Images galore: the Miami artwork

Ivan is always fun to have around, except in the ocean b/c he splashes relentlessly and I hate salt water and sunblock in my eyes. This was before the artist talk when we were trying to color correct the projection.

I have spent all morning doing more updates, so here are the images of the new work in Miami, on my website.

And, a mini-tutorial on joomchi, Korean paper felting. I was too busy to set up the tripod so there are no bodies/hands in the pics, but hopefully it makes sense!

Labor day sloth

[The final piece in the show: hand-ground ink on perilla seed oiled hanji - perilla is in the mint family and commonly used in lots of Korean cuisine, especially the leaves. The oiled paper goes from a light yellow to deep yellow to deep orange over time and UV/air exposure.] I still could use way more sleep but it didn't happen today.

Yesterday morning before the opening, I walked around the town, which truly is a hamlet. Tiny, quiet, one general store, and that is it.

This was the old school, I think. There is a much more contemporary one built behind the main road with huge fields for a playground, baseball field, and rolling hills.

I barely took pictures of the show and forgot to take a huge stack of postcards to blanket anyone I meet in the next month. But Bright Hill will have readings that will bring more local people into the space, and that's really who the show is for.

Susan gave me this print as a gift, which I loved instantly. It's already above my bed. In her words,

the three women in the print represent the Three Sisters of Haudenosaunee tradition ... Three Sacred Sisters: Corn, Beans & Squash, primary food staples of the People of the Longhouse. Of course, in many cultures three women show up in one way or another ... this is how they show up in our tradition. They also go back to our Sky Woman Creation Story, because when Sky Woman fell through a hole in the Sky World she grabbed at the Celestial Tree up there ... one thing she pulled off the Tree were seeds to grow Corn, Beans & Squash ... she also pulled off Tobacco and so when we make Tobacco offerings and pray in that way, it goes back to our first home.

I chose the Sisters because we are women friends and because over the years you have sent me photographs of you and women friends .... very important among Haudenosaunee people for women to be support each other and be of strong and brave heart and give to their community. I see you as doing this.

No need for me to add to the poetry of a poet.

This was on a trail that I walked with my sister and her husband today at Wave Hill, our little outing before having family time.

This was my absolute favorite drawing of my visit upstate. I had done the loop from the gallery to the church and up to the main drag, leading down the hill past the new school, and back, but had to do it again just to shoot this.

The library lives in the same building as the gallery. It's non-circulating and not catalogued yet, and covers only humanities, but it's a wonderful space for the community. I spent a good deal of my weekend in the children's loft on the floor working on my laptop.

I assume that this church is why it's named Church Street. The parishioners just came and went for the 9:15 service, no fuss, no muss.

My parents were really shocked by the back-country nature of this area, but it felt totally familiar and normal to me. It made me realize how much traveling I've done on my own path and how it leads me to places that all feel familiar, or come to be that way. Of course, a comfortable home is a wonderful thing to return to, but I find nothing weird or out of the ordinary about me ending up in green, quiet, sparsely-populated places with no cell phone reception.

This made me recognize that showing here is exactly what I was meant to do. The people who come are attentive and actually read the work, so it was ideal that there was such a heavy text component (makes sense, this being a word and image gallery). Everything fit. I had panicked in CT, thinking I didn't have enough work for the space, but it was just fine, especially since I recognized the great value of breathing space for work. I feel lucky to have a place where I was encouraged to show old work b/c it felt like a short retrospective, giving continuity to work that seemed all over the place when considered separately.

In my artist talk, I went through the two galleries, talking about the journey that started with the dying of a longtime friend, to losing her and my search alone, to constant traveling and traversing various media in the wandering. In the story that serves as the anchor to the exhibit, the wandering girl finally decides to return home and that is when the hanji kicks in (as in, literally, becomes part of the artwork). As my statement said, "This is the country that holds many of the stories that complete my own."

