#the100dayprojectop

⠀ 43/100⠀ ⠀ 1: It’s not ok to be squeamish about this, unless what bothers you is hundreds of dollars in lost cute undies. If you are gonna be all “Ooh, gross, period blood” I’m gonna be all “don’t be such a fifth grade boy.” FFS you are the result of a missed period. Evolve with us, please.⠀ ⠀ 2: Even the most prepared among us end up with period surprises. I am not the most prepared among us. I could fill a book with disaster stories.⠀ ⠀ 3: An ex once said “you’ve been doing this for over a decade, you think you’d be used to it.” That’s what people who have never bled through a super plus in 20 minutes say. There is no getting used to waking up covered in blood.⠀ ⠀ 4: Sure, I could buy black underwear, but that’s not nearly as fun as rainbow panties, or ones with little divers all over them.⠀ ⠀ #period #thisiswhywecanthavenicethings #undies #underpants #periods #periodssuck #the100dayproject #the100dayproject2018 #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #significantobjects #stuff #tradingcard #tradingcards #affinitydesigner #virtualcabinetofcuriosities #art #autobiography #illustration

103/100⠀ ⠀ My friend Bella has only ever used one perfume, it’s her signature scent. Not me. I can trace the evolutionary epochs of my life by the fragrance that escorted me through each one. Middle-school-me felt a bit too edgy (in the nerdiest spelling-bee-champ-straight-A-student way possible) for the OG Love’s Baby Soft, so I went with rain scent. This is not my last rain perfume. There was also a phase in my twenties marked by both grass and dirt perfume. Looking back, I can see I needed a little grounding—and had also been at sea for a while.⠀ ⠀ I’m currently on my second bottle of Flowerbomb—which is usually the death knell for any scent for me. Three squirts into my second bottle of Mark Jacobs and I was over it, just like with Issey Miyake. An earlier era, I woke up one day and couldn’t bear the overpowering nose of my beloved Angel. Now I can smell it three aisles away in a grocery store and always wonder why someone is wearing such an overpowering nighttime scent during the day.⠀ ⠀ Just for shits and grins, recently I gave myself a few squirts of Benneton Colors, what I smelled like in high school (when I didn’t carry the characteristic waft of McDonald’s French fries after work.) I expected a lighthearted fun experience. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It made my brain hurt, I had to drive home and jump in the shower. I still think fondly of it, but I now know there is no going back.⠀ ⠀ #the100dayproject #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #stuff #virtualcabinetofcuriosities #art #autobiography #illustration #perfume #smellgood

100/100⠀ ⠀ As part of my MFA studio work, I experimented with embroidery and food. I stitched into beef jerky, toast, saltines, lemons, melons, and even McDonald’s cheeseburgers. I sewed vintage purple lace around one burger bun, and beads atop another. I displayed them in my studio for a show, then promptly forgot about them. After the weekend they were still sitting on my studio bench, fine, a bit dry, but not even vaguely gross. I threw them into a box, and again forgot about them. Two months later, drier but still not vaguely gross, I invited them to hang out in my kitchen cupboard while hubby and I worked on a boat we took to Thailand from Florida. Almost one year later I returned home and walked through the front door straight to see how they were doing. They were gone. All four people who had access to my house during that time claim they did not touch them. ⠀ I wasn’t done with the cheeseburgers—I wanted to see what would happen. Back in school to finish up my MFA, I revisited my McDonald’s cheeseburger. This time I commemorated the purchase date by gluing rhinestones onto the bun: 7-29-8. Three days later I gave the same treatment to a Twinkie. 8-1-8. I nicknamed them Patty and Pammy.⠀ So, it’s been 10 years. They’ve never seen the inside of a fridge, nor have they seen anything that looks like mildew, rot, mold, or decay. I’ve had ants and mice, and any other crawling thing the South can offer. The mice prefer my dirty underpants. Nothing in the natural world recognizes this as food.⠀ I probably shouldn’t have been so cavalier about them. While they’ve mostly lived in my wine rack, they've a few chunks missing from being toted around in my bag. The original wrapper feels soft and fabric-y. They mostly look old and desiccated.⠀ This food is not actually food.⠀ With the help of my friend @perblkbird at Location Gallery in Savannah we’ve created a group art show called “Fast Food?” to celebrate the 10th birthday. The show opens tomorrow, Friday night July 13. Patty and Pammy will be there. It’s open to the public. ⠀ ⠀ #mcdonalds #cheeseburger #the100dayproject #the100dayproject2018 #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #fastfood? (at Location Gallery)

