Discipline and Vanity- book jacket art and a poem

Discipline and Vanity

Upright animal
your music feels bluesy
your window looks shattered
the voice emanating
from your silhouette
sings the word, "insane."
How could you tell anyone
that inside you feel lonely
inside you feel lonely
when no animal
has ever uttered the word, "alone."
Yes, you stand upright,
supported by uneven heels
sickled foot arches
coiled up with memories
of how you street walked
the wild.

You'll tell us stories
of how you branded history with heartache
leaving men more alive than when they were dead.
But death you'll insist is merely the birth of eternal dreaming.

We interrogators will tell you to shut up and look pretty
shut up and look pretty
while we undress you for bed.
Afterwards, you'll want to try to talk without lipstick
about love and its laws
and what can you do to learn them
as you live best you can.

Our answer will be to release you into its poverty.

One day you will try to find us
find us and kill us
for setting you free
because you will find that freedom is boredom
compassion is selfish
only slavery will save you
when your blue animal runs wild.

We will always be your imperfect bishops,
who build brothels beside and inside of cathedrals
but never above us or outside of reach.
Our dreams of you, finite, our love, conditional
Though our memories of your music, immortal.


poem and image by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Leaning Candle of Jesus

THE LEANING CANDLE OF JESUS:
An autobiographer's ruminations
on some of what caused
the "Violent Beauty of Urda Louise"

The last night you lit
The Leaning Candle of Jesus
to talk to the spirit traveling
inside the body of that
Giant, neglected, wax figurine,
an old film of His superhumanity
genuflected in the reels of his eyes and
He showed you a version of Himself
sitting among his own small section of pews
inside the Church buried inside you
the one that you can get to only when you rise
from beneath a body of reservoir water.
-This Baptism your reward for
shooting heroin into your veins
two times with your boyfriend, Charlie's, pistol
while touring your shadow through a
crack house
that you didn't expect to re-enter.
You had been hailing Mary a long time then
from that sterile mattress you were born on
that became the filthy mattress that supported you
while your spirit dressed in storefront smoke
tried to fly
calling out to Mary
never thinking that
anyone, let alone Mary or your Mother would come.
You never suspected that you would meet your dead mother mourning,
while soaked in Funeral colors
her spirit accentuated with
a wide brim hat and veils.
She sits alone inside
The Leaning Candle of Jesus Church
mesmerized by a stationary hologram
of that image of Jesus programmed into all of us.
"Your unhappiness is murdering me, further" she says,
when you ask her why she sits all alone.
You say, unhappy? who?
You think right then of that handsome underwater astronaut -
the immaculate man-fish who pulled you out from the skeletal grasp
of Charlie Christ's arms,
through the narrow crack of that house
into warm soapy sea water
- the one who said
"underwater astronauts are your able bodied angels, Urda,
and we are here just for troubled ones like you-"
when you had been hailing your Mother and Mary
and Jesus had become just a low flame for your pipe.
But what of rites, wrongs, religions and rituals, you wonder,
and passages along the base of the pyramidal volcano
that ancient, ailing, addicted street archaeologists
dug up between corroded alleyways
that mirrored the rope of their veins.
Passages that lead to narrower streets
flanked by cobblestone tenements
with black windows
and the enormous
crumbling floor-less church
with the nodding, cracked congregation
shooting up heroin, collectively, in the undercroft.
Do such saviors have solstices, too?
If aliens teach our children Sunday school
and the only place for African ritual exists
through the corridors that appear behind
unused church altars - if you search carefully -
where on the other side
you watch African women dive into and emerge from
the earth as if the earth is the wild woman's water,
while your mother sits alone in the ruined belly of the church
calling out to you with her entire heart
"know and recognize your Father, Jesus - "
The miracle man you can only remember embodied
inside a large wax candle, deformed, maligned and leaning
-while your mother mourns your neglect of religion
for your interest in what she calls ignorance and idols
believing that it is the absence of Jesus
and not her decay, disintegration, and death
that causes the sadness in you.



poems and images by: Tiffany Osedra Miller
1st image, "Unbelievable" acrylic ink, india ink on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Purchase "Unbelievable," HERE.