The audience was wonderful, invested, and followed my wandering right onto the path of last year, even when I did the show-and-tell portion of my talk with hanji objects and pieces. Someone asked what was next, and I realized that I will be at this forever: I like beating at the messy paths too much to go mainstream. And I've been on its fringes for so long that it feels perfectly normal to me. So, after today's lack of exercise, tomorrow is back to work: full force into Show #2.

Obligations

[My favorite kind of installations pack up easily.] All done w/the studio visit. But now I'm all kinds of tired. I did get up the nerve to make a new piece (success!) and edit an older piece (it's WAY easier when you do it right in the beginning. Fixing sucks). My fibers teacher from Haystack, Mi-Kyoung Lee, has a show opening at the Craft Alliance tomorrow. See the site and click thru for more images. She is so gorgeous I can hardly stand it.

The good thing about having the open studio is that I just taped up big pieces on the sloped walls in front of windows and found that the backlighting TOTALLY makes the pieces. So this is good information to have. It'll be a nightmare to hang and light in Miami, I'm sure, but I've been told that the installer is top notch.

I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about everything I didn't say or forgot to or was distracted from or what have you during the lecture. But mostly I have been thinking today about how crazy the two full-time jobs are: being an artist, and being the PR firm. I'd be perfectly happy NOT setting up ridiculous tripod/self-timer shots of me "working" so that I could simply work. But it's not that kind of world anymore.

Backtracking

Panties in a pot. Not thrilled about dye tests. I was thinking today that I have too much crap in the studio to play with. So I might just put this away for later.

This, too, the greased hanji. I did a piece with it today and showed it to my sister, who said it looked "rinky-dink," so that definitely is not going to happen. She said that my work this morning looked wholly uninspired. She's right.

Last night I stayed up late (I think I've become afraid to go to sleep here) and wove this out of mulberry bark. Today I dunked it in the dye bath. It's all that comforts me in this time of massive stress, keeping my hands busy w/random tiny bits of bark and hanji. I feel like I have to crank out work like a robot, which would be FINE if I actually WAS a robot. But I'm not. So this human being is going to see how she feels after taking a shower and cooking dinner. I am hoping that tonight will be a good work night. Or at least a good admin night - the galleries are breathing down my neck for a million things, of course all due yesterday, even though I only get notice now. My admin priority is prepping my presentation for tomorrow at the library. The rest will have to wait!

Cooling off

Thank goodness the humidity and heat have finally subsided a little! I went to bed last night feeling like I had been drinking all day, so the morning was a little slow, but I finally managed to finish this book. I was upset about some mistakes I made, but they're not bad enough to ruin it and I don't have time (or desire) to re-do it. I visited the library today to scope it out for my presentation on Wednesday. I'm bringing hanji and stuff I've made, so there better be more people than I have fingers on one hand. Then Jen took me to the store and I got some green peppers, which are my new favorite thing to cook.

This morning, I cleaned the bathroom and washed the studio floor. There is a certain kind of roach-like bug that has been crawling out into the middle of my studio floor and dying, legs up, the same spot. I hope it doesn't happen tonight b/c I have nine sheets of hanji that I glued together today on the floor. And b/c it's creepy! The bugs are coming out in full force, which makes me squeamish, but I don't really have time to be squeamish. I cooked dinner while I was preparing my cochineal dye bath. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. I didn't have pantyhose or mesh, so I wrapped up the ground bugs in a panties. I'm pretending that I intended to dye them.

Derailed by heat

[Milkweed on the side of the road. Ahead, they touched up the crosswalk from the parking lot to the visitor center.] I have lately been eaten up by fear, fear of all sorts, so I decided this morning to do what I usually do when this happens (well, usually, I just avoid everything that is scaring me. But I do have this one tactic): do something that REALLY scares me.

So I finally took the trails from the national park land into the preserve that is managed by the Nature Conservancy. I don't have appropriate clothing, but even in my paranoia about ticks, I essentially RAN through the woods w/my ankles and arms exposed. A mosquito bit my forehead, but otherwise I came out unscathed. I was following the blazes on the trees but ran into a bunch of fallen trees and at one point, a stream, so I had to backtrack a lot. I came out the main entrance and walked past Jen's house (the volunteer in charge of me), and back home for a shower. I'm not really sure that I did anything but run through my fear with my fear, but it's done.

