Journey…

Creole Junkyard Ramble

my road trip to New Orleans March 2012

I traded in one dirty city for a week in another dirty city, city girl seeks out the dirt its where the substance thrives – first time in New Orleans I book into the Frenchman dump my bags and go out to walk the borderline area to see what is beyond I find a scrap yard horse in a vain attempt to reach the sky, across the street is Dr Bob art yard, more barbed wire and life-sized manikin of a clown not creepy at all I keep walking as the sun slips into late afternoon attire iridescent pink and gold threads the scene to my skin as i seep in the streets pass foreign homes that could house vampires with delicate flame of lanterns out to brave the night oh creole rumble strips music always music music music blowing and swinging like a spirit i like this new spirit this new side smoking by the Mississippi  river with strangers we smile have a nice life as we leave and there is no sorrow but exhilaration who would know the joy of shrimp and crawfish mouth organisms feet find jazz funerals and clouds for my head, i left you before i got to see your underbelly NOLA bye

Lazaro Amaral Art & ChloBirdPoetry prepare for their next venture 

 The Arts Center South Florida, has allocated a window space for well-known artist Lazaro Amaral and his poetic apprentice, Chloe Firetto-Toomey aka Chlobirdpoetry. The Lincoln road window show debuts in November 2012 and they intend to let you see the birthing of their ideas and document the entire process.

 The Concept:

  ‘The Gift of the Present Moment”

 Artist/Poet Vision of Show…

The Arts Center display area has 7 windows. Each window will display a posters that reads seven ‘poetic insights’ on a backdrop of stenciled images.  We came up with this idea/concept while drinking coffee and smoking on Lazaro’s balcony overlooking the palm trees of Miami Beach.

Over the week that followed I came up with three samples of writing for Lazaro to choose one that will be the premise of our show. Below is a page I wrote including the seven insights.

 The Poet sought out the Artist and asked, will you teach me how to print? And so he did, and they collaborated to present to you, The Gift of the Moment, 7 posters via 7 windows. Their message is familiar, the teachings unique to experience, and universal to all.

1. You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision

2. Life is a classroom, each pupil must learn a lesson

3. All we have is NOW

4. Leaves are falling prayer flags

5. Love your craft

6. Craft the art of being

7. Handmade Art, heart-heard words, for your eyes.

Posters will be for sale after the show, to be sold in pairs, singular or, as a set. The display will take place September 26^th to November 4^th 2012 at The Arts Center South Florida, 924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach.

 How to produce our vision?

 Each of the seven phrases must be printed out and made into stencils. We have decided to use the classic stencil font for the text as it’s bold, easy to read, cut out and spray paint. I would have like to consider the typewriter font as it has a classic feel to it but once we print it the words might not be as eligible as when the stencil font is used.

 Each phrase is going to need two panels or 7 by 4 feet long pieces of paper.

Panel 1 is going to be the backdrop for the words.

Panel 2 is going to be made into the word stencil.

Panel 1 will be spray painted white.

Panel 2 will be used to stencil the words onto panel 1.  We will do this in black to give a shadow effect to the words.

We will begin by printing out one phrase at a time onto a 4 by 4 inch space. Then, we will place it under a projector so that the words are magnified onto the 7 by 3 feet paper. Then, we trace with a pencil the outline of the words. Then, we shallack it to protect the paper, and with care, use an exacto knife to cut out the words and make stencil. We will keep the loose letter cut outs to possibly use again on the second backdrop panel.

We will then repeat this process until we have all the words in stencil.

How it all began?

A poet and a painter meet to create a body of work through different mediums via a shared view or concept. Artwork is bound to color, words to paper. Lets dive into both… a brief history 1st…

When ChloBirdPoetry walked into Lazaro Amaral’s print room at the South Florida Arts Center, it was as though the horizon spelled the limitless and she wanted to explore it. Chloe was eager to learn, to print her words, Lazaro was eager to teach his skills and did so with passion. Often Chloe in her willingness to learn would make mistakes in haste, turning Lazaro’s face red in frustration before breaking to a smile. Chloe knew this was a beginning, and she told Lazaro, ‘you’re going to know me for a long time’ he rolled his eyes to the heavens.

Three years later, Chloe helps Lazaro in production for 2 shows, ‘Mafia Art’ and ‘Art Bitch’ in Miami’s Design District. She assists Lazaro wherever she can, helping to write and edit his website and blog, and in turn, Lazaro teaches Chloe the art of Printmaking and Silkscreen.

Stay tuned to see how Lazaro and Chloe develop their concept “The Gift of the Moment.

They say an entire life can be summarized by a handful of fateful days… September 2011

I retell three events that roll into one as I look back upon the road travelled.

In 2008 I was living in London with my boyfriend of five years. I would run around the city, my boy at my side, bar tending at museums, galleries, festivals, mixing drinks for fashion shows and TV wrap parties. I traveled through London’s veins, soaking up the city and spray painting my poetry on vacant walls and dustbins dreaming of bringing poetry alive, having it thrive as I did in the city.

My beloved and I travelled to Miami to visit my father.  He drove us through the congested streets steaming in the tropical climate. We arrived at an extravagant condominium I was not familiar with. My father hands me a key to the half a million-dollar condo.  My first thought, my love, what will become of us? How can I leave this city with the weight of the key in my hand? Another key to a red convertible Mercedes-Benz and a check for $10,000, “here’s your graduation gift” he declares.

We walk the 90-foot balcony, I count my steps to measure its immensity and look out the windows into the watery sunshine of the city as though looking at it with a new pair of eyes.

