3 artists

A whole day of visiting with other artists today. Margaret is wanting a web site, so we met this morning to talk over what she wants. Then I had a nice fun visit, no business, with Samantha, the very talented artist I met at the Rake show back in Jan. Then it was on to visit Laura to show her the books from the shadow exchange and to see about possibly doing a group exhibit in the future. Left the house at 10:45am and got home at 5:30pm, and spent all day talking/socializing, not what I'm used to. Now I'm ready for bed and it's not even 9pm. We're off to Tacoma to see the Northwest Biennial tomorrow. No studio time today.

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.

Ouch!

Went to Utrecht's and didn't find anything suitable for making a little container for the book. Art Media next. Art Media now seems to have this 'concierge.' The last couple of times I've been there, after a couple minutes, she'd be there asking if I needed help. So today, I took her up on it, since I wasn't finding what I was looking for.

I explained that I needed a fairly heavy weight paper, but smooth, to make a small container for a book. She showed me a bunch of watercolor papers, which was not what I was after. So I asked if they carried Arches Cover Gray. She said, no they didn't. Which is fine, and she could've just left it at that. She should've just left it at that. But she went on to say "we only carry materials for students and pros."

Ouch!

I wonder how many people she insults in a days work? I hope she does that every time someone asks for something they don't carry...I hope I'm not special.

Well, I ended up with some Fabriano. I'm not sure that's what I'd use. And I don't believe what she said about the Beaverton store not having it, if the downtown store doesn't have it. I know I've seen it locally, somewhere.

Finished putting the covers on this afternoon. I found a piece of fuzz under the plexi on one that I did yesterday. So cross that one off.

When I was out on my walk tonight, I thought of a great idea, which of course involves printing one more layer on the back of the book. Now that the covers are on, I'll need to see if it will work. Tomorrow. The movie tonight was Black Snake Moan, a pretty intense movie. You couldn't tell which way it was going to go, it could all end very well, or it could all end very badly. I had my eyes closed and fingers in my ears towards the end...

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.

Thangka painting restoration/conservation

We finally made it out to visit Suzy today. This was a visit that was originally planned for about a month ago; I had to cancel because I got sick.

It was a nice day for a drive, and we went out to Multnomah Falls for breakfast first before turning back to Corbett for our 1:30pm appt. Since this was Sunday, breakfast turned out to be all you can eat buffet for $20/person (!), a bit more expensive than I had figured. We squeezed in a short hike half way up the Falls after brunch.

Suzy has a very nice studio space and showed us 3 of the thangkas she's been working on (14-18 century). We also saw her photo album of the first 1/3 of the thangkas she restored. Very, VERY, impressive. From weaving in the missing fabric backing, repainting the missing bits/figures, de-oxidation (is that a word?), aging the pigments to match, it's really an incredible process. I guess she's one of a handful of people in the country (or maybe in the world) that does that. Some of the photos we saw, the originals were barely recognizable as to what they were, and when she was finished, they were whole and beautiful again.

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:

First Thursday

There was still a bit of business/email to deal with for the Print Arts show, then I finished the Tupper interview and put it up on the Portland Open Studios blog. Squeezed in about an hour and half working on Calypso before I had to leave for FT. There were a fair number of people there, considering the not-so-good weather. I'm glad it's all more or less finished at this point. Back to my regularly scheduled programming.

[Update at midnight: I just finished folding and gluing the text blocks for Calypso!]

Preview photos

Here are some photos from last night's preview of The Printed Page, An Exhibit of Artists' Books by American Printmakers, at Print Arts Northwest that Roberta Lavadour and I co-curated. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, so these are just from my phone.

This is Diane Jacobs' tablets (based on her book Alphabet Tricks which you can see on the lower right). Each tablet has a letterpress printed page and a ceramic figure for illustrating the page.



This is a general view of the gallery interior. The works shown from L to R are: Sara Owen, Karen Kunc, Jessica Spring:



Two books by Daniel Heyman. He was invited to sit in during interviews with Abu Ghraib prisoners and 'sketch' in drypoints and watercolors. After he returned, he made woodblock prints based on the watercolors, and here is the resulting book (the one on the left):



From L to R: two books by Ruth Lingen, one by Cathrine Michaelis, and two by Barb Tetenbaum:



Two very fun books by Jessica Spring: on the left, a book of old proverbs, and on the right...what do you call those spinner things?



Two stunning books by Karen Kunc:



And in the other window, a book by Inge Bruggeman: