Something new, it's totally true: wet hair will freeze!

Years ago, when I first started visiting Chicago in the winter and stayed at my in-laws', we were all going out to the car for a little trip to who-remembers-where. I had just done my usual naturally-curly-hair thing of hopping in the shower, washing my hair, finger combing it. Done. No blow drying needed. Just wash and go.

Well, you could have heard the collective gasp all the way to San Diego as I entered the garage, "You can't go out with wet hair!!!!! It'll freeze!!!!"

Of course, the logic was unimpeachable. Water freezes at 32F. My hair was w-e-t = it would freeze. But I must confess that somewhere deep inside, I didn't quite believe it.

Today, I'm a believer. Know what frozen hair feels like? Kinda like hair with way too much product in it.

My hair unfroze within seconds after I went back into the house. Lesson learned.

This me with my frozen hair and a low-tech candle defroster. The candle wasn't really needed, but I like the photo op.

TTUT

Happy New Year, Happy 2013!

Last year I took a total break from blogging on Days of Books. I was doing a mini-experiment in social networking and tried out various pseudo-blog posting themes on Facebook. That was then. It was fine. Time for a return to the future, using blogging as artist book. I didn't invent it, just this year I'm embracing it.

So back to the blog-o-sphere for 2013, where I guarantee I won't be cranking out 700 words/day, but I will practice the discipline of posting a photo/day (with commentary, if you care). Today's theme from the list my niece sent me, is "Today". I laugh at the challenge! I put on my new circle knit scarf. I take a low-tech photo of me, moi, myself. Ta-da: today. Soon there will be Rose Parade, nap, black-eyed peas (for peace) and rice (for riches). Today. Have a wonderful one. TTUT

Wonder Bread

Imagine Bravely, Recycle Wonder

I have the nineteen year old daughter of friends visiting from Italy this month. The daughter is absolutely wonderful----funny, charming, happy, willing to clean and cook. Without even being asked, no less (“I love to cook”). Amazing.

So when, during week one, she requested that I buy her some “square bread” (a direct translation from the Italian/French “pain carré”), I took a minute to compose myself before clarifying: “Do you mean white bread?”

“Yes, yes, that’s it. Can we get some white bread?”

O.k. I’m having a full-circle moment about now. My 50’s-60’s childhood meant white-bread sandwiches every day for lunch. Although I grew up to be a connoisseur of all recipes SPAM-related, the very thought of white bread and baloney, white bread P & J, white bread and anything except possibly bread pudding, makes me cringe.  Unlike so many other foods from my youth, I came to hate the stuff, and vowed when I went off to college, never to eat another slice.

Yet here is sweet Marta, recently arrived from one of the world’s most fantastic bread-producing nations, asking for something so simple, so blah, and apparently in her family’s cuisine, so rare. This darling teen from Siena wants her some American white bread, yes-sir- howdy, and so, she shall have it. That evening she showed me how she makes toasted white bread melted cheese sandwiches. Rather good, actually. Then later in the week she suggested Nutella on white bread and that was amazingly lip-smacking, too.  Could it be that Wonder has changed the w.b. recipe? Upped its game a little??? So I gave it the classic test and sure enough, you can still take one whole slice and squeeze it into a round ball smaller than a robin’s egg.  Ain’t that something.

Go Italia!!!!

TTFN,

Renée

Art and Recipes

Freight 445

I have become a pickling diva.

Two weeks ago, I held a paste-paper making workshop. If you read my blog, you already know this. Here’s what you don’t know unless you were there!!!  While we were working on our award-quality papers, we got to talking about pickling. Yep, as in sweet, dill, using cukes, watermelon rind, green tomatoes. Pickling, a skill I’d been saying for years I wanted to learn to do from scratch.

On-line, I could never get past all the Department of Health-type instructions about canning the pickled product.  Way to much fuss for yours-truly.

So as I was saying, we’re talking, and Oliver tells me the simplest basic recipe for pickling juice:

One part vinegar + two parts water + spices to taste

Fill glass jar (yes, glass, you want your pickling to taste like plastic?) with prepared item to be pickled.

Pour juice over items until they are completely covered. Put on lid; skip the whole canning thing--> store in fridge.

Pickling, who knew it was just that easy?

Since then I have made some good pickled watermelon rind, some totally delicious sweet and spicy pickled eggs and some over-the-top Brian’s Mustard-pickled cantaloupe. Isn’t thinking like an artist amazing? “Spice to taste” becomes whatever the heck we want it to be. Yummy.

Now 4 more about the art.

I’m all for making stuff from scratch. Except when I’m not.

A few years back, wonderful artist Helen Schaffer Garcia taught me to make my own paste for paste paper using corn starch.  She whipped up a batch right there on her kitchen stove. Rockin’. I knew I’d never do it. I never would have ground my own lapis lazuli to get a Vermeer blue, either. Just saying.

Still, I love the paste paper effect, so when I found a workshop with another wonderful artist, Al Rodriguez, I signed up. “Give it another try”, I told myself, “Maybe you’ll be more inclined to cook your art supplies this time,” I posited. Well, Al had it goin’ on in a way I could fully embrace. No cooking, just mixing. The rest is history…

Al’s recipe for paste-paper, plus tips from me

One part pre-mixed Universal Wall-Paper Paste “For all wall-paper and all wall surfaces”

One part pre-mixed tempera, color of your choice

Mix well (now here come my tips) in small batches, no more than a cup at a time, no more then 3-4 colors at once unless you’ve got lots of other folks partaking with you.

