Operation Popple People

Liz Gardner's living space has been taken over by giant popples. A colorful ensemble of the muppet-esque creatures crowds her Kansas City apartment, and the mixed-media artist has even taken to signing off her phone messages as "Liz Popple."

If popples pervade Liz's life, it is hardly an accident. The custom-made creatures -—ranging from a pod-shaped infant to a round, furry figure the size of a small parade float —- are the artist's variation on the children's toys from the 1980s. Liz's Popples go on parade on June 3 as part of her Olive Gallery Show entitled "Operation Popple People," which will also include her recent mixed-media works.

Since she received her first popple at the age of 5, Liz has designed popples that correspond to specific stages in her life. A popple representing grade school is inlaid with one of her early writing assignments and a screen-printed pattern of children holding hands, while a middle school popple's arms are folded self-consciously across its chest. A high school popple, decorated with a bra and jewelry, suggests a budding femininity, and a college-era popple boasts a colorful hodgepodge of textiles, language, maps and images from science books.

The popples reflect the artist's advances in craftsmanship as well as age. The most recent creation, constructed by sewing eight different panels of fabric together to form a giant white ball with a Snoopy-shaped head and a blue felt lining, appears minimalist compared to her earlier creations, but is actually more sophisticated in design.

"It's me now," Liz says of her newest creation. "I'm learning you don't have to be as busy with imagery and color. Before it was more happy accidents, but now it's more planned."

Like much of her artwork, Liz's popple project deals with comfort issues, self-exploration and the aging process. "I like that there's an inside and an outside level to them," she says. "You're able to see the isolation of the self as well as the environment it's shaped by."

The upcoming show will not be her first at the Olive, nor her first series of artwork to draw on biographical elements. A 2003 exhibit of Liz’s work, "Tweaking the Right Brain," grew from a fascination with the brain she developed as a child after doctors ran tests to make sure she was free of brain disorders. The artwork -- an example of which includes a drawing of a diver poised to dive into a swirling sea of thread pasted on a painted canvas -- examines the relationships between randomnesss and logic and the way the two manage to balance each other out.

The material Liz uses in her art often serves as a muse in itself. A new series of quilt-resembling pieces stitches together fabrics, magazine photos and other materials with colorful, zig-zagging thread. She has also completed collages with sheet music (she is a classically-trained violinist), sculptures using only hair and wire, and designs based on anatomical slides and microchips.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Liz graduated from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles in 2003. In 2002, she was awarded the Dorris Fair Carey Scholarship for excellence in textile design. Her work has been featured in solo gallery shows in Lawrence and Kansas City, and has been included in group shows as far away as Florence, Italy, where she studied painting in 2004. Her work has also been commissioned for paintings and used for set design in musical performance.

In 2005, she founded Liz Gardner Designs to market her line of pillows, linens and custom home furnishings. Though she classifies her designs as either non-functional (artistic) or functional (home decoration), all of her work employs the spontaneity, diverse materials and fine craftsmanship used to create her fine art.

To see examples of her pillows, popples and other fine art, check out www.lizgardner.com.

Photos taken by Tara Sloan

Doing lines in the Land of Nod

My daily fun-facts calendar states today that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" during a six-day cocaine binge.

"That an invalid in my husband's condition of health should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words on paper in six days, seems almost incredible," said his astonished wife, Fanny.

I'm not sure if this makes me have more respect for the book or the drug. I just know this wasn't the kind of thing I learned about at the writer's museum in Edinburgh, which is dedicated to Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott as well as the "Treasure Island" author. The museum takes a historical but child-friendly approach, dedicating itself more to the passion of writing than the process.

RLS wasn't just an invalid as an adult, either. In the museum, there was a free watercolored booklet available that told the story of RLS's fever-ridden childhood, how he looked forward each evening to the arrival of the lamplighter, or "Leerie" in Scottland. The booklet is actually quite charming, but reveals itself in the last few pages to be a Christian parable, placed there by some Irish ministry group. Though this doesn't necessarily invalidate the story, I much prefer the unpurposed imaginations of RLS's "A Child's Garden of Verses."

