Taxes, day II

...and a couple of pictures. I decided to have Calypso professionally photographed because of the reflective surface, and also how long the book is. I met with the photographer, Aaron Johanson, last Monday and got the CD's back last Wed, but only got around to looking at them today. Here are a couple of the pictures.

The cover is white ink printed over clear plexi. What you can read of the title is the shadow cast by the title printed in white. The plexi is attached to the textblock, which is BFK white, with gel medium.



The middle few pages of the accordion front. The large texts read Acquire/Acquiesce and Time/Tarnish.



Met with Andrew for coffee and catching up today, and got some really good feed back on both the apron project and the vanity project.

Wrapped up my part of the 2006 taxes...amazing, it's not even April yet.

Admin day

The shadow book exchange is more or less finished at this point. Boxes of books went out for Ann, Sibyl, and Shane today. Lisa and I decided to wait for Robyn's books, so I still have that to deal with. Since only Lisa and I are waiting for Robyn, it's turned out to be a bit more complicated, with everyone except Robyn putting in 3 books (and getting 3 back), and Robyn putting in 2 books (and getting 2 back). Since she'll be getting one of mine and one of Lisa's, and Lisa and I will each get one of hers, it became more restrictive as to who will get what, and I couldn't manage to get one of the books I wanted. Well, I suppose if I spend enough time trying to figure out how to arrange it, I could've made it work, but I didn't have that much time.

And finally filled out my application for Portland Open Studios, which is now completely online. Still need to upload the images though. Next – deal with the Focus on Books exhibit and the Bainbridge Island exhibit.

Ordered the books that Suzy recommended for Tibetan Buddhist art. I might be entering into an apprenticeship for thangka restoration and conservation! I'm still a little undecided on that. On the one hand, a) it will be a very cool thing to learn about and b) it can become an income source, if I prove to be any good. However, a) it is a distraction from my main interests (Islamic art, miniatures) and b) it looks to be a 6 months - 2 year commitment (depending on how much time/week I can spend on it). If she did Persian miniature restoration, I would've jumped in head, belly, and feet first already. But as it stands, I'm a bit on the fence.

The first 5 boxed up and ready to go

Another day with lots of pictures. This was really from last Thursday, when the critique group met. I picked up the paper 'nest/skull' from our previous meeting. My intention was to make an origami ball and inflate it after I insert it though one of the openings. I wanted the ball to be big enough so that it can freely rattle around in the nest but not fall out. Well, after many attempts, I couldn't remember how to make a ball, so there's a cube in there instead. And the openings were really larger than I figured (partly because the paper nest/skull is pretty flexible), so I had to secure the cube. I also stitched up the largest opening. The cube is made from dyed tyvek; the 'threads' I used to sew up the opening were just thin strips of tyvek as well.



Okay! The first 5 signed and numbered copies of Calypso, in their little containers. Two of these are copies for myself and three are going to the exchange. I not going to worry about printing the titles on the spine for these; they're going out as they are.



The front cover. You can sort of make out that the title is casting a shadow.



The book opened up, the front view. The back cover is deliberately marked up, scuffed up, and the paper worn on the edges; you can't really tell from the photo though.



The back of the book.



I hope to take real pictures of the book later this week.

Customer service

Called the Beaverton Art Media today and asked if they carried Arches Cover Gray. And indeed, they didn't. However, he followed up with "but we have Stonehenge Gray." Now that's much better customer service. Went in to pick some up, but the gray turned out to be more like taupe, but I bought a sheet to try anyhow. Also picked up a couple of sheets of gray poster board at Paper Zone, to see how that would work.

At the critique tonight, the feed back I got was that a nicer package would be better. So we talked about my earlier idea, which I had abandoned, of making some kind of an evening bag as a container, and people liked that much better. So I'll have to revisit that. In general though, everyone seemed to like the book; they also thought my $200 price was too low. So I'll have to rethink that again. For sure it's too low if it comes with the evening bag, but maybe it's too low even if I only had a simple box.

Although now that I'm thinking about it again, I'm remember why I abandoned the evening bag idea -- I was afraid that in the act of shelving or removing the book, the fabric would rub against the plexi and the gocco printed title, and that would eventually scratch off the lettering.

Alex had the idea of having a plexi box made. And maybe that's an option, if I go with a colored plexi rather than the clear plexi. Not sure how much that would cost.

Yesterday's bright idea

Lots of pictures today.

This was from a couple of days ago when I was painting the back with the eye shadow. I mixed a few different shades of shadows together to create this purply brown, which I pulverized. I mixed it with some egg medium, and decided that it was still too dense, so I've just added more medium to thin it a bit. You can see the eggy mix in the middle there.



