Photo day

Finished making all the window mats with the beveled accents and spent the rest of the afternoon photographing. So these were done with the proper lights. Although depending on whether your monitor is color calibrated or not, the colors may or may not be true.

Here are the 5 going into the show. They're all 14"x10", gouache and acrylic.

I'm staying with I Dreamed That You Were Delicious for this one.

The Fabulous Folly

Flattery Can Only Get You So Far

But EVERYTHING Sparkles When It Rains

Flying Down the Primrose Path

Then there's this one. I think I'll play around with it some more.

The home stretch

I've decided to not include Camouflage/Flicker in this show but include Beauty's Folly (now renamed The Fabulous Folly) instead. I worked on it this afternoon and finished it up. Cut all the mats. Then it was time to leave for the grant workshop. I heard back from Paul earlier today and he had lots of good comments/questions. Got lots of feedback from Carrie and everyone else too during class. I was hoping to photograph tonight, but now it's after 11pm and I think I'd rather do it when I'm a little fresher. So still no pictures tonight, but for sure tomorrow.

Bits of this, dash of that

Finally finished up my first draft of the project summary at 1 am this morning and sent it off to Carrie and Paul (who's supposed to be critiquing it, but I have never heard back from him on any of the emails I've sent). Anyhow, put all the frames together, went back and worked on Beauty's Folly and Camouflage/Flicker. Didn't photograph tonight, I forgot it was movie night, and the Random Selector chose 28 Weeks Later. I read several good reviews of it, but it's just too bloody for my taste. I had my eyes closed and fingers in my ears for most of the movie. It gave me a headache.

Changing gears

OK, I finished the 6th painting, and fussed with an earlier painting some more. I might play around with Camouflage/Flicker some more tomorrow. But my mind was really half on the grant application, and I'm struggling with the project summary. Carrie gave us a list of things that we must address in the summary, and I have segments written for each, but they're not a whole. And the segments are not well written either, they read more like laundry lists at this point.

I must start framing as well, at least put the molding together and make sure they're all the correct size (sometimes they're not), and the glass too.

Hope to photograph everything tomorrow night (with the proper lights and all), and will have good pictures of everything.

Oops, forgotten tasks...

Shouldn't have taken Friday off. Completely forgot that I was supposed to have my first section for the grant application written and ready for critique this weekend. Also forgot that there's yard debris pick up tomorrow, so I missed my opportunity to prune the rhododendrons. But, I am getting closer with this 6th painting.



The half oval shape at the bottom right is bothering me, so I'll probably change it, but not tonight. This was another 6+ hours day already and I think I'll sleep on it at this point. And now that I'm looking at the photo, I'm wondering what that spot in the middle right is? I guess I'll go take a look...

A bit too green?

Despite that we stayed up until 3am this morning and I didn't quite get enough sleep, I was surprisingly quite awake all day and productive, and spent over 6 hours painting. Didn't even feel like having a cup of coffee (but of course I'm drinking tea all day).

So, this was where I left off yesterday:



And here's where I wrapped up tonight. This is a pretty simple piece; I'm not trying to do too much with it, which might be the secret to its success (if I'm allowed to say so myself). Folly might just be too ambitious. I don't know. The only question I have is whether it's too green or not. Or rather, too much green.

A breather

Had a fairly relaxed day: picked up the frames and glass (but they still owe me 1 set of the molding, which won't be ready until next Tuesday) & worked on my new painting before I headed off to taichi in the late afternoon. Then it was off to dinner and the movies; and the Random Selector chose Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, I liked it. Yeah, it was pretty dumb, but I still liked it! Now I want a pirate wedding for our 20th anniversary...especially since we already 'know how to fence,' ha ha! Also saw the coming attraction for Transformers! It looked good too!

I can still make avoidance work for me

...by starting a new image!



I'm just hedging my bets. I have to deliver 5 framed pieces on June 2nd; I ordered my frames today (they'll be ready for pick up tomorrow), I've got my mats/foamcore/bevels, and I'll need 2 days to frame. If I can have 6 pieces to choose from, that'd be great. So this is my 6th piece.

I stared at Beauty's Folly some more today, and am not sure about the idea I had yesterday (or was that 2 days ago), so I'm holding off on that for now.

