MiT, 5 more hands

The artwork for three more of the '8' tiles:



The two flower tiles, plus title and colophon:



The hands printed (plus the one that didn't get its picture taken last time):



And, here we are, practically the end of September already, and I picked another big bowl of strawberries. I had actually gone out with the little bowl first, thinking that was plenty big. But I was wrong:



And Random Movie: Burn After Reading. It was probably my least favorite of the Coen brothers' movies I've seen.

The Grand Exhibition

OK, Margaret's words, not mine. But, we did finalize on all the words for the exhibit today. This is for the book project with the seniors.

I've been calling it "MiT," which stands for Moment in Time; that was my original project name when I applied for the grant.

I never did care for that name though. So this is the John Wilson Special Collections exhibit title, subtitle, and write-up (thanks to Jim Carmin, the JWSC library who helped put it together):

Relay/Replay: Artist’s Books that Illuminate the Creative Lives of the Elderly

November 15 – December 31, 2008

Portland artist Shu-Ju Wang spent eight months working with four seniors at various stages of memory loss. Through conversation, painting, printmaking, and collage, she engaged these delightful individuals; together they created artwork that became the foundation to this collection of artist's books. Shu-Ju has been making artist’s books using the Print Gocco for 10 years, and this collection draws heavily on her skills as a Gocco printer and book maker.

Also, please join us in the John Wilson Special Collections on Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM for an informal talk by the artist about this project (which was funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council).

For more information contact Jim Carmin, John Wilson Special Collections Librarian at 503-988-6287; or jimc@multcolib.org.

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Outside of that, I've been busy catching up on Portland Open Studios work for a couple of days. Finally finished the profile I've been working on for the last 2 months on Shelley Hershberger, another artist. That should go up on the Portland Open Studios blog on Saturday.

Random Movie of the week: Brideshead Revisited. Although it was a fine movie, it was clear that there was so much more going on than could really be condensed into a 2+ hour movie.

MiT book...I sure use a lot of glue

That was what I did today. Gluing. Gluing the cover sheets to the cover boards. Gluing the filler sheets on the inside covers. And now I'm out of glue. Will continue gluing tomorrow, after I get more glue.

On the positive side, I examined the covers, and only 2 were bad as far as pva seepage goes. And I have enough good ones for the text blocks. That's good news in that I wanted to keep the covers pretty clean and uncluttered, as the inside is pretty minimalist. So I can just print my senior #1's name on the cover, as I originally planned.

The Random Movie: Tell No One, a French thriller. A complicated plot but very well put together. There weren't any of those head-scratching moments of what-just-happened? Also saw Man on Wire a few weeks back, about the people that strung a cable between the twin towers back in the 70's and the guy that walked across. It was terrific!

No gallery representation for me

Having had no luck in finding something that I can just use for senior #1's book covers (although I really wasn't expecting to), I came home from Art Media empty handed. I did also pick up my prints my Print Arts, which will close its gallery at the end of the month. So sad. I seem to be going around closing galleries. First Rake, now Print Arts. So now I'm left with no galleries.

Still working on squaring up the paper for the book, but I am finished with laying out the front side of the book. So that's progress.

The random movie: Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I liked it, a light-hearted romp about the nature of love. We did see a bunch of other random movies over the last few weeks: The Dark Knight (not as good as I hoped), the new Mummy movie (possibly one of the worst movies I've ever seen, right up there with 300), and Journey to the Center of the Earth (it was ok, but I really liked the original movie, and love the book, so this was bound to disappoint).

MiT book, final push for Rock Star senior's book

Between yesterday and today, I finished 10 more copies of Martha. 3 more copies, and I'll be finished with this first book. And it's the middle of July already. At least this next book will be pretty simple, I hope.

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I counted up the number of seniors I've worked with and I only counted 3! The fourth person was actually a youngster in her 20s. I thought, oh no, she's not going to qualify for the project...what was I thinking!?

I am starting to get pretty stressed out about how behind I am. I've not slept well for days. This morning, I almost decided to get out of bed around 3:30am or so, since I still hadn't fallen asleep. But I figured I'd probably just make mistakes anyhow, and that would be worse than pointless.

The Random Movie of the week—Bigger, Faster, Stronger, or something similar. A surprisingly personal look at steroid use. I thought it was pretty interesting.

MiT book, sewing, sewing, and more sewing

I've been sewing for two days (although not full days), and I've gotten...what, 8 text blocks done?! It's a bit slower going than I was anticipating. I have no appts tomorrow (yeah!), so hope to get some yard work done in the morning, to be followed by more sewing.

