Naomi Tarantal and the Art of Felting

Felting is the art of transforming garments and materials into works of art. It is an ancient art and appears to be enjoying a revival.

Naomi Tarantal is a visual artist who has worked with many media, and she now finds herself drawn to felting. She recently exhibited her work as part of a Collective at New York University, and her work occupied two windows of NYU Skirball's Windows Gallery located on La Guardia Place. This is a wonderful forum for public art, available 24 hours a day during the exhibit under changing conditions of daylight and night time. Inevitably viewers will also see their reflected images in the window and passing traffic, adding additional layers to the experience.

As the artist points out, she likes the setting with the overlapping sounds and images from the environment because it resonates with the art of felting which utilizes layers as an essential element.

This video interview took place on a crisp January day near the end of the exhibit just after a light snowfall.

Sleepless in Serenity

Here I am in the middle of exhaustion, trying to figure what holds me from sleep... What is this nightly battle that has emerged as a more and more perplexing mystery? It has nothing to do with worry. I am beyond worry. It has nothing to do with ideas racing through my mind refusing to abdicate to quiet serenity. I can be serene, yet sleepless.

In some way I have forgotten how to go to sleep. There is something about sleep that is similar to losing consciousness, but not the same. Actually we are slipping into a different realm of consciousness when we sleep. Sleeping has something to do with dreams, but it is far more eloquent than the sleep center monitoring that counts the REMs (Rapid Eye Movement) to somehow measure the quality of sleep.

So I lie in bed, trying to blank my mind, debating right side, left side, or back, and remembering that I never used to have that debate, so that is different. The radio drones at low volume like a sleep machine. No help.

I have this rich vocabulary of dreams remembered, that once served as an entry point to sleep: a huge house on an estate that I had access to, many rooms that were remote and secret floors that were mysterious spaces where I could make miracles. Another dream was a magnificent block in some suburban place that had urban structures and a mysterious Gothic church sitting on the back corner of the block that seemed dark and daemonic in the midst of urban/suburban glamor. Another dream was a mysterious old building in New York City that was a five story walkup, and I was always drawn to the fourth floor. And of course, I have the classic dreams, the top floor of a building that no one knows about or the second basement that only I had access to.

These dream locations were once portals when I knew how to sleep. Now they are locales, maybe sources for a film script that could launch a wild and imaginative narrative.

The way one proceeds through day after day of sleepless nights is an intriguing experience. Somehow I manage to ignore that I didn't sleep, and my engagement with projects pulls me through the hole of haziness to a clear and lucid state where a new energy is generated through the power of the imagination and new ideas.

I write this entry as an act of sleeplessness... it is a testament to an obsession that ripples through my reality and defines an encounter with the serenities of the night.