JESSICA SHOPS

On my recent trip to Paris, I fell into an outdoor flea-market. The collections, the objects, the people, the colors, the age, the design and the cobblestoned street all played a role in creating the perfect concoction...the remedy to my depleted soul, a soul deprived of trinket shopping. My first purchase was an antique horse and rider with the poise of David's, Napoleon Bonaparte.

I purchased this for my partner Sam as he too enjoys trinkets. A few blocks down, I spotted a brightly colored seahorse sculpture. With tunnel vision and jaguar stealth I reached the desired object, for which I still feel a great amount of affection but gave to my sister as a birthday present. Truthfully, she is more keen on sea themed decor, but since living in the desert, I am drawn to it myself. To be clear, there is something fabulously tacky about the sea horse creation but in the context of the French flea market and then later resting on my piano in Texas, I only found delight in its awkward form, material, color and content. 

This morning, Marfa Public Radio's Talk at Ten aired an interview with local artist turned gallerist, Sam Schonzeit, who is presenting a lecture by PHD student Josh T. Franco. Franco's dissertation investigates a particularly interesting juxtaposition that is the co-presence of minimalism and vernacular aesthetics in Marfa, an aesthetic Franco calls Rasquachismo in Spanish, loosely translated as tackiness. Franco explicates that Rasquache may be observed in the yards of locals--cluttered with decades of sentiment, accented with brightly colored flower beds and most likely completed with the iconography of Santa Maria.

Once a tourist, I remember celebrating the stark contrast of high and low here (picture above taken in 2010). In a less obvious way, Mirth flirts with the concept of high and low. Our aesthetic highlights the beauty of objects, but our objects are designed for utility, the ordinary and the everyday. On a mad shopping spree, I decided to purchase a few of my favorite things from Mirth.

Washi tapes, a turkish towel, a japanese body scrubber, a matching scissor and letter opening set, two wine glasses and the perfect pencil sharpner. I have used at least one of these objects everyday since. They are not tacky by any means but they do possess a sort of dual nature like Marfa.

-Jessica for Mirth

QUALE

I had the privilege of visiting with a lovely artist, poet and intellectual named Andi Shapiro yesterday afternoon. Andi has been a bright and pleasant follower of Mirth since our opening in March that coincided with her move to Marfa, TX. After a warm greeting, Andi served me a freshly-brewed, iced chai tea with milk in the thinnest crystal glass I have ever put to my lips--a delightful afternoon treat. She told me that the glass was a wedding present from Tiffany's years ago. Quickly, I knew that treasuring the experience of a perfectly crafted glass was one of many interests we shared.

After a tour of her and her husband Jim's beautiful home, Andi displayed her artwork for me. From her stories and associations with the works--ranging from the early 90's to the present--several themes surfaced and resonated with my own experiences of people, places, ideas and emotions. Andi informed me that the 'phenomenal character' of moments or relations to objects, meaning one's subjective sensory experience that floats between the physical world and a cognitive conscious, is called quale or qualia (pl.) in philosophy, an unfamiliar term to express a quality that is ineffable and strangely familiar to an individual. In her work, Andi daringly chases qualia, delicately plucking trinkets from the physical world to render new symbols and coax a visual language that evokes that which is verbally inexpressible.

Often I find my thoughts and desires difficult to articulate which can be dreadfully frustrating, but perhaps impulse needs no explanation. In celebration of this newfound purpose for many confusing moments in life, I vow to never question the ineffable in myself...for example, why I'm so attracted to Andi's partially painted over mouse brain or this perfectly organized washi tape display.

-Jessica for Mirth

NATIONAL ANTHEM

The Star Spangled Banner was adopted as America's National Anthem on March 3, 1931. We sing this wholesome refrain at sporting events mostly, and fun is had by all. The Fourth of July is a wonderful holiday for celebrating American staples and principles such as sports, hot dogs, fireworks, puppies, peace, sky, land, war, buildings, expansion, sex, beer, drugs, art, rock and roll, grills, love, freedom and each other. Today I am pondering upon a more appropriate national anthem for America--with a little help from my friends. (written by John & Paul, perhaps performed most famously by Joe Cocker)

My father has always claimed many songs as personal 'National Anthems'--too many to count he would say. There is Ohio Players, I Want to be Free, Jimmy Cliff's, Many Rivers to Cross, and Otis Redding's Call me Mr. Pitiful, on bad days. The ownership my father practices over these songs is a way of defining his own personality, experience, raising, emotions, principles, morals, and ambitions. Obviously, I am reading great value into many off-hand comments Daddy made with flared nostrils and tears brimming, but I like the idea of personal National Anthems as spiritual touchstones, complements or anecdotes to prescribed religion and practice. 

Lana del Rey released the single, National Anthem, from the album Born to Die on July 6, 2012 breathing yet another meaning into the idea of a National Anthem. In del Rey's twisted, patriotic world of acrylic nails, big hair and painted lips, she herself longs to be another's defining beat. The chorus goes like this: 

"Tell me I'm your National Anthem,

Tell me I'm your National Anthem, 

Red, white, blue's in the sky, 

Summer's in the air and baby, 

Heaven's in your eyes. 

I'm your National Anthem."

Del Rey's lyrics express a desire for someone to beat to her drum or perhaps, act as one beating to the same drum--an idea, seemingly, buried deep in a romantic past. Nevertheless, I urge you, readers, to feel passion for the pulse, riot for the rhythm, and breath to the beats that move you this fourth...ha! And tomorrow let the fourth be with you ha ha! And please, enjoy the suggestions below that I have received for America's new National Anthem...

