It's looking mighty orange!

The floor guy was here yesterday and the floor is installed. I picked up where I left off as far as painting went and finished up the walls and started on the window and molding.

Since I didn't have enough left-over paint to do the woodwork, I did have to go look at paint chips. I had 3 top choices—black (homage to the bats), red ("Peony Red" it said), and a olive-y green. The olive-y green actually looked the best with the floor (and the avocado closet doors), but I decided that it was a little too calming. I mean, It's the studio, we want to be energized, not fall asleep! And besides, I've been painting all those peony images, I figured it was fate that I should go with the peony red. And then there was the Good Prince, "you're Chinese, go with red."

Since the woodwork was originally painted with oil paint, I had to prime it first with this special, stinky primer before I could paint over it with a latex paint. So that pretty much took care of today—one coat of primer and one coat of "Peony Red".

All I can say is, after the second coat tomorrow, this better get more red and less orange!



While I was waiting for the floor guy...

I didn't just sit around and twiddle my thumbs, I got a bunch of Portland Open Studios stuff done, including this profile of Sabina Haque. And I interviewed another artist today, Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley, hopefully the profile to come in a few weeks. I have three more interviews to do in the next 3 days, in between finishing painting and moving furniture. I probably won't paint the other half until later. I must catch up on studio work.

Duty calls

I've been doing mostly Portland Open Studios website stuff for a couple of days, adding the Amazon Associates stuff...still not sure what we (the board) feel about it. It does add clutter. But it might bring in a little extra income for the organization.

On other fronts, went to OCAC to hear the residents' presentations of their work over the last 4 months. In particular, went to visit Toby Millman and hear her talk.

Hoping to get back to my blueberries tomorrow!

A little bit of downtime

End of project stuff

This is always a good time to go visit other artists, it's something that I don't do often when I'm busy working on my own stuff. So I visited with Carole Zoom yesterday. I hope to catch up with a couple of other artists soon, before I get busy again.

I'm still working on updating pr and marketing stuff...like my resume.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention—the December 9 The Asian Reporter (scroll to the last page) has a story on the Relay/Replay show at the library. It's a very nice write-up. The electronic version has color photos (the paper copy has b&w photos).

In the It Never Hurts to Ask Department

I noticed on my (very cluttered) table this morning that there was this coupon from Art Media sitting there. And it said "10% off any item, including already discounted items." Or something similar.

That's a good deal. Only it expired on Dec 7, this last Sunday. Wah!

After much consideration (during which I briefly considered lying..."you know, this didn't arrive in the mail until today"), I finally called the customer service department and told them the truth—that I discovered the coupon on my table today and could I POSSIBLY still use it? And they said yes. (They did give me the evil laugh first, though.) Turns out, they didn't send out the coupon until the end of the week last week.

So I went in and bought the Iwata Complete Airbrush Kit, normally $577, on sale for $359. and another 10% off that made it even better. So anyhow, now really I'm committed.

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, 1st senior, day 17

Met with my 1st senior yesterday. She wasn't quite ready, and I'm not sure that she was really quite in the mood for her watercolors either. Took me about an hour to get her ready and out of her apartment, and she painted for half an hour before she petered out. And actually, I was pretty much done for too, having taken so long to just get her going.

And I still had plenty to do to get ready for my exhibit at 23 Sandy — finish packing, making the inventory sheet, preparing labels. And one thing leads to another, I had to get the class descriptions done so I could send out the exhibit and class announcements all in one. Finally got that done shortly after midnight last night.

Today was a whirlwind of activities too — hanging the show, and going out for a rare 1st Thursday outing. Both Rachel and Anne are having their openings today (and we all got our grants at the same time!), so I made the effort. Ran into lots of folks that I haven't seen in a long time. I guess that's what happens when you don't do 1st Thursdays, you just don't see people. (A plug for Anne's show — at Powells on Burnside, 3rd floor gallery; and Rachel's Cycle Seen, all over town.)

Not sure if it's just 1st Thursday, or if it's a combination of that and the Rose Festival, but there were sure a lot of drunks out in Portland tonight. I know this because there were a lot of men who smiled and said hi to me. Now that! is worth writing down.

