Moving, Moving Pangs

Life Goal: Everything I own can fit in my car, or is my car.
Ongoing, increasingly grueling performance piece: Everything I own does not fit in my car, and has to fit in my car.

Okay. I have been tied to a storage unit for the last year, but I moved away from it, and organization experts say that if you want to get rid of something, box it up and don't look at it and a year later you won't know what it is or care. But that didn't really happen to me, since my stuff is all my clothes, art supplies, and art (like my car). I just felt incomplete in my East Coast sublets, like where are my oil paints? Where is my yarn? Where are my paintings? Where are my shoes? I found that I have gathered my things as tools to be myself.

I have a bit of an aversion to storage units. I have a friend who told me a couple of years ago he feels overwhelmed by his stuff since he moves all the time. He said his ideal would be a totally clean, minimalist house (and this would fit his aesthetic and interests very well I think), with a storage unit for everything he wanted to hold onto. Now he has a remote storage unit that's huge and totally full, and also his house is one.

So, right now nearly all my stuff is in my car. But some of it is on the floor of the room I'm staying in because it wouldn't fit in the car, and some of it-cello, brick barbell- is at my Dad's house, and a tiny bit of it is in my mom's storage unit, and a lot of it is in my mom's storage unit but designated for a trip to the dump.  Oh no, and some of it is in the fridge and freezer.

I think this happened because I didn't do my idea of lining up everything I own in order of what I would save in a fire and then when I got to the first thing in the line I wouldn't save, the rest of the line is gone forever.

Scanner

Scanners are amazing! I got to use my brother's CanoScan to document a couple of old projects, and then I had fun trying to "paint with light" with them, making little arrangements. The scanner works best with things pressed against the glass, and renders things with depth as shadowy and blurred. I tried to exploit that but I don't have the hang of it yet. I used to be really good with a photocopier, though. 

This might be the background for a greeting card.

I tried to take a picture of the process I used to make the scan above, but my camera was super dead so I flipped over my assemblage and scanned it. It's a sweater, scale, mouse balls, chain belt.  The scale and mouse balls are pressing the sweater down to prevent shadows, and the scale is also helping the chain stay in place instead of getting dragged around by the sweater.  

Oil Pastel Resists for Watercolor

Today I discovered that oil pastels can be used as a resist for watercolors. This opens up a lot of possibilities because I am really bad with pastels, I feel like they just make smudgy impressions that get grayer as you work. I was excited to use my new technique to copy this blurry photo of the Jefferson Monument that I love:

Oh. It's not masking fluid. Once the pastel resist goes down that part will never be water colored. I put this pastel down very loosely, obviously, because I couldn't see it (white on white) and I usually put my fake masking fluid (rubber cement) down generally where I want it. 

 So I did a whole work up with layers- pencil sketch, ink pen, pastels, paint, ink. I think it looks perfect, exactly how I'd hoped, but the fact that it photographs so badly makes me think it needs a little more attention.

Two Wool Necklaces

I made some necklaces last night to sell, and I got really attached to them, so I made one for myself. 

 This is one of Nick's two forays into drop spindling. I happily upgraded it a little bit with some soft colored stones. It's so dreamy and foggy.

 Part of my process when I'm making things for myself is leaving them room to grow. I like feeling that I can scratch a phone number into the side of my car with a key, glue horns or fins to my phone or camera, deconstruct clothes, and ruin umbrella after umbrella. I like that my stuff is a bit thrifted and shabby, so I don't have to be afraid of pouring resin through it. It's hard for me to switch from getting things finished enough for me to use them, to making things with an appropriate lifespan for strangers to buy. I made some gorgeous collars last night with that in the forefront of my mind.

 I cut apart a scarf I'd been knitting, ironed it into a nice shape, then used loads and loads of silver thread to give it some weight and structure.

Business Card Stamping Bust

I wanted a stamp business card so that I could make cards in batches on the backs of failed watercolors, or in this case retired card catalog cards. I set the stamp into the bottom of a little bust of myself. 

Rainbow Sketchbook Pages

I like to see a rainbow when I flip through my sketchbook, or when I open it somewhere dreary.

 Casey gave me a book of Galway Kinnel love poems, and I transcribed part of one on an ultramarine wash. The stamps are a handcarved moon, and Casey's Baby Lenin signature stamp. I stamped them forever ago with Imperial Blue and Cyan pigment ink, and I found the page when I was cleaning out my briefcase.

 This watercolor ground came out ugly. I glued on a platypus skeleton and a tardigrad, transcribed the beginning of the Doctor Who wikipedia page, and drew stick figures of some stretches that work really well for me.

A color-blending plaid overlaid with shapes I found on a computer flowcharting stencil. Also a photo of the top of one of the dining halls at my alma mater.

Through My Window, a Zine

A meatspace web crossover zine! The expensive parts, the color photos, are free at flickr. It is a bit rough. I made a couple dozen of these to leave at the same site I took these photos and spent all these hours thinking of how this project could work, with the result that it took me three years to get started and only several hours to put it together to my own satisfaction.

I took photos from every bedroom on the 6th floor of a vacant dorm. Then I uploaded those to flickr, There's a transcience to student life, in particular dorm living. As a Student Maintenance worker I spent long summers cleaning and painting and repairing the empty dorms. I felt a connection with the students as I threw away their forgotten earrings or took their garbage poking stick back to the woods or helped repair their dismantled water fountain. And, I didn't want the connection to be so one-sided. So I took a photo from each bedroom window on the sixth floor. The paper zine tells that link. One of the things that bothered the student workers most is the idea that no one would care about our efforts, so I shot this video of how long it takes me to clean part of a hallway.