I've been painting for 6 weeks straight now, just about, with very few days off. And even then, on those days, I'm still doing admin stuff, web site work, volunteering, artist talks, or on the collaboration project. There's been only 1 day (or maybe 2) in the garden. I have to admit, I'm ready for a break real soon now. I'm starting to want to go OUT! Meet friends! Go shopping! At least get some serious yard work done, it's starting to look pretty weedy out there. The raised vegetable bed is still sitting there, half done. We'll be good and ready for raising vegetables for 2008, for sure.

Grant writing workshop, session 1

Tonight was the first session of the grant writing workshop with Carrie. I think she was a little flustered at the beginning, having always worked one-on-one before and not with a group, but she got her footing after a while and it was a good session. I learned a whole lot. But of course I knew nothing to start out with. I didn't get very far with the writing that we had to do in class, but I'm never that great at command performance stuff, whether its writing or something else, so I'm not too worried. We'll need to send in our 1st draft for critique by the weekend. Timing is good, as I'm winding down with this last painting for the show.

So this is how far I got today. I'm liking that the moth is better defined, although it needs more work. I'm liking the one leaf draped across the right wing, like a bandage, or maybe a graft of some kind. It doesn't look too different fromt the previous picture, but there are some subtle differences. There's more texture in the green background & the leaves, there's more definition to the edges, more definition in the moths.



When I was generating the image, I accidentally zoomed it way in and I really liked the pixelated effect of the details, so I made a copy of that (you'll need to click to see the large image to get the full effect). Maybe I'll have to do something with that.

Can't avoid it any more

This one is finished. Still not sure about title, although it's probably neither of the ones I've been considering. It doesn't look too different from the picture yesterday, but I've added a lot of texture to the background.



Made some changes here, too.



The movie tonight was Waitress, which got a lot of great reviews although I wasn't so sure based on the coming attractions. It was just ok. Although I thought most of the pies sounded (and looked) pretty gross.

Flicker, the new title?

I'm getting pretty close with Camouflage, except I think I'm renaming it Flicker. Not sure yet. I'll figure it out once I decide that it's finished. So here's where I left them a few days ago:



...and



I didn't work on Beauty's Folly at all today. It's in that close to hopeless stage and I'm just not sure what to do about it. Avoidance is the trick. But here's Camouflage/Flicker in the late afternoon:



...and tonight when I was ready to call it a day:

Grant, exhibit write up

Today turned out to be a busy business end kind of a day -- did a little writing for Portland Open Studios and started to prepare for the grant writing workshop. The registration form and questionnaire were due yesterday, but of course I only got a chance to look at the stuff today. For the first time, I had to put into words some basic thoughts about the project. This is what I wrote (very quickly, this is intended for the workshop instructor, not as a final write up for the grant application) --

"I would like to edition an artist book in collaboration with an Alzheimer’s patient. The project is intended to serve two purposes – to stimulate the patient’s memory and mind, and to produce a book of her life stories that she can pass on to her family. I would also like to take this project to a broader level and work with other Alzheimer patients who are at the early to medium stages of the disease.

We will use the Print Gocco, a very simple to use silkscreen machine that requires little space and is non-toxic both in set up and clean up, as well as the material itself. I hope to encourage the patient to create most of the text and select most of the imagery under my guidance. I also hope that the patient will engage in the printing process itself, and I will assist as necessary. All of the above will be completed on site at the patient’s home over a number of months. The final binding will be completed in my studio."

I'd like to get a grant to cover the purchase of materials for 12 artist's books (with 12 different Alzheimer's patients, each in an edition of 25-30 copies), the purchase of a desktop laser copier (necessary to create the screens), and the cost of gas for travel to and from the patient's home/work site. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to get an exhibition space lined up for this, so that requirement can be easily satisfied.

Earlier in the day, went and saw the book exhibit at The New American Art Union. Some of the pieces I've seen in informal settings already and it's nice to be able to finally see them on a wall. Also stopped by at Launch Pad to see Jennifer Mercede's exhibit. Wrote up a brief piece about her work for the Portland Open Studios blog. And even though it's such a short little piece, it still took me a couple of hours!