And since this is Rose Festival time, there are plenty of sailors out and about. One man walking around said very loudly, "what are these soldiers doing here, I thought the war was in I-RAN."

So I have to report this: how often have you enjoyed one half of a cell phone conversation that you overhear?

Coming home tonight, I was sitting in front of some guy talking on the phone. Didn't sound like it was a romantic thing (yet), but he was talking to a woman. He was talking about his aspirations, why he chooses to do what he does, and how he would like to travel around the country with the job. He was trying to motivate her too, about work, and encouraging her to spend time with family, asking after her nieces and nephews. He just sounded like a really nice guy. And that put a smile on my face.

MiT book, music

My senior #2 loves music. She played the violin (as a child, maybe), but not for a long time now. She mentioned quite often that she wanted to play the violin again, or maybe get a keyboard for her apartment. One of the image she printed was a drawing of a violin that she had made for this project. So I thought it would be appropriate to have a 'music' page.



I also started to introduce some text on this page — vivace (lively), dolce (sweet), and animato (animated), all musical expression terms but I also mean for the terms to describe her.

I'm still undecided if the envelope pages will all be some sort of a pattern, or if a few of them will have words (as in lines of words, not just part of the pattern like this one). So my plan is to just keep printing patterns until I decide other wise, or until I'm finished. If you can call that a plan.

Yesterday was a long day of helping friends and volunteering. My friend Helen Hiebert is having a show at Reed later this summer (yay!), so I went over to give her a sounding board on some different ideas. After that, it was onto Print Arts to hang the Monothon show (lasts just this weekend). By the time the day was done, I was pretty much done for too. All I could manage was a movie, a non-random one — OSS 117, a spy spoof. It was pretty good, except that's pretty much how I imagine our current so called president and his henchmen are. And that's not so funny.

William Park's profile

After a few days delay, I finally finished the profile for the Portland Open Studios blog. That was the big accomplishment for the day. Still haven't done the minutes...tomorrow, tomorrow! And I'm also hoping that I'll get to the next stage for senior #2's book (the next envelope).

More MiT book printing, and a studio visit

Hey, today was an exciting day. William Park is participating in Portland Open Studios this year, and he's also showing this month at Mark Woolley's, so I went to interview him for the Portland Open Studios blog. I love the show and have been somewhat intimidated about interviewing him (I'm always intimidated by artists whose work I really like). But he was super easy to talk to and had lots to say. I have about 2 hours of recording to go back and listen to. There were a few things that really jumped out at me as we were talking, so there will be plenty of things to focus on.

In the afternoon, I printed the 2nd envelope for my Rock Star senior's book.



I really wasn't sure at first how I liked this, but seeing it now, I rather like the old fashioned look it has. And she loves pink. The whole time I've known her, she's had her nails painted bright pink (more like a magenta though, not a pale pink).

The sheets from yesterday are not 100% dry yet (it's been humid and rainy here) but I folded 1 envelope just so that I can see it. And I'm almost regretting that the way the sheet has to fold, you can't see the inside part, which is fully printed. I thought about leaving it open so it's visible, but in the end, I think it will be sturdier if glued shut.

I figured out a solution to a small little problem that's been nagging me about this book — how to include an introduction page and the colophon page. I want all the pages to resemble envelopes, but I didn't want those pages to be like the rest of the prints which will free float inside the envelopes. These pages must be the first and last pages and shouldn't end up in the wrong envelopes. So now I have a solution. Great! And it uses the extra paper that I had to buy for the spine. Double Great!

Life is easier with Photoshop

First, a couple of garden photos. I couldn't do anything with these until I had Photoshop up and running again. See what I mean about life and Photoshop?

This is the view as I get out of my car. Shot at the height as I'm sitting but trying to get up enough oomph to eject myself out of my seat. From front to back: barberry, tulips, spirea, pieris. I love the combinations of reds, oranges, and pinks here.



This is a very fragrant viburnum (yet another one) that blooms April-May, pretty much picks up when the other fragrant viburnum finishes.



OK, I've got my Photoshop CS3 trial version up and running, and life is definitely easier, or at least work is progressing. Made a lot of progress on the Portland Open Studios web site today.