I finally put this together but didn't have the right rigging for it, which means that possibly it will take more work to FIX it than to make it. I wish wish wish I was better at rigging, but I am woefully bad. I need some PVC piping but that is NOT something I can find in the woods, so I will have to just fix the piece when it gets installed.

If it actually ever gets finished!! It's hot as blazes today and I am surprised I lasted as long as I did (until 3:30pm) in my sauna of a studio. The top is not a fashion statement: that's how I rigged having a pocket to hold the pieces of hanji cord to tie off all of the colored cords. I felt the whole time like I was just making a ginormous basketball net. Well, maybe I am.

[Eventually, I ended up just working in my underwear.] I quit in the afternoon b/c I got a ways down and realized that the whole thing needs to be longer, which means I have to cut down and spin more hanji, which makes me want to throw a tantrum b/c that will take another 2 days at least. Plus, that prep work is brutal. So I took a nap in the a/c, read about female soldiers, talked to Terttu, and looked at the final report for Guapa, the residency program I did in Mexico in 2007. Their call for applications is up - apply! It's due Sept 15 and I think the dates in Feb next year will be around when the monarch butterflies do their migration.

Also, Marian Runk, an alumna from both my almae matres, has a new Etsy shop. She does great comics; I had fun reading her books when they were in Seoul. Oh, and one more shout out to Doug Collins, who is a printmaker back in NYC who helped inspire the conceptual framework behind my word ruler book. Now, back to brave the studio...

I have no idea what is going on

Last night as I was trying to sleep, I realized that I wanted to use up my ink tests on the Chinese-made paper I bought in Korea for calligraphy practice. I had intended first to combine it w/hanji, but I'm too spoiled now. The vast gulf in quality makes it impossible for me to mix the two since the Chinese stuff falls apart. It's so fragile that it won't take my glue tape; it just rips and sticks to the tape, instead of letting the tape stick to it. So I made this today instead: Chinese paper on Chinese paper. I sat on it the whole time that I made it. I really enjoy sitting on and stepping on my work. Maybe this is related to Korean culture being a floor culture, or maybe I was a rug dealer in a past life. I honestly have no idea what I am doing lately with all this joomchi and collage work, which makes it doubly hard for me to be alone here since I have no outside eye to give me feedback. They photograph badly, so I can't share here.

As for all the torn paper, I think that I still have this in my system and haven't channeled it out yet. I only started getting it out of my system last year in Maine, but didn't get a chance to continue in Korea. The good news is that I spun all the cut-down hanji, showered, and gave the cottage a once over w/the highly-functioning vacuum cleaner! This prepares me at the halfway mark, when I need to focus on what I'll get done in the next (final!) two weeks. Of course, instead of working, I walked three miles for pizza and chocolate granola (and eggs and veggies), thought about a welcome home party in NYC, agreed to more time-consuming non-studio work, napped, and watched a supremely bad basketball movie while spinning paper. But isn't that what Sundays are for?

Back into the water

Terttu came to visit yesterday!! It was SO GOOD to see her again. It's been way too long. Years! These are the little stickies I got for her in Seoul, so that she can study hard at Yale when she starts grad school next month. I think it's hilarious that we are both in CT right now, which we both find to be a super weird state. I love that she comes out to see me at residencies when she can. I was so out of it and too busy talking to her to take pics of both of us, but it was really great to have someone come and see what I've been up to and also all the hanji from Korea - she gave me some good ideas for directions to go in, which felt really freeing, b/c I had been so stuck on the directions that I thought I should go in. So now I'm all itching to be onto the next bunch of work - I'm two days behind the schedule I made.