2nd image, "The Leaning Candle of Jesus" oil pastels on 8 1/2" by 11" lightweight vellum paper

The Aliens Born of Immigrants

"The Aliens Born of Immigrants"
Acrylic ink and acrylic paint on a 6" x 6.5" linen canvas sheet

Bellicosa

"Bellicosa"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Osedra/aka Bassagirl
acrylic ink and acrylic paint on approx. 7" x 6" linen

CLick here for more information

The Jive Theater

Everybody's a child actor
Every emotion an unplanned pregnancy
Every new entrance an immigrant...

Book cover: acrylic paint and ink on Bristol Paper approx.2.8" x 4.3"

miniature book: one pice of paper folded into an 8 page book.

Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Osedra/aka Bassagirl

Revelations, Revelry, Triumph then Decay

Image created by: Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Osedra/aka Bassagirl

India ink and pen on 6" x 9" latex paper.

The Skinny Model

Pen, india ink and acrylic ink on the back of a recycled business card.

Image created by: Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Osedra/aka Bassagirl

Salacious Encounters with Poorly Crafted Beings

I am working on a series of paintings called, "Illustrated Titles." I love Books, Titles, Book Cover Art and Literature. Sometimes I make paintings faster than I write and sometimes it's the other way around. "Illustrated Titles" gives me the space to create and present Cover Art for Cover Art's sake.

Click Here for More Info

October

Ceremony

India ink, acrylic ink and acrylic paint on 9" x 11" Bristol paper. Click here for more information.

Artistic Process: "The Winners," version 2

After doing the initial sketch (that you will find in the post beneath this one) I decided to add color to the image. I used india ink, acrylic ink and acrylic paint all on moleskine paper. I got a little carried away. The paper wrinkled quite a bit but I've grown to like the effect. I liked the initial black and white image but I was bothered, even though this was a notebook sketch, by the stray pencil and pen markings and the places where, if you look closely, you can see the white out. I'm deciding whether or not to develp this into a bigger piece on canvas panel using acrylic paint and pen. I like the carnivalesque costumes and the expressions on their faces.

Artistic Process: "The Winners," Version 1

I created this sketch in my Moleskine notebook using, pencil, ink and white out.

You Little Freak

acrylic paint and acrylic ink on 8 and 1/2" by 11" board. Click here for more information.

Seven

"A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.” Federico Fellini

This painting is called, "Seven."

I drew "Seven" in my sketchbook, yesterday, with pencil and pen then painted it with acrylic and ink. After staring at it for awhile and hearing the number, "Seven", in my head, twice, I decided to call it that.

Where Do Characters Come From?

You Must Exit

"You Must Exit"
acrylic ink, india ink and pen on 6" x 9" latex impregnated paper. Click here for more information.

Art School: Finding The Best Art School In The World

The Best Art School in the World

Let the content of your dreams inspire the creation of your art. If you can't remember your night dreams engage in conscious daydreams. Some of the best art lessons come from within. Some of the best landscapes, fantastical characters and themes come from within you. Unwrap the blueprints to neighborhoods inside you and build them up with colors, metaphors, blacks and whites. Build them with your words, your clays, your drawings, your movements. Visit those neighborhoods - located deep in imaginative realms - that eagerly await your arrival. At first these neighborhoods may appear dormant, but that's only because you have forgotten to look with your innermost sight.