Went to the Contemporary Crafts Museum's Kaffeeklatsch on cultural appropriation vs inspiration today. It was a bit more free form discussion than I figured, but was interesting. Shelley and I were the only painters/printmakers there; besides us, 2 people from Froelick, a curator from the museum, another artist who does beading, an intern from an interior design firm, so an assortment of people.

The non-Random Movie tonight — Wanted. It was entertaining in a ridiculous way, although awfully violent. I didn't like that they strapped little bombs to rats though, and they didn't put up a disclaimer that no animals were hurt. We saw WALL-E the other night too, and it was pretty sweet, although I didn't think there was much chemistry between the two leads.

Back in business with Photoshop...again

I finally got the upgrade to Photoshop CS3. I would call it a splurge, except that it was quite necessary since Photoshop 7 did not run on Leopard. I coasted on the trial version for a month, but that expired right before I left for San Francisco. So after some delay, I've now ponied up my $199 and am back in business.

With PS up and running, I started laying out the next page for my Rock Star senior's book. She loves scrabble, so naturally, I have to do a scrabble page. And it's a natural opportunity to mix pattern with text. It will be a couple of days before I'm finished with it, probably.

In the mean time, we have pictures from the past few days. This is the LO chronicles piece, The Four Seasons of Nansen Summit, framed up. It's one of the largest pieces I've done; framed, it's definitely the largest. The other ones I framed without a mat.



The Drum Bridge at the Japanese Garden in San Francisco. It's hard to tell in this photo, but you definitely have to hang on to the rails. I can't imagine doing this in a kimono and those wooden platform shoes!



I think the Portland Japanese Garden is quite a bit larger; I don't know for certain, but it definitely feels that way. The SF garden is more varied architecturally where as the Portland garden has more of a Zen focus.

And The Thinker contemplates Chihuly. Boy, one hail storm, and the Chihuly is toast!



And there was a Random Movie last night — Kung Fu Panda. Talking critters? I'm there! It is cute, although not clever on the scale of Ratatouille.

MiT, 4th senior day 2

Yippee!

So now you know the day had a happy ending. And now I will tell you about the sinking feeling at the beginning.

My appt with senior #4 was at 1:30pm. I was pretty sure she was going to be there with her daughter or son-in-law, or maybe both. Nobody there. Knocked on her door. She answered and was happy enough to see me.

"I don't think I want to do it today."

Hmmm...not good.

"Ok, you just don't feel like it?"

"No, I just don't feel like it."

"Would you like to meet another time to work on the project some more?"

"Yes, I would like to."

I've been here before, and I recognize this behavior. My heart just sank. But I couldn't exactly force her to work on the project now, could I?

Since I was already there, I decided to stop in and visit a few of the seniors that I've come to know. After about 20 minutes or so, I made my way back to the arts & crafts room to pack up and go. And what did I see!? My senior and her daughter, sitting there, going through a giant binder of old family photos and documents!

That was exactly the scenario I envisioned when I started this project. Her daughter had found all kinds of things and they were talking about family history and sharing them with me as we printed. Again, we made 3 prints today. When my senior went off to dinner, the daughter and I stayed and chatted on for another hour and half. I didn't get home until almost dinner time (and was REALLY hungry), but it was totally worth it.

Her daughter plans to be there every time we meet, and says if by chance she can't make it, I should not take 'no' for an answer from her mother! So we'll see how well I do that.

So yes, a very happy ending today.

And I deserved a Random Movie, and Indiana Jones and Something or Other was the lucky pick. I couldn't really exactly figure out what was going on, but it was fun romp. Not as fun as the very first movie, but good enough. We also saw Son of Rambow the other day. Cute.

MiT book, folded envelopes

So here are the first 2 sets of 'envelopes' folded up. I just want them to resemble envelopes, but without the cumbersome flaps, and here they are. The stacks on the left is what they will look like as pages in the book; both sides will look the same so there are really 2 'envelopes' per page. On the right, is a page opened up — the inside of the page is printed as well. This will be sewn down the middle to the accordion spine, and then the 2 sides glued together, attached at the unprinted flap.



The rest of the day was a whole lot of Portland Open Studios business. There was a movie this week, although not random. We saw The Flight of the Red Balloon last Sunday, the Hou Hsiao-Hsien movie. It was excruciatingly slow. I don't mean the plot was slow, which it was (what little there was), but that doesn't bother me. But I mean everyone (except Juliet Binoche) moved very slowly. One scene a woman was learning how to make pancakes; she worked so slowly, Oh, My, God. I could've had the pancakes made in the time she cracked 3 eggs! I kept on thinking, just give me those eggs. And it wasn't like she was moving with such beauty and grace either. But I'm sure I completely missed the point, not having seen The Red Balloon. Or maybe I was just grumpy, but I shouldn't have been...I just ate the season's first strawberry swedish cream at Old Wives' Tales right before the movie!