I had known all along what I wanted the text on the back side to say, but I had figured that I'd write it in graphite and then smudge it. The 'bright' idea yesterday was that I should really gocco print the last word, 'beautiful'. It is also the first word in the book, and I like the symmetry. I used the same screen that was used to print the first page, which I had not really cleaned very well, but that was ok, because I wanted a splotchy kind of a look. Well, it actually printed better/cleaner than I was anticipating, but I did get some of the splotchy effect I was after. After I printed the word 'beautiful,' handwriting the rest of the words in graphite just didn't work (I tried). So I ended up using the gocco ink and a brush, and smudging those. Here they are, on the drying rack.



And on the bed.



So here are the first and last pages:





A couple of potted plants in my studio. The Cylamen has been blooming beautifully for over a week now.

Plexi to paper

I am almost done. I didn't think this day would ever come! The first 10 books are finished (although I still need to build containers for them). Maybe I've just been staring at them for too long, I'm not really all that happy with them any more, I just want to be finished. The all transparent and pristine white front cover is a real pain too, any little piece of fuzz, cat hair, dust bits, loose bristles that come off the brush -- there they are! The plexis aren't all square either, phooey.

Off to get some paper suitable for making containers tomorrow. Pictures tomorrow too.

Saw the Borodin Quartet tonight at the Chamber series. Wonderful players, and I always love the Tchaikovsky quartets anyhow.

Panic attack

As I was getting into bed last night, I suddenly had a panic attack -- I had taken my pristine, beautifully printed books and marked them all up! I didn't even remember to keep one unpainted, so I have it to remember how clean and well printed it was (!). I still think it's the right thing to do -- that it should be marked up, scratched up, smeared and smudged -- but it's hard to not have the clean/beautiful thing any more. At least I think it was the right thing to do...in either case, it's a done deal now. I'm all finished with the front side, and half way finished with the back side.

Tomorrow, we're off to visit Suzy Bennett out in Corbett. She's a painter and a conservator of Tibetan thangka paintings. We'll stop at Multnomah to have a late breakfast before heading out to Corbett.

Coloring with eye shadows

Ok, I've advanced to the last to final stage -- coloring with graphite and eye shadows. Actually, I'm not sure if this particular color was eye shadow or not. It's part of a huge package of all kinds of colors, and the woman who gave it to me said she used it as eye shadows at times. But it's magenta. I mixed an egg medium, and the colors are staying unless you rub it really hard, which is perfect. I do want it to smear and smudge a bit over time. I tried just applying the eye shadow directly, but that was smearing too easily.

This is a mockup of what I'm planning to do, with some modifications and variations:



Here's the lot of them, with this one particular page done and laid out to dry:

Three stacks

Well, I'm not all finished with folding and gluing yet, as is obvious. 3 stacks of text blocks, plus 9 sets of printed sheets. I could've finished tonight except that I got involved in an email conversation about the exchange. That took a couple of hours, didn't even walk tonight. And didn't get around to mapping out how I want to install Diane's tablets. Hopefully, that won't be too difficult! I have to be at the gallery at 9:30am tomorrow to install. Oy.

There's a lion sleeping in my trunk!

What!? You can't tell that it's a lion?! It's obvious...it's a lion on a pedestal, lying on its side, in my trunk. This is one of those Chinese ceramic garbage cans that are so ubiquitous in mainland China. Obviously designed by artists and not engineers -- although the lion has a big gaping mouth for a receptacle, that little hole on the bottom of the pedestal is how you would have to get the garbage out!

So we were at the China Council's annual Chinese New Year fundraiser auction, and as always I buy something totally inappropriate and useless. Last year, I bought the Peking Opera Monkey King suit, and this year, it's a giant garbage can! Of course I pass up all the gorgeous silk and wool rugs...just another thing to vacuum. I did buy a set of very cool stamps with a design from the Dunhuang caves and a book about China and Iran. And a very cute Chinese ink brush painting by a 9 year old.

I did work on Calypso today. Here are all the sheets laid out in order, waited to be folded and glued into the text block. Hopefully, tomorrow by this time, these stacks will be shorter, or maybe gone, and the stack of text blocks will be a lot bigger.

Starting to come together

Started to put the pages together. Here's one that's glued and trimmed, although I haven't added the hand drawing/painting part. If I were finishing this for real, I'd add the hand drawing/painting before I trim it up, but this one was going to be a reject anyhow due to some bad printing, so I trimmed it to see what it would look like. And to make sure it would fit the plexi covers correctly. And it did.

The 1st half:



And the 2nd half:

Last minute change of plans

Printed the colophon, and finally had the opportunity to try goccoing with the gel medium. I added some retardant to it, slopped it on the screen and printed a few pages. It looked fine printed, but when I pressed paper to plexi (the gel medium is the glue that will hold the 2 together), the words all smeared and became illegible. So onto Plan B.

