The Student Loan Scam as Told by a Bankruptcy Lawyer (very clearly)

Article in the New York Daily News

Monica Johnson
Makes: Crocheted and knit cold-weather accessories
Lives: Long Island City

Making hats, hoods, wrist cuffs and cowls not only keeps others warm, but helps Monica Johnson get through the cold. "I was in San Francisco for about 12 years and with a Mediterranean climate, we didn't get extreme temperatures," she explains. "But I'm from Michigan originally and about five years ago, I moved back there for a year and my mom taught me how to knit. It was my way of creatively handling the extreme weather, and something that kept my hands busy.

"So when I moved to New York a year after that, I just kept doing it," adds Johnson, 34. "Eventually, you clothe so many of your family members and friends, but you still end up with so much more, so I sell them."

Johnson, who has a fine arts background and works as an exhibitions manager for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, spends about five hours on each item.

"I like really simple, solid designs," she says. "And they're alterable. For example, the cowls are oversized, so you can wrap it around once or leave it hanging twice. Usually with each of my things you can accessorize it in different ways. And they're all very well-made because I don't rely on this as a way to make a living. I have the luxury of making sure that whatever I made, I feel proud of."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2011/01/23/2011-01-23_queens_museum_of_arts_gift_shop_spotlights_borough_artists_including_wire_croche.html#ixzz1BuK0uK92

A New Year for Wool + Brick

When I first started Wool + Brick I imagined myself a one-person commercial store. I incorporated an aesthetic and a language that was – more or less – a descendant of the retail clothing industry. I titled my handmade items with names that evoked a metaphorical experience that I thought would inspire purchase.

Names like “St. John Cap” and “Museum Cowl” were earnestly chosen because these places were a part of my own consciousness at the time they were designed. It is easy to imagine the same names being used in an LL Bean or J.Crew catalogue, where lifestyle and experience is what often inspires purchase.

The bottom line is this: cottage industries – like Wool + Brick – cannot compete with corporations like these because the big guys will always offer a better price. And we all know the sad reality of why that’s true.

So, why compete using their strategies?

The fact that the handmade/cottage industry is thriving - with the help of online facilitators like Etsy - presents a new and unique opportunity to develop a different and equally successful set of strategies for commercial sales.

To that end, I am making a new commitment to using informative language and visuals to sell Wool + Brick products. If I distract your attention too much with metaphorical titles and slick photography, then you might miss what I want you to see – an expertly made product.

This is not my full-time job, though it is for some people. So, I am also committed to making my products at prices that will not drive the market prices down for those people. My part-time hobby should not negatively affect the ability of others to make a fair living.

This overhaul will take some time. I expect I will have the semblance of a new shop starting January 2011. Until then, thank you for visiting – and thank you for reading this far!

The U.P. in the Summer

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Another Review I Forgot to Post Earlier...

TITLE:	Monica Johnson at lack Fischer Gallery
SOURCE:	Artweek 38 no7 14-15 S 2007
COPYRIGHT:	The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.artweek.com/

Like some haunting dream-world between memory and history, nostalgia and nightmare, g Monica Johnson's exhibition, Stick 'Em Up! Stay Down! Grow Up!, consisted of images both familiar and unnervingly odd--the uncanny at its aesthetic best.
Technically adept, every line in Johnson's drawings seems perfectly planned and orchestrated, while the end result is in the style of certain graphic novels---slightly disproportioned bodies, overstated gestures and freckles and grins. These images are lodged in a fantasized childhood--but not a pleasant kind of fantasy with playgrounds and sunlight and your friendly dragon; more the ones you might haltingly talk about in a psychoanalyst's office. The figures peer out with expressions both exaggerated and inscrutable, often reminding the viewer of the petty cruelties children and adolescents inflict on each other, or the indignities children suffer at the seeming whim of adults. Indeed, Johnson states that these works emerged from a yearlong visit to her hometown, and are in some part an attempted exorcism of the ghosts of childhood.
Among the most striking of Johnson's images is a pair of graphite drawings depicting what at first glance seems to be innocent childhood scenes. Upon closer examination, one finds a complex orchestration of bodies, history, race and childhood exclusion reverberating amongst the juvenile figures. In Loser, a child (Johnson's self-portrait) in full Confederate regalia stands outside a short brick wall, forlornly looking into the middle distance, a pistol sagging impotently from her hand. Meanwhile, a small crowd of children dressed in nineteenth-century garb glare at her accusingly. Loser's companion piece, the aptly titled Winner, features a similar gathering, but with a pre-adolescent Union soldier (also a self-portrait) standing within a similar short brick wall, grinning amongst an adoring mini-throng of child admirers. The soldier holds a hand over her heart while the children gaze upon her lovingly and a happy little terrier dances upon its hind legs.
These pieces place the United States' thorniest domestic conflict within the world of childhood justice. And this is not, one realizes while looking at the images, to say that justice is somehow eviscerated or even mitigated by being placed in the hands of smaller humans. Instead, one is reminded of the often harsh justice that children mete out, and how it grabs hold of young ostracized or bullied psyches. In this context, a history of discord stretches out from 1865 to 2007 and beyond; the Civil War is resituated as a schoolyard tussle of epic proportions. The saga of racial tensions and the political friction between North and South is imbued with a new emotional resonance both smaller and greater than in our history books.
Johnson also groups six small chalkboards together, each inscribed with a meticulously lettered phrase: "Monica-Jar ate a Guitar That's Why Her Boobs Are So Big"; "I Just Wanted To See if I Could Make You Cry"; "Sacrifice Your Body For The Ball." The lettering's flourishes and flowing lines are straight out of the 1800s, but the phrases are pure late twentieth-century schoolyard taunt. This combination, as well as the halo of erasure marks that several are written upon, gives the works a ghostly presence that reminds us of how such sentiments inscribe themselves both transiently and tenaciously in memory.
In another series of six works, Johnson uses wallpaper--that flowery type you might find in your grandmother's parlor--and wood paneling to evoke a sense of the past. Each piece uses the found material to create the idea of a room, peopled with diminutive figures. Yet, this past is not only of your grandmother's era. It is also firmly marked by the 1980s: One figure is in a "Beat It" shirt, another hands a companion a Rick Astley album (on vinyl), a grinning girl with an Esprit bag slung over her shoulder stands next to a friend bearing an "Erin 4 VP." sign.
In her artist's statement, Johnson says that this show emerged from personal reflections on her long visit home. Yet, by combining this sense of internal inventory with iconic images-- Confederate and Union uniforms; an Esprit bag; an old pistol---she also gives the images the stamp of history, which is the imprint both of particular pasts and repeating patterns. They remind us that we can never escape history--not the personal nor the political, not those that have passed nor those that we are in the midst of living through. Viewing these works is like encountering and excavating the ghosts of one's ancestral home before tearing down the appalling wallpaper and bringing in fresh paint from Restoration Hardware.
ADDED MATERIAL
Jakki Spicer is a freelance writer based in Alameda.
Monica Johnson: Stick 'em Up! Stay Down! Grow Up! closed in July at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.
Monica Johnson, ErinForVP, 2006, vinlage wallpaper, wood veneer, graphite, watercolor, at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.

Nice Review of My Work....that i forgot to post earlier

right here