DO NOT EAT this stuff.

S’long ‘til next time,

Renée

Me and the New Blackberry

Cellie Installation-will go on display with other tributes to recycling in Oct, 2011

I knew I was in for it when I opened the instruction booklet on my new Blackberry and the font was size 8—if even.   I’m thinking I’m gonna need adaptive equipment just to get started.

O.k. I was born smack in the middle of the baby-boomer years, and I do feel a certain sense of demographic entitlement. I’ll admit it. Font size 8? Come on—I thought 12 was marketing industry standard.

Marketing? Huh? This is an instruction booklet, right?  Ha! 

I open the teeny booklet and realize that T-Mobiles’ priorities are to sell me more apps. Hello, 411-connect, please: I can’t yet use the ones this gadget already has!

Forever, I’ve been adamant that I want my cell phone to be just that: a phone. No apps, no internet-connection.  Hold the camera, please, don’t need it.

Texting? Had my current phone for 3 years before a family emergency pushed me to learn the texting feature it contained.  Did ya notice I just wrote 3 years? Not a typo.  I’ve now had the same cellie for 6 years, and maybe I should have been upgrading all along as my cell company’s been suggesting, but why? My cellie works fine and there are already enough of other peoples’ old cell phones taking up space in my art studio, waiting to be transformed into the next Great American Sculpture.

Back to the Blackberry. I have been assigned one as standard equipment needed for my work. All well and good. But the training component (also standard) hasn’t caught up with the delivery of the hardware. I’ve got this new puppy. Haven’t been able to make a phone call with it—or answer one either, for that matter.  Would love to enjoy it’s “awesome” features as much as my co-workers are enjoying theirs. Maybe next week?

TTFN,

Renée

How “Bout Them Juried Art Shows?

I’ve juried an art show or two in my time. I’ve entered  them too. Being on the juror end of it is really fun, though sometimes a bit wild. Being on the juried/inspected/judged end is another story.

Let me back up here. If you don’t know what a juried art show is, I’ll explain (and if you do, skip this part): the producers of an art show send out a call for art submissions. It costs money to produce the art show, so the producers charge a small fee for you to submit your artwork. The fee helps defray some of the cost of the show, you get to have your work looked at and evaluated by professionals, and maybe you get into the show. I said “maybe”. There’s no guarantee you’ll be accepted into the art show. You pay the fee up front either way. The person who decides if your work is in or out is the juror. 

Since there’s no guarantee that the art will be accepted, why do I enter juried shows? Short answer: SALES, baby!!!! Longer answer: Sales.  Recognition.  Recognition that leads to sales.

Recently I entered an example of work similar to the image above into the Southern California regional Art + Science* show. Happy to say, the work was accepted and even received an honorable mention from the juror, Ruth West.  I love to display my work at the gallery that’s holding this show, and I highly respect the juror, who is, like myself, both an artist and a person who works in the sciences. Gotta love that combo.

One thing about entering a juried show that the artist best  keep in mind: don’t take it personal. Easier said than done, but it’s true. The work that didn’t even get a passing nod from one juror, may receive an award from another. This really happens. All the time.  And let’s not discount the work that was rejected by a juror, went back to my studio where a private collector saw it and paid 4 figures for it. Buyer with cash trumps juror’s opinion. This happens, too, yee-ha! And last but not least, there’s the juried show I entered because it was annual, well known and well-attended by collectors. My work was accepted. And I sold two pieces to my first public art collection. What’s that I said earlier about sales and recognition? If you take a juror’s rejection personal, you might stop entering.  If you stop entering…you get the picture, n’est-ce pas?

So go to your studios and make stuff. Then take a chance and enter juried shows. You won’t be sorry, and who knows, you might get rich!

TTFN,

Renee

*The exhibit runs August 9-September 30, 2011. Go to www.escondidoarts.org for gallery days and times. Entrance is free, as is the artists’ reception on September  10^th.

Finger-Painting, Anyone?

I was teaching a paste-paper workshop several weeks ago when one of the attendees said “This is just like finger-painting.” I don’t think she meant it exactly in a good way. But her comment got me to thinking. Paste paper is like finger-painting; only with much better materials and tools other than your fingers that you can use to make the designs.

Way (way) back in the private Quaker school I attended in the 60’s, we did finger-painting now and then, and we learned that the coloring material we were using was called “tempera” --ringing any bells with you artists and teachers out there?  Tempera was cheap, came in great colors, washed off hands and clothes, and we kids didn’t much like the taste of it, so were not inclined to eat it. All really great “must haves” on a materials-list for kids.

Now-a-days, paste paper colorant can be acrylic, water color, food color---all good. But the least expensive and least fussy to clean up after remains good ol’ tempera, from a bottle, pre-mixed, and in a large variety of colors, including glossy versions.

For the work in this image, I decided to step out of my personal box a little and try applying the paste-paper medium and technique on a sheet of recycled paper I’d made. Ingredients for the recycled paper were cold water, shredded medical records, a page from an old American Airlines flight manual, and a used Lake Hodges kayaking pass. For the colored paste, I used undiluted wall-paper paste and acrylic paint. To make the designs in the colored paste, I used a Speedy Cut rubber stamp and various foam brushes I had around. My fingers stayed mighty tidy.

I think my friend was right in making the finger-painting connection. I’m guessing paste-paper has its roots there.  Just another reason to restore art classes to the early grammar-school curriculum.

Finger-painting, bring it on!!!
TTFN,
Renee