A wee bit more information about this game piece

OK, so it's clear that not everyone can read my mind, so maybe a bit more information would be good before I proceed—

The game is part of an installation called For the Love of Food that I'm doing with 3 other artists—Helen Hiebert, Diane Jacobs, and Anne Greenwood. It will be shown at Cedar Crest College in PA in March.

There are two parts to the installation. There will be a Food Confessional set up with a video camera and 4 masks (rat, cat, horse, pig). Gallery visitors will be invited to don a mask and talk about their relationship with food in front of the video camera. The four of us have already 'primed' this portion of the installation by taping our food confessions, and that will loop on a monitor/projector in the gallery. I, of course, did my confession as The Rat. And I talked about the different ways that I cheat on my diabetic diet.

The 2nd part is a dinning room table, set up with 4 table settings, one from each of us. We're each doing very different things, but mine will be the game. Here's the portion of the artists statement about my piece: "Shu-Ju made a game that looks at eating trends and highlights the consequences of the consumer's enthusiasm to embrace a new super food and devour it at every opportunity, disturbing the delicate balance of sustainability."

Of the 15 'superfoods' in the game, quite a few are pretty benign, things like broccoli & walnuts. But then you get into things like coffee/soy/chocolate/banana/tiger penis/shark's fin, the damages start to add up. Although you only land in 'jail' if you draw a tiger's penis or shark's fin card, some of the others will land you in a 'quandary.'

Anyhow, I don't have the game board done yet (which is good, because as I was cleaning today, I found something that I had saved from an issue of Natural History years ago that made everything click into place). I've painted the faces of the cards, but have yet to write or print the text. I printed the first layer of the backs of the cards today; although I'm not at all happy with the colors I chose—I wanted bright childlike colors, but I think I went overboard and they look rather garish. Now I'll have to fix that.

And I'm supposed to come up with a title for my game before 9am tomorrow morning.

About the studio remodel

Oh happy day! (Besides the fact that it's inauguration day, that is.) I picked up the flooring today. Of course, by the time they nickel and dime you on everything, it's really more than the advertised fee which they so liberally post on every flat surface available in the store. But it's actually still very reasonable, and frankly, I was a little concerned that their advertised installation fee was so much lower than the next bid, so now I can worry a little bit less.

The flooring needs to sit in situ for a week before they can install. At this point though, I think I'll put off the installation until after my class on the 31st. I've got plenty of things going on through the rest of the month, I don't need to spend another day moving furniture around.

And talking about cleaning...

More happy news! Remember that I was bemoaning having lost a beloved pendent my American dad brought back for me from Iran? I found it today! Yay! I had taken it to RSM when I first started the project with the seniors, as an example of personal items that they can use to create images from. So today, when I was cleaning, I finally unpacked all that stuff, and there it was!

And in there, I also found this photo:



The artist as a 3 year old who did not appreciate having her photos taken, not even for her birthday. (I don't think I ever smiled for a photo until I was 17.) I still remember that dress, too. I did not like it. It was scratchy and it did not breathe in that hot humid weather in Taiwan. Yuck.