Me and Kara Walker, ON THE SAME POSTCARD!

Not only that, my name comes right after hers! You know, '...Walker, Wang...'

Exhibit A:



Yeah, it's hard to read cause I make the images pretty small, but if you click on the image, you'll get a slightly bigger picture and you can almost read it!

How did this come about, you ask? Well, a few months back, out of the blue, I got an email from the Exec. Dir of the NY Center for Book Arts, asking me if I wanted to be in this exhibit. Well, do I ever! So of course I wrote them back right away and said yes. I'll be showing Nigrum and and Pocket Atlas for Travelers.

I was thrilled to be asked to start out with, but then when I got the image of the postcard and started reading the list of artists in the exhibit, my heart just about skipped a beat. So how about that? Me & Kara, on the same piece of paper.*

*Assuming it's THE Kara Walker we're talking about.

On other fronts, mainly my current Relay Replay Press book

I'm getting ready to go out to The Dalles to spend a week there working with my senior. I went out for an afternoon visit on Thursday last week, and his wife had given me a lot of personal items to take with me—high school year book, old photos, etc; and I also gave him a replica of a Model T that I found at the Goodwill, still in its original packaging, and all metal parts. He has a Model A, and I thought maybe the two will be fairly close. As it turns out, the two were not all that close, but he was thrilled with the Model T replica because his family had one when he was little. 'The family car,' he said. It brought a big smile to his face.

The yearbook was also a huge hit. In fact, we spent most of the visit looking over the year book and we didn't have time to look at anything else.

I'm very glad for this turn of events, towards more personal items. Previously, I had been pretty focused on his navy career and his interest in all things mechanical. This is because, well, of course, I haven't known him for very long, and due to the long distance (hour and half drive each way to see him), I have only visited him 5 times or so.

This is very different from what I did last year, with the four women who were local—I saw them once or twice a week for six months.

But with the personal items that his wife found, we're having a different kind of a conversation, in addition to talking about ships and cars.

And remember that airbrush I bought half a year ago...

All so I can mount my paintings (gouache on paper) on board rather than framing them, but I want to give them some protection too. So I finally got that out of the box, put it all together, and put it through its paces—just some tests then followed by clean-up—so far so good, but I haven't gotten any further.

And those college students came back!

The Good Prince was predicting that they wouldn't be coming back, after their fist strenuous encounter with me (get your minds out of the gutter...which by the way, we're also having to replace). But come back they did, and they were clearly paying attention—last time, the only tools they brought were shovels, and so the only thing they could do was dig. And digging those bamboos was hard work.

This time, they came back with a variety of tools, and so there were more options. I set them to do some pruning, but there was still more digging to do, although perhaps not quite as strenuous as the last time.

And now I must go deal with the roofer...