Revolutionary Picture Book - paintings, poetry, prose and vignettes by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Don't Wanna Hear Another Song With The Word Mama In It

2011-02-20T12:18:00.002-05:00

Acrylic paint and gesso on a canvas sheet pasted to latex paper 6" x 9"

by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2011
all rights reserved.

At The End OF The 8' O Clock Race

2011-02-16T09:08:00.004-05:00

"At The End Of The 8 O'Clock Race" everyone will begin to transform any internal state that makes them suffer.

"At The End Of The 8'O Clock Race"
(acrylic paint on gesso primed sketch paper - approximately 1o" x 6.75")
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

visit my website:
http://www.tiffanyosedramiller.com/

Catfish Bone

2010-12-06T20:31:00.003-05:00

Acrylic paint, india ink and gesso on 8 1/8" x 8 1/8" wood

"Catfish Bone"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

The Festival of Subterranean Delight

2010-11-25T12:02:00.002-05:00

(6" x 9" cotton canvas sheet glued to latex paper. Acrylic paint, india ink and gesso)

"The Festival of Subterranean Delight"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

The Aboriginal University of Uncivilized Storytelling

2010-11-07T11:15:00.005-05:00

(approx. 8" x 7 " - acrylic paint, india ink and gesso on cotton rag paper glued to a 3/16" thick wood panel)

I've been thinking about stories lately and the ways we are so used to reading them and relating them to other people. We've developed conventions about storytelling but I believe some of the best stories come to us in the language of dreams where the beginning is at the center and the end is in the middle of the beginning...

"The Aboriginal University of Uncivilized Storytelling"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

Gloria in the Sky with Imogene

2010-10-25T02:38:00.004-04:00

Acrylic paint on cotton rag paper glued to wood. approx. 8 1/8" x 8 1/8"

"Gloria in the Sky with Imogene"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

The Servants of Salome

2010-10-23T11:25:00.002-04:00

I painted "The Servants of Salome" with acrylic paint, india ink and gesso onto a cotton canvas sheet glued to a piece of (approximately 6" x 6") watercolor paper. This painting features rich copper colors with hints of gold.

The Substitute Daughters of Wilhemina

2010-10-01T23:51:00.009-04:00

SOLD

(Acrylic Paint and gesso on a 6" x 9" unstretched acrylic canvas sheet glued to latex paper)

This painting explores how grief and desire torment us with their doppelgangers, substitutes and mirages for something or someone no longer apparently there.

"The Substitute Daughters of Wilhemina"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rigths reserved.

Oh, When You Leave This Earth

2010-09-15T05:51:00.003-04:00

Acrylic paint, india ink and gesso on approximately 6" x 9" unstretched cotton canvas attached to board.

The afterlife I’ve learned about and wondered about as a young black girl growing up in the church is sometimes overshadowed by the afterlife I believe I visit in my dreams. A place populated with familiar yet unfamiliar landscapes, departed ancestors and strangely shaped beings. Where do reality, history, heritage, belief, truth and imagination converge?

"Oh, When You Leave This Earth"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

The Rebirth of Sunday

2010-09-09T09:05:00.003-04:00

Acrylic paint and india ink on 6" x 9" latex paper

The Show (Creative Process)

2010-08-28T08:03:00.009-04:00

(Acrylic paint, india ink and gesso on 6" x 9" latex paper)

This painting combines my 1980’s childhood and teenage memories of a violent, gritty, gaudy and decadent Times Square in New York with my “grown-up” reflections on the so-called underworld of sex, outcasts, masquerade, stereotypes and exploitation.

Process:

I started this painting with no set intention and and completed a draft of it which you can see below. I left it in this state for awhile thinking I had finished it, though I felt unsatisfied. I contemplated this painting for a few days and wrote about it until, to my surprise, the New York Times Square imagery opened up and I began to weave it into the overall work. As with most of my work, I created this painting with acrylic paint and india ink.

On writing about a painting I've created:

A lot of the writing I do for a painting, in order to understand it more deeply, comes in the form of stream of consciousness and poetry. This approach works very well for me because much of my work comes out of dreams and visions I've had or are currently experiencing. A lot of what I write seems very disconnected from what I've actually created but after ahwile it begins to come together and feel more meaningful to me. It is not always easy to create something from an unconscious place and then try to make sense of it. I've wrestled with this for awhile and decided that it's best to experience what I've created, enter into it and then try to integrate it into a framework that eventually I can accept.

On writing about this particular painting, "The Show"

There is a particular kind of corrupt innocence with which I look at the world which makes paintings like this one fairly cathartic to me. I am facinated by masks, puppets and puppeteers and look back on those waning days of the "real" Times Square with a disturbing nostalgia for the overwhelming presence of peep shows, drug dealers, addicts, arcades, homeless people, filthy movie theaters and prostitutes. Who wasn't a puppet back then? Who's not a puppet right now? And why would anyone actually miss those days in New York and long for them again? What's so wonderful about prostitution, poverty, sex addiction and drug addiction? I guess that depends on who you ask. In truth, although this city took great strides to hide these "undesirables" they still exist - in us and among us. That's why so many people come from around the world to catch just one whiff of what Times Square was before Disney did to it what it did to Grimm's Fairy Tales. Well, for me those days in New York haven't gone away they've simply been driven deeper underground. Times Square was to many people what the internet is now. But to think that the Times Square of today as merely just a wonderful, safe and clean place for tourists with their children to visit and enjoy amuses me because the notion is merely another affectation and mask. [Whew! There goes my native New Yorker cynicism again. At least I'm smiling :) ]

Power of Attorney

2010-08-22T23:07:00.003-04:00

Gesso, acrylic inks and paints on 4.25" x 4.25" ceramic tile

The internal and external battle for freedom, power and control.