99/100⠀ One day after I’d watched an octogenarian friend transported into a reverie of pure bliss sorting through some of her own jewelry, and hours after chatting with my one year old niece about which pieces of my jewelry she’d eventually inherit from childless me, I met Ruth Puff. ⠀ This is what I know about Ruth Puff: She never married, had no children. Her middle name was Starr, her mother’s maiden name. She liked flowers. She volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. When she died at 95, her obituary said nothing about her roommate of 45+ years. She never pierced her ears. She had two nephews who inherited her estate, but weren’t interested in her costume jewelry. Ruth Puff was the kind of woman who would hire the kind of probate attorney that when instructed to get rid of her jewelry, he couldn’t bring himself to toss it out. ⠀ It had been sitting in the same corner of a law firm in Hartford, CT for 4 years, lonely, bored to tears. The probate attorney had been instructed to just toss it or something. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know what to do with it, but he knew there was joy in it still. I could’ve taken all of it, maybe I should have. But I picked out the flower pieces, mostly brooches and earrings, to use for some sort of art, a portrait, maybe. I’m not sure yet. I tried wearing a locket, inside was a picture of a stern looking woman (Ruth’s mother Grace?). At the end of the loud and fun night, while I was getting ready for bed, the clasp got stuck. I pushed and pulled the tiny little knob. The clasp finally gave. The heavy locket flew off the chain. With precise alacrity it ¬navigated itself through a crack in the floor at the top of my stairs. Gone forever. Back into the dark and quiet.⠀ Until I can decide what to do with my collection of Ruth Puff’s jewelry, I treasure it. My friend Libby came over and we cleaned and polished everything. For hours we talked and played, arranging them in different shapes, imagining Ruthie’s stories. Occasionally I wear a brooch or a necklace. I call it “taking Ruthie out.” I pour her a drink. She seems to like Sauvignon Blanc, which is good, I’m allergic to red wine. ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ #the100dayproject #the100dayprojectOP #jewelry

98/100⠀ ⠀ My birth certificate is a hot mess; my middle name is XXXX’d out. My parents argued about it. My dad wanted it to be Jean, and spoke first and loudest in the registry office so that’s what they wrote. Two seconds later he walked across the hall to chat with one of his buddies and my mom convinced the woman typing the form to change it to Jane. ⠀ But I didn’t agree with either of them, especially with their choice of my first name, Cynthia. They called me Cindy. I can’t explain it, but that word has always felt like nails on a chalkboard, except the chalkboard is my skin. It’s not their fault, I just never felt like a Cindy. At 13, I adored @CyndiLauper (that hasn't changed) and wanted to switch my spelling to be like hers. My parents forbade it. Through my teens, I tried on Cynthia, but that wasn’t me. I tried CJ. I tried a lot of stuff on. None of it fit until I found Rubi, and it felt like exactly who I was. ⠀ I’ve been Rubi almost twice as long as I was Cindy. My family were the hardest converts, it took my dad almost 10 years to call me Rubi. Most of my post-high school/college friends have no idea about my membership in the Secret Society of Cindys. I don’t ever talk about it; there isn’t much to say. Recently, a made a new friend named Cindy. I opened our friendship bluntly asking her how she felt about her name. She didn’t miss a beat telling me she hated it, and recently came out as Cate.⠀ When I took hubby’s last name, a friend came down hard on me. “I never thought you, of all people,” she poked, “would be so old fashioned and patriarchal.” I explained that I was making a choice between my father’s last name and my husband’s, and mostly I liked the way Rubi McGrory sounds. ⠀ The weirdest thing about changing my name is having completely different initials.⠀ ⠀ ⠀ #saymyname #secretsocietyofcindys #truecolors #cyndilauper #the100dayproject #the100dayproject2018 #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #significantobjects #stuff #tradingcard #tradingcards #affinitydesigner #virtualcabinetofcuriosities #art #autobiography #illustration

