Preview

I forgot my camera again today, but took some pictures with my phone, but I'm too tired to download them now. The gallery did hire a photographer who took a ton of pictures. We got talking, and she knew all about the gocco and Pudding!

Managed to squeeze in about 45 minutes working on Calypso today, which means I got 1 text block done, between setting up and cleaning up. Caught up on some exercise. Picked up Roger Hercules from Beppu-Wiarda. I hope to frame & hang it pretty quickly. Worked on Tupper's interview for Open Studios. We just got home from seeing The Lives of Others, excellent.

PAN show installation, day 2

Boy oh boy, we're still not done!

It occurred to me last night that Karen's Time Offering should be hung vertically, as all the photos I've seen show the pages opened vertically. (I did confirm this this morning by checking her web site.) And plus I think the show needs a vertical element. I prepared some hanging clips, but when I went to hang Karen's piece, I discovered that she had built a little wire loop into the first page. So that worked out well. Made a little support system for Sarah's book and prepared the mylar and headed into the gallery. Everything went well, except that I ran out of mylar on the very last book, wouldn't you know.

Diane's tablets needed some fixing, as the putty wasn't holding the larger pieces flush to the wall. Hopefully the mounting squares will do the trick. We'll see what happens if the weather warms up a bit and that space gets hot.

I have to say the gallery looks great. Again, lots and lots of people stopping to look at Diane's piece in the window. Yay!

So tomorrow, I wrap up the last few bits of unfinished stuff, and then it's Preview time at 5pm. Again, no work in the studio.

PAN show installation

It took all day today, and we're not done. The shelves got mounted (the carpenter got sick, but luckily Barbara was able to nab someone from Waterstone next door, they're installing their show too). I had to sand the edges of some of the shelves, as they had paint drips on them. I asked for a particle mask, Barbara looked at me and said, 'hmmm...well, I think we have some coffee filters you can tape around your nose...'

Diane's tablets got mounted, Inge came in and hung hers. Most of the books are laid out more or less where we want them. I still need to make a support for Sarah's book, and cut some mylar strips. Then we're back at it tomorrow. It was a pretty long day.

This evening was the Music From China concert. A fun event.

Three stacks

Well, I'm not all finished with folding and gluing yet, as is obvious. 3 stacks of text blocks, plus 9 sets of printed sheets. I could've finished tonight except that I got involved in an email conversation about the exchange. That took a couple of hours, didn't even walk tonight. And didn't get around to mapping out how I want to install Diane's tablets. Hopefully, that won't be too difficult! I have to be at the gallery at 9:30am tomorrow to install. Oy.

There's a lion sleeping in my trunk!

What!? You can't tell that it's a lion?! It's obvious...it's a lion on a pedestal, lying on its side, in my trunk. This is one of those Chinese ceramic garbage cans that are so ubiquitous in mainland China. Obviously designed by artists and not engineers -- although the lion has a big gaping mouth for a receptacle, that little hole on the bottom of the pedestal is how you would have to get the garbage out!

So we were at the China Council's annual Chinese New Year fundraiser auction, and as always I buy something totally inappropriate and useless. Last year, I bought the Peking Opera Monkey King suit, and this year, it's a giant garbage can! Of course I pass up all the gorgeous silk and wool rugs...just another thing to vacuum. I did buy a set of very cool stamps with a design from the Dunhuang caves and a book about China and Iran. And a very cute Chinese ink brush painting by a 9 year old.

I did work on Calypso today. Here are all the sheets laid out in order, waited to be folded and glued into the text block. Hopefully, tomorrow by this time, these stacks will be shorter, or maybe gone, and the stack of text blocks will be a lot bigger.

Starting to come together

Started to put the pages together. Here's one that's glued and trimmed, although I haven't added the hand drawing/painting part. If I were finishing this for real, I'd add the hand drawing/painting before I trim it up, but this one was going to be a reject anyhow due to some bad printing, so I trimmed it to see what it would look like. And to make sure it would fit the plexi covers correctly. And it did.

The 1st half:



And the 2nd half:

Last minute change of plans

Printed the colophon, and finally had the opportunity to try goccoing with the gel medium. I added some retardant to it, slopped it on the screen and printed a few pages. It looked fine printed, but when I pressed paper to plexi (the gel medium is the glue that will hold the 2 together), the words all smeared and became illegible. So onto Plan B.