And that, was the whole day (outside of my regular Sunday chores). Didn't get any studio time. But tomorrow! After my morning appt with the trainer, the day is clear.

Oh yeah, I got the go ahead to write up a proposal for another exhibit at the G & V Walters Cultural Arts Center -- of technologists turned artists!

A little work, a little talk, a little night music

Or something like that. I did manage to squeeze in a couple of hours of painting before I headed into town for the Philip Smith lecture. I see why he hates it when people call his book designs 'illustrations' for the books -- he's very rigorous and philosophical in how he goes about designing a book, although I'm not sure that I see eye to eye with him, nor did I understand all that he had to said. He had prepared handouts too, but there weren't enough copies to go around and I didn't get a copy.

Had a bit of time to kill between the lecture and meeting Mike for dinner, so went browsing at the Real Mother Goose. Hadn't been in there for years. There's this jewelry designer whose work I have admired for a while and I see that she does a beaver that looks pretty darn close to a rat! So I know exact what I'm going to get for my birthday.

Then it was the opera, The Magic Flute tonight. I have to say that I'm not really a Mozart opera fan...they all sound more or less the same to me, I'm afraid.

Made some progress with both paintings, but again, no pictures. For Beauty's Folly, I made the dandelion leaves MUCH darker, which helped; also painted in the seed heads. For Camouflage, I started working on the seed heads but didn't finish. Maybe pictures tomorrow.

27th anniversary

Of Mt. St. Helens blowing up, that is. And the 27th extra year that Mike has had to his life. (He was a news engineer at KING TV in Seattle and had been camped out at Mt. St. Helens with all this TV news equipment for months, with a couple of days off the mountain here and there to reset the overtime clock. Yup, it blew up on his day off. The spot where he camped is now named Johnston Ridge, after the geologist who was camped at the same location and died when the volcano erupted. The visitor center is now at the site. I love that story, the part where he survives Mt. St. Helens, that is.)

Had a few hours in the studio today and worked on both paintings. The one with the legs (tentative title Beauty's Folly) is getting closer, but probably still 3-4 days away from finishing. The 2nd one (tentative title Camouflage) can probably be finished at around the same time. I hope. No pictures today. Tomorrow, I don't know, I might not get very much studio time, same with Sunday. We'll see. I'm adding this photo so I can get a thumbnail on fb...

Critique group collaboration

Last time we met, we started working on 2 bag dresses and I brought one home to finish. I added the lacy trim below the fur, and I crocheted the string of gold coins. This was a malt bag, 25kg, as you see.



And this was the back, while I was jiggling it. Used up almost all the gold coins left from my belly dancing days.



This 'dress' and the other are more or less experiments, although the elements might get taken off and used for a final piece. The discussion tonight was excellent and we definitely have better ideas on what we're doing for the exhibit, and we're definitely moving in the bag/dress direction.

I'll finally have a day in the studio tomorrow, after the weight room visit. I think I'm going to skip taichi again tomorrow.

A series of small misfortunes

I was attacked by a starling.

The MAX ticket booth swallowed my money.

As if that wasn't enough, my ticket, which would've been good on my return trip, fell into the toilet.

Outside of that, it was not an exciting day. I was gone most of the day. The car did pass DEQ. Helped with putting up the Philip Smith exhibit at the library, but no studio time, and no Margaret web site. And tomorrow, I've got to work on the dress for the group, we're meeting tomorrow evening. Of course I've left it until the last moment.

The Philip Smith books are really quite extraordinary, now that I've seen them. I have to say that the one on the postcard was not one of my favorites, but some of the other books are really quite amazing. He will actually be here (from England) to give a talk on Saturday. I'm very much hoping to get there, but as little studio time as I've had in the last few days, I don' t know.

Before & after

All the pages are there for Margaret's web site and I started to touch up the photos this afternoon. Here are a couple of before and after comparisons. She had shot the photos using a felt backdrop that had some wrinkles on it. Most of the shots were not too time consuming to fix, but these two took a little more effort.

So on this first one, wrinkles were removed on all 4 sides. These wrinkles weren't too difficult, but there was a reflection of her, the tripod and the camera on the bottom of the framed piece. So I removed that. At least removed enough so that it's not noticeable.