Part of this comes from some serious administrative struggles since I'm now entering a give and take phase w/other people, and not everyone values efficiency and keeping deadlines. I am trying not to let that poison my work, but it's hard. It was good, though, to talk to Terttu about all of my major concerns. Near the end of her visit, she was like, "so, what else are you worried about?" But we had taken care of most of it. Mostly, I am just scared of making crap and wasting my time (not just my daily time but my time on earth). CLEARLY, someone needs to have a vacuum taken to her head so that she can clean up the neurotic dust bunnies. Instead, she spent the day downstairs weaving this and making lots of hanji dust.

This book is waiting for the one before it to get done. I'm hoping tomorrow will be the last day for these and then I can get to bigger work, fun stuff, for the second show this fall. I'm listening to Milli Vanilli and re-listening to Alain de Botton talking about things like how we live for the first time in an era where we worship ourselves and not things that are outside ourselves, or bigger that ourselves, or not human. Yesterday, I read a super depress-o article about our misogynist culture. Oh, and it's now crazy hot and humid, as August usually is. But otherwise, I am grateful for the time and the studio. And for the PVA that Terttu got for me in NYC! Total lifesaver. I loved being able to talk to her about being outside of the US and how that really brings out the differences in Americans and non-Americans - that idea of the individual as first priority, rather than the community as most important. So it was good to process that part of what I had learned in Korea with her. And also to eat lots of fruit.

Frozen grapes

Yesterday I had the most heavenly visit to Canton to visit Velma and Mark McMurray, the special collections curator and archivist at St. Lawrence University. He also runs Caliban Press and has the most exquisite printshop I have seen in forever. I finally got to see Velma's home and studio and papermill (!!) after doing the brutal 0515 rise so that I could drive Ben to base and then to North Country. She lives and works in this treasure trove of everything an artist could want and it was a total crime that I didn't have fresh batteries so I couldn't shoot anything yesterday. She did give me this piece of shifu she wove from lokta paper that she spun: we had fun at the printshop w/Mark doing proofs on her shifu w/wood type.

She also showed me some of Carol Blinn's books, which are insanely delicious. I finally saw the nest book that they made together in person, which is gorgeous. Carol is a total duck person, so I was particularly happy to see the books, even though it made me late picking up Ben (I have to learn to not have any expectations from the army: he's late when I expect him early, and early when I expect late). I think people could easily spend days in Velma's home and never need to emerge. She showed me her flax patch outside and I got to see her gorgeous red barn and her border collie Wendy was all over us, which was sweet.

Visiting Mark's shop and the library was also very nourishing. We were all nonstop talking about books and paper and printing and I went overboard babbling about my time and research in Korea. He pulled out some things from Paper Nao, a shop in Japan run by Naoaki Sakamoto, who makes amazing paper that he dyes in beautiful ways. There was one book besides the Paper Across Continents book that I had read in Korea at my hanji teacher's mill (they are friends). It was about hanji and I was too fried to do a decent translation job from the Korean, but it was great to see the photos and diagrams of the webal technique.

Mark treated us to a yummy lunch at Blackbird Cafe, where he found an old origami book and where I had to control myself from getting decadent desserts. If I had a car, Ben would be in trouble b/c I would spend all my time up in Canton. I'll definitely do a trip in the fall when I move with an operational camera so everyone can see the goodies.

Resistance to whatever this is

Spending yesterday w/Velma was SO lovely - a perfect antidote to my current situation. She came to pick me up and brought the loveliest gift of a handmade paper box w/a stone inside before driving to Clayton to visit the Thousand Islands Arts Center, which houses the Handweaving Museum that she used to run years ago. She knows the current director, and we got to meet the registrar and get a peek at the process of digitizing of the collection. We stopped in at the beading class since Velma is friends w/the instructor, and got to meet the resident potter who showed us the old papermaking equipment that Velma had helped acquire but has sadly been sitting in an attic, neglected and unused. The plan is hopefully to get her to help w/setting up a papermaking outfit in the new space and getting classes started. No brainer!

