Hi, Daddy.

Today is the second anniversary of my father's death. He would've been 70 in June of that year. (My mom died seven years prior.)

There's not much to say when both your parents are gone, except "It sucks."

I could write until I keeled over and still not convey their respective essences. I am just not that good of a writer.

It's odd: I feel almost like my father was not someone I knew personally, but a storybook character I grew up with. Which is really bizarre, considering that we were very close, yet I was completely aware of his human flaws. It's just that... I will never be able to hear his opinion about anything important to me again. I can tell him; he can't respond except as a whisper of what I would expect he'd say.

I'm starting to feel the same way about my mother. I suppose it might have something to do with the genealogy research I'm doing, because I'm hearing perspectives from my father's brother and my mother's sister. They're becoming narratives.

I guess I'll light a mental yahrtzeit candle and let it go at that. I'm not Jewish, but I like the idea.

Little arters everywhere

I read the lovely Deryn's post yesterday about blogging passionately, just after I took this picture of the cardboard-and-birdseed feeders at my son's daycare.
Didn't have my camera with me, but The Husband showed me how to transfer my cell phone photo properly. (And of course, your blog host probably offers mobile blogging.) The pic illustrates the comment I made in Deryn's post on successful blogging: carry your camera or camera phone with you to remind you to look for the art around you.

I like reading blogs that show art in everyday life. It could be small-people art on the naked trees... could be your own work or work-in-progress. Nina Bagley is a master of the latter -- in fact, I'd say her blog pictures lean about 8 to 1 in favor of arty bits to photos of finished pieces.

I know sometimes the only photo you feel like posting is one of your own toes, but I believe I've seen more toes in the past year than I have in my entire life. And that's including summer swim team leagues. Scars are interesting, though. Chicks dig scars.

Time's up!

We have two winners! Tally guessed where I kept the figure while I was at work -- right in front of the iced tea...... and Cheryl guessed the closest to the actual number of matchsticks -- 51. (I screwed up the first masking tape t-shirt, so I had to start over.) When was the last time you saw a fire in a fridge? Huh? Can't hear you.

Full disclosure: Tally might've had a bit of an advantage on guessing I'd be crackheaded enough to put the figure there. We've known each other for 30 years. (That still trips me out.) And Cheryl will be one of my Artfest roommates. But the hints these lovely and talented winners received were the same ones you also read in the two previous posts. The only difference was that they shouted their answers before you did.

Blog candy on its way to Tally! Cheryl, email me your snail mail address and I'll get your prize out to you quick-like-bunny.

Next month, we'll have some more fun, with blog candy to someone(s) lucky. Maybe it'll be Valentine's-related, maybe not... depends on my mood. I bet if it's Valentine's-themed, Julie will win. She's the Empress of Sweet.

That's more like it

Good guess, Julie... 32 matchsticks is definitely closer. Keep trying 'cause you've officially overtaken Laurel as the leader. And don't forget to throw in a guess as to where I kept the figure while I was at work.

HINT #2: The container has large doors.

If you figure that one out, you're going to think I'm simple for storing the figure there. But it was my first time burning masking tape, on a wooden figure no less! I wanted to make sure the house didn't burn down in our absence! Horrifying visions of the fire captain assessing the damage: "We found the accelerant. It was some sort of wooden doll covered in tape."

Laurel did it. You should too.

My sassy girl Laurel took the first stab at the blog candy and guessed I used 14 matchsticks, with the figure "behind curtain number one." Boy, I shoulda taken a picture of the pile to give you guys a hint! Well, what's done is done. You'll have to live with a written clue.

HINT #1: I used more than 20. And I stored the figure in a container about ten times taller than the figure.

Y'all got until 11:59pm (Pacific Standard Time) next Thursday night to guess the answers... So far Laurel is in the de facto lead!

First steps

I've just gotten started on the next piece... this one will come with me to Artfest. I have a very specific outfit for her in mind, based on women's clothing I saw in Ghana, a country in west Africa. It's sort of an everyday outfit, comprised of a blouse or loose dress under a skirt wrapped around the waist.
Her shirt is made of strips of burnt masking tape, a technique I wanted to try in Michael de Meng's class during Art & Soul, but I didn't have time. An excellent way to relieve your pyromaniac tendencies, I might add. I would've used a cigarette lighter, but thank God The Husband no longer smokes, so that's not readily available. So I used those long fireplace matchsticks.

