Comments for Emily CK Hoisington

Comment on Parking Lot Snow Mountain by Larry Kaasa

Larry Kaasa — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:52:17 +0000

Awesome Image! I love how the Red coat pops on the simple 2 color variation. I’m interested in buying one – please contact!

Comment on Parking Lot Snow Mountain by Debbie Blue

Debbie Blue — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:33:02 +0000

I love this, Emily.

Comment on Anniversary print by Steve Thorngate

Steve Thorngate — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:26:53 +0000

Wow, ten years. Congratulations!

Comment on Cherry twig test prints by Marie L.

Marie L. — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:07:18 +0000

Very cool, Emily!

Comment on Woodblock business cards! by Steve Thorngate

Steve Thorngate — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:51:47 +0000

Love these!

Comment on Images from Advanced Japanese Woodblock at MCBA by Barb Auer

Barb Auer — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:48:16 +0000

Wow! That is wonderful!! The first couple (Maple Leaf and Oak Leaf) are mine although my last name is now Gibson it was originally Auer. It was fun to do, and now I am working on a Pine Needle and Cone one on my own.

Comment on Installing at Living Green Expo by Teri Power

Teri Power — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:53:35 +0000

Emily,
it was nice meeting you yesterday. i really enjoyed seeing your work first hand. i am very interested in working with natural processes and materials. i would love to keep in touch with you about possible collaborations, shows etc. i have some work in the EcoByWays show in Stl Joseph coming up. They are older pieces however and i want to move on to some new work and i see you are having the same concerns…

Best,

Comment on Back to making work, back to blog by Steve Thorngate

Steve Thorngate — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:32:53 +0000

Glad you’re back. I enjoy seeing your work here.

Comment on Loving my enemies, including animal pests by Jen

Jen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:36:52 +0000

Hey emily!
I too have very little knowledge of whether or not this rabbit eating a tree is normal. Of course I asked Chris about tree bark and regeneration. He said that say for instance, in an oak during a certain season if the bark were ripped off it would expose the tree to beetles and infection (oak wilt) and ultimately death whereas in another season it would not. And with birch, the pulled off bark can cause the tree to leak sap and possibly die. We all know that there are plenty of trees that have been attacked by elk sharpening their horns and have gone on to live many more generations. So the question is, what happens to the apple tree. Also what about the metaphor of the apple being from the tree of knowledge?
In terms of pests and loving thy enemies, what comes to my mind is definitely weeds from the garden that are actually so good for us nutritionally such as purselane, nettles, dandelions, lamb’s quarters or shepherd’s purse. But of course they can take over a garden. But there must be a differentiation between just plain violence which I experienced while gardening on our patio in Minneapolis. It was the attack of the squirrels for no apparent purpose. They just seemed to be bored and wanted to find ways up and under our chicken wire cage to get to those tomatoes and just bit them off the vine without eating them. This happened to our garden this year as well.
I think it’s a whole lot easier to love the cycle of life and regeneration than just simple violence. But I think we are suppose to be able to love that kind of enemy as well. I think you have to come to terms with what this kind of loving is about. And determine what is more interesting. I definitely think that just pest portraits would be interesting but maybe miss the whole struggle you are exploring. I think this struggle is worth dialoguing with. Maybe you need to not be as literal. Maybe there should be a series of the struggle… a close up of the rabbit, then the weeping tree behind in great focus while the rabbit is large and in charge in the foreground. What about layering the print to represent time and show decomposition like you have done in the past. The rabbit could be eating the tree high in the picture while below him, under layers of dirt you show strong roots and decomposing rabbit turds?
I love the ideas you’re exploring. Let me know if there is any other thoughts you have to throw back at me.

Comment on Loving my enemies, including animal pests by Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:28:24 +0000

Hi Em, I’ve been reading your blog since you made it and enjoying the pictures. I also find it useful to watch you force yourself to make work while I am trying to force myself to make work too.

Your rabbit print makes me think of a few things.

1) Gandhi received a letter once from a farmer who was having his crops ravaged by some kind of animal. The farmer said that he wanted to kill the animals but didn’t because he thought it was wrong, but he was going broke and would likely starve without a successful crop. So he asked Gandhi what to do. Gandhi said that it is impossible to avoid all violence and that in this case he recommended killing the animals to save the crops. A Jain monk heard about Gandhi’s reply. He wrote to Gandhi and said that as a monk he was now honor bound to kill Gandhi to save the animals. The monk didn’t kill him, but he was really really mad.

2) I remember being a little kid visiting my grandma’s house and having a picnic in the back yard. There was a bee flying around and I was afraid it would sting me. One of my uncles trapped the bee in a glass jar and put it on the table like a centerpiece. I watched the bee walk around on the inside of the glass. When we were done eating my uncle let the bee go, but he warned me that now the bee was angry and would be more likely to sing us now than before it got trapped.

2.5) I thought of this one last but thought it should go here but I didn’t want to renumber all the rest so this one is a 2.5. Most examples of cannibalism don’t have anything to do with food. Instead it is a matter of safety. Cannibals don’t just eat anyone, they eat the dead body of their enemy. The worry is that after killing their enemy their enemy’s spirit will haunt them and try to get revenge. They’ve killed the force of life and unleashed it. The only way to protect yourself in such a situation is to eat your enemies body and absorb their spirit into your own.

3) We think of pests and weeds as being out of place. It isn’t that you don’t love the rabbit, you just don’t want it to eat your tree. But it needs to eat something. Levinas says that the ‘there’ of ‘being-there’ is already an ethical question. By simply existing we take up space and take it away from other people/animals/plants/things. By what right do we take up this space?

4) You should take the rabbit to court. Collect the tree as evidence and have a third party decide who had a greater right to the tree.

5) I encountered a lot of these issues with my rabbit and snake piece. The snake needs to kill another animal to live. Saving the rabbit kills the snake.

6) Meg and I are making some cold frames for our small front yard. We’ve been warned that in our neighborhood the passerbys might help themselves. I kind of like that. We’ve also been warned that some passerbys might wreak the garden just out of ill will.

7) It is funny that you are casting the animals and people in these roles when people are destroying so many habitats. Maybe you could make a revenge piece.

8) Rabbit poop is really great fertilizer. I like all the rabbit poop in your drawings. If you want some real rabbit poop I could mail you some. Rabbit pee inks and poop inks, or maybe poop paper.

9) Do you know about the artist who started off with a little bug and kept the bug as a pet and then after a set period of time fed the bug to one of its natural predators and then kept that predator as a pet for the same set period of time and then fed that pet to its natural predator and repeated the process until finally she ate the last animal herself?

10) Why did the rabbit eat the tree to begin with? Is that normal rabbit behavior? It sounds more like beaver behavior.