The Dissent of Sorena Sodby #1 - A Surrealable

2010-07-07T10:29:00.006-04:00

oil pastels, acrylic and india ink on 8.5 x 11 vellum paper

A Surrealable: Comic Surrealism (Bassa Bassa Arts Style)- Where stories are streetcars as much as they are baskets of overripe fruit.

Now just who, or what is Sorena Sodby?

Stay tuned for "The Dissent of Sorena Sodby #2"

"The Dissent of Sorena Sodby"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

More Surreal Comics...

Website

Promise

2010-05-24T00:01:00.003-04:00

Pencil, ink, acrylc paint and gesso on approximately 10" x 6 and 3/4" paper.

"Promise"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

I'mprettyamIpretty?

2010-05-21T21:14:00.003-04:00

pencil, ink, acrylic paint and gesso on approximately 10" by 6 and 3/4" paper.

"I'm pretty am I pretty?"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

Cabin in the Sky

2010-05-15T00:08:00.009-04:00

Lena Horne was laid to rest yesterday. I drew this while ruminating on her life and legacy.

"Cabin in the Sky"
pencil, ink and gesso on paper
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

Sugarhill and Gemini

2010-05-05T11:49:00.002-04:00

Forget 'Bonnie and Clyde,' but beware 'Sugarhill and Gemini' they'll take your dolls, then steal your dreams.

Acrylic ink, paint and gesso on 14" x 17" vellum paper

Recollection

2010-04-30T08:44:00.005-04:00

"Recollection" is my piece exploring what carnival culture means to me as a child of Caribbean immigrants to the U.S.

Acrylic paint and ink on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Check out my new Website

Bassagirl in Sao Paolo -"This Woman is Not Called Jasmine"

2010-04-13T13:48:00.007-04:00

Eric Marechal of the wonderful, Street Art Without Borders wheatpasted another one of my paintings on paper - this time in Sao Paolo, Brazil! More to come.

Check out some more of my work pasted by Eric, here:

At Last

2010-04-03T10:55:00.004-04:00

"At Last" is the companion piece to Finally.

Acrylic ink and paint on 6" x 9" Latex paper.

"At Last"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller
Copyright 2010
all rights reserved.

Finally

2010-04-01T08:59:00.005-04:00

I painted, "Finally" after an (aha!)moment!

acrylic ink, paint and pen on 6" x 9" latex paper.

Be the one to own this original. Click here for purchasing information.

The Armstrong Pageant

2010-03-26T18:54:00.005-04:00

Some of my surreal, comic strip style storytelling.

Acrylic ink and paint on 9"x 11" canvas paper.

The Underwater Astronaut - Book Cover Art

2010-03-11T19:37:00.004-05:00

This book was composed underwater and is to be read underwater. It features an Astronaut who lives and breathes underwater and has many kinds of adventures there.

Here's one found in his diary:

August 21, *********

"There, beyond the Sandwhale Shell Statue(try saying that three times) I discovered the most unusual planet floating amidst the coral. This planet - Spoon shaped and miniscule and full of vegetation, included many walking and flying forms of life, that I could see clearly with my naked eye. I've encountered many planets beneath sea level before but this one called to me like no other.

"Ernest," It said. "Ernest," it continued to speak, though I could see no mouth. Still, that voice drew me in. It was meant for me. I'd swear to it, though my name is not Ernest.

So, against my leader's prior warnings and instructions, and against my best judgment, I swallowed that Spoon Shaped Planet into what I call that Gargantuan, Shallow laboratory of the Self (my belly) to study it further. And though, I was spared indigestion, I wasn't spared anything else..."

Street Art Without Borders - "Noodle" and "The Princess Pays For Parliament" - Pasted in Paris!

2010-02-16T19:55:00.008-05:00

These two pieces are feautured on walls in Paris thanks to generous amounts of wheatpaste, courtesy of Eric Marechal who spearheads a wonderful international project called Street Art Without Borders. Since I showcase and sell my original art work to people around the world, Street Art Without Borders and its mission of promoting street art and artists internationally seemed a perfect fit. Over 100 artists located around the world are involved in this project. Check out Eric's site. More of my work featured around the world to come. Stay tuned.

The Arrivers

2010-02-08T22:27:00.005-05:00

The Arrivers arrive at a place called Beverly. You have to take the freeway there or go the other way. They chose the freeway but when they arrived they never felt more oppressed. They told the mayor-concierge that they wanted their money back but he had no money to give them, reminding them that the way they chose to come was for free. In fact, the Arrivers though penniless, dined well, but were forced to endure the overwhelming smoke of too many complimentary cigarettes and even had to force themselves to beg for everything they never truly wanted and certainly did not need.

"The Arrivers"
by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Colored pencil, oil pastels and ink on moleskine

Wild is the Wind

2010-02-04T10:35:00.001-05:00

paint,ink and pen on 8 and 1/2" x 11" lightweight vellum

The Drill

2010-02-01T09:41:00.006-05:00

Pen and ink on 8 and 1/2" by 11" board

Storybook Libation

2010-01-23T17:59:00.003-05:00

acrylic ink and paint on an approximately 6 and 3/4" x 6" linen canvas sheet.

