Art net.

I've been fighting an uphill battle with myself all week. The weather, I fear, may finally be defeating me, here, where I see the spring light at the end of the tunnel. But I've also been churning some ideas the last few days, and they're slowly making their way out through my fingers.

Last Saturday evening, I went out to a wonderful experience: both Catherynne Valente and S. J. Tucker in one place at one time-- which should be enough for any mortal. But not only were they there, they were both sharing their art with us. And such art it is! It was delicious and immersive and strange-- like taking a bath in warm, clear honey. (If you had the assurance that you wouldn't be trying to get it out of your hair and various other parts for months afterwards.) I listened to the stories, and the music, and felt alive and fully present. I couldn't stop grinning.

But best of all for me, personally, was the fact that as Mlle. Valente built the walls and alleys and shadowed curves of Palimpsest around us, she was wearing one of my corsets. It was right there in front of me: my own work, my own child. I started thinking, then, about the web of art that we weave, that lies all around us, in layers and levels and arches, interconnected and intersupportive.

There are those artists and works that hit us suddenly, waves breaking over us and spinning us around: a Stones concert, seeing Casablanca for the first time, a Holbein sketch in a museum, standing at David's feet in Florence. Hamlet. All of a sudden, we see things differently, and our perspective is shifted, as if we've grown just-so-slightly taller. These are major events: some of us will only experience them a few times, others spend their lives racing from one glorious epiphany to another. 

But there's another level: the art from those people who surround us, who live among us, who are us: the painter at the Old City gallery, the photographer down the street, the singer you run down 95 to see at a cafe. Remember "These Are The People In Your Neighbourhood"? Yeah. That's it. These people live and work and create all around you. Maybe they live across the country, or across the globe, but they're there, in your life, in the fabric of your daily existence. You may even be one of these people. And that, that web, that's the web that supports you and hold you up minute by minute. 

This isn't to say the Stones or Holbein aren't important. But it is to say those people with whom you interact are just as important. A racing yacht is no less important than a cruise ship, a dolphin isn't less vital than a blue whale. The important thing isn't the distinction in size or stature-- these things change, and unlike the ships or the whales, artists grow and shift in their spheres, and the band you see in the coffee house this month may headline the Electric Factory next year, and the Wachovia Center two years after that. The ten-minute stage play you catch at a local club becomes a big-screen movie musical with a DVD on sale at Best Buy and people dressing up like the characters all over the country. And, of course, the guy who headlined stadiums years ago now does intense, one-man shows at galleries and clubs that set your brain on fire and show you things you never saw when you were one in fifteen thousand.

So it hit me, sitting there in the fiercely independent bookstore with new and old novels piled up to the ceiling everywhere, that this web, this every day, all-around web, is not only every bit as vital as the major-event waves, but it's also my web. It's where my work sits: affecting other people, making them happy, being something they think about and plan for and wear happily. This web, all around me, is one I'm weaving, too. It' s not exclusive and unreachable and rare. It's everyday, and it's everywhere.

And it's quite wonderful.

Philadelphia Flower Show, 2009: "Bella Italia!"

Philadelphia Flower Show, 2009: "Bella Italia!", originally uploaded by Ysobelle.

Also on the theme of beauty, I present to you all the photos I took yesterday (now the day before, I suppose, technically) at the Flower Show. Oh, it was magnificent. Just amazing. And packed. Packed and amazing.

The most fun part of the show, the vignettes, were set this year to evoke different regions of Italy: Venice, the Italian Riviera, Milan, Tuscany, Florence, and the Lake Region, arranged in a counter-clockwise half-circle around a magnificent little villa with reflecting pools that represented Rome. It had a raised little tower in the centre from which costumed singers from the Academy of Vocal Arts sang us Puccini. Arches before it were the first thing I saw upon entering the vast exhibit hall, and they served well to say, "You're not where you thought you were. Welcome!"

I wandered around somewhat in a daze for the first hour. There really is no suitable metaphor: it's the end of winter, and I just got drunk off all of the flowers. Flowers everywhere: as shoes, dresses, as animals, as jewelry, as architecture. I remarked to my friends, "It's like the Rose Bowl Parade, except we're the ones moving."

There was also a magnificent tea, suggested by snugglyevil. It was, I must say, a most excellent idea. And, I think, one in which I must indulge far more often.

I bought four varieties of lavender, some soap, and picked up many business cards, including one from a man who did such magnificent marquetry I all but cried. One of his magnificent mirrors was $1,300. And worth Every. Single. Penny. When I am rich, with a permanent shop, I will indulge.

Afterwards, danorsong and John and I ran through the streets-- without our coats, because we're very silly-- to an amazingly good dinner at Penang. And I came home to sleep the sleep of the just, and, more than likely, dream of orchids, lilies, and roses. Thousands and thousands of roses.