On this one, again, wrinkles on all 4 sides, and the image was pretty washed out. (I know this paper and know it's a much more saturated and darker red). The wrinkle on the lower right corner was hard to retouch out of the picture, so I just replaced the entire section with another section of the felt and merged it in.

You can click on the images to see larger versions of them.



Had to stop working pretty early this afternoon to get into town for a lecture and panel discussion on the state of religion in contemporary Tibet. Didn't get anything done after that. Tomorrow will be another 'workless' day, between weight room, DEQ, and hanging the Phillip Smith exhibit at the library.

Speaking of photo retouching, this was one of my more fun/frivolous projects. DMC, who was my boss at Tek, is CTO at the company Mike's at. He took this image of his plush mouse (yes, he carries around 2 plush mice in his pockets, complete with a variety of costume changes) sitting on top of Mike's bat and the whole things on top of Mike.



He sent the image to me. I found a photo I already had of my rat Kiki and made this composite. Notice the bat's name tag also changed...yes, that's the man who carries around plush mice...

It's getting close

Spent most of the afternoon on Margaret's web site, and most of the pages are there (I think I'm just missing two now). I haven't checked for italics, bolds, and funny characters yet, and also still need to check all the links. Most of the studio shots still need touching up to remove the wrinkles in the felt (she elected to have me electronically remove them rather than reshoot). So maybe another 5, 6 hours.

Did some yardwork, ran some errands, voted. That rounded out the day. Didn't work on the painting. When I was at Costco tonight, I had a strange urge to buy a bottle of wine (which is so unlike me), so I can have a few sips when I get back to the painting, figuring that it might relax me a bit. But I resisted the urge...

Stupid human tricks

Argh! I can't believe I did it again!

We have one of those enclosed kitty litter boxes with an opening on one end. I have twice now put the litter box back with the opening to the wall after cleaning it! Poor kitty. The first time it happened, she was just a kitten, and she held it for almost 12 hours before she let it loose right next to Mike just as we were getting into bed. This time, she held it until the next day (poor kitty), and I found it on my side of the bed.

I guess she uses pee-mail. And just to make sure I got the message, she cc'ed on my pajama top. I discovered this as I was putting on my pajama at 1am. Good thing the guest bedroom was made up, I just had to clear off the gocco stuff and we were in bed before long.

Got some yard work done finally, and worked on the Portland Open Studios blog after that -- added 2 exhibit announcements and 2 artist highlights (myself included for my show in Hillsboro). Didn't get to Margaret's web site, but did spend a little time painting.

Most of this was actually done yesterday, I only made a few changes today. It's a long ways off from what I would like it to be, and if I only knew what that was, it would be so much easier. Right now, it's looking like a big mess in the making. And actually, looking at the photograph now, I see a few obvious problems that I don't see when I'm looking at the actual piece.

No Marion Forks for Mother's Day

My mom called and cancelled our lunch tomorrow at Marion Forks, saying she isn't feeling 'too great'. She sounded pretty depressed and I didn't push her on it, especially since I'm planning on going over for a couple of days early June. Although I'm sorry that she cancelled the lunch, I'm glad that 1) she actually REMEMBERED that we were meeting at Marion Forks (I didn't think she would remember), and that 2) I now have Sunday to do a few things that I really need to do. Like doing some yard work, Margaret's web site, and painting.

These two photos were from yesterday. I wanted this image to be like a model going down a catwalk, but I also wanted it to resemble how traditional textiles/clothing are displayed in exhibits. The 'model' is a hybrid of human legs, a moth, and a dandelion. So this is before I scrubbed it.



And here's after. I didn't use very much water this time, which explains why the colors are still so dense. I was afraid the turquoise would not hold up well with too much water, but I think the red really needs thinning. I've worked on this painting a lot more today, but no new pictures.



Then I started a new image this afternoon while I was waiting for the other to dry. I wanted to do one that's purely surface design, so here's how it's starting.



And after I scrubbed it. Again, I didn't use much water.

Geting behind

Spent about 4 hours working on my painting, but I'm too lazy to put up the photos right now. Maybe tomorrow.