Isn't that romantic?!

The other day, after my senior #3 decided to pull out of the project, I was moping around all evening. I put my hand to my forehead and declared, "my life is over." The Good Prince said, "well, if your life is over, I guess my life is over too."

Isn't that just the most romantic!? And there I thought he was going to say,"well, then all the rest of the chocolate is mine."

Speaking of romance, the Non-Random movie of the night was Made of Honor, which was really not a very good movie, but I'm a sucker for movies where the girl gets to marry her best friend and live happily ever after. Someday, they're going to make a movie about the Good Prince and me, and the whole time, he'll be going, "what a dumb movie."

Seems like after we got the AAA discount movie tickets, we've been going to more movies (not much money saving there). We've seen Ironman (Non-Random, and it was ok) and My Blueberry Nights. My Blueberry Nights was a bit disappointing; I think it could've been much better had Norah Jones been a better actress. But the movie also lacked the painterly beauty of In the Mood for Love, my favorite Wong Kar-wai movie (although admittedly, I have not seen them all).

Picked up some Nepal Heavyweight, which will make a much better spine than the Rives Lightweight. I did have to buy more of it than I needed for this project in order to get it wholesale, but I think I'll eventually use it all.

Things that put a smile on my face

As I was pulling out of the driveway today, I saw this robin in my yard pulling up on weeds, and it had collected quite the beakful. It looked like those paintings of old Chinese men with the long beards and whiskers. That put a big smile on my face.

Only problem was, it was not pulling up weeds that were still attached to the ground; it was merely picking up the weeds that I had already pulled.

In the studio, I made some progress with the book that I've been oh-so-slow to mock up. I finally came up with a good envelope look-alike that will be easy to use and will not be a pain in the butt to cut, print, and fold. And in fact, I'm pretty happy with the solution.

The movie tonight was Leatherheads. I think it was meant to be like those old fashioned romantic comedies like It Happened One Night, or something similar. But it was just...boring.

Board Retreat

When I told the Good Prince that the board retreat was happening at our house, his response was "I didn't know our house was that rustic."

Rustic or not, it worked out well enough, although 9 people was a bit crowded, and the Good Kitty was hiding downstairs the whole day. But we got a lot done, although I think I got my best idea AFTER the meeting was over and pretty much everyone had gone home. And it was a long day, by the time I cleaned up and returned the house back to normal, it was 7 hours later. I never even got around to washing my face (people arrived a bit early, right before I was about to wash up and change my clothes).

We tried a new restaurant today — Ho Soon Yi, a Korean place on Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy. I really liked my tofu stew, but their kimchee dishes selection wasn't as varied as some other places. Also, they didn't have a hot version of bi bim bop; although for a change, it came with lots of toppings and not so much rice, which is a big plus; but that may just be due to the current rice situation.

And the Random Movie the other night was Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Some movies are very lucky, like Forgetting, which was picked the first time it got on the random selection list. Other movies, like Kite Runner, which has been on the list since it opened, and same with Teeth and also The Other Boleyn Girl, and lots of other movies, never get picked, week after week after week.

Well, I didn't care for Forgetting, it was a bit raunchier that I like.

Nothing's perfect

I finally finished packing my 3 big boxes for the Abecedarian show. After I sealed everything up, I discovered that I forgot not just one thing, but two — the contract and packing list, and 1 small book. I'll send the packing list and contract separately in the mail, and I'm just going to forget about the extra book (The Belly Dancer's Alphabet). Everything fits really well the way it is, I think I'll leave well enough alone.

Decided to frame up the other 2 pieces I got frames for the other day; one is a piece of my mothers that she gave us, and the other I bought at the PAC fundraiser last December. And wouldn't you know it, the frame for my mother's piece is just a teeny tiny bit too small. It's an oil on stretched canvas, and they measured just from the center in the 2 dimensions, where it's apparently just a smidgen shorter than along the edges.

And No. 3 in the Nothing's Perfect category — we went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark - the Adaptation, at Hollywood, and it was sold out. We even went an hour early. Not too surprising, I suppose, it had gotten such a big write-up in the papers. While I was reading about these 11, 12 year olds making this movie—setting the basement on fire, putting snakes in the basement, being dragged behind a moving truck—I kept on wondering, "did the adults know what they were up to?"

We ended up seeing Forbidden Kingdom, which was rather disappointing.

