Winter projects

 I've completed my new color chart

...Finished one obsession and started another.

I recently got hooked on Kendama, which is a traditional Japanese game. Learning the tricks is challenging but fun. Plus it makes a really satisfying wooden clink. I've been using it as a focusing tool, and it's improving my hand-eye coordination. 

In less nerdy news, I started prepping some large canvases.

 I didn't have any stretcher bars at my studio at the time, so I just tacked/taped the canvas over some boards. I'm priming them with acrylic gesso (which I haven't used in years) and absorbent ground. I'm hoping the absorbent ground will create a paper like surface- something that my rabbit skin glue paint can stick well to. I had been using 300-400lb water color paper, but it was really expensive and there were size limitations. 

I haven't worked with absorbent ground before, but a former CCA grad student Conrad Ruiz  uses it for his larger than life watercolor paintings, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it out.

The weather has been rainy and cold, so it takes a while for everything to dry. I started playing with some paper scraps I took from a free pile at work while waiting for the layers of gesso to dry.

 At first I was thinking about topography, and building the layers slowly.

Then I figured I could make it function more as a frame. Right now I think of it as an island, and that I'll build the land with layers of my leftover tape. 

I gessoed the surface and painted the base a textured silver. It was fun to make waves with impasto paste. I still have a bunch of layers of absorbent ground to prep, so I'll be jumping between my canvases and my little island for the next few studio sessions.

I wanted to spend the day there today, but last night my back got all out of whack at work, which is alarming because I've spent a small fortune on chiropractic care since it first reared it's ugly painful head in October. Plus I noticed that the bundle of palm muscle between my pinky and wrist on my dominate hand is really sore today, and it hurts to close my fist. I just hope that these things are minor little flareups. I've had to deal with injuries this winter that prevented me from working, and the  depression that feed into it. I really want to make these paintings- I want them to work, I want them to be beautiful but most of all I want one less thing to be frustrated and bummed about. I need to catch a break. Maybe letting you all know this will motivate me to make my own fortune. Send a kind word or thought my way as I get through the next few days. I'm going to spend my birthday on Thursday and Friday in the studio and I'm very excited to have some big chunks of time. Fingers crossed that my body let's these aches go and doesn't start protesting again.

absorbing versus production

I am very effected by stimuli. One of the reasons why I don't have my driver's license yet is because I like looking out at the passing world too much, and I worry that I would be a distracted driver. As a bike rider I've learned to focus- but really it's just honing the kind of observation centered on whatever is going on in your personal space bubble. Car doors that fly open a split second after I pass them send shivers down my spine, and I can almost feel which cars will suddenly swerve in front of me for that coveted parking spot. As a viewer and participant in the world I bounce from a type of focus that hums out conversation and is at times mistaken for a fierceness and unintentional intimidation, (a modified biking attitude) and one that wants to notice and capture details that connect to stories, images and smells. In everyday terms it means that I am appear either seriously occupied or spaced out, silently focused or blabbering about every little thing I notice.

I sometimes wish that all of this awareness would lead to a die-hard artist work ethic but that is a nut I have yet to crack. Maybe I am just weak-willed or too good at psyching myself out, but damn do I get distracted while doing things. Originally I meant to publish this post on the the 5th. I was going to talk about how I had found a box in my room and spent all day working to transform it into a beautiful and fitting carrier for my precious business cards, with explained process and photo evidence. I nearly finished it. The gold paint is alluring, the cardboard wallet box transformed and lined with velvet. Two details threw me off though- do I affix a black masking tape label with my website embossed to the box cover or not? The gold paint made the fit of the box very snug and now it sticks- do I keep it as it is and fumble while opening it, or do I figure out a way to make the box easier to open? How do I do that? And with those questions it has sat. I don't quite have the right type of ribbon or even a solid idea of how I want to do it, and this project follows my pattern of working. Things get started, sometimes they almost are finished, but usually I'm missing the last touch.

Today that last touch is uploading the photos I've taken to support all this chattering. I can't get it work and it's frustrating. I find myself skimming text a lot lately, so I imagine that people will notice a lack of pictures and skip this page. I'll just end these chunks of letters with a list and the acceptance that people will skim and the list has the best chance out of everything.

Things that have been eating my non-work time:

(In order of appetite)

netflix instant watch:

21 Jump Street

The X-files

movies from the 80s

movies set in California or with Aaliyah 

playing scrabble (ipod version and in person)

better job hunting:

interviewing:

barista/espresso test

by phone

in person

craigslist

editing resume and writing cover letters

 

Art projects:

 Making a watercolor color chart

( because I am ashamed of the "b" worthy one I made for Randy Chavez's illustration 1 class)

composing little studies with the left over paint from the chart

a valentine's day lino cut with astronauts

business card box

cooking tastier than what I usually eat food:

soups with tomato bases, carrots, cabbage and potatoes plus whatever veggies I have around

curried lentils with collard greens and bacon

sausage, spinach and mushroom sandwiches

Brussels sprouts

peach-ginger black tea or lycee red tea

hanging out with friends and my boyfriend

over-sleeping

the packers playoff game

 

Hopefully I can get my photos uploaded soon, but I can't promise that I will be distraction free.