Slow crawl

I think I've finally reached the turn where now I get better instead of worse, so hopefully by the new year I will be in full health. In the meantime, I've been on the floor working. I spent a good portion of one day sewing up my second book in sheets, only to find that I had made my spine too wide. It was functional but ugly and didn't feel right in my hands. So I ripped it out at night and started over the next day.

I selected Morgan hanji to use as the cover, a little thin but reinforced with shifu. Two done, and there are no more. Yay! Jean's weaving is the backdrop. Now I am onto more tying of loose ends: filing, spreadsheets, and another bin.

Immunity challenges

Got sick. Nothing big, but enough to keep me home and quiet. After moping about it for a while, I started to weave again. These two from last night, plus a scrappy baby that may or may not get a paste coat. Happy time off!

Winding down

[Two shots of Fumiko's studio; her building, dedicated to art and artists, is hosting open studios on three floors of a building  this weekend. It's a beautiful space in Harlem with lots of great work inside.] After about 48 hours away, I was happy to have caught up with old friends, sold the two books I carried with me, lectured to bookbinding students, and taken some time off.

These gifts, such treasures, landed in my mailbox on the same day this week! WONDERFUL treats from Velma and Jean. Now, the real weekend begins. Happy solstice!

New history

I'm surprised that Korea elected its first female president ahead of the U.S.! Then again, looking at the way that some things seem to be moving backwards in this country, maybe I should be less surprised. In the meantime, I finally built a new section of my website devoted to the book. It still needs tweaks, but at least it's done (unlike this pile of mixed done and in-progress work).

Reframing the end

Somehow, all sewed up! I have one more book in sheets and enough shifu to do a second, but want to think about it before I dive in (mostly because the embroidering is such a headache). I realized this morning why I've been feeling like I've been filling up slowly with lead: this is the time of year not just to go inside, but to tie up loose ends, finish up lingering and malingering work, and prepare for the longer days to come. I kept thinking I was supposed to do new, groundbreaking stuff. That conflict between my mind's misunderstanding and everything else going against is now finally explained.

In light of my discovery, I went through at least three bins of books, samples, teaching tools, and so on, trying to re-organize and purge. Also, I have a lecture to present on Friday at ICP, so I had to pull book samples. I'll leave filing for next week, as well as drawings of a Korean mould, a task I have somehow avoided for well over two years. If I'm lucky, I'll get a section of my website done to feature my book before I devote the rest of my week to friends, open studios, family, meals, movies, and social activity that will keep the lead from sinking.

Some silences and not others

Embroidery does not come easily to me, and after all sorts of sewing and ripping out this weekend, I realized I was supposed to take the weekend (or should I say Sunday) off, doing nothing. I just have to repeat words now to finish the spine, and then the shifu will get ironed and then somehow sewn onto the book to become a cover for the cover.

Saturday was a work day, albeit an unusual one. I was part of a book fair to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a local bookstore (that is also now carrying my book, the first brick-and-mortar place to do so). There was an issue with heat and electricity, mostly that we didn't have much, so kept our coats on. But it was an impressive crowd of illustrious book folks; I sat there, amazed to have a view of Ed Young and Jerry Pinkney and their zillions of books surrounding them, an enormous number of years and experience and awards and good cheer and children taught between them. Pat Schories of Biscuit fame made the rounds to greet everyone and I treated myself to a zine by Isabella Bannerman (above), all proceeds donated to the Red Cross Hurricane Sandy Fund. James Howe came and found me because his niece, a board member of the Morgan, told him to, and I laughed at his and Ed Young's stories about famous authors being a dime a dozen. Amada, the bookstore owner, is one of those generous hosts who insists on LOTS of food and music, so we were treated to a huge spread and live music (flute, violin, voice, and accordion).

I was especially touched near the end when Ed looked through my business cards (all different images of my artwork) and noticed one of my favorites that has yet to find a home. He said, "I think people will eventually come around to what you are doing. Once all the digital stuff has gotten to a point where everyone can do the same thing, they will come back to this." I was honored that everyone took the time to walk around, introduce themselves, sit down, share stories, and spend time together. I was guilty of mostly staying in my corner because 1. I was starstruck and 2. it was the warmest spot. But it was on the way to the food, so lots of interesting conversations ensued. By the time everything was winding down, a store assistant asked me if I ever made hanji rings (I was making bracelets as giveaways for those who bought my book at the event). I hesitated, but she insisted, saying that Jewish culture is heavy in symbolism and her grandfather had been a Holocaust survivor, talking about how important "papers" were. She will get married next month and wanted something simple, humble, meaningful, and affordable. So I obliged, though I would have liked to add a drop of PVA for safety's sake.

If only glue could keep everything together! If only.

Multiplication

Can't stop! But I will soon because tomorrow I will spend six hours at a book signing. Today: one last long walk in the sun and then tackling shifu in an embroidery hoop.

Smaller and smaller

The original vessel of scraps, and then the mini one made from those scraps...

 In Velma's excitement over the wee ones, I caught a bug...

and was up late making one and a half, then finished the second today plus the lid! Another lid to come, and great pleasure even though my eyes are a bit strained.

Scraps of scraps

This week has been hard, getting the making part of work done while the admin sucks me into a black hole. But I made a stab at it last night and made this itty bitty vessel that is exactly the size of a thimble (maybe a tad shorter, but it fits on my finger). I used hanji scraps from endsheets I prepared for a binding (paper made in Cleveland) and the spokes are the bits of bark leftover from the last vessel.

The base is smaller than a penny! Meanwhile, in business-land, books have been selling particularly well this week and I get dribbles of happy news every day (today, a heads up that a museum may start to carry it and another major university library has already ordered it). And the first book-in-sheets is bound!

