing a bit. I don't think he did that on purpose, thankfully, but I am consciously choosing not to analyze further what that might mean. I'll settle with this shape being much easier to construct.  yeah, that's what it was.

but I digress.  well, ok, if i were to make badges, those are the kinds of messages they would portray.

thank you, Mary, for paving the way!

my mother claimed that you should not hold back your bowel movement or else this

from Andrea Dezsö's, Lessons from my Mother. very gutsy x 2. I like.

always good to educate oneself ... although it appears that big dick is just hanging out while a different body part does the reading.  "hey buddy, can ya put that paper over here about 3 feet so I can read it?!"

I love the idea. to me, though, the dick looked like a bunch of pink pillows until he sat down. then I wondered - once anything gets past a certain size, does everything kinda look off or grotesque or not what it is - or just confusing?

plated embroidered ham with rosemary and grape garnish

why, your uterus, of course!  or the uteruses closest to you!

I love this woman's sentiments and creativity!

lots of new and interesting work over at Mr X Stitch!  check 'em out!

lovely muscles and veins felted onto paper - clever interesting work by Dan Beckemeyer posted on Mr X Stitch.

check out this collection of "contemporary embroidery and needlecraft".  they seem to really mean "contemporary" in the most open forward thinking way, like if it can be imagined or seen, it can be created in fiber.  yesss!

thanks, Tanya, for the link!

ruby42's handiwork.

thanks, T, for your forever combing the web widely for wonderful wisions.  meow...

treat the natural as ordinary to decrease our human angst.  ahhh...  we have coloring books for all the other parts of the body.  what if we had respectful ones for all our parts?  what if we grew up in this environment?  what if we saw these since day 1?

how did I miss this?  the cunt coloring book by the late Tee Corinne has been around for about 25 years and I've never heard of it till now, thanks to an artist friend suggesting I might like Tee's work.

on the Last Gasp page that offers this book for sale, it says:
This item contains adult content. If you are under 18, please leave this page.

but their writeup for the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book with a thick line art gun on the cover, says nothing of adult content.  however, it does say "The juxtaposition of the outlaw image of the rappers with the childlike innocence of a coloring book makes for an instant laugh."  huh???

why the vulva is off limits to under 18 in our culture while the gun is not is beyond me.  make them both equally accessible, one way or another - either of these is better to me than the way it is, yes?

anyway, I went looking for what else I might have missed.  I searched for coloring books of vaginas, vulvae, cocks and penises.  I found The Big Coloring Book of Vaginas and The Big Coloring Book of Cocks, both by Morgan Hastings - hard to find more about this author.  both are more cartoonish than the Cunt Coloring Book.

imagine if we all grew up with comfort about all parts of our bodies.  I think I am more likely to win the Nobel Prize than to get my mind around all the implications of that.

and yet I still wonder - could we do this?

I always wondered how they did it.

thanks, sashahc over at dorkbots blog.

what I really like about this experiment of theirs is that it makes me think again ... and again ... what we make of hair.

hair seems to be loaded with meaning for us.  do you have enough in the right places?  too much in the wrong ones?  is it the right color? length? texture?  if it's not connected to a living body, do we want to touch it?

but what if we all had hair like this, growing long out of our eyelids?  or out our noses?  and we were so used to it we didn't see it as odd.  in fact, if you bucked the trend and cut your nose ponytail off, you'd look freakish.

how freakish do we all look today to the aliens who are trying to decide if they want to make contact or not?


note: I could not find the original source of these photos.  search "longest eyelashes" and maybe you can.  if you know, I'll gladly update this post with references.

my friend Will has alerted me that I am not alone.

I wrote about a month ago that
I dream that someday in america on the sides of houses in suburbia we will be free to ... paint flying phalluses on our houses just like they do in Bhutan and no one will get sued or jailed.

but this kid has me beat!  he is doin' it!  and so far I hear he's not going to jail or getting sued - by his parents.  Go Rory!!  and his parents!

it does have a similar style to the Cerne Abbas giant.  do they all look like this in England?

a new artist to me is making similar feeling pieces out of ceramics.  she is not a Jennifer but she's from the same jen-eration.  her name is Christiane Haase.  see what I mean?

through the blog of Kirsty Hall, who does some amazing pieces with straight pins, I'm introduced to ... alsokaizen ... and an emotive floaty spiney nodule-y fiber piece here.