They've Got Gold Trouble

They've Got Gold Trouble (temporary title, still considering other options)
Gouache on paper mounted on board (it will soon also get a coat of acrylic on top)
12" x 12"

Apparently, it took me exactly one year to finish this painting. (Well, I finished it sometime after midnight, so I suppose technically it was a year and a day...)

Looking through my archives, this first photo was taken Feb 19, 2010, and this was how this painting started — a pour and 3 spritzes with a water bottle that created the 3 bulbous spots:



I didn't work on it again until October of 2010, when I needed a demo piece for Portland Open Studios and I thought this looked like a demo in the making. During the two weekends, I worked on this on and off in between talking to people. I really didn't have anything in mind, it was meant to be a demo piece, something I could do while talking at the same time. But I wanted to preserve the three bulbous forms, I really liked those, for whatever reason. And at the end of two weekends, I had:



It was January, 2011 before I got back to it, hoping to finish it in time for the PCPA exhibit, but I didn't finish in time. The bulbous forms turned into seahorses. I hadn't ever done seahorses before, although I've always love them and have a collection of images I've kept from my 30 years of Natural HIstory subscriptions (my 20 year old neighbor was really impressed that I've subscribed to a magazine for THAT long):



Betwen January and February, I worked on it on and off between putting together 3 other applications. And then I got pretty well stuck on it. I had decided that the three seahorses were really Rheinmaidens (I saw Das Rheingold at the Met Simulcast somewhere along the line in there), but I really didn't know how to proceed from there.

When I get stuck on something, one way I get myself unstuck is to do something 'drastic' in red. In the past, I've poured red over an entire piece, I've poured red over most of a piece, but in here, I've made red waves. It's just something that forces me to react and to do something other than to sit there, stare and wonder what the heck I'm going to do next.



From Valentines Day on until Saturday night, I worked on it pretty intensely, while listening to the BBC news about the protests in North Africa, Middle East (and Wisconsin). How much does that have to do with the finished painting? I don't know.

Although I managed to preserve the bulbous forms (at least two of the three), I lost the lines of drippy paint in the process. I wanted to bring those back...and so I did, in the final stage (top photo).

Collins Gallery exhibit

This was an exhibit that fell into my lap 3 weeks ago. The original Collins Gallery exhibit for the time slot fell through; then the substitute exhibit fell through too. At which point, I was at the right place at the right time, and got the opportunity to put together this show.

We installed yesterday, and it all went very, very smoothly. I am very happy with how well it worked out, given that there was so little time to put it together. So in short—

I was asked if Portland Open Studios would take the slot. The board approved to do it that very evening. It took another week before we all agreed how to select the 11 artists (we ended up w/ first come first serve) and to send out the call. The slots filled in 24 hours and we had 10 different mediums covered. I ended up slipping in a 12th artist as well.

Then it was a matter of chasing down 12 artists for their statements and titles (which always turns out to be more time consuming than one might think), making a postcard graphic, putting together tour guide sales for the Friends of the Library store, scheduling installation times for everyone, writing up a contract for the artists and getting our PR guru to write up some PR materials. And installation.

We managed to wrap up early too. But of course, I forgot to take pictures. So maybe next week.

Always doing things the hard way

Yup, that's my motto.



I've been slowly removing the grass from our yard for the last 20 years. When we moved in, it was probably close to 7500 sqft of grass (lot - house - driveway - a rather uninteresting border of mugo pines and rhodies). I'm figuring that I'm down to about 250 sqft of grass now, about half was removed by hired guns, rest removed by myself. (Oh yeah, that chair, it's holding back the rugosa rose.)

So after these last two days of back-breaking labor, I've removed (by hand!), what, another 30sqft? I'll be putting down a path to go around the strawberry bed and the sedum bed. Another week of work, and I'll be ready to put down the path, which will be a combination of red bricks and cement pavers. It will be very pretty, you'll see.

I haven't done all of the grass-removal the stupid way, of course. If it's an area to be planted, then I've actually done it the smart way—a layer of newsprint and topped w/ mulch. But since this is to be a path, all the organic materials have to be removed, so here I am, with my shovel...

Haven't seen the robin parents for a couple of days, but I'm pretty sure the babies haven't fledged yet. I'm resisting the temptation to get out a ladder and peek. Maybe I just don't get to see the ones that survive, but I don't seem to be having very good luck here with those birds nests. Last year, I had a bushtit nest; mommy and daddy were busy, busy, busy, but then I never saw the fledglings either.