Discerning

[I pulled out an older cord from darker hanji and twined two rows with it for my shoe sole but didn't feel like removing them.] I'm reaching that point where I need to finish what I've started, or go back and fix earlier mistakes. Like the dresses I made this summer, I have to go back a step and get a pattern, or at least get a better understanding of shoe engineering. Or else the end product is going to look awful. This is also why I decided to stay put for the rest of the month and just hold ground. In the meantime, I'm making progress on fleshing out my 2013 book tour, and wanted to note a few highlights:

* Today, I have a guest blog post on a lovely site, Lauren Olivia & Co. They've been wonderful to work with and I enjoyed the challenge of doing an intro to hanji in so many words.

* This Saturday, I will do a book signing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Galapagos Books, a sweet local book store. The event will be at 22 Main Street in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, from 11am - 5pm. Each copy of my book sold comes with a complimentary hanji bracelet.

* This lecture isn't until April in Boston, but I think the page is pretty (and will be followed up with the first ever joint workshop on art and conservation uses of hanji, taught by Minah Song and myself).

More compelling ways to stay busy

[B. papyrifera bark + persimmon-coated Cleveland hanji.] Whenever it's time to update my artist statement, I struggle. This has always been a horribly difficult task for me, even though I enjoy writing and am accustomed to writing about myself. This morning while preparing tea, I realized that what I do comes directly from what I learned from childhood.

Before I knew that other people judged the behavior, I thought it was normal, and frankly, smart, to scavenge. If there was a perfectly functional teapot sitting outside next to the trash, it was fine to pick it up, take it home, scrub it with steel wool, and return it to its former self, a pretty silver kettle. Scraps of everything were saved, food never went to waste, no one consumed more than they needed, lights were turned off when not used, holes were patched, and there were more books than you could ever read in a lifetime in one library. This is probably why I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's books and later was entranced by the possibilities at thrift stores and never understood why I had to go to the store to buy a bunch of stuff to make art.

Because wasn't everything I needed already with me or easily found and transformed? I remember marveling in middle school when we learned about bartering societies, and wondered why progress meant leaving those practices behind. Currency seemed so unnecessary; why did we invent money when we functioned for so very long without it? Of course, I didn't fully understand human greed and power intoxication then (nor do I now). But I finally understand why I enjoyed conceptual art at first (all you have to do is read and write! No materials if you wanted to be a purist), and then made books out of found objects, and later was more attracted to papermaking from raw materials rather than half-stuff.

Part of the reason that writing the artist statements makes me want to jump out of my skin is that the way that I think and feel about my work is so fully embedded in me that I often can't access it (the whole thing about not being able to see under your own nose). When I am able to grasp the words to articulate what the rest of me has known all along, they seem so obvious as to not be interesting enough to write in a statement. I still wish that my friends could do it for me because they understand what I do—I am further away from the space right under their noses. These days, I also feel like a relic, having been raised by a family that survived a horrible, horrible war that happened in their own country. Being frugal was cultural because it necessitated survival, not because it was trendy. Transforming scraps of paper and twists of bark gives me great pleasure but also provide my hands a life's work, without which my mind becomes dull and dark. It's not the only work I need to do, but it's solid ground.

Update: I thought I could get by for a day w/o book promo, but a new interview is online, via Italy.

Keeping up

[Local paper article, just a snippet of it. Front page here.] For some reason, I keep forgetting that things never just fall into place, schedule-wise. This morning, I was all ready to do some hand work, but only managed to sketch two drafts of a folding technique before life demanded that I stay on hold for hours with health insurance and billing agencies, along with other Monday-ly duties. But at least I got the good news that I'll get to return to the D.C. area to teach at Pyramid in April, which is wonderful! There are a lot of new friends I made on my last visit and I look forward to seeing them again. Also, Helen Hiebert was kind enough to share info on my book and trailer on her blog today. Check her video links there, too, because her new DVD footage is stellar.

Now, with the sun on the other side of the sky as when I had hoped to start, I will get back to work.

Already

December! That was a sneak attack, but I had a lovely end to November. I caught up with Terttu, who did my book's cover photography. Then I went to Harlem for a studio visit with an artist I randomly found online because she shows at the same gallery as Melissa. Fumiko was fantastic, so full of energy and questions, and her studio was crawling with bugs and creatures on paper that she adds to her paintings. I absolutely love her color sense and we had a long talk about the "art world" and its addiction to trends and credentials. She you have to continually practice, and through the practice, you develop your philosophy. She and I know about practicing, too! She used to play the flute and I saw sheet music under her paintings. She teaches printmaking classes in her studio and lives in a building dedicated to artists. Afterwards, I saw an old friend who is still on the music/violin track, over a huge and delicious Korean dinner.

The ongoing big project has been getting the book into the world. Last week, I walked into a local bookstore, plenty nervous, but was invited to a book signing event in two weeks! It will be nice to do something very local (I can walk my books over). On Friday, the local paper ran a story about the book and what I've been up, so I went to the store to pick up a couple of copies. The store owner grinned when I entered, which I didn't understand until I went to pay. He pointed at my headshot on the front page, then pointed at me, and then shook my hand. He's Korean, so he was very happy to read about hanji in the paper. Later that day, I dropped off a print for a show in NYC, where I hope to schedule a book talk next year, and then went to a specialty bookstore. The book buyer was out, so I was told to call the next day. Partly because I know it's easier to say no to people on the phone, and partly because my knee went into excruciating pain several hours later, I stayed in town and returned the next day. I went to the info desk where I was refused, pretended to leave, and then came back and found the book buyer, who clarified their stance on carrying books. Hopefully a consignment deal will be in the works soon.

And now that December is here, it's time to get my hands onto something. Today, some bark!