I'm still here checking the posts a couple of times a week.   Most of my writing is for books and artist statements.  Trying to do some postcards and letters but not getting a whole lot out.

I'm currently struggling to write a short series of how-to-draw essays to accompany little books of my notebook ink drawings.  Actually, the writing part was pretty easy for the first one, as it's really just what I ramble about if folks ask me about my process.    What is difficult is building the books into a printable form with the resources I have access too.

I began by building the book on the blurb software, thinking I'd just put it online on demand.  However, while blurb was fine for the portfolio book We will be rich for the rest of our lives, it does not feel suitable for a small black and white book.   I would like to see the book printed in a very simplified format at first, either by myself at IPRC or Atelier Meridian or in collaboration with Publication Studios (or another friend who does some printing).  Unfortunately, the blurb software doesn't allow my to convert the book to a pdf or print anything but a marked proof outside of the blurb website.  I dont' have InDesign or Quark on my pc. I have Scibus, but it is clumsy and it crashes.  I don't have working cd drive nor do i own a thumbdrive. I email the jpegs to myself and spent Saturday afternoon at the IPRC rebuilding the little book on InDesign only to see the disasterous picture file compressions when I printed out a rough.  Bleh.  So I am temporarily stuck on the project.

It also struck me this morning that the jpegs i emailed to the Singer Gallery in Denver for an upcoming show may have arrived much smaller than I sent them.  I hadn't thought about this danger for sometime and I feel awful - yet emailed jpegs coming from Denver to me have been fine, so perhaps my method of importing the ink drawing jpegs into InDesign from my email was faulty.  

I've been prepping canvasses, reading history books, and going on explorations out here on the penninsula. I've found plenty to work with and am planning the new paintings, some to show here in the spring and some to ship to Denver as I go.

Afternoon Edit: 

Whaddaya know:  thank you lli the resolution in InDesign is all in how you attach the picture files!    And hey - I actually get to listen to eltoro on the computer today!

The book of pictures is done.  It is indeed basically a hardbound portfolio.  But if you want a hardbound portfolio of my pictures, with the oil paintings grouped with the drawings and book tiles they relate to, then here you are.  There is also a little writing.

I have a studio to disassemble now.

I did a blog post for someone else the other day.

I've been uploading notebook drawings to Lastwater Spring (along with some commentary).  But I just realized how much crap I have to sort through when I started two self-pub book projects: one a book of the school year's notebook drawings for parents in Gus' class (ninety drawings?!)  and another, color one as an introduction to my working process on an image group by image group basis (because the figures in the notebook get turned into tiles and then oils and matched with landscapes yada yada...).  There will be a good chunk of work hanging during the next Plus gallery opening and I'm getting things together for an installation at the retired retirement home at MilePost 5 in mid-August.  

Also we're ready to start house-hunting for a place of our own.  This means I'm both supposed to be cleaning up/ throwing stuff out and upping work production/distribution (or at least distribution, but production is much more interesting).

My birthday party is Thursday night.

This looks like a good day for outings.  I've got two, maybe three girls at home, if we go through Milwaukie I could collect a fourth.  I want to go for a walk in the Gorge or to the Willamette Narrows (not that I know where the Narrows are exactly).  However, here are some of the things I oughtta handle instead, or at least first:

-  scan in the rest of the drawings from the current notebook and build a zine to share with Gus' kindergarten classmate families and other MLC friends (I'm doing this as I type - it's why I'm typing).
-  flatten and package the prints I pulled at Atelier Meridian yesterday (finally finished Your brother has become a spy) and deliver to the IPRC for the Zine River show at Grass Hut  (holy shit click there and follow the one minute space painting link).
-  fold laundry
-  paint the next layer on the pocket eyeballs
-  finish evaluations for my students and go help the other art teacher close down the artroom for the summer (though I won't be back next year I want to help her be ready)
-  pay my less than a dollar etsy bill
-  pay my well more than a dollar library fine
-  feed the children breakfast and pack a lunch for our outing
-  eat more strawberries

What am I forgetting? All the letters and postcards I want to write? The stencil I cut out and stuck onto the silkscreen last night I want to pull shirts with?  The oil painting sitting on the easel awaiting completion (no, I intentionally postponed that for a couple days).   Paperwork to my tax-preparer?  And oh yeah - I'm out of tea (Kobos across the river for cheap bullk dragonwell, no problems there then). 

Also, it is time for new brush pen, but will have to go to Seattle for it now.

We were offline for a few days, but that is corrected now. 

In that time I recharged my teaching confidence; delivered new work to Froelick Gallery for their group show; built another craptacular kite (will build some more for the Store); took charge of too-long tuckins; shopped Alberta's Last Thursday sidewalk racks for a high school prom outfit wih our freshman (landed one);  and continued to come sooo close to completing more copper plates.

Thank god.  I went in early to school this morning and tore down many sheets of paper into various sizes and folded and collated some of them for the many 2-D students who were overwhelmed last Monday by how I dropped them into book re-making hell. The students were actually grateful and most got quite far along in the process this time.  Some still aren't stitched, which will mess with my plans to go outside and work Wednesday, but I'll see what we can do. I had asked 17 students to tear open 17 differnt sized books and tear down pages to fold and fill them with.  I had initially provided no extra tables, only two metal rulers, and only photocopied every other page of the instructions. I owed them.

Tonight I made a fast oil sketch out at the horse farm.  Late last week I began a new canvas, and wanted more color and equiptment information than was in my first pencil sketch. Got the information tonight.  And didn't spook any horses.  Now i just gotta make sure the kid's herbicide sprayer and beer bottles come out well.

I'm looking to hitch a ride to Maryhill Saturday to do plein air monotypes.  Anyone going?

How is it that no one has published a bumper sticker resembling Goodnight Moon but  with the words "Goodnight Everywhere" and a cute little mushroom cloud?

A the MLC talent show this morning my youngest and two classmates did a short, fast furious ballet performance that I sort of missed cause I was snapping pictures of it for Danielle.   Another kindergartner came out with a drum and mallet and bells in her socks and jangled and sang Gilliigan's Isle.  Almost every other perfomance was almost as entertaining.

My favorite, even more than the small girl perfectly delivering Fool on the Hill in honor of her late father,  was a frazzled high school boy with a guitar singing Big Star's September Gurls.  When he got to the luv-making part, he got flustered, blushed, gawked at the packed k-12 audience then stumbled forward with the song, hollering it out where appropriate.  I'm still singing it, and if the performance appears online anywhere I'll be sure to post it.

Someone shot some video of Gus in action so hopefully I get to hgave a better look at that too.

September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you well never mind
I've been crying all the time
December boys got it bad.
December boys got it bad.


Also the second grader playing ukelele and singing Let it be was pretty darn good.

Yes, I am getting my teaching chops back alright.  And having a really good time with paper mache.  And wondering why I never worked with black crayon and watercolor before.

After a very quiet little reception for a little hanging of my little book tiles at a favorite local kids store, I came home and got an app in for a public project in Denver I want to do. Here's the bulk of the statement:

I paint pictures of children playing to confirm for children the validity of the activity and to provide adults a visual space to pretend to engage in the same activity themselves. I work in a camera-less, documentary manner, with an eye to respecting the intensity of the games I see and the crux of the places I would have played those games myself.  Playing is the practice of altering your world to see what it could become, and is thus in sympathy with the practice of painting. I paint what I’ve seen to see what it might become in paint. I like this work to be in locations where it can be shared, casually or intently, with many others.