Obies in the house

This morning, after the errands to send out rewards for one tier of my backers for this project, I was lucky to get a ride from my host. The whole getting to and from has been hard and stressful b/c I hate asking people for favors, even though everyone has been super nice about it. But I finally found out a better route on public transport and will attempt it tomorrow. In the meantime, I got to work to find a group of Oberlin students at the Morgan! They're all library workers and came in to do some papermaking and letterpress. They were super sweet and one even told me that he's already seen my books in special collections since he works at the art library. I also got to meet Eleanor, an intern from Colorado College, who is a printmaker.

Today I put together my Korean mould (minus the brace that goes in the middle across the long bars) and visited Tom's studio. Ridiculous: four floors of a warehouse. Multiple gallery spaces, printmaking studio, ceramics studio, paper studio, etc. I can't even begin to describe it b/c it's probably as much stuff as you would find in an entire museum. I saw some gorgeous wood panels standing upright and asked what they were: flooring from an old bowling alley. He's converted a lot of them into table tops. We talked a lot today about plywood options and timelines, since he's leaving on Sunday for PBI and will be gone for 11 days, so it's best to get as much of this done before his departure since he's the one w/the best carpentry skills. When he finally got a better sense of how Korean formation works, he said, "why do Koreans make everything so hard?" It's hilarious but also true, in this case.

I almost forgot: tomorrow is the opening of the 60th anniversary Fulbright Korea show in NYC at Gallery Korea starting at 7pm. I have a piece in it but won't be able to attend.

Also, I will be teaching a letterpress class this weekend at the Morgan. Plus, I've gotten the green light to do workshops to teach the interns new book arts skills. Party on! I love this place, despite being mauled by mosquitoes behind the paper mill area today. Let's all hope this heat wave passes SOON.