I created this piece as an illustration for this vignette:

STORYBOOK LIBATION

Most nights and on some mornings, I wake up to find seven spiders dangling above me as I lay in my cold bed. I can never recall whether or not they emerged from one of the webs hidden deep in the neighborhoods and boroughs of those planets called Dust or if they rose like eight-legged saviors from beneath my dry, frigid skin. They didn't often look like spiders either. They more resembled carousel horses straddled and driven nowhere but in circles by what appeared to be eunuchs wearing nothing but soldier helmets.

The remnants of a spider carousel existed one summer in the basement of the basement of one of the country churches of my youth. I was sure no one else knew of its existence but me and those savior-soldiers who rode their horse-spiders during church services.

From my shelter behind a long abandoned pulpit, I watched those seven beings crawl down webs they'd woven, lead their horse-spiders in unison and then gather together and speak quietly amongst themselves once they reached the floor. They continued this way until one of them let out a long, high note and then they all joined in with a musical overture to precede their ride. To hear them sing in such a state!

As I watched them, the savior-soldiers appeared to me fully clothed in skin and uniform in one moment. In the next, I was accosted with the image of them in various stages of decay; their wounds, black holes or deep fissures impressed on their skeletons. And even in my youth, I understood while watching them, that this was their burial ground.

That summer, I marveled that I could hear the voice of the preacher from so deep within the earth's core where I was. I distinctly remember one Sunday morning as I watched the relentless ride of those soldiers, hearing the Father say: "Forget the five lives of starfish, the nine lives of cats, and the one sinful life you lead and recall, instead, the eight lives of spiders, the eight legs of horses, the high song of eunuchs and the sad spirits of soldiers."

by Tiffany Osedra Miller/aka Bassagirl
Copyright 2010

The News

2010-01-22T09:54:00.001-05:00

"The News"
(Mixed media on 8 and 1/2" x 11" lightweight vellum paper)
by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-13T09:39:00.005-05:00

There are many ways you can send aid to Haiti

Please click the link below:

The Earthquake in Haiti Relief Effort

Discipline and Vanity- book jacket art and a poem

2009-12-18T20:34:00.005-05:00

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

2009-11-21T00:49:00.007-05:00

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

2009-11-21T00:39:00.004-05:00

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

Bellicosa

2009-11-20T22:27:00.005-05:00

"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

2009-11-18T10:36:00.003-05:00

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

2009-10-31T05:20:00.003-04:00

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

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

The Skinny Model

2009-10-30T11:37:00.006-04:00

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

2009-10-27T23:27:00.005-04:00

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

2009-10-21T02:26:00.002-04:00

Ceremony

2009-10-19T17:27:00.008-04:00

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

Artistic Process: "The Winners," version 2

2009-10-18T04:28:00.004-04:00

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

2009-10-18T04:20:00.006-04:00

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

You Little Freak

2009-10-06T09:07:00.005-04:00

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

Seven

2009-10-04T10:56:00.008-04:00

"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?

2009-10-02T01:00:00.004-04:00

You Must Exit

2009-09-30T09:44:00.005-04:00

"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

2009-09-25T16:05:00.013-04:00

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

2009-09-22T02:29:00.002-04:00

Image by: Tiffany Osedra Miller

Trees

2009-09-16T09:02:00.002-04:00

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)

2009-09-04T10:25:00.006-04:00

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?

2009-08-25T01:28:00.004-04:00

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

Number 26 to Memphis

2009-08-22T10:57:00.007-04:00

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

2009-08-12T02:16:00.006-04:00

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

2009-08-09T22:01:00.007-04:00

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

2009-08-08T19:01:00.009-04:00

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

2009-08-07T00:18:00.003-04:00

Introducing, Judy Jook

2009-07-31T23:02:00.003-04:00

Formaldehyde Mind Wagon

2009-07-21T14:29:00.009-04:00

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

2009-07-18T23:47:00.005-04:00

Posing Peaches

2009-07-12T02:09:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-11T12:01:00.006-04:00

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.SOLD

Mam'zelle

2009-07-11T02:41:00.003-04:00

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

Cane

2009-07-10T23:01:00.007-04:00

A Serving of Cake

2009-07-09T11:45:00.003-04:00

The Inhuman House

2009-07-05T17:12:00.007-04:00

'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

2009-06-29T19:47:00.012-04:00

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

2009-06-21T17:54:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-21T01:17:00.001-04:00

Praise Him!

2009-06-20T18:56:00.004-04:00

The Ballad of the Boy

2009-06-18T20:36:00.006-04:00

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

2009-06-17T11:21:00.004-04:00

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Return

2009-06-13T01:00:00.004-04:00

Portrait

2009-06-12T14:11:00.004-04:00

All Artists Must Be Soldiers: A Manifesto For Revolt

2009-06-11T21:04:00.005-04:00

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

2009-06-11T08:39:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-10T10:23:00.001-04:00

In The Other Neighborhood

2009-06-05T16:34:00.000-04:00

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

2009-06-05T01:13:00.001-04:00

Josephine

2009-05-29T18:14:00.000-04:00

Moons of Lucy

2009-05-27T01:01:00.001-04:00

Moons of Lucy

Lucy used to share the sky with diamonds,
lifted by hallucinogens
that cast her in cubic zirconium light.
Lucy, carried on the backs of five white Beatles
singing yesterday as if we'd never catch up with today.
Beatles, black scarabs
That pulled her up further
after she was pulled
from the ground she was pulled from
pulled from her Mother's land
our Mother's land
and we became her faithless children.

So how is it, then, that Lucy used to worship here
millions of millennia ago
centuries ago,
no, decades ago
though she was seen here the day
before yesterday
okay, earlier today
before the sun crawled up the ladder
behind the horizon
and her moon sunk its face
into darkness that looked like water
much like one of those tortured ships -
but these I'll not speak of
I'll not speak of
because Lucy does not wish me to.