Most of this will be covered up with other stuff I'm planning to add. I might paint the "shirt" too... just dug up some photos from that Ghana trip and I'd forgotten how much vivid color people wear there.

If you can guess how many matchsticks I used up to make the figure's t-shirt, I'll send you some blog candy. Extra candy for guessing where I stored the figure after I was done...

ATCs on Flickr

You can see all my Artfest ATCs on my Flickr page. Dude, check it out.

Last one!

I counted twice just to make sure -- once like I was dealing cards, then once grouping them into five sets of five plus two.

So now all I have to do is scan them (or take pictures of the more 3-D ones), put them in a big plastic baggie, and ship them off with the shipping/handling cost for the organizer Bee Shay. It took me about a month, but mainly because I allowed for pauses when I didn't have time to art, or I felt like designing instead of assembling. You know what really helped? Doing two or sometimes three when I intended to do just one.

27 ATCs! Oy!

Focus... fohhhhh-cusss...

That Ricë... she just got me to post an impromptu tutorial on how to avoid glare when you're taking a photo.

In the comments section of the last post, she demanded that Evil Greg spill with the anti-glare information. Basically, you use a tripod/timer combo.

Here's Evil Greg:

In most cases, the glare is caused by the flash. If you turn off the flash, though, the exposure time has to be a lot longer to compensate for less light and 99.999% of people will get a blurry picture if they hold the camera in their hands, because they can't hold it perfectly still for long enough.

So you put the camera on a tripod, focus it on the item, turn off the flash, and set it to a 5-second timer. That way any shaking you caused when you clicked the button is gone by the time the camera shoots the photo, and the tripod holds it perfectly still.

I tried to do a little meta-photography to illustrate. (Don't laugh -- I have a shaky hand and only one tripod.)
You're looking at our "new" camera, a Canon PowerShot SD800 IS Digital Elph. (I used our "old" camera, a Canon PowerShot S200 Digital Elph, to shoot the "new" camera.) It's attached to a cheapie Samsonite tripod. For simplicity, I'll pretend you have the same.
Go to the big circular control to the right of the screen, the one above the "Disp." and "Menu" buttons. First, press the "flower" on the left side, to tell the camera you're zooming in. Then press the bottom of the big button, the part that has the multiple rectangles:The camera displays "Single Shot" in addition to a 10-second timer, a 2-second timer, and a custom timer (you set your preferred lag time).

Press the rectangles again to get to the 2-second timer.
Then quickly press your shutter button (you know, the one you normally press to take the picture). Your camera will probably show a blinking light and/or chirp at you; this is the camera saying, "Ready... set..." and then two seconds later, the camera takes the picture!

Like I said, your camera will likely be different, but that's about how I managed it. Here's a zoom shot without the tripod/timer combo:And then with the combo:
Much better.

Nine or ten to go

I'm working on an ATC that incorporates this photo I took at a nearby park this past autumn. I love the little seed pods (?) against the red leaves and the blue sky. Great weather that day; crisp and clear, but slightly overcast so there weren't too many shadows.

At this point I'm in the home stretch: I believe I have ten more to go and then I'll be done with the 27 (oy!) ATCs needed for the Artfest ATC book. However, I might make a few extra, if I decide to keep a few more. It kinda depends on how well I'm able to take a picture of them for my records. One has a tiny glass tube on it, and I think I'll be able to keep the glare off. If so, I'll actually part with it. (I don't have any more glass tubes, so I'm not going to make a duplicate one. Trying to use the stuff I got!)

UPDATE: Not quite as many ATCs to go as I thought -- I've been knocking out two most of the times I sit down long enough to make "just one and then I'll go to bed." And believe me, I procrastinate plenty: The only reason I'm this far along is because I started in December and I have at least two other projects I need to finish by Artfest.

Thanks to Julie for the compliment on my photo. You should see hers -- last year she took a photo a day for eight months, and I totally got hooked on what was going to pop up next. It was like a visual version of the "shuffle" feature on an iPod.

Also, Evil Greg reminded me how to take a decent picture without glare from the glass tube. He's my Shell Answer Man.