She took me to Teaism, which is part of Winged Bull Studio run by Greg and Karen Lago, for the most delicious lunch. Fresh-squeezed lemonade, cilantro soup, salad, and quiche. It was so good to hang out with someone who is good at listening and sharing and understanding. She drove me back to the front of the public library where I was supposed to wait for Ben, and we ended up talking until he pulled into the parking lot. I was especially moved when she talked about how she thinks that making art is a serious and important activity in the world (different from artists taking themselves too seriously!).

After swapping custody, the next stop was the hail and farewell for incoming and outgoing officers at the base; my first military function. It involved a dinner that resembled a turkey day spread, a spoon the size of a medium-sized child, a great many officers (mostly not in uniform), and a drawing where I won a ginormous beer mug. I NEVER win things, and was hoping I could get away w/NOT fetching the prize, but I had to. After the event was over, Ben actually let me drive his new car home (I was the DD), which is the first time I've driven in well over a year.

Last night, I agreed to move up here in the fall. I then proceeded to not sleep well and couldn't get back to bed after Ben left for work, so I went for a walk in the dreary weather and felt insanely depressed. I went to the tiny "private beach" next to the marina and just watched the water lap at my feet for a while, wondering what I am doing with my life. I realized a few things:

1. I hate commitment to people (I like it to intangibles)
2. I am terrified by my schedule for the next 5 months
3. I have never been this far away from my family in a long time (esp since I lived so close to so many family members in Seoul), which never felt weird in the past, but now makes me feel unmoored and isolated
4. I need a LOT of love, which is why I befriend so many people, so I am wary of a decision that would take me away from all of those people. When I think about sacrificing community for a partner, I think about a conversation that I had with Ben about how, often, beliefs and practice don't line up. My problem is that I hate for those two things to NOT line up, so making sacrifices like this is super out of character for me
5. I wish I was a duck (I wanted to sail out onto the water today).

All of this just exhausted me. Time for a 9am nap!

I found rubber gloves!

I might end up with more duck pictures than I ever expected.

I love sparkly water. I had gone out right after Ben left for work at about 6:15am for a long walk to find town on my own in daylight. I left my camera at home but regretted it b/c the morning light was soooo nice.

So, after coming back and having breakfast and tea, I went back out with my camera b/c I realized that it may start raining today, which means I won't get to take any pictures.

I shot a lot, but by then it was all overcast and the light wasn't pretty at all.

On my first walk, I saw very few people, and these planters were dry. On the second go around, I noticed they were all dripping.

And sure enough, this dude was a few paces ahead of me.

I love this doorway. Also, I saw three magnificent dogs - one black, one brown, and one very furry one.

Yet another sign of abundance: the local cantina.

Battlefield sites are so weird to me. I think generally that warfare is totally weird to me. Duking it out in a field? Makes no sense.

A wooden walkway along the battlefield. The rest of the winding walkway is fine gravel, with spots of gnat swarms.

On my way home the second time, I noticed eerie orderliness in the landscaping here. It made me think about a recent convo w/Ben about systems and how we are both systems people. But maybe everyone just uses the same landscaper.

The real reason I had taken the walk was to look for local places to find rubber gloves (the stay-at-home gf w/a penchant for cleanliness always ends up doing the dishes).

The local market, about 100 paces away from the front door, was open when I got home, and of COURSE they had everything I needed (except for quinoa. Sharing space with a guy who doesn't cook carbs is a serious challenge). I finally got the dishes done and the kitchen area is clean. Now I have to tackle both bathrooms w/the second pair of gloves I got. This would explain why I am posting a million pictures right now: who wants to clean bathrooms on vacation? I have plenty of time since Ben has to go to the shooting range tonight for practice, and I can easily procrastinate by updating my website. Or taking a shower. Or napping. Ah, time off.

Just to say I'm home

Korea sent me off w/rainy season downpour. In reaction to my equally-paranoid American friends' advice, I had Julie come to my place in a cab WAY TOO EARLY, which dropped us off in the rain at the shuttle bus stop. We were to the airport in no time, so early that we couldn't actually check in. Julie was like, I told you! And I said next time, you HAVE to insist more forcefully. We ended up eating all of the snacks I had brought for the flight before I even went thru security. Turned out, of course, that they didn't weigh any of my bags. I should have brought another one for excess baggage...but this is all hindsight. In reality, I was so crazed w/finishing up business that getting even MORE things to bring home or spreading out into millions of bags was the last thing I wanted to do.