I ended up printing the text that would've been in the gel medium on the opening page. I have yet to decide what I will print in the gel medium. I think something large and loose will work fine; it was just that the fine text did not work so well.

Btw, even though my little experiment only took about 20 minutes from start to finish (including cleaning up) and I had the window open, I think the retardant really irritated my nose. I'll be sure to put on my chemical mask when I go to print for real.

Spent a little time setting up the blog for Portland Open Studios. There will eventually be information about selected artists, events, and such.

The next to last print

Only the colophon is left, which I'll do tomorrow. I ran out of drying space -- the racks are full, as is the guest bed. It's hard to see, but the plexi covers are printed and drying on the left end of the racks. I was feeling pretty awake and productive today (didn't even think about coffee, and in fact, hadn't wanted coffee for days now), but after 4 hours of printing had to stop due to the lack of drying space. The print on the plexi cover worked out really well. More photos on the goccoing on page.

Lets see, saw Breach last night, which was a fine movie, but somehow it didn't really grab me. I love Chris Cooper though, he's terrific, as always. As was Laura Linney.

Smooth and clear (or not)

Spent 4 hours sitting outside in the 40+deg temperature (with rain and even some hail, although I was under the eaves) sanding the rest of the plexi, and then washing them. Most of them got through the sanding with not a scratch but a few did not escape injury. Which is fine, the back covers will be intentionally scratched up anyhow so those can just go on the back. These are the unscratched ones, washed and dried, ready for printing. That will be tomorrow.




We're off to see Breach tonight.

More work than I expected

I managed to put in about 3 hours in the studio (at the expense of going to the gym) and printed 4 more layers (graphics for Acquiesce, the eyes, and text for Discard/Discard). The rest of the day was cleaning the guest room/bath for Eliza (so no photos tonight, all the prints have been put away), and getting ready for the class this weekend. I won't be able to get back to gocco'ing until Tuesday, as Eliza will be staying through Tuesday morning. I guess Monday will be sanding plexi day.

The Joy of You-Know-What

For the images of the couples, I referenced More Joy of You-Know-What (I don't want people looking for you-know-what to come here), and here's one of the 2 pages I printed today.



Finished laying out the colophon, the watching eyes, and the image for the Acquire/Acquiesce page, but probably won't get to print them until next Monday at this point. I need to clean the guest bedroom for a visitor this weekend, and will be in a class both Sat & Sun, all day.

Second half

I never did have all the graphics and text finished for the 2nd half of the book, so today was spent doing that. I manipulated a bunch of existing images I found in magazines and books, and went back to the blog and words that folks sent for text for the Discard/Discard page. I hadn't really liked what I chose originally, but now I think I'll go with:

Who was this? Me?
These colors on my eyes
Did I look bruised?
Like a suffocated hen?

We were strangers, lovers
then strangers
I rather suffer more now
than suffer longer

Didn't do any printing today. It doesn't look like I'll get all my printing done by Friday.

Time/Tarnish

Dimsum day today, and am trying to catch up on the weekend chores since they didn't get done on the weekend. Printed the Time/Tarnish page and the text for Acquire/Acquiesce page. Started sanding the plexi sheets; took me an hour to sand 15 sheets, so I have 3 more hours to go. Also started experimenting with the drawings that will go on both the front and the back, not sure if I'll stick to line drawings or go with something more bold & graphic. No pictures today, too busy catching up on leftover chores.

Not sure how much work I'll get done tomorrow either. I need to drop off the China Council donations and go to the gym. First I have to find the China Council donations. It'd be 3pm before I get into the studio, I bet.

Saw Children of Men last night. It was a bit of a disappointment after hearing what a great movie it was from all kinds of places. The movie last week, Letters From Iwo Jima, was a fantastic movie. Not that you can really compare the two, apples and oranges and all, but Iwo Jima was definitely the better movie.

Discard/Discard

This is the text that follows the Allure/Desire page:



And here's the Discard/Discard page:



I also made some additions to 2 previously printed pages based on feedback from the critique group. See the goccoing on page for that.

Pot stickers and hot & sour soup

Mike decided to demonstrate his prowess in the kitchen today so we went shopping for all the necessary ingredients. I managed to get a little work done on Calypso (printed 1 more layer, rewrote some of the text based on the feedback from last night, laid out and flashed the 4th screen but didn't get to print it) while he made and rolled out the dough, mixed the filling, & cut all the ingredients for the soup. (We cheated, we bought chorizo sausage and added chopped napa cabbage for the filling.) I made the potstickers and cleaned up. Then it's getting ready for going on the snow shoeing trip up Mt. Hood tomorrow, preparing food/water/extra clothes. I guess I'm calling it a day...we have to be up at 5:30am tomorrow!