Look at these neighborhoods, now, with your most powerful vision. See the people that occupy these neighborhoods. Observe the interesting characters. Listen to their unique voices. Hear them tell their stories and whisper to you their poems. Watch them dance and feel how their dances move you. Allow your new, loving, eccentric and most interesting acquaintances to take you into deeper journeys. Have outstanding adventures and when you return from these adventures, record them, by expressing them, using whatever artistic medium you choose. Then proceed to craft these adventures so that those of us who haven't experienced what you have, can feel what it was like to be there, and also become enriched by what you've learned. Craft them in the ways they wish to be expressed. Respect the independent spirit of your creations. Remember that your art is in constant collaboration with seen and unseen forces. Allow your conscious life to become enhanced by your unconscious journeys. Walk your art. Preach it. It's yours. It's ours.

Tiffany Osedra Miller
Bassa Bassa Arts

The Preoccupied House

Image by: Tiffany Osedra Miller

Trees

I've been thinking about trees a lot, lately. So much so that I even tried to make a painting of a tree which resulted in what you see above. Maybe I've been thinking about trees as Fall approaches and I want to embrace the memory of what trees look like in the Northeast U.S. in the Spring and Summer, before they change into those yellow, brown, auburn aging beauties. I think of the tree in front of the house I grew up in which shielded me from people who could see through my window. Never once, did I consider its roots. It died with a rubber tire looped around one of its highest branches thrown up their sometime in the 1980's. I don't recall the incident and forgot about the tubing for years only recalling it in moments when I happened to glance at it on my way out. Oh, how I took that wonderful tree for granted. I think of what trees mean to me as an American. And what they offered to my ancestors in the Caribbean. I now think of them as living and full of magic and spirit - capable of feeling the earth's joy as much as its agony. I hugged a tree a couple of weeks ago. Something I don't do often. It felt good to hug that tree. It felt more like a homecoming. A memory of something I had long since forgotten about nature and all of its silent spectators. It felt so good that I even wanted to kiss that tree. But I didn't go that far. People were watching and this city girl needs to walk before she runs. I didn't even ask the tree its name.

I created a poem about trees, however. Enjoy!

Witness the march
of naked, sodden trees
bark beings with
melodic tree-steps
echoing
falling rainwater.

Let flashes of lantern light
reveal their tree prints in mud:

These green,
greasy haired elders
lounge around verandas
in Summer-times
watered by sweet teas and
drunken soldier lemonades.
Wintertime snow-heads
carry Christmas gifts of pines,
Spring-times offer
churches their palms.

On farms, Cow-Trees milk their lemons
suns bake the cream tarts on windows,
and wiggle worms of apples.

Around each tree
roam the spirits
of black, fallen fruit
once considered strange.
Guilt and resentment
buried in tree-roots
at once being forced to dangle such
doomed jewelry.

Bark tattooed
with the exhalations of lovers
romances written on tree-skin
penned with knives

decapitated bodies
sold into lumber.

Each tree-stem and branch, a system
weighed down with knowledge
from haggard, hooting owls
gargoyles to tree-mouths
shut against its foliage-doors.
Behind it
you'll find yourself entering into
corridors full of sap -
and you'll experience yourself swimming in
the placenta of your roots.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Boom Boom Revue (a mini original painting)

Oh my!

I painted this naughty showgirl onto the back of an old 2.0" by 3.5" business card.

Purchase the painting, here, or at least see how much it costs!

Am I A Lion?

                                                              SOLD

Purchase this ACEO original acrylic painting on 2.5" x 3.5" canvas textured paper, here.

Number 26 to Memphis

                                                               SOLD

The Number 26 train to Memphis
hovers above ladder-tracks
laid down by the indigenous
inside of visions in which they saw themselves
climb each rail across the world.
If you board the Number 26, now,
the conductor will drive you through a state
of abandoned, yet occupied railroad cars
fossilized in mass open graves.

Regarding your luggage:

Tourist -
life already stores inside you
the sands of Memphis,
the gyrations of Elvis
the Libations of Africans,
the base desires in your blues,
the post-Lenten carnivals inherent in your jazz.

Regarding fare dodging, the
Members of The Subterranean Indigenous Tourist Board
wish to tell you this:

scavengers and passengers
must and will pay,
scavengers and passengers
must and will pay.