Once I finally got through to the gates, I looked for places to buy electronic dictionaries, but I couldn't find any. Plus I was bogged down w/way too many heavy carry-ons. I don't know why I did it (I think it was part of my denial), but I had taken out a big wad of cash less than 24 hours before I left. I guess it's all going to my mom for her trip to Korea in the fall. Hindsight: I should have gotten more snacks!

The flight to Tokyo was fine; I of course sat next to a soldier, who of course thought that I was Korean. I decided to go along w/it. I also realized before I left Seoul that b/c I am so bad at reading the 24-hour clock, the layover that I thought was 3 hours was really almost 6. And of course the terminal I had to go through was under construction. I was pressed into service at the American Airlines counter b/c their peeps couldn't speak Korean and had to do my final Korean translation of my trip. The rest of my time at Narita was spent drying my umbrella, typing notes from the book I had finished reading into my computer, napping, and finishing what I had cleaned out of my fridge: roasted anchovies. By the time we boarded, I felt as tired as I would have over halfway into a normal nonstop Asia-to-US flight. But I was only starting!

The flight back home was dreadful only b/c I kept comparing it to Korean airlines and service. I honestly want to know why US airlines bother to run international flights, b/c they are SO BAD at it. Why can't they just leave it to the pros? I used to think it was dreadful the way that Korean airlines only select the prettiest, skinniest flight attendants. But once I got on the AA flight, I realized that it's b/c it totally makes the flying experience so much more pleasant. In general, I knew I was going to have a rough re-entry in terms of customer service, but I would have preferred to deal w/that on US soil. It was a half-empty flight, but everyone else had spread out by the time I realized so I wasn't able to sprawl out. The worst part was that something was wrong w/the TVs, so we couldn't watch movies until the very end of the flight! That was serious torture. And the food was dreadful. It was like every stereotype of American food that I had heard in Korea: too sweet, too much bread, too much meat. I wasn't able to sleep much, as usual, even w/my dose of melatonin. Or even read b/c my eyes were so fried.

But I made it! Only to have to wait until the very last dump to get my baggage (this is the curse of checking in too early). Then I tried to wait for a manned cart b/c I didn't think I could actually pile all of my bags onto a tiny $5 cart. But once I saw the very last person load more bags than I had onto one cart, I just did it and was the last one to go thru customs to meet my parents, who were the only ones left at the gate.

It was completely strange leaving Korea. I had been there, and nowhere else at all, for over a year. Just going to a Japanese airport was incredibly jarring. Being on the AA flight, I realized that the whole hierarchical system in Korea, once you get used to it (and if you are not at the bottom of it), is actually very comforting b/c it is so orderly. But hearing all the English on the plane freaked me out since there is no high form - everything sounded incredibly rude to me. So that, I miss. It was also disturbing to see so much cleavage. Hahaa! Related to how Koreans are so much more concerned with the whole than the individual, which makes some parts of life quite pleasant and easy. I miss how most people are groomed and well-dressed and presentable. And that used to be something I hated^^

I'm in a complete mess of unpacking and sorting out what has piled up for me at home, and haven't been able to contact anyone in Korea yet to say I've made it back. I leave in an hour an a half to meet an old friend/teacher and then we'll see how the jet lag hits.

I can't believe it's over! I got an email from Kelsey that made me really sad since it's always hard to leave good friends. I wish there was an in-between time where life could just stop on this end so I could have some time to decompress, but it never works that way. And I woke up not to Korean food, but bacon. Ha! This truly is America.

One last thing

I just remembered: I had this ginormous, irrational fear before I left for Korea that I would be forgotten b/c I was out of sight. Now I feel more loved than ever. For that alone, this has been entirely worth everything.