The walls of Santa Lucille, now
contain stains and mirrors
indentations made by needles.
Hymns written in fingerprints,
sung by dust.
When the floors of Santa Lucille became
lined with bags of heroine
on top of vials of cracks
the saints devolved into
proselytizers,
prostitutes and erections
drawn on the ceiling with the kind of ink
only Lucy can generate for us in our sleep.

The church began to crumble
when her asbestos bones became brittle
no longer boasting their robust remains
her aliases - illegal alien a/k/a angel-dust
but never ancestor.

Harold's House

2009-05-23T23:32:00.000-04:00

Harold's House

The house on
Harold Hedonism Hill
once held handsome Harold
whose history of hustling is hearsay.
But whose house
haunts the memory of
hookers like Harold's?
Here's what I know:
Though Harold's blueprints
smell of sandalwood, sex,
saccharine and
salmon sandwiches
they buried Harold with all
of his architects,
ancestors and answers.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

A One Second Fairy Tale

2009-05-18T23:17:00.001-04:00

A One Second Fairy Tale
For Grown Up Children

by
Tiffany Osedra Miller/Bassagirl

Pleading for the Desert (1961)

2009-05-15T06:05:00.001-04:00

Pleading for the Desert (1961)

With your sand-pills
plant pricks
and tonic winds
I long to crawl along
your filthy midnights
stare at myself
missing
in mirages and mirrors
chased by casinos
driven by cadillacs,
to have you
travel up your down sandsteps
onto fertile land that's mine.
I long for looking up at
stars from car hoods
realize wrong rituals
bathe my wishes off with water
imported from tenement
buckets and tubs.
Drag myself
along your dryways
ride all of your ripe cacti
'til I empty the flood.

Pleading for the Desert (1961)
from 'Portrait of a Mantrap'
Starring Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester
who likes to cause an entrance before she makes a disturbance - or appearance, rather.

The above words came right off of the liner notes included on Mathilda's 'Tiddy' Rockchester's 4th album, 'Revolution My Ass, Pour me some Rum.' She didn't write this plea as if it were a poem (I took that liberty) she wrote it this way, instead:

"Listen here, Desert-honey:
I long for your sand-pills, plant pricks, and tonic winds. I long to crawl along your filthy midnights, stare at myself missing in mirages and mirrors - chased by casinos, driven by cadillacs, to have you travel up your down sand-steps onto fertile land that's mine." She broke it off here, and included the above picture, whose author, (undoubtedly a beatnik-hippie or a freak of jazz) is unknown.

This album was produced and distributed posthumously by her former manager, Wellington Daniel Waters (aka Wellwater) who branded himself sole proprietor of her estate, after discovering the location of her unmarked grave on a map which provided a most disturbing backdrop (according to Wellwater) to the most vivid dream he had.

Her liner note continued after the picture, with the rest of her plea:
"I long for looking up at stars from car hoods, realize wrong rituals, bathe my wishes off with water, imported from tenement buckets and tubs, then drag myself along your dryways, ride all of your ripe cacti, 'til I empty the flood."

Wellwater swore the note was meant for him but still dedicated the album to Tiddy (as she liked to be called), writing, in his own hand:
'This album is dedicated to the memory of Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester, which does not necessarily mean that the lady is dead. '

After the album's release, Wellwater spent that winter waiting for one conjugal visitation from - at the very least - (according to him) her wicked, wicked soul. When the Spring of 1962 came and Wellwater was forced to realize that though he had aged, he could detect inside of him little growth, he hydrated himself with water, then whiskey and wrote down these lines to the beginning of an account in which he denigrated, then elevated, then denigrated, again, the myth of Mathilda:

'I have always loathed Mathilda - and not because she was ruthless or manipulative or that she sold to the public the image of herself as a prostitute and genius. I loathed Matilda simply because I created her - and though it is no comfort at all that she allowed me to ruin her with every act of my creation, I have been destroying myself ever since."

From 'Portrait of a Mantrap' excerpt #1 by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Mother's New Wings

2009-05-10T17:43:00.001-04:00

The last time I dreamt of my mother was a few days ago. She was dancing on a stage with three other women whom I didn't recognize. In the dream I remembered thinking I never knew she could move this way. The time before that I dreamt of her holding me, embracing me on an evening when I felt like I was the loneliest, unhappiest woman in the world. When I woke up from this dream I felt invigorated, hopeful, refreshed. I have since began embracing my new relationship with my mother. Though she is bodiless, I feel her energy. She wanders inside the spaces of my art and more than ever I love her - what she was and what she is now. Where in life I had closed doors on her in my heart and mind, those places are now fully open. I do not merely love the memory of her. I love the freedom inside of where she lives without the weight of what life and circumstances eventually did to her body. Her new presence inspires me to find the newfound freedom she has while I am in the prime of my life. The freedom we all seek to be our complete unfettered selves. It is a way I have found to honor the legacy of my ancestors.

I was a dreamer long before I claimed the identity of an artist. I was fortunate enough to be born into a family that encouraged me to achieve my brightest dreams. From the time that I was a small child I was taught by my parents that anything was possible. Learning at a young age that anything is possible meant that I was somewhat prepared for both greatness and devastation.

Though I long to feel the reality of my mother's physical arms wrapped around me just one more time to make me feel loved, forgiven and safe, I cherish those arms that embraced me in my dreams a couple of months ago far more. It has always been her spirit I've wanted to cling to the most. Her sense of humor, her imagination, her beauty, her wisdom, her grace. And while, just over a year later, I am still sad and at times angry that she, in the way I remember her, is no longer here, I think of her as she was a few days ago, dancing with such liberty with other women on a stage, and I recall the eternal reality of movement in any time, form or space, from one place to another.