And, if while sleeping in your sleeping car
a gaggle of horns wakes you,
screaming out in a cacophony of sorrow,
open your door to a procession
led by face masked marauders,
their plastic expressions altered
by fire-light from candles.
Join that army of perversely masked
women and men,
raising back into life
the sarcophagus of the world they carry.

Tracks and Tunnels can then
become the open road for
trains traveling over, under and through
the imaginations of
all cities called and not called Memphis.

The original "Number 26 to Memphis" painting is on sale here.

Little Miss Drifter

After weeks of intense bacchanalia, Little Miss Drifter spends the rest of the year hovering over islands with fairgrounds, longing for laughter and masquerade, sensual, spirited adventures, spicy food and revelry. I wonder why no one tells her that carnival ends only when we allow it to? Could it be that she's been the reigning carnival queen for decades and her ladies in waiting have grown tired of watching her engage in dance after dance?

I painted this image of Little Miss Drifter, after I glimpsed her hovering over a small, quiet island on which I sat sipping a rum and coke, while sinking in sand. In hindsight, I could of called out to her, telling her that carnival never really ends, but I don't think she would have heard me.

Your Chaos, My Flow

This image takes me back to my Bronx roots, circa 1980-1981 - some years before Hip-Hop became a worldwide phenomenom. Graffiti was everywhere (I mean, everywhere) and everyone rocked their own style. I was still a child, then, but heavily influenced by the unfettered imaginations and the artistic anarchy.
Purchase this miniature original, Now!

The Entryway Man

From "The Diary of the Titillater" (click link to read Entry #1)

Entry # 2:

I met 'The Entryway Man,' when I began to wonder if human beings contain passageways and portals inside of ourselves that can lead us into places we never knew existed. This rumination opened me up to a series of encounters with a man known to me now as a Portal Porter who preferred the name, 'The Entryway Man.' He emerged from the darkness to add light to my illumination is how I will begin to describe the effect he had upon me. Upon greeting me for the first time, The Entryway Man said this: "The Human Body is the diminutive doorway to the universe of the imagination. Won't you step over the threshold of your small, troublesome frame and instead derive insight and pleasure from your own internal gifts?"

"Hell, no!" I said ,while he laughed for a good, long time at 'this idiot's expense' (as he so-called me while laughing and conducting conversations with himself as if my apparent idiocy revealed to him that I was hardly even there) without showing any of his teeth.

'I prefer vodka or Jack Daniel's or the warm musky bodies of women named anything, to stepping over thresholds,' I said to him when he calmed down and sat down inside the opening in myself he guarded. He watched as I lit sage, forgot what it was then began to smoke it, put it out, immediately, then opened up my Bible to find that a trip to a rain forest over 16 years ago had ruined every single page.



This miniature original is for sale, now!

Statuette

Introducing, Judy Jook

Formaldehyde Mind Wagon

Formaldehyde Mind Wagon

Calling all Stained Glassed Street Soldiers
Your ancestor's visions are dying with your limited sight.
Challenge Rigor Mortis or Dance with Him.
Your Bacchanal is not a band-aid for burdens
dragging you through carnival beams.
You must encounter the spirits of jump-up
and wear the masks of friends and enemies -
Before this:
Develop an inner vision addiction.

This 8 and 1/2" by 11" original oil pastel, pencil and ink painting is for sale here.

The Plot

Posing Peaches

Posing Peaches
pantomimes patience,
praying for persistence
in permanence
her spirit stuck and stationary
inside her standing statue
so that she surrenders and stays.

Entourage

                                               SOLD

All lonely artists need an inner entourage.

This mini colored pencil and ink original was created on the back of an old business card. Click here for purchasing information.

Mam'zelle

An orginal painting created with ink and pastels on the back of an old business card. Click here for purchasing information.

