if i never become a girl / who goes to church / if body / feels less girl / more alien / less own / who do i belong to? who am i to myself / if i am no one / last night i held my girlfriend’s face / for hours or forever / her skin warm, always / she has fever, always / i am fever, always / too warm but always feeling cold / in sheets we’ve never washed / i lied to her / she said i was lying / she said she could tell / she said, i know you / i said i know / i said it’s nothing / she said it’s something / i said sometimes you have to let something be nothing / she looked at me / i held her skin / it felt like wet in my hands / slick and warm from fingertips / as if only i

could warm her / as if my fingers were life-giving and not good-sucking / i imagine her soul fading to black / my mom says i have a god complex / i think she gave it to me / or i brewed it on my own / nine and always dressed as witch / or old woman / i’ve never wanted to be this version / of myself / am always ready for the next / her lip beneath my thumb / she pulled

away / me from myself and her from me / skin thick and hot / i said it doesn’t make sense / because you’re not like this / she said i don’t even know what you’re talking about

i say / it’s like what i said when i made you cry in the car and there were deer everywhere / she says what are you talking about i say i don’t think monogamy makes sense to me and i think one day we’ll have to talk about what that means but i don’t want to lose you / and she cries and says what? is something happening now? with eyes so soft our cat won’t come out

of hiding / i say no and she says am i supposed to be dating other people and i am crying too and i am saying no i’d rather you not be dating people because i don’t know how to explain what i mean because no one taught me how to say i just feel like when you don’t want to fuck i should go fuck someone else and it’d be cool if someone fucked us sometimes and sometimes i want you to fuck other people to a girl with big big eyes and soft soft soul and warm warm skin / and i’m such a fucking asshole to turn her into a character she isn’t

she agrees / she says i’m not some southern baptist republican / we are both crying / because i act like she is / i say i’m afraid you’ll give me rules because i’ll follow / i don’t know how i feel about that / she says i’ve never given you rules / i say i know / she says you don’t give me any credit / she says do you even know who i am / i say yes / but i say

you’re right / but i move close / but she lets me / but i cry in coffee shops writing about my perfect relationship / chai to my left because i don’t know how to say macchiato / am not sure what it is / reality is so much harder, sometimes, than the life i create for myself, steamed foam tucked in bottom lip / small thing birthed and fluffed / waiting to be swallowed

the weight of my kitten on my chest is // all of the weight i can hold. i imagine the boring life i'll lead and it feels like orgasms lightning bolts cheese and crackers (the fancy kind i almost buy every monday but always put back, tuck behind lighters i can't light and candy bars i want to eat all of). but, too

it feels like going to pick up my kid and having them say a different mom came yesterday so who the fuck am i. feels like having them say these are white kids, so who the fuck am i. feels like being in hospital with pregnant uterus and having people stare and not knowing if it's because we are one part white, one part brown or two ladies

at restaurants, everyone says, 'hello ladies,' and i want to kill them because i am not a lady. don't know what that means though my life is 'ladies.'  i'm nervous about going down on girls but i've done it. i like it but i freak out about trying new things with my body. i thought i did a good job the first time i went down on another girl, but then she said 'you hated it, huh' and let me know she didn't come. i thought that was what love looked like and now it makes me

sick to think about. to see my own weakness in another girl's face. to revel in it. is art breakdown? when i write my girlfriend comes home and asks me where i am. i say, 'here.' she says, 'you're so far i can't touch you.' i smile but it's all teeth, like toddlers learning to smile, no eyes, all teeth and gums and mushy food scent. i am so mushy and so easy to tear apart and i wonder if it's my fault. but, too

everyone else's. but, too, like, society. but, too, mental illness. but, too, anything but me, anything but here, anything but this, or all of it. all the time. try to soak without overflowing. try to spill without staining. 

​The moon was smiling at me.
 
I reached up with open arms and an effervescent giggle. The moon, my friend. My friend, the moon. Moon. Friend. Moonfriend. I stopped caressing the night sky, suddenly remembering another friend. He was on all fours at the bottom of what he deemed to be “our stairwell". Violently flatulent and hurling uncontrollably, he turned to me in between retches, realizing that my attention had found him once more.
 
“I… am so… s-s-sorr-ry…” He spluttered, breathless, before starting up again.
 
I waved a hand in nonchalance. I was alone with the moon. Truth be told, I much preferred my earthly friend be open-mouthed and splay-legged on the floor than on me. My lungs were gardens watered with alcohol, forbidden to criminal tongues.
 