I think one of the reasons why I'm not really enjoying the taichi class is that just as I'm in the middle of working away, I have to clean up and leave for the 6pm class. I have to give myself 45 minutes to get there because of the evening traffic. On a normal day, I work until 6:30 or 7pm, so having to clean up and leave by 5:15pm is a bit of a drag.

I haven't had a chance to work on Margaret's web site, and now I'm getting close to the June deadline. Of course, I'm busy working away on my other June deadline, the show at Rake. I was originally planning to go visit my mom for a couple of days for Mother's Day, but I've changed my plans and we'll all meet in the middle for lunch at Marion Forks. It's a lovely, lovely location (although it is just your hamburger, oysterburger type of a place), right on the Santiam River. I mean RIGHT ON the Santiam River. It's still 4 hours round trip so much of Sunday will be gone, but at least I'll have my whole day on Monday.

PSU talk, part II

This afternoon was the talk, and without any coordination between the 3 of us, we each presented a different aspect of making an artist book. And also without any coordination, we went in the 'proper' order -- I went first, and I talked about the experiences that were the inspirations behind Fatherland (my entry in the exhibit); Sue Allen went 2nd, and she talked about the technical aspects of making her work; then Sue Collard was 3rd, and she gave a grand tour of her book work. So we had inspiration, the making of, and the finished work, in that order.

Sue A said she likes to go in the middle, and I usually like to go first -- that way nobody in the audience could be thinking 'oh hey, the last presenter was so much better.' I always chose the first slot for oral exams too. Once a professor had to add a slot because the original first slot was taken by someone else.

I must've been more keyed up about this than I realized. After we got home from dinner, I was pretty tired. Originally, I thought I'd paint (or work on Margaret's site), but I ended up catching up on the Sunday Times Magazine.

New painting started

I normally don't sketch out or compose my paintings before I start; I just start with the white paper and go to it. But in this case, I did compose it before hand (I took pictures of reference materials and collaged them together digitally); and I sketched it in in pencil first.



Spent the afternoon working on this, and was planning to work on it this evening too (or on Margaret's web site), but then ended up wasting the evening away looking at cute cat pictures with captions and cute overload. Those get you everytime...

New composition

Started to work on the next painting this afternoon. Took pictures of some reference materials and I'm laying them out, haven't decided what I'm gonna go for yet...and no picture.

Tonight was the first Portland Open Studios workshop. The blog was introduced, and I can't believe how many people have exhibits up right now! Allen mentioned that he might be interested in helping with the writing, which is good, because it looks like it will be a lot of writing.

Saw Spiderman tonight. It was pretty much what I expected, mindless fun, although it was a bit too long. The original choice was Offside, but then I decided I didn't feel like seeing a 'soccer movie'. I suppose it's not really about soccer, and I'll eventually go see it.

PSU talk

I don't think I'm quite ready for the PSU talk yet, but the CD with the images have to be delivered tomorrow, so I've got the CD made. That was the bulk of the day -- deciding what I will be focusing on (the making of Fatherland), choosing the images, & putting them in a sensible sequence so that all the elements/sequence in the book make sense. Here are a few of the images that I'll be showing:

The lay of the land -- Taiwan is mostly hills and mountains, and just like everywhere else, hills are prime real estates. In the case of Taiwan, the prime real estate is often reserved for the ancestors, ie, cemeteries.



You don't have to go very far from the city before you're in the middle of the woods. This was maybe 10 minutes walk from town.



On this hill not very far from my parents' house, there was this public cemetery. Here a Mr. Lu had posted a sign for his business. This particular sign says 'bone picking', but he has multiple signs up everywhere, and he evidently owns a turnkey operation for burial -- he takes care of everything, from the initial burial to tomb maintenance, to the exhumation 7 years later.



Here's a fairly new tomb.



And here's a tomb where the bones have been collected.



My book, Fatherland was conceived because I was walking up to this cemetery a couple of times a day during my visit, and it seemed like every time I went up there, something had changed -- a tomb had been exhumed, a new one had been put in, etc. The book was accepted into the Guild of Book Worker's 100th Anniversary exhibit which is traveling the US for 1 year, and it's here in Portland right now. So the 3 of us in Portland in the show are giving a talk on Thursday. Thus all this preparation.