Cane

A Serving of Cake

The Inhuman House

'The Inhuman House' features prominently in the rise of stories. Characters from all over the streets, pages, paragraphs, corners, brothels, racetracks and alleyways of Storybook, gather here to share their experiences, visions and adventures within their respective tales. They walk the halls of this house with reverence, careful not to disturb the well trampled floors of this shelter or take a piece of fallen plaster as a memento or scrawl their names on its sooty walls. They leave the floors unmopped, the toilets unflushed, the beds unmade. Worst of all, they leave the windows and doors locked and shut to block out the pleas made by legions of Storytellers and Writers who try to enter and transport the Characters - before they are ready - into another body and another locale. Consequently, the Inhuman House cannot stand its residents - calling them divas and megalomaniacs - the voices that make up the structure of the house emanating from the cracks in the walls. These voices register to the Characters mostly as gibberish and grumbles, as they are only able to make out a word or two, here and there, like 'vagabonds, assholes, and storyshit.'

Excerpted from a work in progress, called, 'Storybook Uprising.'
Image and Words by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Imagination Getaway

Sometimes the imagination needs a little getaway. I painted a picture of one of the many locales my imagination visits to recharge and convalesce. Where does your imagination travel to when it needs a vacation? Can you draw or paint a picture of it, even if it's abstract? Can you describe that place in words?

"Imagination Getaway" is an Original Art piece created on a 3" x 5" index card for sale!
Great for the Collector of Mini art works.
Created with Ink, pastels and Colored Pencil.
Free shipping worldwide!
Click here to purchase, "Imagination Getaway"

Father's Day 2009

For Hugh:

The ability to think in images
and set certain symbols free
comes from a man most comfortable in shadows
though born surrounded by sun and sea.

His wisdom emanates
like the solemn lights
from botanica candles,
evoking original firelight.
His torches of fatherly love ignite island roads,
branding cities in their streets.
My American days merge with memories of his Jamaican nights:
He and I have have shared symbols, journeys and travels:
I have found my father gazing along sand paths in Jamaica
a small child alone and awake at night
waiting for the riderless horse
that once carried and supported the weight of his own father.
Long before I was born,
I found myself apprenticed to my Father,
We fixed the broken Grandfather clock, together,
tinkering with it as small children
both of us listening to the voice in ourselves saying
that time, age and powerlessness are lies and illusions
-We can fix things, and if we've always been together
how could we ever fall apart?

The ability to dream in all colors
and define the woman I've wanted to be
comes from a man most comfortable in shadows
though born surrounded by sun and sea.

I've felt as scattered inside
as my father's family
my father's mixed heritage
begat mixed loyalties -
I, too have felt confused about all of the parts I am
and have felt ravaged inside -
parts of me torn apart.
I've believed in the illusion of any form of supremacy
and felt miniscule, when consumed by ignorance
of my heritage and history.
I've been that dutiful choir boy he was,
singing hymns for the congregation
swaying inside with the
ecstasy of spirituals.
My Father, future metaphysicist
young root doctor, energetic engineer
man-child of beaches and rivers
converging blood lines,
tributaries, winding veins.
When I finally make it through
the wide, unopened door of my father
I'm sure to find more glorious written and unwritten books
undiscovered herbs
placed carefully on handmade shelves.
Perhaps I'll find other rooms
which may contain suspended scenes from
My parent's first meeting which
began inside the poetry of a church
inside of the expressions of love
that he wrote to my Mother.
Expressions he never buried with her.
My brother and I would not exist
if not for the writing and reciting of these poems
written by my father, a former veteran, a forever soldier
a world within world traveler.

The passion to fight for love and self-expression
and voyage freely through my mind
comes from a man who with his inner wisdom
eradicated all sense of color, space and time.

