The side track is the important one

I shirked most of what I meant to do today (mostly a bunch of admin, yuck) and instead started a new gourd. I mean, I started it last night and then brought up the walls today. My hands are screaming but then I gave them more screaming material: impatience + unrealistic expectation that one hand could hold so much weight + lack of oven mitts = ow ow ow, hand burned on the oven rack! I hope this is the third bad thing so I can move on already with my March accidents (1. gasoline, 2. scraping side of car against pillar while parking, 3. burn).

But amidst not feeling at my best in my body or at work, I am heartened by how The Work has been rippling. Sammy was one of my students in Denver back in 2011 or so and now has new joomchi work, a show at a Boulder museum, and is teaching joomchi! Bill, another former student, is also teaching joomchi in town at the Morgan. This was part of the long-term goal to spread the wonders of hanji—I wanted others to get intrigued, invested, and interested in falling down the rabbit hole. The best part is that I end up with more friends and colleagues, and more places to point to when people ask, "What do you do with this paper?"

P.S.—The Morgan was awarded $12,000 from the Gund Foundation last week to support the Eastern Paper Studio! This goes towards matching our $50,000 grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. We still have a ways to go, but hooray for now!