I ended up printing the text that would've been in the gel medium on the opening page. I have yet to decide what I will print in the gel medium. I think something large and loose will work fine; it was just that the fine text did not work so well.

Btw, even though my little experiment only took about 20 minutes from start to finish (including cleaning up) and I had the window open, I think the retardant really irritated my nose. I'll be sure to put on my chemical mask when I go to print for real.

Spent a little time setting up the blog for Portland Open Studios. There will eventually be information about selected artists, events, and such.

The next to last print

Only the colophon is left, which I'll do tomorrow. I ran out of drying space -- the racks are full, as is the guest bed. It's hard to see, but the plexi covers are printed and drying on the left end of the racks. I was feeling pretty awake and productive today (didn't even think about coffee, and in fact, hadn't wanted coffee for days now), but after 4 hours of printing had to stop due to the lack of drying space. The print on the plexi cover worked out really well. More photos on the goccoing on page.

Lets see, saw Breach last night, which was a fine movie, but somehow it didn't really grab me. I love Chris Cooper though, he's terrific, as always. As was Laura Linney.

Smooth and clear (or not)

Spent 4 hours sitting outside in the 40+deg temperature (with rain and even some hail, although I was under the eaves) sanding the rest of the plexi, and then washing them. Most of them got through the sanding with not a scratch but a few did not escape injury. Which is fine, the back covers will be intentionally scratched up anyhow so those can just go on the back. These are the unscratched ones, washed and dried, ready for printing. That will be tomorrow.




We're off to see Breach tonight.

Fun day with Eliza

Today was a free day between the conference in Corvallis & the one in Yakima for Eliza, so we went around town and had a fun day. Stopped in at Paloma's, ran into Jo and Laura; tried to go to Zombies, but they weren't open (we peeked into the windows and it looked like a fun store). Too bad Baker & Spice was not open. Didn't get any work done, but it was a fun & relaxing day.

Rigid board binding, day 2

It's hard to make out the books among the junk on the table, but there are 5 different models here, all using a variety of rigid materials as pages or covers (metal, wood, foam sheets, etc). I can't remember the names of them all, and I probably didn't even remember to write them down, but roughly from L to R clockwise -- modified Byzantine binding, Mongolian structure (a Hedi Kyle invention and we were told most likely had nothing to do with Mongolia), a 'tab & rod' binding (not the official name), a something or other binding, and an exposed hinge. Of these, I liked the Mongolian structure the best. The 2nd biggest discovery of the class was dyed tyvek. The blue paper on the Mongolian and the orange paper on the 'something or other' are both tyvek dyed with acrylic. They both have this beautiful marbly texture that just comes naturally with the material. Everyone in the class was just in love with their own little sheets of tyvek.

No work in the studio today, but I wasn't expecting to, between the all day class, the play in the evening (Act A Lady, very enjoyable), and also Eliza came back from her conference and is here tonight.

Rigid board binding, day 1

1st of the 2 day class on rigid board binding taught by Alicia Bailey. Fairly relaxed paced, but we still did 3 structures. The big discovery for the day -- dyeing tyvek with acrylic! Terrific effects. All the books felt substantial in the hand, very nice. There will be 2 more structures tomorrow, and hopefully I'll get around to taking a picture of all 5.

Then it was the opera in the evening (Norma), a great group of singers, although I thought the mezzo was better than the lead (the soprano who sang Norma). No work on Calypso today. Robyn wrote to say she's been further delayed and was going to pull out of the exchange, so I had to fess up and say that I'm late too.

More work than I expected

I managed to put in about 3 hours in the studio (at the expense of going to the gym) and printed 4 more layers (graphics for Acquiesce, the eyes, and text for Discard/Discard). The rest of the day was cleaning the guest room/bath for Eliza (so no photos tonight, all the prints have been put away), and getting ready for the class this weekend. I won't be able to get back to gocco'ing until Tuesday, as Eliza will be staying through Tuesday morning. I guess Monday will be sanding plexi day.

The Joy of You-Know-What

For the images of the couples, I referenced More Joy of You-Know-What (I don't want people looking for you-know-what to come here), and here's one of the 2 pages I printed today.



Finished laying out the colophon, the watching eyes, and the image for the Acquire/Acquiesce page, but probably won't get to print them until next Monday at this point. I need to clean the guest bedroom for a visitor this weekend, and will be in a class both Sat & Sun, all day.

