Contender for Best Husband Comment 2008

Last night, I put away some of the clutter that's been smothering my workspace, as well as a few items I'd been "storing" in the play yard. (That's millennium-speak for "playpen.") There used to be a black recycling bag to the left of the white bag from Artfest. Not anymore.
The black bag had edged out this bag, forcing me to put it on another counter. (You might recognize this bag from last year's Art & Soul in Portland.) Prompting The Husband to say something like this:

"The longer other women are married, the more their asses expand. But the longer we're married, the more your art space expands."

See, that's love.

Relatively speaking

Nana and Peepaw came up to see The Boy during Memorial Day weekend -- and so did Auntie Stacie, virtually speaking. The Husband arranged for a Skype video call to Dublin, so we could all talk over one another in the comfort of our respective homes. Look closely -- my kitchen will never be that clean again, at least until we have visitors.

Later that day, we headed out to the historic portion of Snohomish, a town north of Seattle.
The weather was supposed to falter by then, but we had a lovely stroll under sunny skies (!)...
... wandered by antique stores and late 19th-century architecture...
I'll definitely have to go back on my own when I have time to get lost in the stores.

Nana and Peepaw were also kind enough to babysit The Boy while we Went Out To A Movie [cue excited fanfare]. It was a toss-up between Iron Man and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. We went with Caspian. For those of you who've read the original series, it was pretty good... mostly stuck to the original storyline as well, although some parts are obvious add-ons.
I'm glad they chose Peter Dinklage to play Trumpkin -- he does a great job of conveying the idea that all these humans around him are bizarrely tall and cheerful. The producers decided to make Caspian's people, the Telmarines, into Inquisition-era Spaniards, basically, in contrast with the bright and innocent, very English, World War II-era Pevensie children.

I tried to explain some of that to Nana and Peepaw, but The Husband deterred me from that. We have an understanding: The Husband and I are their favorite Incomprehensible but Friendly Geeks, and they're the Designated Normal People. And no, reading our respective blogs would probably not clear things up at all for Nana or Peepaw. So we smile and wave and send them home with pictures of The Boy.

Postcard on its way!

Arrrgh -- I should've checked the picture of the postcard more closely before I sealed it up in the envelope. Made the mistake of using the old camera, which I haven't used in months. But I did sharpen it a bit in Photoshop. I'll have to ask Tally to take a better picture once she receives it.
Hey, say it with me: "Tally, can you take a better picture of the front, so we can see what it really looks like? Lisa's picture looks like crap."

The other side is covered with a crinkly dark green paper and pieces of sheet music-patterned paper. I then sealed the paper with slightly thinned matte medium and dried it with the heat tool. Next, the Golden Acrylics colors... I toned down some Cobalt Teal (a freebie I'd usually consider too garish) with Paynes Gray and a little bit of Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) to get a seawater color; dried that too. The last color was a wash of Iridescent Pearl (Fine). I used a Sharpie for the text. I knew the back would be impossible to shoot properly, what with the final wash. I was going for the same iridescence you see on a water bubble just before it pops. (Love that word, "iridescence." So much more evocative than "shimmer.") The text reads:

At night we swam together, him tossing me up with the waves and down into the current. I had not tamed him, he insisted. But he found my human oddities intriguing enough that the merman would not let me drown.

But one night, I chose to swim back to shore on my own. Let the waves overwhelm me, or let me drown, or maybe carry me home.

He was astonished, though he tried to hide it. The merman accused me of abandoning him like the sea spray flees the waves.

I reminded the merman that he was not tamed, and then swam the last few feet to the shore.

And now the postcard is off to the wilds of the Valley. You'd think it would take a day or two to travel a thousand miles, but I predict it'll reach Tally on Friday.

Somewhere, beyond the sea...

Here are a couple of elements I'm thinking of using on the postcard I'm going to alter.
Ooh, I love this paper. Enough to marry it and not have our relationship recognized in most of the 50 states. It's even better than the navy blue and white version I found previously. Expensive as all get out, but delicious.

About a week ago, something about a merman floated into my head just before I fell asleep. I was thinking about events that happened years ago (it's fun to rewrite history!) and the storytelling started to flow. I don't know if I'll use everything, but you know how I like the lace paper...

... and the colored lights in that snippet look like the aurora borealis to me. Then yesterday, I went over to my pal Stacie's house and studio, and hung out with her and Amy Lee. I didn't have time to stay long and I was still sort of in art-freeze, but I could scribble down some ideas and pick out some elements in like-minded company. Which got my brain telling me, last night:

Get up and gesso the postcard. Nothing else. Just gesso the slick side of the postcard and let it dry.

Yes, I know they have medications for this kind of thing now.