On other fronts

I've been getting the Portland Open Studios website ready for our 2010 tour. It's almost ready to upload now, with new artists, new sponsors, new supporters, new community partner, new scholarship recipients. I've also been interviewing and profiling artist, with 5 interviews in the can and 2 profiles completed. See here and here.

Dream On

Dream On, gouache & acrylic on paper on board, 12” x 12”

My, it's been almost 3 weeks since I've documented. I have been busy, but one of the reasons why I haven't documented is that my camera is in the shop. It's been a while since I noticed that the focus was a little soft, but a few weeks ago (when I was shooting And Along Came a Cloud), half the time the problem was way beyond 'soft focus.' I finally took it to the shop, expecting to get it back in a couple of weeks, but they called yesterday and apparently they have to send the lens back to the manufacturer. So we'll see how it all works out.

So besides not having a camera (the image above was taken with my cell phone), I've also been busy with Portland Open Studios application period (through March 15), and then of course jurying. We'll finish jurying this week, and then the fun part of preparing for the tour itself!

Wait a minute, didn't we JUST do this...?

Anyhow, Dream On is part of the on-going collaboration with Artist X and is in response to her piece called Party On.

The piece started with my initial reaction that I'm typically the wall flower at the party and the lawn mower at the bbq. Then it devolved into this nightmarish scenario (parties do strike some fear in my heart).

While I was working on this, my friend Steve was also documenting it's evolution. Poor guy, all he wanted to do was to come over and make some portraits of me while I was painting, and I went, "say...how about..."

So the camera, lights, computer and disk were set up, a little script was written to remind me to run the camera every two minutes or so. Steve also took some videos. It will be a while before we get to see the end results, but whatever it is, it's been an interesting experiment.

And since this piece was part of the collaboration with Artist X, we've also talked to Artist X about making a little video about her part of the collaboration.

Coming up for some air

January turned out to be Portland Open Studios All The Time...all day, all night, and all the times in between too. Since Jan 1, I've logged about 180 hours doing a variety of Portland Open Studios support, whether it's meetings, website, paypal, or just general chores and errands. Phew. Now I'm getting my life back, and the ants seem to be back too. Darn those ants.

Eliza brought me this little plant on her way to Santa Fe at the end of Dec, and now it's blooming happily. Bright magenta flowers on the bright orange window sill.



Got out and worked in the garden for the first time this week. Pruned a few of the roses and collected these gorgeous reddish black thorns. I've not been able to get the dark red thorns that I got a few years back, but these black ones are nice too. They are much smaller than the red ones from before. I have some ideas, we'll see if they dry in time.



Believe it or not, for an art project, I had to dig out my calculus book to look up a couple of things. I had forgotten that I had painted the inside cover of the book a few years back. I had been cleaning out my bookshelf and had a few books that I couldn't let go, not quite yet, and this was one of them.

So we'll just say this is an early Year of the Tiger greeting.

Feeling like a Real Neighborhood around these parts

Happy New Year!

It occurred to me last night that our neighborhood is evolving to feel like a Real Neighborhood here. Just in the last couple of years, we've seen the opening of a skate park (Holly Farm Park) next to the library; it also has all kinds of play structures for the younger set.

And next to that, we now have a pho place (Korean-Vietnamese, painted BRIGHT lime green) and a good vegetarian Chinese place, both opened in the last 6 months or so. Both good additions to the existing Middle Eastern/Mediterranean place.

Across the street, a new coffee shop that serves Stumptown Coffee and Kettleman's bagels (REAL bagels, not the round bread variety, started by a fellow with the name off Jeffery Wang). The Domino's pizza next door to the coffee shop closed, so I'm hoping for something interesting to open there.

So now I'm thinking—somebody should do something with that huge commercial building between the skate park and the pho place. In the almost 20 years we've been here, it has been unoccupied more than it has been occupied, it seems. The last incarnation had a professional yard tools place, but it's been empty for maybe a year now.

Maybe something that can house a yoga/dance/exercise studio, a small exhibition space, and..whatelse? Right now, it's ugly as sin, but it backs up to a lot of trees and has parking. Seems like a great opportunity for the neighborhood.

On other fronts—working hard on Portland Open Studios website update, getting ready for the 2010 application season. We're going to try to have some animators in our mix this year, so look forward to some fresh and new artists in the lineup!

Floating plum blossom...