One morning when we were walking, he
grabbed and held onto the light from
the sun presented its glow to me and said you
must shine your light with this intensity
burn down any obstacles
impeding your imagination
stay on sun-paths of truth.
I was astonished that the sun did not burn him.
One night, when we sat talking on our patio
he pointed directly to the moon brought it towards us,
balanced it on the tip of his index finger and
and twirled it around.
He said to me, "you've been here with many others
long before anybody went there with ships or machines.
You've already placed each brown foot in a crater
and declared the moon your finest shoes.
You are Queen and Solstice.
Woman and Goddess.
There is significance in your birth."
This man of shadows
this listener to angels, ancestors and dolphins
this rider of sub-sub marines
unfettered dancer
Jamaican King
my surviving parent
continues to shine light on possibilities
remembering, honoring, yet discarding the weights of cultures and colors
reminding us all of the infinite landscapes and geographies
of timeless times and better worlds.

Daddy, you've always been my soldier
my hero, my most, devoted confidante and committed guide.
I only dream big and deep
because your vision for me was far and wide.

Love you!

Tiffany Osedra Miller

Solstice

Praise Him!

The Ballad of the Boy

On a joyride over the underworld
I brought a woman to an end
In her last moments of life she said she hated me
but in death she swears she is my friend.
She tells me we could have been confidantes and lovers,
spies, dressed as a boy and a girl
uncovering Mama Noir's secrets
and traveling together
over the underworld
I will never ride with joy again
on sad street
or through the other place
unless I am driving to be with my
lover, confidante and friend
the one I never touched before I
brought her to an end.


Tiffany Osedra Miller

The People From Over The Underworld

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Return

Portrait

All Artists Must Be Soldiers: A Manifesto For Revolt

All Artists Must Be Soldiers:
A Manifesto for Revolt

To all my comrades, revelers and soldiers,
to my posse, my gang, my crew,
to all of you who have acquired higher weapons
to defend the soul in me and you.
To all you uncivilized artists
who paint pimps and prostitutes
diseases and guns
To all you religious fanatics
who weep
when you find you have painted the spirit
who had you speaking and singing in tongues
To all you writers who describe all of the battles and massacres
that you create inside your own minds
you are the first to call your hearts bomb-shelters
and convalesce there for periods of time.
To all of you under-educated illiterates
frustrated that your regiment considers you a mess
because when you tell stories of great insight and wonder
you're labeled simple but blessed.
To all of you who were raised on Hip-Hop, Motown and boleros,
-Wagner, Mozart and Bach
was just not your style
it's fine that all your heroes battled by break-dancing
and you hated ballet as a child.
To all the General Theories Of Color
the Sergeants of Anatomy, Sentence Structure and Form
The oral tradition was here long before you existed
and all colors mixed just fine before you were born.
To universities and well intentioned professors
and their masters; Shakespeare and Michelangelo,
Picasso and Dickens
you may find newer, better masters
hiding in corporations,
raising children and eating in soup kitchens.
If you never saw the statue of David
or inspected the hieroglyphs inside the pyramids
gazed at a Matisse or a Rembrandt
a flower or a plant
whatever you create is STILL brilliant and significant
even if someone says that what you just did you can't.
I insist that YOU set your own standard
your own opinion is valid and good
create what you consider outstanding
not what you think that you should.
Study those considered masters
and those masters ignored because they are
marginalized and oppressed.
Follow your highest muse at all times
and put your self-hatred to rest
- but do not for a moment put down your weapons;
your poems, your paints,
your spirit released
through your body in dance -
the fight for your unfettered self-expression
must be strategic,
your art too sacred to chance.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Bishop of Sorrow and Pink

The Bishop of Sorrow
and Pink
his blood a mix of brown
and whte rum,
opium and delirium
his courtesans call him
stubborn when he
threatens to but does
not shoot himself with his
gun. A former soldier
infinite clown
man statue with soul
mummified in skin and
bone. Enslaved Saint
situated on Sad Street
clutching pink, his carnival
color, childhood fable, his
sweet story
sung in sermon.

We Stay Away From Tony

In The Other Neighborhood

If you wander into the other neighborhood
And you're asked to stay,
You mustn't leave
Get to know your neighbors;
They're not dead;
they just don't breathe.


by Tiffany Osedra Miller

I Need Love

Josephine