But for once, the brain delivered its message without comment or judgment. So I did it without fussing about cleaning up my workspace first. Ugh. That task, on the other hand, will require me going to the room in my head that's stark white, with no furniture -- you know, like those "nowhere" spaces you see in movies like Heaven Can Wait or 2001: A Space Odyssey, where people always ask, "am I dead?" -- until the rest of me finishes cleaning up.

"I aten't dead yet." -- Granny Weatherwax (Terry Pratchett)

It isn't much, but slapping gesso onto this postcard is the first time since Artfest that I've held anything resembling a paintbrush or a canvas.

Tally and I are going to do a round robin of sorts, just the two of us, using postcards. You know, this is the second time she's helped me get out of an art funk or slow period. I think we're mishpucheh by now, for many reasons. So here's a shout-out to her.

Oh, and I aten't dead yet... I have at least four more months before I have to make art with one hand while I nurse with the other and yell at The Boy to get me another martini. Kidding! I'll still be blogging and arting for awhile. So hang in there with me.

I made her wait for two weeks past her due date. During a muggy New Jersey summer.

How long did you make your mom miserable before you decided to give her a break and get born already? (I'm sure your mom would answer "too damn long.")

I know I talk about my parents relatively frequently on le blog, but oddly enough, I don't exactly want to dig up anything on Mom for this post before Mother's Day weekend. I guess it's because she's already the star of this month's Gypsy Bonfire. You'd think I would be filling your eyeballs for pages, since I find myself reading Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, following up Little Altars Everywhere.

(What can I say? There's a reason why the first book got made into a sappy, incompletely realized movie.)

So instead, I'll leave you with an excerpt of an essay by Garrison Keillor I found on Salon.com:

Like an old lioness, she'll come running even if you're 2,000 miles away.

That is why you pay homage to the old lady on Mother's Day. You entered this cold world causing her more pain than she thought possible and now she won't ever give up on you.

I thought this was fairly appropriate because I'll be helping someone new with the "you entered this world" part later this year. I'm preggers, people! But I'm sure the 33% added crankiness has been completely unnoticeable.

Scrubs: RIP

But I don't want it to go!

Last night, the series finale of Scrubs aired. It wasn't as absorbing as it usually is -- I think they did a better job pulling off the episode where they did an actual musical -- but maybe that's due to the writers' strike. I'm guessing the staff really didn't have the time to put in the effort they might've, had the season been a normal length.

I don't know which I'll miss more: the actual jokes, or the depictions of JD's relationship with Turk, and Turk's relationship with Carla. One element of JD and Turk's friendship reminds me of my own friends and me: race is part of our relationship but it's just part of who we are, and if we have dumb questions about the other, we can ask because we've put in the time to get to know each other as people.

Carla and Turk's relationship, on the other hand, I love because she's bossy and he's just stupid -- but they work together, in spite of their egos. Plus, Turk looks (and acts) a lot like my brother.

I hope the actors all find work at least as good as Scrubs. And I really want to see Angela Nissel (wrote about her here) one of the writers who became a supervising producer, get another show!

I miss them already. Yes, I know they're in syndication. But I miss them.

I blame this on Dr. Kelso.

Homework. This could require thinking.

Ricë and I had a good talk last month about getting to know yourself and your art better... what really excites you, what medium/media you love so much you want to marry it, things like that. Like decorative paper and transparencies and stuff. (See more on my Flickr pages.)She suggested I get off my ass and do some deep thinking about these things. The threat of her nagging me to do so reared its head also. So I've been thinking. (Yes, that was the source of the smoke you smelled.) I hate hate hate homework, but I've been thinking.In my last piece, Dryad and Child, I was thinking about the face(s) I mean to show to the world, and the ones that show whether you know it or not. When I was younger, I thought one had to be the real thing, and the other was fake or not as authentic. (I was a teenager. Cut me some slack.) But I now think it's more like parts fade in and out, depending on circumstances.
Even with children. Which is why I printed one face, and layered another on top, on both figures. You look at one face, then the other, then back to wonder what one face expresses or conceals...

Another element of these shifting perceptions: all of the faces I used are of African Americans. Even the transparency face. They're just different shades of black people.

So I guess essentially, I like translucent layers, especially faces, because you can see two elements at a time and your mind shifts back and forth from one perception to another. My clever Artfest roomies Cheryl and Layla picked up on that right away.
That's why I like lace paper so much, and the semi-translucent white leaves on the dryad's over-skirt. I used to adore vellum when I first started making cards, for the same reason. The delicacy obscures, but doesn't completely hide, the layer beneath. This piece was the first I've made where I think that interest came out to the fore.

Dryad and Child is for sale (email me if you're interested), mainly because I want someone else to be as fascinated by the faces as I am. I plan on putting the piece on my Etsy store tomorrow.