The New National Anthem:  Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Everyday People by Sly & The Family Stone, American Pie by Don McLean, This Land is your Land by Woodie Guthrie, Wild World by Cat Stevens, Kiss by Prince, George Michael !, Dear Mr. Fantasy by Traffic, Wicked Game by Chris Issak, basically anything by Cher,  Free Your Mind by En Vogue, I'm Proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free...jk, Love's in Need of Love Today by Stevie Wonder, Rocky Top (for the volunteers) National Anthem by Radiohead, The Southern Anthem by Iron & Wine. more to come!

-Jessica for Mirth

BEAUTY

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 

It's loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 

-Keats

-Jessica for Mirth

WASHI WONDERS

Mirth now carries Japanese washi tape. Wa (Japanese) shi (paper) is traditionally made from the fibers of gampi tree bark, mintsumata shrub or paper mulberry but is also made using bamboo, hemp, rice and wheat.

-Jessica for Mirth

BRETON'S SPOON

In this excerpt from Andre Breton's book entitled, Mad Love Breton elucidates the complex trajectory of a wooden spoon and its acquisition. Giacometti, who accompanied Breton to the market where he found the spoon, purchased a mask. Breton's narrative remains vibrant in my mind as I think of it often, inevitably when I study the spoons at Mirth. 

"Some months earlier, inspired by a fragment of a waking sentence, "the Cinderella ash-try" and the temptation I had had for a long time to put into circulation some oneiric and para-oneiric objects, I had asked Giacometti to sculpt for me, according to his own caprice, a little slipper which was to be in principle Cinderella's lost slipper. I wanted to cast it in glass--even, if I remember rightly, gray glass--and then use it as an ash-tray.  In pite of my frequent reminders to him of his promise, Giacometti forgot to do it for me. The lack of this slipper, which I really felt, caused me to have a rather long daydream, of which I think there was already a trace in my childhood. I was impatient at not being able to concretely imagine this object, over whose substance there hangs, on top of everything else, the phonic ambiguity of the word "glassy." On the day of our walk, we had not spoken of this for some time.

It was when I got home and placed the spoon on a piece of furniture that I suddenly saw it charged with all the associative and interpretative qualities which had remained inactive while I was holding it. It was clearly changing right under my eyes. From the side, at a certain height, the ittle wood spoon coming out of its handle, took on, with the help of the curvature of the handle, the aspect of a heel and the whole object presented the silhouette of a slipper on tiptoe like those of dancers. Cinderella was certainly returning from the ball! The actual length of the spoon a minute ago had nothing definite about it, had nothing to contradict this, stretching towards the infinite as much in great size as in small: in fact the little slipper-heel presided over the spell cast, containing in itself the very source of the stereotype (the heel of this shoe heel could have been a shoe, whose heel itself...and so on). The wood, which had seemed intractable, took on the transparency of glass. From then on the slipper, with the shoe hell multiplying started to look vaguely as if it were moving about alone. This motion coincided with that of the pumpkin-carriage of the tale. Still later the wooden spoon was illuminated as such: it took on the ardent value of one of those kitchen implements that Cinderella must have used before her metamorphosis. Thus one of the most touching teachings of the old story found itself concretely realized: the marvelous slipper potential in the modest spoon. With this idea the cycle of ambivalences found an ideal closure. Then it became clear that the object I had so much wanted to contemplate before, had been constructed outside of me, very different, very far beyond what I could have imagined, and regardless of many immediately deceptive elements. So it was at this price and only at this price, that the perfect organic unity had been reached."

-Jessica for Mirth

ROUND AND SQUARE

Upon returning to Marfa from holiday in Paris and Barcelona, my inspirations and ideas are imploding. Moments of happiness, smells, images, tastes, connections, lessons, feelings, faces and textures mill in my mind but when asked to verbally articulate the experience, I'm at a loss! As the wispy strands of meaning and memory begin to collide and bond, I will jot them down perhaps via the Mirth blog, as many of my thoughts revolve around the spaces I spend time in.

For the whole of our (my best friend and I) vacation in Europe, I set the personal goal of seeing at least one monument, museum or piece of history a day. That one place became our destination which took us anywhere from one to eight hours to locate. The time spent exploring, wandering and seeking was wonderful. In Marfa, I watch tourists wander and I am the local.  

In Barcelona, I realized we were walking in circles. Then I looked down to find that we were also walking on a circle patterned sidewalk, on a street lined with concrete spheres (all pictured above). The trend continued the remainder of our time there because the four way stops in Barcelona are rounded so that cars can park in front of the stores that share the four way stop. Naturally, my friend and I, involved in an intensely-heated conversation about anything from love to politics, found ourselves wandering to the left or right as opposed to around and straight--the sangria at lunch thwarted our navigational efforts most days but made the getting lost more enjoyable. 

Of all the sights/sites we encountered, the creations of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi were most gratifying--delightfully round and indulgent. In addition to the innovations and advances Gaudi made in the field of architecture he fabricated spaces modeled honestly after nature and its elements. The curves, convex and  concave, form loose lines that define one space from the next, evoking the sensation of actually being in nature. Gaudi's Casa Batilo, La Pedrera and Park Guell reflect the round about way I spent time in Barcelona, veering off track to have a nibble there and altering plans to experience something never seen or felt before. I intend to incorporate my traveling mentality into daily life, keeping close the idea that there is no right or wrong way to reach one's destination.

If Gaudi's round spaces inspire care-free living, what inspiration is stirred by Donald Judd's squares in Marfa? Resting peacefully in the landscape, settled and heavy on the ground, Judd's boxes are wondrously splendid intertwined with the desert terrain and endless blue sky. Looking around the store with careful attention to the round and square shapes, it seems quite clear that the round would not be as lovely without the square and vice versa.

-Jessica for Mirth