I got to look at one of Mare Blocker's earlier books that used the piano hinge binding. I went into the library for my volunteer gig yesterday, but Jim didn't need me. But since I was there, and I've been meaning to look at some examples, that was a good time to do it. Turns out, it was the only example of the piano hinge binding there. But anyhow, got some different ideas for how the hinges and the cover boards can come together. Mocked up some samples when I got home. I was originally thinking I'd use Rives Lightweight for the accordion part, but now think maybe a slightly thicker (but not as thick as the BFK) and more textured paper would be better. So I'm still looking.

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.

MiT, 1st senior, day 10, 2nd senior day 12

In my last few morning meetings with senior #1, she had not been ready; I usually found her in her bathrobe when I'd knock on her door at our appointed time. The activities coordinator suggested that we switch that around, so today I met with my second senior in the morning and my first senior in the afternoon.

That, worked out very well. In fact, my first senior was 15 minutes early this afternoon!

In the morning, my Rock Star senior and I looked at all the prints that she'd made so far (18 of them!) and picked out the ones that she wants to work on some more. There was the one verse with the spelling error that she wanted to correct (she decided to handwrite in the correction). There were two that she wanted to add watercolors to, so we hand colored 30 prints today. The rest we'll finish next time.

In the afternoon, my mercury senior was very talkative today. She's usually not so talkative, at least not in the morning; so she probably is more of an afternoon person. She clearly is very fond of the first watercolor she finished, and is lamenting that she hasn't been able to complete another one since. So we talked about what she could add to one of her unfinished pieces, and one of my suggestions was to add some ducks or geese to the water. We practiced making ducks and geese most of the afternoon, and I think she had a good time; although I think in the end, that's not how she'd want to finish the piece. But that's ok.

The highlight of the evening was the Marjane Satrapi (author of Persepolis) talk. Time goes by so quickly, it seemed like just a few weeks ago that I bought tickets to the Orhan Pamuk and the Satrapi talks, but these 2 talks bracket the 2007-2008 Literary Arts lecture series, so I know it's been a while.

One thing she mentioned — the book is not an autobiography, rather it's the telling of the events around her, as observed by her. By framing it in the first person's view point, it's much easier for people to relate to.

I don't know if that's the reason or not, but when I was watching the movie, I did feel as if it was telling my story. There are a lot of superficial similarities between our lives—I left home at 15 to go to school in another country, she at 14; we both grew up under repressive governments (although she had more awareness of that early on than I did); we both grew up with wars (hers was much more physically real, mine was more rhetorical); we both had to live within a dominant culture that knew nothing about our own cultures; we both went to live with strangers (my situation worked out very well, hers did not); we both had grandmothers who were strong presence in our lives; we both fell in love with guys who cheated on us (she was smarter, it took me a bit longer...what can I say).

She is much more of a rebel than I am though. I've never been a rebel, and I'm not sure if I'm sorry or happy about it. Exactly what does it mean to NOT be a rebel?

Sewing Circle

Portland artist Marie Watt occasionally holds sewing circles to work on one of her projects. They're a great way to get a behind the scenes look at her work and to meet other artists. There was one today, to work on her piece for the Portland Art Museum's Contemporary Northwest Art Awards exhibit (this was what replaced the Oregon Biennial).

I almost decided to not go. I got a late start for the day, and didn't get to the taxes at all. And after lunch, I really waffled between the two; but in the end, indulged myself and went to the sewing circle. And I'm glad I did. I finished one of the 'cameos', which are not cameo sized but more like the size of a sheet of paper, and brought another one home to work on. Met Marie's assistants and Lisa, a friend and an arts consultant/administrator, who is very funny. So the afternoon passed quickly and with much good humor.

So much for taxes. (And yes, I'm still listening to Andreas Scholl...must get more CD's.)

Hanging shows

First, some garden pictures. This is the most amazing Viburnum ever. Yes, it's a huge family and I don't remember the name of this particular Viburnum, but the variety is called Spring Dawn. It set the buds back in October and has been blooming ever since! It does that every year. And the flowers smell wonderful.



Here's my Katy McFadden sculpture at the foot of the viburnum.



One of the many hellebores blooming right now:



The Chinese paper bush. It's supposed to bloom in December, but mine is always late. And in years past, it only set the buds but didn't bloom. We'll see if these actually do anything this year. They smell wonderful, when they do open.