The best part of the day

Rocking The Boy into sleepiness after a bath: I get three minutes of The Boy resting his head on my chest, sucking his thumb, his other fingers curled up against a patch of my bare skin at my collarbone.

The small, powerful gesture

My father once said I have a talent for the small, powerful gesture.
That's what my aunt (my mother's sister) told me when we were talking, about a week ago.

For Christmas, I sent her a framed copy of a 1947 newspaper photo of my aunt as a child. She's in a group shot of kids, so I put one of these mini-frames around her face. I also included a note about when the photo originally appeared in her hometown paper.

You should've heard my aunt's reaction: apparently the photo had the impact of "an atomic bomb," but in a good way. Auntie N was blown away, and so were her sons when they saw it. And then she reminded me of a small gift I'd given her years ago that she still loves, and told me what my father said when they were talking about it. Apparently he said, "Oh, she's always doing things like that. She's good at finding something little that means a lot."

Auntie N found their friendship (and yes, it was just a friendship) especially comforting after my mom and then Uncle L died... my dad was a terrific listener, with a sly sense of humor. It touched me to hear Auntie N reminisce about my dad, and how I did things to make him proud even when I wasn't trying to impress him.

I've been thinking about the small, powerful gesture a lot these days. What is an ATC if not a small, powerful gesture? I mean my ATC to be a palm-sized gift of what I've observed.

The kind of scrutiny that leads to creative expression can also come back to bite you in the ass, though. I'm reminded of that as I re-read a favorite book, Mixed: My Life in Black And White. Angela Nissel is now a contributing writer for the sitcom "Scrubs", but back in the 1970s and 1980s she was just a half-black, half-white girl painfully aware of the pressure to be either-or. It made her the screamingly funny person she is today, but man -- some parts are hard to read. No, I'm not of mixed race, but I've lived through some of the same small, powerful gestures that life will gift you with, if you're a relatively light-skinned African-American woman.

I guess I bring this all up to say I'm grateful I have so many kinds of art that express the poignancy, humor and beauty I see in my life. And I'm grateful I have the tools with which to experience all of these. I'm well-educated, well-read, middle-class (barely), able to express myself in words and images, and I have people who listen, watch and cheer me on.

I am spoiled, and I'd like to keep it that way.

ATCs, etc.

Well, thank y'all so much for the praise and flattery about the ATC with the transparency door! I did decide to make a couple more; one's done, the other will be soon. (Tally, check your mailbox.)

I realized I'd only done two with hedgehogs (part of the "Forest Floor" theme of this year's Artfest) so I might incorporate them into a couple more ATCs. Plus, woodland mythical creatures -- when else am I going to get such an opportunity to use the various brass/transparency/stamped wings in my stash? This is also a great chance to put to work some of that Greek mythology clogging my brain.

In other news, I made some calls to relatives about more genealogy stuff. I'm distantly related to the head pastor of a prominent African American church in the South, and he clarified a couple of relationships. It gets hard to keep track of these people, since most of them were farmers with lots of kids, who named their children after their siblings: "Bob Smith" names his daughter "Mary" after his sister "Mary," who was named for her aunt "Mary."

But I figured out that if I can get a death certificate for the pastor's grandfather, I'll figure out more about my own grandfather's female relatives. Generally, men are easier to track down than women, since their names usually stay the same for life. (And they're never listed as "Mr. Wife's Name" in official documents.) But our family genealogy expert explained to me that death certificates often list a person's mother by her maiden name -- which of course helps you find other relatives. Here's hoping.

About half done with the ATCs

This one I finished up tonight... it's called "Welcome to Artfest." It's the fourteenth of 27 I need to make for the Artfest ATC book. (Each swap participant gets a 25-card book, and the last two go to a book to be raffled off, and a final one for Teesha and Tracy.)

I emailed the host of the swap, Bee Shay (who will also be my instructor on the final day) and asked her to clarify about the ATCs. We can make each card an original design, or we can make 26 good-quality copies of one design. I thought about doing the second option, but by the time I'd asked, I'd already made seven or eight ATCs, so I figured I might as well keep making individual cards. Plus, some of the dimensional ones I've made, like this one, I can't really make copies of easily.This is the first time I've made an ATC with a door. I'm tempted to keep it for myself, but how can I keep such a heartbreaking-work-of-staggering-genius to myself?