What is actually happening

Al Dhaid fort, which they demolished a police station to refurbish to how it was longer ago. Inside were lots of displays about life in Sharjah, which included a graphic taxidermy version of a falcon attacking its prey.

I had gotten lots of random candy and while I gave a bunch away, I was curious about what this was.

So good!! Happy to have a soft cookie rather than chocolate-covered candy.

The reason I was able to travel to UAE is that my Oberlin gig was kind enough to push the workshop a week. It was insane to get home and then immediately turn around to prep the course, as it was the first time I ran the beater for a job. It's always hard to estimate pulp for a given group and the timing kept changing. These are my weights before going to the used sports store: 12 lbs on the left and 6 on the right. I needed another 6 but got carried away and got 11 lbs worth of weight plates, mostly because it was just fun to shop different sizes and they could be useful for other applications.

Because my first two pounds of cotton came out looking like it needed more weight, I overloaded the next batch of abaca AND ran it for two hours, thinking my Valley would be less powerful than a Reina for taking the pulp down to good shrinkage. I was extremely wrong and so my poor students yesterday had to wait forever for their sheets to drain. We had to alternate groups because they couldn't all fit into the studio at once, so it was pretty wild to try and physically move them but also give them enough time to do things given they've never made paper before (save one student who took my Winter Term class, and it was great to have her around to help). I also sprayed myself HARD in the face during cleanup, which meant swapping out face masks.

I hadn't intended to pigment but seeing the crud come off of the roll made me color to distract. And the idea that paper has to be white as default is not an idea that has to live forever. I started these batches and then worried I'd be called out for being political so I did batches of green and dark grey. Based on which were most popular both at the vat and with the colored hanji for joomchi, people clearly love yellow. People love yellow. Why not yellow as a default for paper? Or, maybe they're tired of winter in Ohio. After taking a student out for lunch who had volunteered to help set up and break down, I got home and was so tired I wanted to cry/sleep but was so tired I couldn't cry/sleep. Then I noticed something hilarious. I had worn a handmade dress and during class kept hearing it tear in the armpits, but was so busy that I didn't have time to even look until class was over: the dress had completely shredded, not just at the seams, but the fabric had also torn in front (the risk of sewing clothes with hand-me-down mystery fabric!). My apron covered a lot but NOT that. It was a great visual indicator of how I'm barely holding it together.

School big prep has overlapped with major prep for my trip to California in just under a week. I'll be teaching in San Francisco, giving a free public artist talk, going to an opening (above) for a group show at the Environmental Design Library at UC Berkeley, and tabling at CODEX with the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. Of course what I'm most excited about is seeing old friends and colleagues and being back in the Bay Area after too many years (this gig was originally slated for 2020). I'll be in the studio every day before I leave while also writing my book in the mornings, doing active physical therapy, and prepping the rest of the year. I did this to myself but keep hoping that come fall, things will calm down because I can't sustain this pace for much longer! See you on the west coast!