The chard and the leeks are still standing! I wonder if they're still any good...maybe they'd be tough?



OK, the rest of the day: today was a 'medium duty' volunteer day, just PAN and the library. Helped Sarah finish putting up the March exhibit by putting up those adhesive letters/signs. I hadn't done that before and didn't know how they worked. So now I know! Good thing to learn.

No studio work today, just volunteer duties and some Portland Open Studios errands. Tomorrow, I'll be at RSM the whole day, meeting with both seniors, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Then, the Big Day—I'll start to mock up books for both seniors on Thursday, my first day in the studio this week. As I was walking from PAN to the library, I came up with more ideas for the books (walks are even better than showers sometimes). Here are my current thoughts, obviously subject to change once I get started:

1. I want all 6 books to look similar on the outside—same size and similar (if not the same) covers, but to differ drastically on the inside in structure and materials. Superficially, I see the elderly as a homogenous group (except for my American mom of course!), and I think probably most people do. They seem frail, forgetful, slow moving, & dependent on their children/helpers. And of course, they look old, which to many of us is something that is 'other' than our own state (which might be completely delusional). But of course, the reality is not so. My 2 seniors are as different as night and day, and I'm sure the others will be different still.

2. For my first senior, something ephemeral, delicate, and fragile (she is, I think both physically and mentally). For my 2nd senior, something bold, expressive, and sharing.

Not sure how I'll pull off the 'same on the outsize, drastically different on the inside bit' yet.

James Turrell in Portland

So I was one of those losers who didn't call early enough to get a reserved seat (in fact, I didn't call at all) for the James Turrell talk today; instead, I stood in line for a possible standing room admission. I got there at 1:30pm for the 4pm talk, and I was the 5th in line! I was pretty confident I'd get in, but as we got closer to 4pm, the PNCA staff were walking around telling us that it wasn't looking good because it was taking them so long to check in the people who had reserved. Turns out, they had 600 people with reserved seats!

But miracle of miracles, we got in; and actually it looks like almost everyone got in.

James Turrell is very Santa Claus like, not at all the he-man that I had imagined. (C'mon, here's a guy who's digging a BIG hole inside a volcano, wouldn't you picture him to be a he-man type, too?) Pretty soft-spoken, and told some sexy jokes (I guess that's NOT Santa Claus like). And my claim to fame for the day? My question to him got picked (they only picked 4 out of the bunch from over 600 people), and it was the first one! Ha!

Potential solutions to pillow books

OK, I think I have several different possible new formats (still involving pillows) to try, and I might do each of the books in a different format, rather than using the same format as I originally planned. These, I hope, will give me the Didn't have a chance to physically try any today, which was a hodgepodge day. Lots of art related phone calls, little updates/emails concerning a couple of web sites, a gocco demo for an art critique group, and then a visit to Reed College's special collections. Librarian Gay Walker gave us a 'tour' of the collection by selecting a wide variety of work to discuss and pass around. I love these events, where I get to see all these wonderful books, but they're inspiring and depressing at the same time. As in, "why do I bother?" I must be an optimistic person though—I think, hey, my NEXT book is going to be just as good! That's right...just wait until I finish my pillow books.

But anyhow, lots of wonderful books at the tour. Hard to pick a favorite, but I loved the Ian Boyden books, and the Tim Ely, Inge Bruggeman, & Sarah Horowitz.

Lucky birds

Two weeks go by quickly and Monday is yard debris pickup again. Cleaned up the pile of branches at the base of the Douglas firs, and also cleaned the bird feeders and bird baths, which had all fallen out of care in the last 6 months or so. Unlike previous years when I'd had sightings of a few of the more unusual birds, this year has been very quiet in the bird front. Hopefully we'll get the birdies coming back soon.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out a solution to my pillow book problem (see this entry), but I'm not really happy with anything I've come up with yet, so didn't work on that at all today. Went to the Boxlift building's open studio event...they really know how to do it up, with a band and all. I bought a small drawing of a geranium from Mulysa Melco. I sold my geranium painting a couple of years back, and I thought it would be nice to have another, this time by another artist.

Tomorrow afternoon is the small notebooks gocco class. I'm off to bed early so I can get up early and get ready for the class. (But I now see that it's past midnight already.)