He was scared and scary, weak and forceful. Our friendship was based on a shared self-destruction – his desire for “girls who hated themselves”, and my attempts to find self-esteem in people who would not dare to challenge it. He was not a moon in my night sky, but perhaps more of a comet – capricious and short-lived as it sparks and fades across the stars. He knew this too, and so chose to lust for me as a form of mutilation. This was no first, or even a last, but being someone’s poison never stopped overwhelming me. Perhaps I had held that razor to my own skin so many times that I’d become it. My only bittersweet love affair was with science fiction.
 
I reached to the sky with dissected arms and a pleading sob.
 
But the moon always smiled at me.
 
~~~
 
She would sing in the middle of the night, once my eyes were calm and the air tasted like ashen stars. The best times for our friendship were when I were no longer so lucid – my mind slower and my body somehow less angular. Of course, this only happened when I’d been drinking. I sighed breaths of adulthood from gnawed lips.
 
The mere presence of her more graceful figure made me feel I could relax into myself. And under the seemingly cosmic gaze of her eyes, I felt I could spin magic.
 
Of course, these triumphs were my own. But in the insecurity of youth, I attributed them to external factors – dreams of luck and of beautiful, imperfect ladies. I was yet too careful and too frightened to stand on the two feet that had kicked and clambered their way for themselves, alone.
 
It felt appropriately cautious and predictable to attach myself to close-minded girls who could crush my spirits before I crushed my own.
 
I could always mend pieces. I loved jigsaw puzzles, tinkering with tools. I loved to fix. Anything of mint condition, however, I spit up through citrus lips.
 
And so, she sang.
 
As girls like herself would sing their way out of adolescent strife, and into a speechless and spineless adulthood.
 
While I just kept fixing things to break them, and breaking things to fix – the first of many self-defeating relationships with myself and others.
 
I was waiting at the edge of the moon for her voice to shatter me in one note. I was waiting to sew my translucent, tattered rags of skin together with spun gold.
 
I am now heavy and malleable with my lashings of gold stitch. But I no longer wait for she. And she no longer sings for me.

​✱✱✱

january is whatever you want it to be, not because it’s the beginning of the year but because that’s just how things worked out.

february is watching a mail truck run over your roommate’s bike and not telling her about it.

march is a tradition you’ve never understood but celebrate anyway.

april is talking about anything besides the weather.

may is seeing a small dog in a small sweater outside your apartment and smiling for the first time all week.

june is being comfortable in silence with anybody.

july is a story you can tell at parties if you ever go to one.

august is your dad not caring you’re bad at sports because your dad doesn’t care about sports.

september is being cold without having to think about it.

october is a youtube video of stephen king explaining to stephen colbert who flava flav is.

november is biting your lip and tasting cabernet.

december is blindly trusting anyone who says, “you don’t want to know.”

The Artist
Rossella, Lella, Rosaria - different names used to sign her artworks. She creates an essential world, sometimes complicated in symmetrical and specular figures - well designed in the series of self portraits, shoes, and houses (always with doubled streets), chimneys and trees; some abstract paintings draw remarkable similarities to graphic design and contemporary illustration; artworks from Rossella are painted in bright colours, with high contrasts and essential marks and gestures. She has worked in Turin since the '80s and hosted a solo exhibition curated by Print About Me at The Others Art Fair in 2014.

The Exhibition
Rossella Carpino' solo exhibition is in the context of Mai Visti e Altre Storie (Never Seen and Other Stories), a project for enhancement of Outsider Art in Piedmont Area (Italy). It is based on the idea of Tea Taramino (Città di Torino, Servizio Disabili), curated by Arteco (Annalisa Pellino and Beatrice Zanelli) in collaboration with Passages cultural association.

/maɪ prɪnt/ solo exhibition of Rossella Carpino is the first of a series of solo exhibitions about artists included in Mai Visti e Altre Storie archive (www.maivisti.it).  The exhibit displays artwork from the '80s to present and retraces Rossella's artistic research in conjunction with serigraphies (screen printing) by Print About Me from Rossella's artwork for /maɪ prɪnt/, a project in the context of Mai Visti e Altre Storie.  /maɪ prɪnt/ was born as a tool for sharing outsider artworks from the Mai Visti archive through their limited edition serigraphic reproduction.  Also on display is a short video by Claudio Malpede to show how serigraphic technique works.  

The venue, Palazzo Barolo, is a typical Italian baroque style palace, but the exhibition setup, totally contemporary, will make a sort of "shortcircuit" in the traditional way of approaching and perceiving the interior. 