97/100⠀ ⠀ My nonnie, Battista Ricci, was born 9 months and 2 days after her parents disembarked from "La Lorraine" on Ellis Island. When her parents Alfredo and Ermenia fled their village in the Marche region of Italy they weren’t married, but by the time they boarded their ship in LeHavre, France they were. There’s a lot we’ll never know. They worked hard to barely make their way in this new country. Battista felt the shame of being a poor immigrant. She hated how her name marked her as different—why couldn’t she be a Helen or an Ethel. She hated even more their poverty. Her family lived on polenta, a filling, but inexpensive meal of boiled cornmeal. Every night at dinner, the polenta board was set out on the table, then hot polenta poured on it. If they could, that was topped with a stew of whatever cheap meat the family could afford and vegetables they could grow. Otherwise it was plain. What Battista didn’t understand is that her friends were probably as poor as she was, but that didn’t stop her from hiding the polenta board any time she had a friend over to play. The polenta board was her symbol of poverty and shame.⠀ As a young woman, she met a man, a butcher. They fell in love and married. His name was Michael Battista, she went through the next 60+ years of her life as Battista Battista, still working hard but never wanted for food again. ⠀ I learned the story of her polenta board shame when I made truffle polenta for my mother, Battista’s daughter. The irony of my use of one ingredient so expensive it could've bought a year’s worth of food for them was not lost on me. I hadn’t truly understood their immigrant experience; this was a first step for me. ⠀ ⠀ #nationofimmigrants #immigrants #immigration #polenta #nonni #the100dayproject #the100dayproject2018 #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #significantobjects #stuff #tradingcard #tradingcards #affinitydesigner #virtualcabinetofcuriosities #art #autobiography #illustration

93/100⠀ ⠀ I walked to work one day overwhelmed by the depth of the blue sky unmarred by a single cloud. My job brought me to Oyster Bay, Long Island, just outside of New York City. I lived about a 25 minute walk to the boat. My commute that morning was longer because I kept stopping, looking up and confirming that it was, in fact, the most beautiful day I had ever seen. I sang. I skipped. The color of the sky filled me with joy. I honestly had no recollection of such an intense blue, such a perfect temperature, such a clear sky. This color and clarity, I decided, is what poets and songwriters mean when they talk about the perfection of September.⠀ Whenever I see a sky like this now, which isn’t very often, I think back to that morning, to that joy and what followed. It was 8:45 a.m. on September 11, 2001.⠀ ⠀ [this is an actual photograph of the sky, taken in Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 19, 2108]⠀ #the100dayproject #the100dayprojectOP #the100dayproject2018 #blue

90/100⠀ ⠀ “We lived in a little house that had gaps in the floorboards full of pearls from wedding dresses.”⠀ ⠀ Hubby wrote that, it is beautiful, eloquent and succinct. But I’ll embellish the details. It wasn’t just pearls, there were crystals, beads and sequins crammed between the planks of the floor. The gaps in the floor were so big I could tell if I left the light on in the basement and also, if I vacuumed, I felt like we lost a bit of insulation. ⠀ But back to the beads. The previous owner created wedding veils and embellished wedding dresses. There are so many layers of memories there, not just my memories of the sparkle and shine coming from the old wooden floor, but the memory of the maker, creating every single stitch and sewing every bead, hundreds of thousands of them. Every thought and conversation that occurred in the making process, imprinted into the stitch. And then the memory of the wearer, on her wedding day, festooned in shimmering, sparkling beads and pearls. ⠀ ⠀ The owner before that made piano keys in the same house.⠀ ⠀ #newportrhodeisland #makers #pearls #sequins #rhinestones #weddingveil #weddingdress #oldhouses #woodfloors #memories #the100dayproject #the100dayproject2018 #the100dayprojectOP #objectpermanence #significantobjects #stuff #tradingcard #tradingcards #affinitydesigner #virtualcabinetofcuriosities #art #autobiography #illustration