Orhan Pamuk in Portland!

But business first -- picked up more matboards and some food for the weekend, and started to put the cards together. I always forget how long it takes to print the cards, so I didn't get very far today. Hopefully I can finish tomorrow in between matting and cleaning up the studio.

Then the evening was the highlight of the week, or maybe the month -- Orhan Pamuk is the speaker for the Literary Arts lecture tonight. He's an excellent speaker! You can't always tell with wonderful writers, sometimes they don't turn out to be great speakers, but he's a wonderful speaker, very open about his art and very good about answering questions. Although I was a little surprised that he objected to too many political questions. I hadn't caught on that the name of his newest book 'Other Colors' was a joke about how so many of his titles contain colors. I always did wonder about that, and apparently he gets asked about that a lot. So this new book is called 'Other Colors'; now I guess he can't be naming any more books with colors because he's already covered them all now.

Apparently Snow is his most popular book in the US, but my favorite, My Name is Red, is his most popular book in England. I just bought Istanbul but haven't cracked it open yet.

Wrapping up the grant application

Yay! Got a confirmation back from Kathy today that my slight change of schedule is ok, and also they'll be able to display the books and the screens at the Rose Schnitzer Manor. So tomorrow, I'll update RACC with the information.

More admin stuff today -- sent off the contract for the Bainbridge show (before the deadline too), and started checking out Constant Contact for managing my email list. I've just been sending out show announcements and such with a mailing list alias, but with the last announcement, a few people started responding to the alias, which of course got sent to everyone. I hate it when that happens. So I'm looking at alternatives.

More work on the silk road flowers site. Finally finished the banner off -- just the final details, no big changes.

In the evening, went to a William Kentridge film that's part of the TBA festival. This was 9 short animations, drawn with charcoals and pastels, on the same pieces of paper. So he's erasing and redrawing to create each frame. When you think about that, it's really pretty incredible -- he destroys one frame (at least partially) before he can create the next frame, so he's got a really good image of what he's doing in his head. Although I have to say, I was good with 7 short animations; the last 2 were just a bit too much. Plus I was pretty hungry.

Artist community

Between getting a late start in the morning, the weight room, and more credit card research (which is starting to wear me down) today, I didn't get into the studio. Then this afternoon/evening was the benefit for Dawn McConnell, who's very ill with 4th stage lung and liver cancer. Many artists, particularly from Portland Open Studios donated art and bought art (Dawn participated in the PDX Open Studios for many years). I donated a framed rooster screen print, which went for almost $200 over the listed price(!), so I was really thrilled. I bought a framed screen print by Keane Rathbun and a necklace by Bonnie Meltzer. What I REALLY would have liked was this vanity painted by Dawn:



This was a vintage vanity that Dawn stripped and repainted. It's been in a few exhibits here and is much more lovely than the photo shows. I'll put up more information on the Portland Open Studios blog this weekend, along with images of her other painted furniture, and a painted bike (looks like a fixed gear or single speed bike, I can't tell the difference).

Oh, heartbreak!

Transformers, the movie I've been looking forward to for months, got trounced in this review in the NYT..."a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense." Wah!

On other fronts -- what better way to ease back into serious art making again than to meet another artist...for breakfast! Horatio just got back from a 6 months teaching gig in France and we met for a bagel breakfast this morning. He's getting much more focused on doing public art and in fact just won a pretty stiff competition to do a piece in a new building going up in Seattle. Congrats to Horatio! I also got some good pointers about writing grant applications.

Finally got off my butt and started working on helping Daniel Heyman finding an appropriate space to exhibit his Abu Ghraib work. He was invited to sit in on interviews with some Abu Ghraib prisoners. One trip to Jordan and a 2nd trip to Turkey. He made etchings and watercolors during the interviews, and later at home, produced a couple of artist's books and an installation. I first saw 1 etching at a Blackfish exhibit back in Jan/Feb, and got in touch with him. When we did the book arts show in March at Print Arts Northwest, he sent 2 books for the exhibit. Anyhow, I've been procrastinating in scouting out appropriate locations and contacts. Looks like the Portland Art Center deadline has just passed (drat), but we'll see if PNCA or Reed would be good/available/interested.