Tiffany Osedra Miller (aka Bassagirl)
Mother's Day, 2009

The Maskfisherman

2009-05-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

The Maskfisherman

He couldn't hide anymore,
so went fishing for masks.
Caught a maskfish,
held it against his body
and wore the costume
closer than his wife.

He ceased blowing horns, too
and beating steel pan
and calling out with a voice unfamiliar to him
inside of dry, judgmental rooms.

He became a maskfisherman
and found ways of obscuring from the world
what he believed to be truths about his life.
He fished for these veils
covered his face with corals
entombed his body inside of seaweed and nets
evacuated wife and sun for the company of the moon.

He took down the moon, too,
slapped the glare off its arrogant face
and positioned it over his own.
In the morning the world woke up in darkness
beneath the sea, tribes of maskfish
extinguished their lights.

The maskfisherman
stalked all of the world's river banks
and beaches
unmasked many he found
searching for candles and suns,
on totems he carried
the carcass of their illusions
costumed them in breeze.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

DIRTY FREEDOM

2009-05-04T18:57:00.000-04:00

Dirty Freedom

There was a dirty freedom in the 1980’s
when grafitti was written on the walls of our brain
and we rode the train
on the laps of people stoned and dancing,
killing and cursing.

Bibles were thrown way up into the air
and they later came down and crushed good, beautiful people
already concentrated into volcanic ghettos-
humans covered in disease and debris
blowing away-
from every last immigrant parade,
every last existential blowing, hollow
empty flag.

All colors slink and shine in this dark universe
of individual universes
who move slowly with the weight of their culture and color,
trying to remember
to forget
that assimilation becomes a cellular duty-
survival of the filthiest.

How do you arrange the fragments
that make up the puzzle that is you,
to arrive at some sort of honest human picture,
as you walk through what is left
of the hollow recesses of your dying culture
scattered throughout the terrain of your
broken borough’s mind?

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Those Mansions in Your Walls

2009-04-30T22:05:00.001-04:00

From 'The Diaries of The Titillater,' Entry #251

Those Mansions in Your Walls

the blood in your high walls
poisons my base desires
making me reinfect myself
with what started the foundation
of my longing for you.
I travel through those gnarled veins,
chronic, chaotic passages around the bend
to where I ruled a world I invented
Terrible, Titillating, Totalitarian
to me as infant
then crocodile
tree, chopped down
then ripped into a page
of a script where I read lines for
the hunted, then the hunter,
preyed
then cast
against type, of course,
as predator.

Though I attended schools in mansions
I tended to you like you were all the weeds
of what I learned
about human beings
I branded with inhumanity.
I confess to seeing you as separate from myself.
I'd like to say that now, I am devoted to you
through becoming a devotee of me.
And though your walls grow tall as Redwoods
the ladders I produce should not pick your heart
like a peach.
But I am afraid I will always crave then crush you
for the rush of staring at myself in mirrors
falling in love with the image of my disbelief
and know that diamonds can be derelicts
and derelicts delicious.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

Puppeteers

2009-04-28T11:21:00.000-04:00

Judgment of the Puppeteers

Heat harlotted in your hips
dances and harlequins new hysteria
on the broken, troubled floor you move on.

That strobe light over your head
wasn’t put there by you.

Diamond dotted clothes
fabric and illuminate
beneath this light
undulate
beneath this light-
to show you trembling,
coupling, laughing.

Your face flashes
the pitch black animal wrestling
with your heart
behind a hot mask of shames.

You are a furnace for fools
who radiates nothing,
an unwashed costume
all the next mornings
dangling on an empty clothesline
waiting for your
nocturnal march through alleyways,
underneath underground discos
led by a brass instrument
of motleyed thorns
sticking you deep inside your head.

Your days have no lights,
night flashes artificially lit colors,
Music pricks you open
in private places
mechanically you dance
like human offspring of puppets
held loosely by chains.

by Tiffany Osedra Miller

I Dance in the Carnival Room

2009-04-12T01:37:00.000-04:00

I Dance in the Carnival Room

I dance in the carnival room
with my carnival doll
it's the only way I will dance
if I dance at all.

When my doll sees me dancing
it does not laugh or turn away
I'm not sure if it's a boy or girl
When I ask, it doesn't say.

I dance in the carnival room
while everyone else dances at the masquerade ball
my doll and I spin 'round and 'round
'til we get dizzy, laugh, then fall.

From my room I could hear the crowd
crown the King and Queen upon their throne
yet if someone looked into my carnival room
they would think I danced alone.

They are blind to the beauty of the thing
dangling from my hand
its body hanging from a string
dancing to the steel pan band.

So what they crowned a king and Queen
they do that every year
Won't someone crown my doll and me
during our carnival love affair?

I dance in the carnival room
with my carnival doll
it's the only way for my doll and me
to freely bacchanal.

Unmasked by PURPLE ZOE!

2009-04-09T00:35:00.002-04:00

Purple Zoe, artist, writer, and bloggeress extraordinaire operates a fabulous blog called 'The Ultraviolet Underground' which introduces and showcases Undergound artists of many different disciplines. Check her out!

Purple Zoe interviewed me about my art and writing a few weeks ago. Here is the link:

A few words with Revolutionary Picture Bookist Osedra a.k.a Bassa Bassa girl

Calypsonian Blues Woman

2009-04-03T00:46:00.000-04:00

Calypsonian Blues Woman

Calypsonian Blues Woman,
What is your death to me?
Is it America, Antigua,
England or Africa-
Catholic or Episcopal
Yoruba or Obeah?

