Weekend itches + it takes a village

I haven't been able to work on any of my stuff since Friday during the daytime, but at least the apt is clean. Yesterday, Ben took me to the arts and craft center so that we could both get trained and cleared to use the wood shop and ceramics studio. The latter was not as exciting, since none of what I would find interesting (glazes, firing, throwing, and hand building) are part of it, but the wood shop was an interesting social experience. Five men, one male teacher (all military), and me. Luckily the teacher only made a couple references to me being weaker than everyone else. He could tell I was terrified at times - either from my hanging back or likely the look on my face - and set the pushing guide next to the table saw even though I was the only one who used it. Or he'd say, "don't be afraid of the machines; just respect them." I enjoyed the DANGER signs with bloody hands with severed fingers. He also liked to say often, "don't but the Bluebeard lock on it!" I only understood this reference since reading the wolves book a few months back.

It made me appreciate the time and place I grew up, b/c I was in a public school system that still saw fit and had the budget to have mandatory wood and metal shop starting in 7th grade. That was the most shop experience I've ever had. Everywhere since, in schools and residencies, I mostly steered clear of the equipment. But yesterday felt like middle school again. Except that the boys were a lot better behaved and polite!

Also, an interview I did with Wura Ogunji is up on the Diaspora Vibe blog. After having read Outliers recently, I wanted to add shout-outs, in the order that they are mentioned:

Thanks to Helena Meyer-Knapp, who has been a great supporter of my work and working life from the first time we met in Seoul over a big group Fulbright dinner.

Thanks to Younghui Kim in Andong, who was a grounding inspiration and guide to me on two visits there, where she made exquisite tea in her hanji-covered home, and told me the story about her mother using a woven hanji chamber pot on her journey to her husband's home for marriage.

Thanks to Rosie Gordon-Wallace, for having the faith in me and my vision to invite me to show in Miami, with work sight unseen.

Thanks to the artist residency program run by the Weir Farm Arts Center at the Weir Farm National Historic Site, for the perfect place and time to be alone, and work.

Thanks to Mi-Kyoung Lee, an artist and fiber arts professor at UArts in Philly, for being such a pivotal teacher for me at Haystack for two weeks right before I left for Korea. And thanks to Haystack for the scholarship making it possible to be there!

Thanks to all the women in my life. And all the men in my life.

Thanks to my family. All of it.

Thanks to Oberlin College's Allen Art Museum for having such a great collection, open to its students, and Robert Harrist for bringing our class to the museum to see Chinese paintings on hanji.

Thanks to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for hiring me to run its education programs, where I met a headhunter who was the best friend of the woman who founded and chaired the department (thanks, Suzanne!) where I eventually went to grad school.

Thanks to Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias for introducing me to book arts in the most expansive way possible.

Thanks for all of my teachers and mentors in Chicago, especially Melissa Jay Craig, my graduate advisor and the one who could tell from my app that I wanted to do this and later was the one who kept me from dropping out of school.

Thanks to Andrea Peterson for nurturing my initial venture into papermaking.

Thanks to Jami Attenberg, who wrote Instant Love.

Big up to my hometown public library!!!

Thanks to Joan Dickinson, a performance teacher who helped me get a much clearer framework for thinking about and performance art.

Thanks to Daniel Gardner for teaching me about service learning, and the study abroad program that made it possible for me to do it overseas.

The obvious one but maybe not directly mentioned: thanks to the U.S. Fulbright program for making it possible for me to spend that year in Korea!

A welcome change of scenery

[Ed Clark of SUNY Potsdam doing joomchi action on colored hanji from Wonju, Korea.] I taught a paper felting class today using hanji that I had a friend in Seoul select and ship over at the Saint Lawrence County Arts Council. Good times! I had been so cranky about it b/c I just wanted to sleep in but it ended up being a really nice group, and it was nice to get off base with Ben (who joined class, too).