Continuous improvement?

I've been slowly getting ready for the 3 person exhibit at Alicia Bailey's Abecedarian Gallery in CO. But of course, I always forget that sometimes frames are not available the same day you order them. I must try to put that in a permanent place in my head. Anyhow, my original plan for the day was to mat/mount/frame, but the frames weren't ready until after 3pm this afternoon. By then, I had been sucked into another project (still making changes to my web site), and sucked in good. So I just ended up doing that. (Actually had an appt with my first senior this afternoon, but she cancelled...family gathering for Passover.)

It took me a long time to decide which way to go. I tried a bunch of different things and stared at each one for a long time. I took out a lot of the explanatory text on the home page, and grouped the labels for the images together at the bottom. I also decided to switch to Garamond which is not as dense as Baskerville (what I had before), so it doesn't look like there's so much stuff there. We'll see how this works.

The reason why I wanted to make the change—I notice that some people come to my web site after googling for variations of 'gocco'. Then they probably just promptly click on the Portfolio link without looking around first, and that defaults to the painting page. I'm guessing that since they don't see any gocco related stuff there, many of them just bail out and leave at that point. So I'm hoping that, without all the explanatory text, the home page will actually be easier to navigate. We'll see.

The Random Movie this week, which we saw a couple of nights ago, was Under The Same Moon. A bit of a melodrama, but very sweet. The boy was phenomenal.

The art tour

I decided to take the day off and go visit the Buckman Art Show and Saturday Market. Mostly, I just wanted to have a little R&R, which I haven't had for a couple of weeks now, between taxes, my regular projects, and yard work. Also, I was hoping to find a night light for the guest bedroom, and maybe anything else that might suit my fancy.

I didn't find a night light, and didn't spend much money. Bought a small print from Theo Ellsworth, whose work I saw at the Everett Station Lofts a few months back and really liked; he's at Saturday Market, which really surprised me. Bought a little card for the Good Prince (it's our anniversary!) from Carye of Red Bat Press, and a pack of mice cards drawn by the students at Buckman Elementary. (And I did sneak in a little work on the Portland Open Studios web site.)

The Random Movie (from a few nights ago) was Married Life. A rather different take on friendship, love, and marriage. Not sure that it's for everyone, but I kind of liked it.

Taxes!

Yes, I did what I said I would do today! What a change. I'm not quite finished yet, but looks like I did better than last year, which isn't very hard, since I netted all of $500 in 2006. That was my worst year in all the years since I went full time with my art.

The Random Movie tonight was The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, a touching story about a young boy who suddenly found himself in the care of strangers, set against the 1970 World Cup games and political turmoil in Brazil.

MiT, 1st senior, day 10 V0.1, 2nd senior day 11

We had a slight mishap today, with senior #1, which is why it's day 10 V0.1

When I got there at our appt'ed time, she was still having breakfast and in her bathrobe. This had happened before and this time I was prepared — I brought my lunch! So I ate my lunch and went for a quick walk. But an hour later, she still hadn't shown up. I knocked on her door again, and she did come to the door, although apparently, she had taken a fall and spilled a can of coke on the kitchen floor. The floor was wet with brown liquids and very sticky. Well, I don't blame her for not being up to do watercolors after that!

After I cleaned up the kitchen floor, she asked me to go into the living room to see the watercolor she painted! She was very proud of it (and yes, it was the watercolor she did with me). (And yes, I reported the fall to the front desk.)

Senior #2, as always, was prepared with 2 drawings, 1 verse, and a watercolor. And we managed to print everything today. Next time we meet, we're going to hand color some of the prints.

The random movie tonight was Summer Palace, a Chinese movie. Except we didn't actually get to see it. We thought it was playing at the Livingroom Theater at 10:15pm, but turns out, they don't show movies late on weeknights. And it was too late to try for another movie.

There was a random movie last week, Mrs. Pettygrew Lives for a Day, which I thought was a magical fairy tale; the Good Prince, naturally, thought it was pretty dumb.

(And yes, all day, whenever I'm sitting at the computer, I'm listening to Andreas Scholl. Like right now.)

Pudding issue #23

For a change, we had a sunny morning and early afternoon, and I was not already involved with another project, so I took advantage of the sun and exposed the StencilPro screens. And of course, I forgot to take pictures, until I was already all done. This is the StencilPro HiRes (SPHR from now on) screen (the red thing) mounted onto a previously used gocco screen. I cut out just enough of the gocco screen so that I can use double sticky tape to tape on the SPHR screen. The light blue part is the exposed area (I'm using light blue ink):



I exposed 2 screens, one using a transparency and a 2nd using 20lb weight white paper. I followed the exposure times on their web site. The screen exposed using the transparency exposed properly. The one exposed using the 20lb paper did not expose properly (I did the full 3 minutes, as instructed) and during the wash phase, all of the light sensitive material washed off.