I see the same colors now
that I saw from your womb.
I feel the march of painted stilt walkers
And marvel how their faces
Nearly reach the sun.
I hear the chant of the steel pan
And the blow of the bugle in
The old man’s final whistle-

Mother, I am missing you.
Clowns, jesters, and the beautiful
Are not supposed to die.

In me is carnival again
Bittersweet masquerade
Innocence and nakedness.
We were always, to ourselves,
deformed and abnormal
burned by the sun,
on your beach by the sun
and by our South Bronx window when
our borough was burning -
on the altar
by the flame, by the flame, by the flame
by the fire in the sores covering
every bit of your flesh
-these blemished my life.

Mother, I am longing for you.
Queens, Revelers and Soldiers
Are not supposed to cry.

I listen, now, to what’s left of you.
I, daughter and reveler, raise high
Your image on carnival streets
which run the labyrinths of my veins
Bleeding and guiding each color in my blood.
My mask, so like yours,
red as the Indian, white as the European,
Black as the African.
We both genuflected for Jesus,
yet moved our entire bodies
To the boom of the drum.

Me, your new world, ‘pickney,’
Sunk with your death,
Watch carnival trains of passing mourners
Rich revelers and poor revelers
Revelers dressed in clothes of white powder
Tattoos of ha’pennies glisten on their bare backs.
Death they mock and dishonor
For they are dead, too, this reminding me,
Mother, as you have said
Mumbling from behind your masquerade,
‘Life, my granddaughter-daughter, is the mask we wear.’

Come back to me, now Mother,
The swan only pretended to sing your final song
Your final song should include the ping-ping-ping
Of steel pans, the shout of horns
exploding your name into Bacchanal,
the call from the trumpet
and the singing voice of your own bodily departed Mother,
the music of African and Antiguan kisses,
the clamoring of belly laughs –
language of revelers whose image, like you,
they see reflected back to them
against the night’s colored face.

Mother, I still listen to you.
I catch your whispers
As they walk across the sky.

Dream of me, Mommy, dancing in your womb,
Knowing that I, too, was an immigrant
from the precious, soil of your body
–Your beautiful body, you once carried
with African Royalty and English pride.
Dream of me, Mommy,
dancing in your new-spirit womb
Energized by carnival light
Basking in Torment, yet dancing, towards Joy.
Come back to me, Mother,
and while I sleep
Give me just one piece of your strength,
move me with the spirit of your new Calypso.
Come kiss forever your grieving daughter,
Leave pieces of heaven on her cheeks.

by Bassagirl (aka Osedra)

UNFORGETTABLE

2009-03-29T10:07:00.000-04:00

My Mother died a year ago, today.

IGENA GLORIA MILLER October 24, 1933 - March 29, 2008.

AVE IGENA

WIND-SWEPT WOMAN
(In memory of my Dear, Sweet Mother, Igena)

Your soul continues its travels
without the weight it bore here, yesterday
because that wind has blown you on home, now
though we always thought you'd stay.

No grown folks ever told us
we could never hold the breeze
the wind is the best and worst lover
who now leaves us begging on our knees.

So long, Wind-Swept Woman,
with laughter and wisdom
forever stretched across your gorgeous face
Your legacy, now eternal
Your essence, every place.

Ashe, Ashe,

Tiffany Osedra Miller

Yes, my Mother did rock those hair pieces and wigs!

May she continue to rest in peace.

$7.00 ART FOLIO SALE!

2009-03-28T15:35:00.001-04:00

FOR COLLECTORS WHO WANT TO GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR,

visit:

BASSA BASSA ART STORE

ART FOLIO #1, 'The Violent Beauty of Urda Louise'

On SALE now at my store on ETSY, for $2.00. That's right, $2.00 plus .50 cents for shipping and handling. One standard size sheet folded into four full color pages and reproduced. You can view each page right here on ETSY

Participating in sales like these are great opportunities for all art lovers, but especially for art lovers with limited funds. Your support allows me to promote and share my work with a wider audience. Start collecting these, now! Enjoy!

Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Lady Conjures a Lion

2009-03-27T14:05:00.000-04:00

(This pastel and ink drawing is for sale at my store on ETSY)

The Lady Conjures a Lion

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or
MGM.
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.

The lady conjures a lion
the way lions look in other worlds
eroded by other wars
a lion with a staircase for its body
containing earth’s eternity, power and pain.
The lady conjures a lion –
This was not her intent
Yet she embraced its prowess and mystery
Climbed its series of steps
Without Bibles, ballads,
whips or guns
And found herself living in the
Universe of its belly.
Its newest pregnancy
not immaculate
but a consummation
of the lady’s conjuring
and the animal’s openness
in an orange sand desert
beneath the ground underground.

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or MGM
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.

When the lady conjures a lion
It does not swear or spit
Or come attached to a green and jaded jungle
But joined, instead, to its staircase of pregnancies
Digging deep into an orange ground.
And the lady who conjured the lion
Understands that this is the lion
At its most supernatural,
Un-caged in openness
Its steps suggesting levels.
When the lady conjures a lion
It does not use its mouth to roar
But uses its presence to buzz
In the mouths of lion-less carolers
Who sing into the myth of its patriarchy
Something so maternal
that it exists in dualities
Then multiplicities
And can fly as much as it can run or swim
Or present its belly to us in steps or stages
And we can call it with great pleasure,
‘The best of the beasts.’

