More framing...

Art made with a colorcopier, it's fabulous.

More framing today. Here's the mess:



And more mess:

Rusty is framed, and sold!

I sold Rusty Fragments last night! Made the deal from the email announcement I sent out for Portland Open Studios.

Today was photo day and framing day. Frame Central redeemed themselves by getting all of the frames ready today (just 3 days late in stead of 5). So I started framing. Since Rusty got sold, I framed it first. Also framed Cobwebs in the Fetish Cabinet. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow, and maybe Wed. Here's the framed Rusty:

St. Andrew

The 2nd and last day of the egg tempera painting workshop. Our assignment was to paint an icon of St. Andrew. The instructor, Sean Cain, had an outline for us to copy on our clayboards, and then we could paint as we wished, following the basic guidelines of 1) painting dark to light, 2) feathering transitions areas in the skin tones. And also following the traditional color choices for skin and hair.

So this was my finished icon. I decided to play around with the background area, since I had all that unused space. The texture was created by wiping (with some oomph) with a paper towel while the top layer of paint was still damp. I also wiped into the painted icon around the edges so that it looked more integrated. The clayboard that Sean had specified for the class was 7"x9", but I already had this board that was slightly larger at 9"x12". And it was just a little to big for the composition, so I created the border, originally thinking I would do a decorated border, but there was no time.

Now I'm thinking that I'd try to use it as a cover board for the Byzantine bookbinding class that I'm taking in 3 weeks.

Egg Tempera

Today was the 1st of 2 days of my egg tempera painting class. All day. Both days. And I'm already exhausted after one day. My right arm was already REALLY tired from fencing on Thursday night, and having to work in hundreds if not thousands of little tiny strokes seemed to have done me in. I don't think I'm getting anything else done tonight. I'll try to remember to take out the film tonight so I can photograph the pieces before they go into the frame tomorrow night. Or maybe Monday night.

On a brighter note, I might have sold Rusty Fragments already, just from the announcement! They wanted to know the sizes and everything, so it can still not work out, but still, I'm excited.

Never run errands on Fridays

Maybe now I'll remember that, having written it down.

Since I didn't get museum boards yesterday, I decided to do that today. And since I'd be headed Beaverton way, I figured I might as well run some Beaverton direction errands. Bad mistake, as I remembered once I was caught in traffic. Anyhow, got the boards, checked out the framing services at Art Media (just noticed today that they had custom framing supplies). Prices seemed pretty comparable to Frame Central, but I like the selections better, so I'd definitely try them next time. Especially since FC told me that most of my frames would be cut and ready to be picked up this afternoon, and then I found out at 6pm (and I had to call them), that they wouldn't be. They ran out of the moldings. So now I have to wait until next Wed.

And I seemed to have left the announcements to the last minute. I've been meaning to get them out early this week but didn't. So got the email announcement out, but I still have maybe 40 postcards that I'd need to send out, the old fashioned way.

Tonight, I should be cutting some mats, but maybe I'll decide that it's Friday night after all. I do have to get ready for my egg tempera class tomorrow and Sunday.

Framing

Time to get serious about preparing for Portland Open Studios. Went to Frame Central to order frames for 8 new pieces (almost $800!!). Went into town to pick up 6 pieces that were in a Open Studios Preview show. Tried to slip into Art Media to get some museum boards, but couldn't find parking so decided to skip it for today. Will try the Beaverton Art Media so I won't have to deal with parking. Did work on a small painting, but no pictures to show for today.

Rusty Fragments

That's the title for this piece for now. I'm still thinking about it; there's another title that I'm also tossing around in my head. So this is one of the pieces that I've been working on for a couple of weeks. You can see previous incarnations of it in older entries (Sept 29 and 26). I might fuss with it here and there for a little while longer, but I'm pretty much finished with it. This was a good day.

Two days later...

Finally, after 2 days of printing, I'm finished with cards for now. Again, I'd get 1 image set up to print 10 copies, run off to do some errand or chore, and then come back to get the next card started. And so now I have cards to sell at Portland Open Studios.

Cards, cards, and more cards

So it's yes to cards after all. Printing high quality inkjet prints is a slow process, so I'm babysitting the printer as it slowly spits out cards in between my doing various chores, like cooking dinner and cleaning the laundry room. The new dryer was supposed to be delivered today, and in fact, they did bring it; but it was slightly damaged and they took it back. They took the old dryer though, so I was able to clean the room. It took a couple of hours of playing with colors and test prints before I had 3 images ready and printed. Hopefully, it will go a little faster now that I've had some experience.

Tonight's movie was Jet Li's Fearless. A little preachy and stilted, typical of that genre I think, but it was alright.

Maryhill Double

Today was the day. As always, we didn't start too early, around 12:30pm or so. Got there 2 hours later and met up with R and J L. at the site. Walking up to it, M and I were both disappointed, considering how much press the installation had received, it simply did not have that ethereal/shimmering quality that I was expecting. But once we got there, and were able to interact with it, walking around and climbing up the scaffolding, we both changed our minds. And after talking to Annie Han (the artist) about the impetus for the project, it all came together.

This was a photo taken at the top of the scaffolding, about 4 stories up. At the lower center left, you can sort of see the steps coming up the scaffolding on the other side. There were 2 stairs going up, and we climbed up both. The photo was taken with M's cell phone; not the best quality but I rather like the impressionistic quality of the image.



And here's a shot of the Columbia River taken on the stairs you see in the picture above, just a few steps from the top.