Snowday

Though it doesn’t look like much, we had a bonafide snow day; Paul’s class was cancelled.  More snow all night and more tomorrow.  Since I did all my running around yesterday: Nice.  It’s lovely coming down, though too fast and too fine to show up in photos.  But it’s there. Blizzards are much more agreeable than grey February gloom.

Something about a snow day lets me relax, buckle down and enjoy, no matter what I’m doing. I got tons done, including six class descriptions, laundry, more work on a long complilation document, several photo shoots, and I finally resolved the ‘your text is so hard to read’ problem on the web site, I think for good.  (Lots of the photos were of paper, so I could do this). And I added a page, and played, too – though I’m not sure I like this, or at least not the way it shows up on youtube:

Last but not least, I actually cooked dinner.  Snow days require good hot food. Now I’m working on a very fine bottle of red wine, blogging and not thinking about the fact that one thing snow days are not good for is retrieving beaters.

DIY: testing, testing

Today we have *SUN* – so this will be a quick post. Must…get…outdoors. But I am continuing on with the web site, and am about a quarter of the way there. Most of the galleries, though they’ll be consolidated into a single source page from which you can open each, will continue to look like this (but wider). I feel that some works, particularly the books, need a different presentation.  So I’m experimenting with this.  What do you think?* I’ve tested it with Safari and Firefox on my Mac and Internet Explorer on Paul’s PC (which screws up my new temporary home page mightily, but thankfully only that page.  I think I know how to fix it). In any case, I now know why having sites made costs so much.

If you’ve noticed the stack of empty wine boxes on out front porch in the Amaryllis photos, they are for these great things that Paul builds from recycled materials:

The second one has temporary strings at the moment; adding an empty three-dram bottle of Springbank Old Malt Cask as a support made the entire thing too long for regular guitar strings.  Somehow that reminds me of working on the site. I’m pleased that we are a D.I.Y. nation at this address; nothing goes to waste, as amply evidenced below.

In keeping with that, I found an on-sale shredder a few days ago, and brought it home to begin processing fifteen years worth of teaching materials into a new piece, after scanning the things worth keeping. Shredding is curiously satisfying.

* I’m soliciting all kinds of feedback these days.  Not only did I also post the web page test to both my Facebook pages, tomorrow, I’m excited about meeting with some trusted friends to pick their very fine brains about possible situations involving the bronze beater.  Which I am not even ready to pick up until the weather settles down in the east.  Stay warm, everyone.

February Syndrome

‘Tis the dead of winter; that’s always true of February, regardless of the timing of the solstice.  I am seeing, reading, feeling and even sometimes hearing February Syndrome symptoms everywhere from everyone I communicate with in the northern hemisphere.

Tuesday, left;

Wednesday, below right.

I wrote a blahg at midnight last night, and then decided it sounded waaaay too February to publish.  It boiled down to the fact that my personal February Syndrome is one of impatience. I’ve got a whole lot o’ balls in the air right now and all is moving forward, but so, so slowly.  All the things that must be done to keep all my projects progressing are very mundane at this point, and not blahg-worthy. So I’ll remind myself that getting any of it out of the way is very good and necessary, and I’ll get back to it.  Apparently, I want it all to bloom as fast as this Amaryllis is right now (and am in utter denial about the weeks it was just a slowly expanding stem). That’s my February so far.  What’s yours?

Thursday

During a lot of this phase, I need to (still) stay basically glued to the computer, awaiting communications. While that was happening this week, I got some of the preliminary work on the web site up and published, all on the (boring) text-based section. I’m not at all sure these are the final page formats, but I needed to either publish them or leave it all offline.  iWeb contains many mysteries, such as photos that suddenly refuse to move on a page after they’ve easily been repositioned previously, and the captions on the two home page photos that look so different even though all the information (color, typeface, opacity) is exactly the same for each.  I can only do the best I can. The site now has a split personality, maybe multiple personalities.  Maybe that’s another February symptom.

Today

Limbering (after Limbo)

This is the first image I ever saw of the soon-to-be-mine Bronze Beater. That long green wire was the (scary) way it was grounded electrically. Yikes.

Earlier this week, I finally, finally, finally broke through a gargantuan writer’s block, which was (not surprisingly) centered around another academic cover letter and somehow extended to everything I needed to write.  This block was even more of a monster than the one I had for a similar endeavor exactly two years ago. In celebration, I decided to take Thursday off, and played around in the morning, and spent the afternoon and evening in the studio, just pulling sheets, making something for an old friend, thinking about my next piece, enjoying guilt-free free time.

Friday, the e-mail: “the beater will be finished today or tomorrow” and these lovely small photos, taken as its roll and bedplate were being ground in.  Hooray!

Today, off to Vespine to say my final farewell and pick up my piece.

Tonight and tomorrow: pack up the piece to immediately be shipped elsewhere, where it will soon be included in a fabulous online auction.  I’ll post a link when it’s ready, but plan ahead! You will be able to Buy This Book, and help fund a marvelous place —>

Also today and tomorrow: finish printing, burning cds and packing up applications and other things: massive mailing on Monday.  The rest of the week: big big studio revisions, receiving and storing all the work from The Leaf and The Page, and then: figuring out the logistics of the Beater Retrieval Road Trip!

Sea In Sight

I bought a better desk chair. Interview finished (fun but painstaking) and sent, another web page revised, another cover letter ready for (extensive) editing, more (aiee) new opportunities have been added to the February first deadline. By then I will have been writing and editing and re-writing and re-editing for an entire month of wan grey days.

Silence is an ocean.

Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk

into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,

and bring your talky business to an end.

Traditional words are just babbling

in that presence, and babbling

is a substitute for sight. – Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Later today, close to the ocean in Brooklyn, my beater will be turned on and running at long last!

