Month: July 2009

Local Talkers Class Picture Day

It’s been fun thinking up how to show you all thirteen weekly small face jugs from the second quarter of my 2009 year-long series based on the Local Talk column in the Local Rag Called The Good Times. It’s basically a face-a-week proposition I have been working, working, working.

But ever since hitting the half a year mark in June, at 26 weeks, I have been letting the columns pile up and taking some time away while I did a six-week summer intensive at Skyline College in San Bruno, CA with Tiffany Schmierer. (Much more wonderfulness on that later.)

This group shot is reminiscent of an elementary school shoot: line ’em up on some risers and try to capture everyone looking their best. Obviously, some have misbehaved! Love that.

I also have stylist tendencies, because I put them all on a 2×4 on the laundry room water heater. Let’s go urban funk. It excites me in some great way to do anything BUT the perfect gallery shot. I’m saving that for when the whole series is decorated, glaze-fired and complete. Which is, gee, a whole six months or more away. I’ll wait. In the meantime, I will photograph whatever and wherever I like.

So here are their sweet and lively bisque-fired faces. What I have learned in the Second Quarter is that the smiles really speak to me, even if they are “window smiles.” I know I talked about smiles in a previous post, but responding to them goes deep and satisfies.

I also have to admit to understanding my work better when viewed through a lens, blogged about and published. It’s a bit like putting a frame on a painting because it sets it apart and allows another understanding of it to come forth. So does good lighting. So do 2×4 water heater risers in the laundry room.

I also have learned to stay loose and interpretive this quarter. Hence the Bland Man: I’m sure you can pick him out. But there is also the Temptress and the Dude. (No, not that The Dude, who abides, but a relative.) Such fun.

I have a few close-ups to post soon. But I wanted to share this Class Photo from today to get things started. It was a great July away..and you will hear me talking about that soon enough…but for now, just enjoy another small body of work that leads to a huge one.

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Quinn’s Traveling Journals Project

Those two (formerly) blank journal pages up there were mine to do anything with: write, draw, apply thin collages… whatever called me. I had a deadline I wanted to honor before mailing it back to Quinn McDonald in the padded envelope provided, but that was it. I took my sweet time and for once was blessedly serene. No Blank Page Problem here! I was in the tree-stand waiting to trap some lovely creative prey. I was drowsing at the Old Fishing Hole, knowing I would lightly spring into action when I felt the niggling idea on the line. I’d say it was deliciously downright recreational and a grand way to allow art in.

Since this was the Unthemed Journal #3568 from the Traveling Journals Project, the only thing I felt vital to the effort was my well-considered and deep authenticity. Oh, and don’t fuss. Yeah, yeah: go deep in the most spontaneous way possible! The more this thought grew, the more it seemed the pages needed to be about a moment, and not much more. I wanted an enso, a Japanese brush circle. That much was settled.

Here came the technical, logistical, physical, spatial, practical, formal, artful problems shuffling in their predictable queue right behind that enso-shaped wish. I kept on waiting. I invited them to my campfire, my drum circle, my tea room. We got along great. They left, tipsy and sated, their ears ringing a bit and I received turquoise and amber, opals and jade!

They (by now very old friends) suggested that to make an enso in an unthemed traveling journal I use: high contrast, blankish simplicity, pen stippling, my own handwriting, label machine printing, red, humor, and a tiny surprise, but not to plan it in the slightest, just begin. The real-time making was over in, say, 27 minutes. Sweet.

May I recommend you give yourself a similar creative gift? Sign up for one of the Traveling Journals: Unthemed, Travel, Dreams, and/or, if you’re near Quinn, Summer in Phoenix. You’ll see how by clicking on that link in the second paragraph up there. You also can see all the other pages completed so far. Quinn is definitely in my emerging online family, and I told her I loved doing this so much, to please put me on the lists for Travel and Dreams. Maybe I will see you there.

And, thanks, Quinn, for letting me use the photo you took, since I forgot to!

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