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or MGM
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.

The Violent Beauty of Urda Louise

2009-03-12T05:31:00.000-04:00

"The Violent Beauty of Urda Louise," Volume 1 coming soon. (I love volumes and issues) Here is an excerpt:

Rumored
And rumored
that she ruined
all of the men in this city
Reduced one serious man
Into a weeping, witless clown
Participated in ceremonies
celebrating sex and spirit
And buried her mother one sad morning
into the cold wet ground.

Born to midwife
by light
gleaming off her father’s knife
reflecting candlelight
her small body washed by her mother,
grandmother and grandfather
in a ceremony by the sea
where they let her descend
then drown
then rise again
to ensure her big spirit roams free.

Rumored
And rumored
that she ruined
all of the men in this city
Reduced one serious man
Into a weeping, witless clown
Participated in ceremonies
celebrating sex and spirit
And buried her mother one sad morning
into the cold wet ground.

AVE URDA...stay tuned.

Revolutionary Picture Book, issue #1, "Dynamite and Pigeons" on sale now!

2009-02-24T21:47:00.000-05:00

My first, independently produced, hand bound book, "Revolutionary Picture Book," issue #1, "Dynamite and Pigeons" is on sale now!!! You can find a link to my store on Etsy on the side bar of this blog. Here is a description of it:

Dear Customer,

Welcome to the Cupcake World! Journey inside a mourner’s mythology! Witness her transcend grief and suffering through color, surrealism, image and line, all while indulging a bittersweet tooth. Are you mourning, too? Before you enter, drop all of your illusions but hold onto your Masks!!! "Dynamite and Pigeons" is your word and image collage initiation into an atmospheric carnival world full of performers, mourners, lovers, revelers, and holy rollers - in celebration of the spirit of tragedy and loss with humor, bacchanal and revolution.

Come catch a glimpse of the enigmatic and resilient Mama Noire, laugh at the sorrows of Clown Soldiers, hesitate then genuflect quickly before the Bishop of Sorrow and Pink, then shake your head at the audacity, acquired over ages of suffering, of an immortal Little Bad A** - and more, beginning with this first issue!

This first issue of "Revolutionary Picture Book" is a raw, original, hand bound, gorgeous and concise DIY introduction containing poetry, prose and images, hand drawn with pastels, inks and colored pencils, scanned then printed in full color and black and white onto 16 pages, 8 sheets, including slightly thicker vellum covers. Dimensions are approximately 8 and 1/2 by 11 and 1/4.

Looks fetching (especially if protected in its plastic sleeve, which is included with each purchase) on coffee tables, private altars, or displayed (cover outward) on bookshelves amid plants, eulogies, lit candles and ancient books with thicker spines.

***Please avoid browsing through this or any subsequent issue of "Revolutionary Picture Book" while driving or operating heavy machinery. Conjure its colors up at funerals, however, or dance in full costume and mask, alone, or with a lover while clutching it, and, of course, sleep and dream of a peaceful world with it sparkling beneath your pillow.

Love and Carnival,

Tiffany Osedra Miller

Headdress and Crown for the Daughter of a Dead Immigrant

2009-02-20T16:29:00.000-05:00

Headdress and Crown for the Daughter of a Dead Immigrant.

Concerning the daughter of a dead immigrant
Whose mother lives alone, now, in some hut in some jungle
found on a map that is difficult to locate
If you still walk or crawl the world.
Her mother is alive in a Technicolor sense.
She lives without her body but within her daughter.
She whittles figurines of this daughter
Out of fantastic wood and debris from broken glass found on floors
of Countries with Carnivals.
The hut is supported by a statue of her daughter
Wearing the headdress of Three Mary’s:
Maria and Magdalene and Marriage,
Her wood-skin tinged with red,
And sodden with rum
The Mother costumes her in wedding dress and crown
In celebration of having joined the wisdom of spirit to this living young woman
Made in her mother’s likeness.
The walls of the hut also stand wooden with her daughter
And the ceiling shows the moving cinema
of her daughter’s dramatic face
The Mother will not whittle her offspring weeping
She will not whittle for her a single tear
She settles for whittling inside her child-friend, heart-fruit,
a heart so open that it can only be an un-forbidden door
for the universe to enter
and recline in the pulp of its chambers
until the call to carnival and revel
places upon the universes’ illusions about itself
every hanging, menacing and magnificent mask –
with which all shadows in this heart space must genuflect.
The mother declares her daughter’s heart to be a cathedral
And though the mother is without her body,
she is resurrected in the carnival dance of her daughter
she congregates within her brown daughter
calling on her to demand of the world
that her majesty be seen and heard.
It is all her mother can do without a body
because she is now free to travel other gardens of Goddesses and Gods
with a gilded posse
of revelers, brown birds, butterflies, immigrants
and dimming memories
of being once hopeful and human
her belly bulging, burgeoning and blossoming her brilliant brown baby
born with every right to be regal.

"What Happened to Charlie Christ?"

2009-02-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

from "The Violent Beauty of Urda Louise"

THE VIOLENT BEAUTY OF URDA LOUISE
(What Happened to Charlie Christ?)

“Listen to those cats in heat, Urda, they sound like they’re in mourning.” Charlie had said this to me three times already. When I reminded him of this, he flinched and called the repetition calculated, then wondered aloud if my dumb ass ever read poetry. Charlie was a poet, alright.

We were smoking weed on his mattress celebrating his return. I was happy to see him but I didn’t want him to know. I got up, stretched in a way I almost never did, then sat on the floor. Charlie liked my stretch so much that he loosened up, sat beside me, and put his hand on my knee.