So a quick comparison between the Gocco and the SPHR:

1. The 200 mesh Gocco screen is way, WAY, higher resolution than the SPHR. You can see the SPHR mesh very clearly, and those are some big holes in there. And because of the large/loose mesh of the SPHR, straight lines and edges end up jagged, if the line/edge is not parallel to the lines of the mesh. So my squares and lines came out with kinks in them.

2. Print Gocco is much easier to expose than the SPHR; but of course, most people need those disposable lamps to expose the Gocco screens, where as you use sunlight to expose the SPHR.

3. If you buy the smallest sheet of SPHR, it's actually more expensive than the Print Gocco (including both bulbs and screen); if you buy the largest sheet of SPHR (17"x11", on special at $18.99), than SPHR is cheaper.

Overall, I'm not happy with the SPHR print results. If you need to print small text or fine lines, Print Gocco definitely has it beat.

I still need to print the same image with the gocco, so the issue is not ready to go out, and probably won't be ready until after this weekend.

And, the Random Movie tonight was Penelope, which I thought was a very sweet movie, but the Good Prince thought it was ultra dumb. But maybe I'm just inclined to like it because James McAvoy is in it. He does look good with stubbles, which got me wondering...what would I look like with stubbles?

Back when my hair was shorter:



And take 2, back when my hair was WAY shorter:



He wears it better:



When I just now looked for images of him that I could photoshop, every single photo I found had him in stubbles. I guess that's just his look.

MiT update

After my critique group meeting today, during which my CritqueGroupMates (?) suggested that if I want to spend more time with each of my seniors, I should call RACC (the grantor) and see what they say. Many other people have suggested the same, so I finally did just that, and they thought that was fine. So the deal is that I will work with 4 seniors in stead of 6, with the extra time and materials I would've spent on the other two seniors now to be distributed among the 4!

I feel so much better about that schedule. And now that I'm back in the car again, I'll be meeting with both senior #1 and #2 tomorrow.

I actually got a lot accomplished today, although it's also kind of scattered. There were many phone calls, many unrelated to art, but still needed to be done. And I started to prepare for the gocco class I'm teaching at iprc this Saturday—4 topics in 4 hours. I'm almost finished writing the class notes; I need to go shopping for some materials not covered by iprc, and pack. Then I'd be ready.

On my way home from the GBW meeting at Muddy Waters last night, I stopped in at Powells to pick up a book that people were talking about, but couldn't find it. But I did finally buy the Penland book on artist's books and also Alisa Golden's Expressive Handmade Books. Both are gorgeous. I've just part way through the cursory look at the Penland book and haven't opened up Alisa's book yet.

The advantage of having fixed up the upstairs spare bedroom—I can now use it as a comfy reading room! Before, I've already just sat at the dinning room table to read, which is not the most comfortable setup.

Oh, almost forgot the Random Movie. We actually saw it 2 nights ago, but I keep trying to forget it—10,000BC. I swear we were just there to see the saber tooth tiger! The ticket ripper grinned at us and said, "oh, gooood movie." We kind of figured that we were in trouble then. I tried to tell him that we were there just for the saber tooth tiger, he grinned some more! What did the NYT reviewer say..."sublimely ridiculous," or something like that.

MiT, 1st senior, day 7

I met with my 1st senior this morning, which now seems like a LONG time ago.

Once again, we met for a watercolor session; she finished the one she started last time, and then started another. Also once again, she's spending A LOT of time trying to get a blue/pink sunset sky with subtle color shifts. She's willing to spend a lot, I mean a lot, of time doing that. We worked mostly in silence, but then once in a while, she would pop out some really surprising comment about her past. They would just sort of come out of nowhere. It's really interesting. There's something about these sessions, where she's really obsessed about this ONE specific image (sunset sky, grass, trees, a path), that seems to bring out some memories. This this entry for out last meet.

On other fronts, I'm still chipping away at the Portland Open Studios web site update. And on even more other fronts, I'm starting to feel really overwhelmed, with Alice asking for a web site update in the next 2 weeks and a gocco class being lined up. I probably should've said no to the class; and in fact, I still might, since they don't seem to have quite all the equipment necessary, which means I'll have to schlep a lot of stuff.

So I was feeling pretty down and out by tonight when we went for the Random Movie, The Band's Visit, and it really cheered me up. Again, nothing really happens, but a very sweet movie.