I watched my love disappear up the escalators of Miami International Airport at 2pm on Monday 24^th June. I walked back to my little red Benz and broke my heart, as I had never felt it break before. Blinded by tears and feeling loneliness that seemed to echo and echo. I drove back to my palace on the 11^th floor and I haunted it, feeling like a ghost. Nothing would ever be the same. The dominos fell and fell and there seemed no end to the falling for I didn’t want to be ok.

The days arrived without permission. I found a job as a cocktail waitress, working at a club in Coconut Grove. I was making money but not enough to pay the condo fees. I couldn’t forgive myself for leaving my ex the way I did, unresolved, still filled with love for him and no way to further it. I appeared ‘rich’ but had nothing. I wanted to punish my father for my pain.

I wandered through Miami trying to make a buck, looking for someone to trust, trying to make friends and appear together when all I could write about was how I had lost my feet. The truth was I cursed myself for allowing material assets to replace the love that once lived in my heart. My soul was lost and I knew it was a journey. I put my foot down in the wrong direction without my lights on.

I dated a millionaire for six months within weeks my new reality was pink champagne and free-flowing Peruvian cocaine, I was a part of ‘Miami’s finest’, high-end strip clubs and guest list, money had no limit neither did we?

I stood before him pulling clumps of my hair out, body shaking while he hurled rounds of abuse, verbal bashing and I succumbed to the pathetic, weak shadow of a person where I could barely forage a memory of my former self. Try as I did I couldn’t leave him.  Until my mother came to visit from England, “you’re not my daughter, I want to go home” were her words that changed my life forever.

I wondered then, why I didn’t come home? I had no answer only an instinct that I must follow the path to the end of the line.

Several months past before another fateful day came to shape my being.

Mike was a poet and a magician. I left my house of sorrow and ran into his illusion. Driving up the East coast of America with nowhere to live we stopped in Asheville, North Carolina.

While he was at work one day I looked through his emails due to a mounting sense of urgency that came from his increasingly erratic behavior. I found he’d been married to a prostitute with five children six months earlier. I knew he had been in the US Marines but had no idea I was living with a self-confessed paranoid schizophrenic who had lied about being adopted.  He only owned up to this after I had moved away with him.  He became manipulative, controlling and violent.  I packed as much as I could carry and left him in the mountains.  I returned to Miami with bruises, penniless and homeless as my father had gutted my condo of all my belongings and rented it out.

I now know that you must live life to fulfill your own dreams. To trust instincts, rest in reason and go ahead in passion, to learn from mistakes and to value them as they act as life’s mirror so you may see yourself clearly. It’s a long life you may as well make friends with yourself.

I realize that the capacity of sorrow can also be a capacity of happiness that decisions made map the journey as you travel. To love free at all cost.

9th June 2010…

Almost two years ago to the day it all changed forever. This the history of the experience named Chloe Firetto-Toomey.

London mixology, glittering black streets, soles in steps with gold sequined shoes and the City calling. The call of dual citizenship, duality called across the pond to Miami. To explore my passport to my father’s land. To experience. I risked all my little life had gathered, threw it up and watched it spark out like fireflies getting lost in the night. I guess that’s what it’s all about. Wondering or stagnant or running still all in the name of experience. I made my decision to do now and think later. This is my habit. A recurring pattern in the fabric of life, i pull my own threads and pluck the frayed. I left London and once you leave it’s hard to go back, this by no means makes moving forward clear either. I suppose we are all tugging on those threads, ropes to pull us through to the next breath.

Lets move to the now; sat in a red Honda civic at 12:48am, Asheville, NC. I moved to the mountains rebelling from my father on a quest to make it to New York City. I thought the country air would lend me breathing space, clarity of mind. Crystalline blood should follow the indescribable force for that is a soul freedom.

The move from London to Miami to Asheville has been a much shock to the system. The culture is different, not Latino of Miami, not diverse as London. The nest in the mountains is a strange Quiet. No city choirs, sirens or screams with their colour explosions resonating through the languid river roads. I went from Poetry Cafes and Cocktails to working as a banquet server in an old creepy hotel, apparently haunted. Definitely hair-raising and in a comedic light barely resembling a ‘Faulty Towers’ feel meets ‘The Shinning’. The night has a devouring blackness to it unlike the city, out here the stars offer no constellation. In the city you cannot see them but who wants to anyways? You’re in the city. The city forms the constellations and threads dreams to fabric.

If I am creating my reality, life is a classroom, I am my own God. I am creating the lessons, the problems and the solutions. Hours arrive by the second, my compass cares not. I’m still sitting here, waiting for the coins to lead me to the lights and then what? what? What happens when you are out there? With only desire lines, eyeballs on the horizon with only a ghost of a destination?

I went to see Sex and the City 2 last night. The late night showed to me and one other female. It was the first time i’d been to the cinema on my own. I laughed, I cried and loved it. It made me miss my friends and want to buy a new outfit. It made me remember me when I flowed through the city’s veins, feeling myself pump lost and precise through the underground with headphones in my ears on the way to meet the girls. I used to think that you had to lose yourself to truly find yourself. This thought lingers, the egg timer has yet to decide and maybe it never will and maybe that is my defining factor, quality and character flaw.

Do other people consciously make decisions? or do the decisions make them? my decision has been to bolt rather have it be decided for me.

Feb 2012- Thank you for life journeys

I bolted from Asheville NC over a year ago. I left Mr Somebody who turned out Mr Nobody. I took with me the knowledge of the mountains. Thank you to my father for driving a day to come and bring me home. Thank you to my mother whom I doubted, but who knew me better than I knew myself at the time. As for Mr.Nobody, thank you teaching me a valuable lesson. I pray to know myself better. I pray to trust in my instincts always.

If I should fall, pray it be forward.

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