I was going to include a verse-weed from my own weird kid's garden of verse, but I'd rather list these series of quotes from the great Scottish author, who lived from 1850-1894

• For God's sake, give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.
• To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.
• All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
• There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.
• Wine is bottled poetry.
• Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
• There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.
• Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
• The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
• Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
• To forget oneself is to be happy.
• Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
• To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.
• Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police
• The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
• Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
• Youth is wholly experimental

Spring and All Aboard the Tit-Tanic

In the parking lot behind my lead-poisoned apartment sits a boat called the Tit-Tanic. I have no idea who this brave vessel belongs to, but one night Fletcher and I hatched a plan to take it all the way to Lake Titicaca. Provided the boat is still there on Oct. 31 (when my lease ends), we plan to sail by way of Brush Creek/Kansas River/The Ocean all the way to Titicaca, which at 12,536 feet is the highest elevated lake in the world. This is appropriate, seeing as how you'd have to be pretty high to even dream doing such a thing!

In honor of the lake and the mysterious flagship of 43rd Street, I give you Poem X of William Carlos Williams' "Spring and All." If the connections between modern poetry, Bolivia, and an abandoned motorboat seem tenuous, allow me to suggest that they are in fact, tenacious -- perhaps even titicaucus.

The Eyeglasses

The universality of things
draws me toward the candy
with melon flowers that open

about the edge of refuse
proclaiming without accent
the quality of the farmer's

shoulders and his daughter's
accidental skin, so sweet
with clover and the small

yellow cinquefoil in the
parched places. It is
this that engages the favorable

distortion of eyeglasses
that see everything and remain
related to mathematics--

in the most practical frame of
brown celluloid made to
represent tortoiseshell--

A letter from the man who
wants to start a new magazine
made of linen

and he owns a typewriter--
July 1, 1922
All this is for eyeglasses

to discover. But
they lie there with the gold
earpieces folded down

tranquilly Titicaca

WCW, 1923

america's warmaking center

Today we all played on the Atomic Cannon, a big gun capable of firing an 11-inch projectile over 20 miles. The idea was that the cannons would be able to hurl nuclear shells far enough not to kill the people firing them. This 42,500 lb monster was built in 1955 and deactivated in 1963. According to the sign, there are only three such cannons left in existence.

In the valley stands Fort Riley, the old calvary outpost and current army base boldly referred to on the nearby water tower as "America's Warmaking Center." Just down the road is the Dreamland Motel, whose infamous former tentants include Oklahoma City bomber Timothy MacVeigh. Neighboring Junction City is the so-called "wicked little town" where Hedwig shared a trailer with Sgt. Luther Robinson, groomed Tommy Gnosis for stardom, and sewed the musical seeds for the fictional fab-rock act, The Angry Inch.

After our play-session with the decommissioned artillery, we drove to the dedication ceremony for the Wetzel Log Cabin, which has been newly relocated and restored. This historical structure was the site of the first Lutheran church service in Kansas way back in 1861, and the home of my great-great-great-great-grandfather, C.F. Wetzel. A bunch of nice folks were on hand to celebrate with hymns and lemonade. There was even a horse-drawn wagon, for history's sake!

Before driving back East, we pulled off 1-70 to eat at Cracker Barrel. The cornbread wasn't great, but the okra was delicious. My grandma had packed a cooler, so after dinner we stood in the parking lot and drank Molson Golden from styrofoam cups. Brother Peter opened a package from Sam Stepp, who sent him a boomerang and Shrek towel all the way from Australia. People eyed us a bit funny, but we didn't even have to use our AK (atomic kannon). Today was a good day.

Letter to the editor: Proposed Lego theme park an affront to gravity, taste

An article in the Kansas City Star last month stated that some 400 acres in South Johnson County are being considered as the site for what would be the fifth Legoland Amusement Park in the entire world. The front-page piece, framed by a cutesily scanned-in Lego block border, posed the headlining question: Block-buster idea for JoCo?

My response: Preposterous! Are the powers-that-be in Johnson County so intoxicated by the potential commercial and tax benefits of a Legoland that they don't realize a rollercoaster made of Legos isn't safe?

I don't care that it’s a $200 million proposal, or that they’ve already succeeded in using 1.5 million Lego blocks to replicate Mt. Rushmore. A life-sized Legocoaster will violate the laws of physics and almost certainly result in destruction. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen before.