Well, that's what it looks like to me anyhow. It actually looked a lot better before I had to run off to grab the camera. I had the brita filter turned up side down and was rinsing the outside when I saw the suds on the bottom on the inside. By the time I grabbed the phone camera, I had lost half of the blossoms.

So probably the biggest 'excitement,' if you can call it that, was that I taught my last beginning Gocco class yesterday! At the Atelier Meridian, as a fundraiser for Print Arts Northwest. It was in a giant warehouse style print shop. Lots of large presses of all kinds. It was a cavernous space.

I am actually pretty happy to be finished with teaching beginning Print Gocco—it's hard to teach it when I know the participants will not be going home to make more prints. I used to hand out copious amounts of class notes, templates, etc, but I haven't done that ever since the supplies became harder to get and more expensive.

And today was the all day Portland Open Studios planning retreat, which happen twice a year. So that was a long day.

The other big excitement was that I delivered several pieces to 23 Sandy this week. Laura had had a couple of my artist's books in inventory for a while, but now she has some paintings too!

I'm still slowly grinding dirt for my senior's book. The papermaking isn't going to happen until Jan (as Helen's schedule dictated), so that kind of allowed me to relax a bit too.

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.

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.

For those of you who don't facebook—I figure this means that the gods think I'm flossing and brushing right. And for Shu-mei, who can't believe that I noticed this—I just spat out my toothpaste, I had my face in the sink, I was staring right at it, how could I NOT notice?

Unfortunately, the last couple of days have not been productive in the studio. For some reason, I had bouts of stomachaches all day yesterday. On and off, and through the night. Thank heavens it didn't continue today. And today was mostly a Portland Open Studios day. Shipping out tour guides, picking up tour guides, incremental updates on the website. I still haven't finished Kate's profile.

Tonight was the China Council's annual membership meeting/dinner, so that took up almost 5 hours! For a meal! Well, ok, there was a talk too, and this year, by the Portland Art Museum director, about the new exhibit China Design Now. I'm sure it was an interesting talk, but unfortunately, I did not have a very good seat—the last table, close to the rest of the restaurant which had diners not involved with the event, and the other Chinese patrons at my table kept on talking to me through the talk. Yes, this is always a problem—while the speaker is talking up there, half the Chinese people in the audience are having their own conversations. I can't exactly just ignore them when they say something to me, and if I respond, it just keeps the conversation going. What do you do?!

7th

Queen Bat and Her Royal Jewels

Going to Bend knocked me off my painting track for a bit so I had a chance to catch up on some Portland Open Studios chores. You can now buy a tour guide using PayPal, and I'm also working on another feature, and an artist profile.

Got back to my bat this afternoon (see this entry for where it was last I worked on it). I'd say this is a worthy facebook picture alright!

For those keeping count, this was another 5 1/2 hours of work. That makes the total 10.5 hours, excluding preparation time. I prepare the boards a bunch at a time (3 coats of gesso then mounting paper), so it's hard to track how much time it takes per board. I'd guess maybe 15 minutes. Of course, I'm not done-done yet—I have yet to spray it with the GAC500 mixture. Again, I'll batch that step of the process too, so we'll say it's another 15 minutes. Which brings us to a grand total of about 11 hours.

Time to start thinking about Portland Open Studios

Not that I haven't been thinking about it all along. It's impossible not to, having to do the website and the secretarial duties and the Portland Open Studios blog. (Just finished this profile on Kamala Dolphin-Kinsgley a couple of days ago.) But now it's time to start thinking about me in Portland Open Studios.

Helen Hiebert, Diane Jacobs, and I (three from our foursome critique group) are all participating, so we decided to do coordinated hands-on demos for the event. Make paper at Helen's, letterpress print at Diane's, and silkscreen print at my studio.

And we made a little postcard. Got it off to psprint yesterday, in time to take advantage of their 1/2 price postcard sale.

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.

I best start selling some art!

When I was still working in high tech, one of my fellow engineers walked into my cubicle, sat down, and asked "how many times have you been laid off?"

I thought that was a very strange question, and told him so, and told him I had never been laid off.

His eyes bugged out. He thought that was highly unusual, given the state of high tech in the Portland area from the 80's through the 90's.

Then I told him that the Good Prince had never been laid off either. He thought that was doubly strange.

Well, after a combined approximately 50 years in high tech (and related industries), we've had a layoff! Yes, the Good Prince took a voluntary layoff from his job and today was his last day. He came home with a packet of information of his 'Career Transition Benefits!' Career transition. Who think up these terms? The benefit, I guess, would be the severance pay. The first time either one of us got a severance. Unfortunately, it was not as good a deal as they had offered during the last layoff. Too bad...but it's better than no severance pay.