The Details:
Address: Palazzo Barolo, Via delle Orfane 7, Turin, Italy
Opening: May 19th 2016 at 6:00 pm
Exhibit Hours:
Monday, closed
Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 am to 12:30 pm and 3:00 pmto 5:30 pm
Saturday, 3:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Sunday, 3:00 pm to 6:30 pm
Contact and Websites: [email protected] | www.associazionearteco.it | www.maivisti.it

Glass on tiles is from broken dishes is from walking home.
Trying to find where you live is picking up jagged pieces is wrapping the gash from the
contact of the sharp corner colliding with your skin.
Dropping the plates feels like 8 PM feels like asking you to pass the salt.

Broken mugs are glued together like an antique puzzle, 
fragment by fragment found one under the table, 
found one I stepped on it.
Almost reversed except for the lines running around it,
the memory and experience also regret.
It still works if you're in need of a mug but always drips a little from a crack the glue
​couldn't fill.

Bought some new dishes fixed the kitchen sink fixed the glass on the tiles.
Found new tiles found new reasons to break some new dishes.
Forgot to wrap the gash it'll heal anyway.
forgot to ask to pass the salt the plates dropped themselves. 
Feels like 8 PM feels like 9 feels like 10. 
Put the broken dishes away buy some more glue later.

at midnight when it rains i’m hoping you’ve
seen something as soft as the green/gray
they put in the sky in the middle of a 
summer,afternoon,storm on the coasts of florida

if not let me tell u it is … soft … 

like the tiny kisses u put on my forehead when it’s 5 am and the sunrise
wakes us up and warms us up and i sigh something like a smile with my 
whole body and then go back to sleep 

i’m grateful ur always awake first

.

ur still a tiny forehead kisser a few hours later when 
i open my eyes again and it’s still very much morning 

i know the sun’s gonna be pulling some flowers out of the ground today,

so i will get out of bed and ask you to wrap me in a shirt
with many buttons and say thank u bc some afternoon last summer 
before it’d even stopped raining for the day
 i kicked my mom out of the house
… but somehow i still sleep pretty good next to u, kiddo

Oh Color Milks is a collaboration project between Elise Mesner and PAX Ceramics.  

Sea Foam Thoughts

We love Elise Mesner's work.  It's luminous and it's whimsical.  It manages to be glamorous without a hint of pretension.  Her photography has a distinct energy, which translates into fixed scenes and objects radiating life / effervescence / enchantment. Colours rule her projects, somehow carrying airs of being both expertly curated and wildly carefree.  Filled with interesting perspectives, pallettes and compositions, her lens dusts people, landscapes and articles with some sort of rare magic.  

​And the subjects of Oh Color Milk?  Well, we have a strong affinity for ceramics in general.  There's a history, process and tangible result.  We have nothing but praise for those who use their hands and minds for creation.  Speaking about PAX specifically, we love the application of modern colour gradients to minimal, artifact-like structures in the "breakfast club" (debut line, pictured below).  Seeing traditional mediums combined with a fine eye for design and quality product is always a delight.  Kitchens rejoice!  Also, let's be honest - we'd probably set these all over our houses and not just in our kitchens because they're really pretty.

Elise Mesner
Detroit native Elise Mesner (now based in Los Angeles) is an eclectic-minded painter, illustrator, fashion/costume designer, stylist, taste maker, cross-media artist, singer-songwriter and fine art photographer working and dipping into all arty media. Creamy colors, plants, fresh air, and drops of neon rule her world. With whimsy forever as her guide, she's known for creating idyllic dreamscapes, both in front of and behind the camera, as well as on the canvas. Mesner's artwork has garnered solo and group shows at local galleries, including the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her photography has been featured in several print publications and in other incarnations, including album covers and recipe books.   You can visit her website at elisemesner.com and find her on Instagram @lellopepper.

PAX Ceramics (California)
PAX combines contemporary design methods with time-honored production techniques.  Our process starts with hand-sketching and wheel throwing, refining forms in CAD programs and 3D-printing prototypes.  The pieces are then handmade in Los Angeles.  Creative references for the debut line—titled the “breakfast club”—include the forms of Japanese, Scandinavian and Bauhaus master ceramicists.  The beauty found where simplicity meets usefulness.  Closer to home, we are in constant awe of California’s natural environment, particularly during the golden hour, which inspired our gradient glaze.  PAX was founded by Mia Herron Kantor in 2015 based on a lifelong love of ceramics and exceptional design.  Available for purchase exclusively at www.paxceramics.com.  You can also find PAX on Instagram @pax.la.