As a child growing up in Johnson County, I witnessed just how suddenly Lego civilizations can be laid to waste. Entire feudal structures, cosmic fleet voyagers, an armada of sea-faring buccaneers -- time and time again my little plastic friends met their doom at the hands of my toddler siblings. If Legolands are subject to disaster on the whim of a three-year-old, I'd hate to see how a Lego theme park stacks up against gravity, not to mention aggressive speeds.

Also, the proposed use of state funds to finance the project is a slap in the face to Jackson Countians, who recently took on a new tax hike to save Truman Sports Complex. Yes, Kansas City, Kan. benefited from the aid of STAR bonds to fund the 1-70 Speedway, but let's be honest -- your average Wyandotte Countian would give his life for that race track.

To be fair, Johnson County has seen its share of recent developmental success stories. "Town Center" is considered a unique marvel of the "New Suburbanism" architectural movement, and the transformation of the now defunct Mission Center Mall into a "Zona Rosa South" is bound to be a smash-hit. And who could deny the beauty of the Overland Park Convention Center? But a JoCo Legoland -- even one featuring the rampant shopportunities of I-70 Speedway's Village West -- would be a project of Gatsbian ostentation, one likely to result in a similarly tragic outcome. And if for some reason it does succeed, what would be next, a Lego tower of babble?

Then again, maybe Johnson County needs such a tragedy to mend its apparent break with reality. With state and county legislators devoting so much attention to deciding how evolution and sex education should be taught in our schools, a Lego rollercoaster crash might help South Kansas Citians regain their focus on the more important issues of underage drinking and day-to-day survival.

As a lifetime Lego enthusiast and a staunch supporter of both Denmark and Kansas City, I do believe that the Lego spirit is one of progress and construction. I even think a JoCo Legoland might be fun. But with such an alarming lack of practicality and humility invested in the theme park's potential energy, the kinetic energy needed to power such a park work would be sorely lacking. In the end, I don't care that "Lego" translates to "play well." Not even the Wizard of Oz can make this misguided wish come true.

sincerely,

Indignancy Drew

the fury of the nile, hell hath no washtowel for

This firefighter rescue simulation took place yesterday at the Worlds of Fun thrill-ride, "The Fury of the Nile." I came up with the title line during the 2002 typewriting experiments held at Ben's house on Mississippi St.

backward, tears

In celebration of the month of May, I'm including this translation of "I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth," a ballad by Francois Villon which I first heard read by the late German actor/eccentric Klaus Kinsky. For at least part of his life, Kinksy was obsessed with Villon, a 15th-century French poet, outlaw and vagabond who wrote this poem about his ex-girlfriend, Isebeau. I couldn't find an English version, but I had a CD and transcription of Kinski reading it in German, so I took the liberty of translating it tonight. The line breaks and forms of address (i.e. repetition of "you") are modeled after Kinski's reading, which is full of ecstatic shouts, quavering pauses and reverent whispers. I wish I had the means to include it here. I also recorded a 12-minute electric guitar anthem last month borrowing from this poem's title, imagery and energy, but I'll leave that off the Internet for now.

The above illustration was inspired by a line of Paul Celan's that means "a tear rolls back in its eye." I had it in my head for a while without remembering where it came from, and I decided to draw it to look like weepy faces going through the last stage of an automatic car wash, the part where heat fans lift the moisture up the windshield.

For now, here's Villon's ballad, one of my first efforts to interpret/translate a classic.

You
You
I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth
I've torn my lungs from shouting
after your white body,
you woman.
In the clover, May built a bed,
there bloomed a sweet passing-of-time
with your love the long night.
I long to be there in the deep valley.
Your night prayer and your star-husband.

In deep strawberry valley, in black hair
I slept several summers there
but never slept enough all the same
come,
come here
I know a lovely game
in the deep valley, in mussel-earth
oh, you
you
I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth

The gray world brings joy no more
I gave my sweetest summers there
and it has also brought you no happiness;
not really, only your red mouth
has been spared
for me, for me
for me kept so deep in your hair
I searched the long nights
in winter valley, in ashen earth
I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth

In winter valley, in black strawberry cabbage,
the snowfall built a nest there
and did not ask where love was.
I had ridden that red beast so deep
when I slept with you
Oh, if only the winter were through
and the meadows green again!
oh you,
you
I'm so wild about your strawberry mouth

-Francois Villon