Second half

I never did have all the graphics and text finished for the 2nd half of the book, so today was spent doing that. I manipulated a bunch of existing images I found in magazines and books, and went back to the blog and words that folks sent for text for the Discard/Discard page. I hadn't really liked what I chose originally, but now I think I'll go with:

Who was this? Me?
These colors on my eyes
Did I look bruised?
Like a suffocated hen?

We were strangers, lovers
then strangers
I rather suffer more now
than suffer longer

Didn't do any printing today. It doesn't look like I'll get all my printing done by Friday.

Time/Tarnish

Dimsum day today, and am trying to catch up on the weekend chores since they didn't get done on the weekend. Printed the Time/Tarnish page and the text for Acquire/Acquiesce page. Started sanding the plexi sheets; took me an hour to sand 15 sheets, so I have 3 more hours to go. Also started experimenting with the drawings that will go on both the front and the back, not sure if I'll stick to line drawings or go with something more bold & graphic. No pictures today, too busy catching up on leftover chores.

Not sure how much work I'll get done tomorrow either. I need to drop off the China Council donations and go to the gym. First I have to find the China Council donations. It'd be 3pm before I get into the studio, I bet.

Saw Children of Men last night. It was a bit of a disappointment after hearing what a great movie it was from all kinds of places. The movie last week, Letters From Iwo Jima, was a fantastic movie. Not that you can really compare the two, apples and oranges and all, but Iwo Jima was definitely the better movie.

Discard/Discard

This is the text that follows the Allure/Desire page:



And here's the Discard/Discard page:



I also made some additions to 2 previously printed pages based on feedback from the critique group. See the goccoing on page for that.

It's not just like walking

What we thought was an 'introduction' to snow shoeing turned out to be an advanced back-country snow shoe trip. Back-country as in lots and lots of up, down, and sideways on hills at 35deg inclines while wearing shoes 5 times as big as your feet and walking on 5 feet of snow, sometimes with holes underneath that you fall into. We managed ok and didn't fall behind, but now we're pretty tired.

Here's a view of Mt. Hood right before we walked down one of those steep inclines. I would've taken a picture of the incline except that I had no idea we were about to walk down it. That's the head of our guide, Doug, at the bottom of the picture there.



The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold. We had periods of very heavy snowfall with big, fat, beautiful snowflakes, and then periods of sun break. A little bit of wet snow too here and there. Mostly it was too cloudy to get much of a view, except for this view of the mountain.

Of course, no working in the studio today, and I'm not about to get started in my current condition.

Pot stickers and hot & sour soup

Mike decided to demonstrate his prowess in the kitchen today so we went shopping for all the necessary ingredients. I managed to get a little work done on Calypso (printed 1 more layer, rewrote some of the text based on the feedback from last night, laid out and flashed the 4th screen but didn't get to print it) while he made and rolled out the dough, mixed the filling, & cut all the ingredients for the soup. (We cheated, we bought chorizo sausage and added chopped napa cabbage for the filling.) I made the potstickers and cleaned up. Then it's getting ready for going on the snow shoeing trip up Mt. Hood tomorrow, preparing food/water/extra clothes. I guess I'm calling it a day...we have to be up at 5:30am tomorrow!

The hairball

When the critique group last met, I picked up 'the hairball' as my part of the round robin that was already in progress. I knew within a week or so exactly what I wanted to do with it, but then I completely forgot to actually do it! While I was washing up, I suddenly realized that we were meeting tonight, and it was time for show and tell. So the afternoon was spent working on the hairball.

The piece was very soft and fuzzy, very tactile -- the original knitted ball was stuffed with something very soft (Anne did that), in addition to the soft yarn; Diane then added the hairs to the surface of the ball, which gave it even more of a soft, fuzzy glow. So I wanted to add a contrast. Here's the result:



I had the rose thorns left from another project, and the red silk. I made little roundels of the red silk and attached the thorns to them, and sewed the roundels on the surface. I really quite like the result. I'm thinking that I'd make up more of the little roundels, although I don't have a particular project in mind.

The meeting tonight was fruitful -- got good feedback on the shadow book, especially about the texts that I have yet to finish. We talked about the collaborative project some more (the current round robin is the warm up session) and decided to meet at Helen's next month to work in her paper studio and see where it leads us. I recorded the evening's meeting on the ipod as part of the documentation process.

Allure/Desire

Starting from this page on, the words and their shadows are physically closer together but the words themselves diverge, but expressing sentiments along parallel trajectories. So here's Allure/Desire and Acquire/Acquiesce.



