Dorkfest '09

Goodness gracious, looks like there's scant competition for it this year, so it looks to be my chance!

My qualifications:

1. If I win this year, I shall use up the remaining Starbucks card! No socially-well-adjusted buying 1 cup of coffee and leaving the rest of the card for Dork '10! No Siree! Previous Dorks who did such things were ninnies.

2. After entertaining art lovers for 7 hours a day during Portland Open Studios, I relaxed in the evening by reading my O'Reilley Web Design in a Nutshell book, updating my CSS knowledge.

3. I've probably been on the net for longer than most of M5K's readers have been around on this planet. If they were on Mars prior to coming to Earth, that doesn't count.

4. This is Friday night, and I'm listing my dorkitudes for millions to read on the web...need I say more?

5. All my previous entries still stand...

OK, got to submit this before the last minute deadline rush!

My good name is being sullied

Way back when, we used to laugh at people who used their own names for domain names. Then it became the expected thing for artists. By then, [insert my name here].com had been taken up by a Chinese software company selling math related tools. (You'll see why I'm not using my name for the reference shortly.)

But after a few years, they went away and the website [insert my name here].com just had ads. So I carefully marked the domain expiration date on my calendar, and as the day approached, checked and double checked whois to see if they renewed.

Well, they didn't. So the fateful day arrived. I checked as midnight approached. Nope, not renewed. So immediately after midnight, I checked again, and aaaargh, it had been renewed. Bots!

So I didn't look there for a long time. And today, I looked. And oh, I really shouldn't have.

[Insert my name here].com had turned into a very naughty place. Although there are no photos, the links all supposedly point you to some rather 'interesting' places. (But all in Chinese.) Although, I certainly wouldn't click on any of them, no matter how interesting they sounded. I was reading the links off to The Good Prince, and he was going "whoa, too much information!"

Certainly if I were on a PC, clicking on any of those links would probably be an extremely bad idea. And on a mac, still not good.

So there you have it, do NOT go to [insert my name here].com. (But of course you will.)

I'm still around

I seem to have fallen down on the job of blogging. I have been working hard on a variety of art related work, but not much studio time in the last couple of weeks. Portland Open Studios ended last weekend, but being on the board, that means we're now planning for next year. We've already had out first meeting tonight, not only wrapping up for this year, but starting to think about next year.

The first weekend this year was very slow for many people. The good weather, Wordstock, both had an impact. The second weekend—Saturday was just the craziest weather we've seen in a long time, and Sunday afternoon, it seemed like everyone was finally out doing Portland Open Studios.

On Saturday, when I was doing my first Gocco demo of the day, I got to the part about flashing the screen. I pushed down on the Gocco (with the lamp unit in there, but with old bulbs) and said "...and at this point, the lamps would flash."

And KABOOM! LIghtning and thunder went off, just as I pushed down.

Now that's Gocco Power!

Portland Open Studios, week 2

The second week is always so much easier to do than the first week. I didn't have a whole lot to do—made a few changes from last week, dug out some old photographs from my photography days, prepared a new demo, and got the giant huge pizza to last us through the week. Yes, we survive on pizza during Portland Open Studios.

The old photographs from the late 80s and early 90s were fun to see. Portland has changed a lot since those days and a lot of the things I photographed are not there anymore. I'm putting out a few of the silver gelatin prints and a few of the RC prints and see if there's any interest.

[Oct 18: and the answer was no.]

Taking it easy for this week

This is in between the two Portland Open Studios weekends, and I'm determined to take it a little easy this week. I got caught up on making various appts that I need to make, finished writing a profile on Susan Gallacher-Turner for the Portland Open Studios blog, and tomorrow, I'm off to see a few exhibits! Yay!

I've also been working on a mock-up for updating my website. Not sure how far I'll get with that. I was originally thinking that I'd finish that before the end of October and then I can focus on my senior's book for November and December, but that was before I was asked to serve on a grant panel, which was just too good and educational an opportunity to pass up. So maybe I won't get my website updated before the end of the year after all.

Here's a photo of the 7x7 panels installed in the front entry. I'm pretty sure that I damaged my camera last year when I dropped it on the driveway. I don't think I've taken a photo that's in focus since. I guess I'll have to take it in.

I've joined Etsy

OK, I resisted and resisted, but I can't believe that I couldn't sell a single bat print during Portland Open Studios! I figured that little baby would just fly out the door like those Austin bats at dusk. So I've listed 2 prints on etsy. We'll see how they do there. Here's the etsy page.

2009 Portland Open Studios, day 1

How does one get by on 4 1/2 hours of sleep? With lots of leftover pizza and coffee I guess.

I was up until 3:30am this morning getting ready for Portland Open Studios, and was up again at 8am. It was a pretty slow day though, probably the slowest day I've seen yet. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

What was funny—I had set out Superfoodland!, the board game I did for For the Love of Food earlier this year. Part way through the afternoon, I mentioned to some neighbors who had stopped by that I was surprised that no one seemed impressed by the blueberries. There was a short pause, and he said, "they're not real blueberries?" The Good Prince thinks everyone just thinks I've put out a goblet of blueberries on the table and they're not sure why.

Now it's time for me to catch up on my beauty sleep.

All's not quiet in the studio

Well, ok, so I was gone for a few days celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival out on the Alvord Desert (see a few photos on my facebook, even if you're not on facebook, I think you can see them), but outside of that, I have been working hard.

I'm still finishing the paintings (airbrushing the gouache pieces with the GAC500 mixture), painting the edges of the panels, and having my 3rd solarplate intensive with Barbara Mason. We did relief prints in the 3rd session, and I have some nifty prints to scan and show, I just haven't had the opportunity yet. At this point, it will have to wait until Portland Open Studios is over. Speaking of which, I was up until 3am this morning finishing up this profile on Jason Kappus, a very young and very talented artist.