I fancy I will be able to feel its vibrations, calling me towards the sea.

OK

so I am a bit of a dramahblahg queen today.

But I am so very weary of sitting and writing, was under a pall of a friend’s sad story – and of no sunlight for days and days – and sorely in need of good news.

When I opened the e-mail titled Your Beater,

I shouted

YEAHHH!

at the top of my lungs,

startled Paul,

scared Lupe.

Two more things to be built on its cover,

and

the bronze beauty

comes home.

Heal and Tow, ’round we go.

Chan ann leis a’chiad bhuille thuiteas a’chraobh.*

For days and daze now, I’ve been having this continual feeling of trying to run in deep mud; it’s probably just my winter cycle, but a tad oppressive, nonetheless. Progress is being made, but sooo very slowly, with setbacks abounding, a strange dogged forward, back, forward dance.

I ended up using an older piece instead of the (unfinished) new one for a group show entry, and am running later than I wanted to be for a few other things. Fortunately (sort of), the article that’s being written got broken into several smaller, more comprehensive ones, and I have a couple of extra days to finish the interview. My car got swiped again but I now have a brand-new tail light, and got the dimmed headlight fixed and a new battery in the bargain. My cell phone fell out of my pocket, and I had to re-trace the multiple steps of a busy, busy day, but I found it, some decent soul turned it in rather than using all its minutes.

On the other hand, in an obsessive push (and with inappropriate timing, likely) I got the entire new website mapped out, and re-wrote the front-page blurb and resume to put things into perspective, which felt very good.  But, when publishing the revisions, I somehow lost an entire web page (the site for the Respite show) which will now need to be re-built. I also dug deeply into iWeb, and learned exactly how to do what I want. But now I am a bit daunted by the task I’ve set myself. Days and daze of scanning need to take place. I will absolutely love it, when it’s finished, but I sure wish I could hire someone else to do it (to do a lot of things, actually).

I’m taking a break today, to get a badly needed haircut, and to get some equally required sanity in the studio. Then: back to the interview, the next deadlines, the site, and siting sitting sitting in front of this wee box.

* It is not with the first stroke that the tree falls.

Oh, and the Vespine folks got a well-deserved farewell…I hope to make it down for the last day of Retrospect.

Prepare to Inhale

It’s never over, but the first applications (and another slew of recommendation letters) are done and gone. The final push was hilarious in many ways, or at least is now that I am finished. 1. I finally completed a draconian academic job application which, if it had been printed out, would have been the size of a major suburb’s yellow pages. I uploaded the entire glut of documents, hit ’send’ – and then (and only then) got an instant auto-reply: ‘The position is cancelled because of a hiring freeze. Have a nice career!’  2.  Between mid- afternoon, when I checked for image specs, and mid-evening, when I was ready to upload, a residency program changed its entire application process, image requirements, fee and the deadline I’d just managed to make. Hilarious.

Next up is finishing off my interview, which will be pleasurable. After that, one more academic application (a late listing that I am actually quite intrigued by), and – hooray! – the studio, to finish a piece for a show, and to make something for a birthday…and then it’s back to the February deadlines.  But now I have the CVs and powerpoints and statements and philosphies and blablablahs all updated, and this page made, so it will be easier. Right? I am thinking that the new website might look something like the portfolio page, though I am not sure about the type; it looks much, much nicer before it’s published. I don’t think the typeface changes, it just goes all fat.

Enough!  I’m off to a lavish ’sushi night’ with my grrrlz, though this time we’re going for bulgogi and other Korean BBQ delights.  With alcohol. Definitely.  And then a stop on the way home to pick up one of my last-minute recommendation letters.

Bookbinding sewing samples by Betsy Palmer Eldridge. Sushi by Oysy.

Hiatus

I had to take a break from the writing for three days there, so now am heading back to it with a vengeance.  There was a family emergency that needed input, and a flaring up of health issues lingering from – and brought about by – last year’s formidable stress. The good news is that, during the research I did over the past few days, I’ve discovered a way to deal with them that will not involve prescription drugs, nor the AMA. Part of it requires daily low-impact, gentle exercise, so I’m back to the Forest Preserve. I’m going out now for more – in 36 degree sun! – and then getting back to the deadlines.  When they are finished, Chicago will be in the middle of a January thaw. I’m looking forward to that and, at last, the studio.

I am still thinking of these patterns, or rather patterns upon patterns.

Attack squirrel. “Yo!  No pictures!”

deepfreeze

I’m still involved in the write-a-thon; today, it’s Application Land. I am truly, truly having to push myself to get through them. I sit here working, hours pass, and then suddenly I  realize how little I’ve done. Daily walks don’t seem to help, but rather, they result in sketches and studio ideas that I can’t get to till this is all finished.  It will all come to a crescendo in a few days, when I hit the shared deadline for most, with a few isolated February stragglers here and there.

Patterns I’m thinking of and sketching right now.

Last night’s farewell to Vespine was very well attended despite bitter windy cold; inside it was comfortable and warm in many more ways than thermostat degrees. The Vespine folks all looked great, dressed semi-formally in black dresses or suits; a proper sendoff.  I was feeling quite subdued, and couldn’t help wondering throughout the evening where and how this community will gather next, but: I never once wondered if it would, so that’s good.

This and this are now officially part of my summer. I’m excited over the newness of PBI, and SO very, very, very happy to be returning to WSW…I think it has already become another touchstone sort of place for me.  I’m eager to see everyone. And now, back to the grind. If you’ve got ten minutes, this video that’s flying around Facebook (another factor in my writing quagmire) is interesting.  I wish I could churn my apps out like this. Or, hey, even with 2007’s efficiency.