“I am changing,” he said. “I threw my computer away. All I need and want, now, is you.” Charlie had been trying to hit it since we both met in the sixth grade at a school in the Bronx, a school with good- natured nuns and a broken window in the girl’s bathroom that the boys all knew about. I didn’t remind Charlie that he had hit it already – and on more than one occasion – and that before we parted ways that night, I’d let him hit it again.

His weed was bad quality. He told me that he grew it in containers inside his bathroom. He said that the light was good in there. Exceptional. Although every time I visited him, instead of finding containers filled with cannabis, I found white candles burning on the floor of his tub. He told me he had placed them there because the light fixture didn’t work. He insisted that candlelight was the best way to grow marijuana. He didn’t mention, however, that his Grandmother had fallen and hit her head on the faucet and died there while he was away. She hadn’t wanted him to go. Bad marijuana had nothing to do with the deterioration of Charlie’s memory.

The sound of the cats outside built to a crescendo. We couldn’t even hear the traffic. Their cat-blues – a mix of horn, jaguar, and tenor sax. We both stood up and ran to the window to see if a band was playing in the streets. It was too dark to see anything and by the time we got to the window, Charlie had forgotten why. For a moment, I too had forgotten when I saw his grandmother’s face floating in his eyes like a cataract.

"YOU CAN HAVE YOUR BROADWAY, GIVE ME LENOX AVENUE"

2009-01-30T14:13:00.000-05:00

I say 'You can have your Broadway, Give Me Lenox Avenue' to myself anytime I feel displaced, ignored, or marginalized in this city. Though a tried and true proud as hell Bronx woman, Harlem has always represented Renaissance to me. Safety. Connection. Reconstruction. Immigration. History.

And though I will never know what Harlem was like when my parents used to go to parties there in the 50's and 60's - long before I was born - I know what it's turning into. Here are 'The Victims of Yellow Lights,' long time lovers of Harlem World and infinite spirit residers of Sad Street, singing:

"When the Lights in Harlem Glitter"

Oh when the lights in Harlem glitter
It’s hard for me to feel so bitter.
Tonight my heels stand taller than the litter.

I pass a whistling old man wearing a zoot suit
and a young man in baggy jeans,
now, wait a minute he’s cute.

Well, my hair is fixed
My numbers picked
I am wearing Spanish fly.
Everything new on Lenox Avenue
Except for the moonlight barbecue fish fry.
Where Pearl wears her fox-fur
It’s not that cold, what’s wrong with her
I like her alligator purse, however,
Not as much as mine
I like mine better, it’s leather.

Oh when the nights in Harlem glitter
It’s hard for me to feel so bitter.
Tonight, my heels stand taller than the litter.

Young handsome men hang on the corner, again
One asks me if I would be his friend
I say not if I see him standing on this corner, amen!
Ah well, men.

Just where am I going, tonight, I wonder
I hope far away from my inner thunder
Tomorrow I praise God just like every ‘Sunder’
But for tonight let my mind be free as summer
Got the rest of my life to think like winter, because
When these lights in Harlem glitter, honey
I don’t think about not having any money
Ain’t that funny

When these lights in Harlem glitter
It’s hard for me to feel so bitter,
I mean the weather’s a pleasure, the people are lovely
And Mister Magic Moon twinkles directly above me
and I just might find me a man to love me
looooove me,
Harlem, with you, I'm in love.

Please visit Harlem before it's all gone!!!

Here is Cynda Williams singing Branford Marsalis' 'Harlem Blues' in Spike Lee's joint, 'Mo Better Blues' back in the day.

HUMAN ALTARS

2009-01-19T17:04:00.001-05:00

(from 'THE VIOLENT BEAUTY OF URDA LOUISE')

HUMAN ALTARS

Your sentences push like needles through my veins
and my eyes are bloodshot.
Here I will call you Charlie and remember how you looked at me
dressed in sky blue
floating over Tremont Avenue.

The first day you touched me
was the last day my body would ever put up the right fight
was the first day I had been so scared in all my life
at the power of pleasure.

For years you trembled me, Godlessly,
in your parent’s row house,
a working class laboratory of joy,
cluttered with pictures
of a white saviour in human form
who looked nothing like me or you.

Every room became dusty with that image of God
including the lower ones
where you saved me.
For a time we fashioned our flesh
into desirable brown skin.
Our singular ambition to light a candle through what we believed
were inevitable life sentences
spent dying in church
after our dreams would defer then decay
illuminated us as human altars sacrificing our own flesh.

You were the first one to bend back into yourself,
dry up and disintegrate,
though you were once the ripest fruit on the vine.

Before you crumpled
you said to me from deep down inside
“Urda, I am sorry
for us both starting an impossible religion.”
There was nothing much left of you
but the basic functions of your limbs
and the visions in your stained glassed eyes.
God killed You, Charlie,
but you needed God more than you needed touching me.
The same God you denied that you said
denied you
was an invisible man.
You reached him through the narrowness
Of crack pipes and filled your head with smoke,
Forgetting the memories of the murders, you say you
Committed in the Persian Gulf, forgetting the stroke you had at 31,
And most of all, forgetting your unwillingness to worship a mortal like me.

You Believed their was dignity and righteousness in suffering,
As long as your veins were penetrated by thorns
and God’s holy, holy cross.

Pleasure became your smack,
my silent immeasurable terror,
knowing I worshipped the person you were,
the savior you might have become,
knowing I worshipped something as superficial
as the skin on your body,

the only religion in this world
I could really touch.

Tiffany (Bassagirl)