This is Susan's first piece; I'll post a shot from her 3rd that I really love, later. She had some serious skills. No one used scissors, which I loved.

Velma did amazing things w/my scraps and Hilary was so happy to be pounding the crap out of the paper. I should have made a video just to get the sound effects of everyone slamming the table at the same time. Hilary, Velma, Ben, and I went out afterwards for a warm lunch and very decadent series of desserts.

Ben and I even got to hit the food co-op and Asian market! We drove through a very, very red sunset - lovely, since we never experience sunset together, and eerie b/c of how it turned huge patches of trees red. It almost all faded by the time we got through the gate at the base, so I wasn't able to shoot good pics (I was too busy gawking beforehand to remember to grab my camera. And some roads on base are not very smooth). I was talking to Ching-In and she asked if we were going to have trick-or-treaters and I said, I doubt that parents would want their children coming near the homes of unaccompanied soldiers! I wish that wasn't the case, but at least we saw a bunch of them on Route 11 while driving home. Plus a parade in Potsdam during lunch! That's about as much Halloween as I ever get, so I'm pretty content. On top of that, we saw an inordinate amount of animals while driving: SO MANY cows, a good deal of horses, and even a huge flock of sheep!

Ultra-green mulch

I took my first long walk today since I got back from Miami. Wait, I think this is only my second long walk here, period. Anyhow, it's hard to find things to shoot b/c it's either depressing or I'm afraid someone will come out and yell at me, but I liked this best on my way home, as I was trying to figure out how to get back through a residential area where everything looks the same: houses, fences, roads, everything.

I tried to go down a trail today but wasn't able to get past a sea of ferns and a trailing off of the path, so instead I walked along the back of everyone's fencing and later wandered around the homes that all look the same with Halloween decorations that all look the same. Before that, I saw this sign. There were a bunch of them along the path.

Funny, since when I saw these things from a distance, I thought maybe it was a park, with outdoor sculpture! But it's probably some kind of military fencing that I don't know about. I was confused by the signs b/c I couldn't tell if the space behind the jacks was off limits or the path itself. So I walked down the path anyhow.

To find more railroad tracks! They have these all over, I think, to transport things to other far-off military places. The sad thing about wandering around is that there are so many wooded and grassy areas, but no matter how far you get from buildings, you always hear rumbling of something. At one point, coming out of the "off limits" area, I was startled by a generator that started up as soon as I came out of the woods. But the noise is usually construction, which seems never ending - I went the back way b/c the road in front is being torn up and re-done. Like Korea, only more ominous.

Venturing out

Aside from taking out the trash and checking the mail, I don't think I've walked out the front door since I got back from Miami. So today after my combined workout/trashy TV session (part of the bday indulgences), I went outside, got a fun bday card from lil sis, and then walked in the grass just next to the major construction outdoors and found my way to the arts and crafts center.

[Crossed these on the way.] Studio rental is $1/hour and $4/day here. Ridiculously huge and amazing facilities: wood shop, ceramics, quilting, stained glass, framing, etc. Not necessarily something I can access but it attests to the seriousness of military benefits. Yesterday, we found out that Ben is not going to Iraq in January. That's all we know. I love that they get orders saying only the negation of what their orders said a few months back, but not saying what will really happen. I think the very obvious, easy, and not cool answer is Afghanistan in early 2010. Which means more wrenches in my plans; I had only intended to stay up here until xmas.

On the bright side, I got lots of nice feedback from my Korean contacts and lots of love and wishes and hugs sent my way. I also booked my Dec flight and hotel to Miami. It's really happening, again! Velma also gave me the heads up on a nice little plug [about 3/4 of the way in] by Hilary Oak, the ED of the Saint Lawrence County Arts Council, who is hosting my lecture and class on hanji (the talk is Thurs, Oct 22 and the class is Sat, Oct 31: Halloween!). [One correction: hanji is the actual paper, and jiseung is paper weaving.]

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.