Anyhow, so he's reviving Five Bats (consulting). And this time, he says his website will say something other than 'There is nothing here.' (Which is what it says now, check it out.)

The garden in this 100+ degree heat

For years, I've been trying to pitch my garden to Portland Open Studios for promotion, and finally, this year, when my garden is looking pretty weedy, they want pictures! So here's one I snapped today, when we had about 3 seconds of cloud cover. Weeds and all:



More about the studio remodeling

Mainly, I'm just waiting for the floor guy to install on Saturday. In the mean time, I'm doing a few things that I can do, like hanging things back up on the wall, and making this bulletin board:



I bought the frame at a garage sale for $0.25 a few years ago and made a bulletin board, except that I didn't quite get enough of those cork tiles. Rather than making another trip to the store, I just made do. Well, this time, I did it right. Here's a close up of the frame. It's really a very nice frame, and you can't beat 25 cents!



And I'm also getting other things accomplished while I wait for the floor guy—Portland Open Studios artists' profiles and website changes are all getting done...

Strange tale of the spider

It was a glorious day here today, sunny & warm, and as I was coming home this afternoon—riding on the passenger side—I noticed an itty-bitty spider on the window. It was running around on the window frame and up and down the window like crazy. And when it would stay put, it waived its legs about like crazy.

I couldn't figure out exactly what it was trying to do, as it didn't seem to be having trouble moving around, nor sticking to the window. I touched the window glass and, no, it wasn't very hot. I watched it for quite a while, wondering if I should've let it out while we were still in the parking lot (didn't seem like a suitable place to let out an itty-bitty spider). I finally decided I would just have to wait until after we get home to let it out in the garden, seeing how we were going 60 mph down the freeway at the moment.

I took my eyes off it for just a few seconds, and when I looked back, it had balled itself up—hanging by a strand of silk attached to the widow—and was lifeless. Dead.

It dangled there, waving back and forth along with the movement of the car. Thoughts went through my head: "oh my god, that was like, a life & death struggle that I was watching," "I definitely should've let it out in the parking lot," "I just witnessed a living thing pass into a non-living thing..."

It was a bit of a downer. I like spiders, and the baby ones are so cute. Finally, we got home. I thought, well, I guess I might as well clean it off the window.

I took an used kleenex and tried to wipe it off the window. It had hung itself really close to the window frame and I couldn't get it very easily. So I tried it again. This time, I barely was able to scrape it off the window, and as I held the kleenex in my hand, the spider suddenly unballed itself and started running around like crazy on the kleenex!

It was just like in the movies, I could almost hear the crowds roar, "yay, yay! Itty-bitty spider! Go! Go!"

So the story had a happy ending. I let it out on one of the plants. Of course, it might be bird food by now, but at least it had a chance and didn't die inside a car while some idiot watched.

OK, onto work. Made a big push to update the Portland Open Studios website for 2009, and we're almost there. But yesterday and today were both pretty low key work wise. I gessoed some boards, and worked on a proposal for a show in Salem. Got some much needed yard work done, saw La Cenerentola (the Met simulcast) and the new Star Trek on the same day. And now it's time for bed.

How quickly a week goes by

I didn't think I was very busy, but I've had scant studio time this week. Instead, the week has filled up with administrative and volunteer duties—taught a little mini-bookbinding class at the senior resident facility where I worked with 4 seniors last year, installed a show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, met with the Print Arts NW web committee, did a bunch of Portland Open Studios website updates and other admin stuff (lots of it), looked at materials for the class I'll be teaching at Jobs Corps next week, and finally almost completed Katy's website update. I'm still hoping that before the weekend is over, I'll be painting...

Found some extra time

Hey, after bemoaning that I wasn't going to have a relaxed couple of weeks as I had previously thought, I got some extra time today. Looks like my class with Jobs Corps won't happen until March 13, so that gives me an extra week, and my volunteer gig at the library was cancelled today because Jim is on vacation.

I caught up on some errands that I was late on, and I sent out more books to Vamp & Tramp. They've been doing a GREAT job selling my books. They've sold 19 of my books since the start of the year. And this box I sent today was my 4th box to them in about 2 months. The Good Prince says "if I ever decide to make a book, for sure I'm going to send it straight to them...I'm not going to be shy and wait years before I contact them."

Had a couple of hours to catch up on some Portland Open Studios email and my secretarial duties too.