All fixed for now

Fixed the Paintings and Drawings page, and took the opportunity to add the moth paintings from last year (which I never added) and the new pieces from this year as well. I guess I'm going with the new format, not that I really gave it much consideration. I reduced the number of thumbnails/pages by combining a few of them. I think it's better.

Went to the Catherine Michaelis (May Day Press) talk this afternoon at JWSC. She's got a great sense of humor (besides being fabulous to look at) and it's always fun to hear other artists talk about the way they work. Went to the play tonight, the last play of the season. So the day was gone, just like that. Didn't have a chance to prepare for my Thursday talk, which I'll absolutely have to do tomorrow; and that means I won't get my new painting started until Tuesday afternoon, probably.

Oops!

I knew I shouldn't have done that "scp -r *..."

Spent most of the day working on Margaret's web site and made good progress. Can't remember why now, but had to look up something on my web site, and that was when I discovered that I had accidentally written over my Paintings & Drawings page when I updated my Prints & Artist's Books page, with partially redesigned html, but it's not all there. So instead of preparing for my Thursday night talk at PSU like I had planned to do, I spent the evening trying to get that fixed. I'm not finished, but I'm too tired to continue at this point. All together too much sitting in front of the computer today.

Cough cough cough

The cold has moved to my lungs, which I suppose is good -- that's usually the last thing it does before it goes away all together. Decided to skip Friday Night Extreme Taichi tonight, I'm just coughing too much and really didn't feel like going anywhere -- just rather stay home and paint instead.

I dreamed last night that 1) holding a can of tomato paste will cure you of a cold, and 2) we're moving to this place that's underwater. We went to see the house, we even cooked a meal in it (using the can of tomato paste I was hoding). Everything seemed just fine and normal, except that everyone moved very slowly because we were underwater. I was very concerned that, if we moved there, all my paintings would be ruined.

Speaking of which, I think I'm done with this one.



When I was checking my statcounter this morning, it became pretty obvious that the new prints and books page has some usability problems -- search engines seem to want to lead people straight to the subpages, where each book's details are shown, and I didn't have a link back to the main page. So I took a little time to fix that.

web site reorg

Spent most of the day reorganizing the prints and artist's books section of my web site. The inline frame has been bothering me for a while now, so I thought I'd try this. Another reason for wanting the change -- there are enough books/prints on there that I thought some information, e.g. the titles, along with the thumbnails would be useful. I'll live with this for a bit before I change the paintings and drawings page too. Didn't work on the painting today; the web site change took about 6 hours. It doesn't look like it's a whole lot of change, but there are a lot of little things that you have to update in each file...and making sure that the next and previous arrows all link to the correct files.

Went to the Focus on Book Arts exhibit reception tonight. I'm very glad I went, really liked a few of the books and am sorry that the classes I'm interested in taking are going on at the same time that I'll be teaching.

The movie tonight was The Year of the Dog. It has its moments, but I'm sorry to have to say that it's not a good movie. Laura Dern was terrific though.

Sick but productive

I almost succumbed to a nap late morning, but decided to paint instead. Ended up painting for about 5 hours today, so I'm feeling very satisfied. Of course, again, no exercise, and no chores. I did manage to put together a pot of soup for dinner though. Here's where the current painting's at. Not sure if I'll finish tomorrow or not, but hopefully at least by Friday.



I forgot that there's another reception tomorrow night, for a group show that I'm in. Since it's a group show, I don't feel obliged to stay the whole evening, but I do hope to go and see the exhibit.

Hillsboro reception

Tonight was the opening reception for the Hillsboro show. There were more people there than I expected, but turns out, tonight was the first Hillsboro Art Walk, so traffic was pretty constant. Several people I know came, so that was nice. I did ok, but had a few coughing fits and my nose was pretty stuffed up. I forgot to take pictures again.

Got an hour and half in the studio this afternoon, but the painting doesn't appear too different (so no picture); there are a few subtle changes though. Napped for a couple of hours. Hope to be back to normal tomorrow, I can barely breathe!