Here are the 3 screens used so far. I love how the used screens look. I've photographed some screens in the past as I cleaned them. I put them on the lightbox and photograph them at different stages of being cleaned. Especially if I use vegetable oil for cleaning, they look so beautiful on the lightbox.



There're more photos on the goccoing on page of my web site.

The Chinese cooking class took up almost 5 hours this evening. This was Mike's idea -- signing up for a whole bunch of classes. Tonight was Chinese appetizers, next week will be Chinese stirfry. The week after is rice and noodles (although I'm not taking this one). We also start tennis lessons next week, for 4 weeks, then we have taichi! And this Sunday, we're going on a field trip -- snow-shoeing!

Sexy, Sexy

Bad news first -- I just got the news today that I got rejected from the All Day Snacking show. They sent out the list of the 31 accepted artists to everyone (I assume), with everyone's email addresses on the To: line, so we can all see who got rejected! Sigh. There were 150 submissions (not sure how many artists, as I'm sure some submitted multiple pieces). The good news is that I recognize several on the accepted list and really like their work, so it should be a good show.

Little by little, progress is being made on Calypso. This was the page I was laying out when Mike walked up and saw it. He's been calling this 'the sexy sexy book' ever since. Not a bad nickname for the book.



This is one of the (probably) 7 screens that will be necessary to complete this project. I cram stuff together pretty tightly.



This page will have another layer on top before it's finished. Tomorrow. I'm getting pretty good at retouching flaws on these prints. The fake Estee Lauder logo at the top was missing some bits which I had to manually fill in, same with the circles, and most of them came out ok. A couple were smudged, mostly because I was resting my hand at the wrong place.



Here's the sequence from the top. Each sheet of paper represents 3 pages in the completed book.

Promises & Seductions

Between dealing with Portland Open Studios and the Print Arts Northwest March show, once again, I didn't get as much printing done as I hoped. I finished 2 more pages, 2a & 2c.





The words are supposed to sort of look like they're casting shadows. The colors are slightly more intense than the photos (I used the flash on the camera at a fairly close range), although they are pretty soft colors.

Power outage

We lost power late in the evening last night, while we were out on our walk. It was out for quite a while, so we lit a few candles, enough to see to get ready for bed, and went to bed. I wasn't able to continue printing, just as well, I got some pretty good rest instead.

So, today, I finished printing pages 1b, 1c, & 6c, and printed the backgrounds on 2a, 2c, 3b, 4a, & 6a. This is the set up for printing 1c. That's a page template under the mylar:



Here's an actual printed page:



And here's the opening page (1b) and the next page. Those are supposed to be 4 little containers of eye shadows.



A shot of the background on some of the inside pages. Those are the same eye shadows after the containers have been opened. And they're closed again on the last page.



The Painted Veil turned out to be a very lovely movie. Wonderful scenery and acting. And we're off to see Letters from Iwo Jima tonight.

The power of suggestion

I've been listening to A Dead Man in Istanbul on my iPod at the gym, and while I was on the elliptical yesterday, the protagonist '...walked into a cafe...', and I thought, 'wow, that sounds soooo gooood'. From then on, I couldn't stop thinking about coffee. Finally I got my cup at Papa Hayden's last night. And today, the effect still hadn't quite worn off (the suggestion, not the coffee, the effect of that was long gone), so we went to Peet's this afternoon.

Mike's taking the weekend off again (2 weekends in a row without working, yay), so we went for a long walk, coffee, and a pizza. And I still managed to get 7 hours in the studio.

I had more of the BFK than I thought, so I ended up cutting enough paper for 29 books. They're all trimmed, marked, and ready for print. It took probably 11, 12 hours to do that, even with the guillotine cutter, which worked quite well, so I'm happy. Now we're off to see The Painted Veil.

A couple of shots of the mock-up, printed on the laser printer and taped together:

Paper, paper, and more paper

Made a few changes to the postcard and continued with paper cutting, which sure does take a long time. 30 sheets of BFK...I'm still not finished.

If it's not one thing, it's another

Finally did the postcard for the Print Arts March show. The book is Karen Kunc's Evocation. (Isn't it gorgeous?)



Finished laying out Calypso and put together a mock-up. Even took a couple of pictures, but the media reader is refusing to read the camera's card. So here's a spread from photoshop instead. Got about half of the paper cut. I was hoping to get them all cut tonight then I can just start printing tomorrow, but it's not to be.