( Number 19 of 36. Images under cut. )

Unfortunately, I've just discovered that I'm almost out of Process Magenta, and the supply store downstairs is out, and the manager *might* order some more next semester, even though she knows I do use it and do need it. I've checked the local Hobby Lobby, and they don't have any, and there's not really any place else in town to buy it, as this place is distinctly lacking in art supply stores.

Long-term, I can certainly order more ink online and it's not so bad, but short-term it is distinctly a pain in my ass.

It is said that if a woman sits under a tree, holding a chocolate bar, and if the woman is strong of mind and spirit, and the chocolate's of good quality, sometimes a narwhal will come and lay in her lap.

Because narwhal like chocolate. They just don't get to eat it much, what with living in frigid arctic waters and all.

( Images under cut. )

So my cunning plan is to get as much work done as possible before break, including the actual printing, and then during break I'll work on more images and the written part of the thesis. Because yeah, totally going home for break.

( Two new monsters under cut )

I've been really tired lately. I don't think I'm coming down with anything (except for my persistent chronic case of grad school), it's more a grad school + daylight savings + grad school + thesis year.

I'm just feeling ridiculously bogged down, and it feels like new responsibilities keep coming out of the woodwork.

I'd thought I'd feel more relaxed after the thirty minute artist talk I had to give Monday, but I just had a meeting today with the new Prof for Women in Israel/Palestine, and we're trying to catch up on ten+ weeks of extant grading this week so we can be a little closer to normal next week. Which totally needs doing, I just wish it wasn't now, when what I really want need* to be doing is locking myself in my studio and working on setup for the committee meeting Monday. Seeing as it's all Monday and stuff.

And Conservation continues to suck more of my time than I'd like, and there's always 110 grading, and the MFA students graduating this year have started having meetings where we discuss show titles and budgets and that just makes it seem real that in five months I put my stuff on the wall and defend it. I just want to hit a pause button on life for long enough to catch my breath. Or at least toggle off some of my other responsibilities for a week so I can get some bloody art done.

I'm hoping there'll be time this weekend, but Cloister does that feel like cutting it close.  Right now I have fifteen creatures total, and I want text for at least three of them... the text is being collaged, so it takes a while. 

Is it naptime yet?




*what I want is a bathtub and a stack of unread urban fantasy and/or murder mystery paperbacks, or a marathon knitting session.

Women & Children First (the feminist bookstore in Chicago) just called to tell me all (but one) of my letterpress cards there (twenty, five of each design) have sold, and can I bring in more?

Yes. Yes I can.

It's almost Halloween, and that means...



Spider cookies!

Okay, so as usual, they look halfway between Miyazaki soot sprites

and what happens when a spider gets near Kavs or Pix...


but it's very hard to do detailed forms when you're dealing with molten chocolate and rice krispies, so ah well.

There are still pterodactyls and thunderbirds being reported in the skies of New Mexico. I haven't personally seen one, but I haven't seen a Great Horned Owl either, and I still believe in those.

I'd post the other colours but I'm too tired. The cats kept me up last night with a disagreement they were having with another black cat right outside the bedroom window.

You may have noticed I haven't posted any screenprints lately. Or you may have better things to do, but anyway. This week's been a nightmare for screenprinting even with the new power washer, but I'm three colours in to the next image (which I'm planning to finish later today). Luckily, I've gotten a bit of my fervour back (I was starting to flag) after watching a special on the Jersey Devil, so as always, I just need more time I don't seem to have to work on more creatures.

The other reason is that I've gotten caught up in designing a new set of letterpress cards, which I'm hoping to print before the holidays so I can sell them as gifts. I decided on a New Mexico theme, with the same size (blank) cards as before. After weeks of trying to figure out how to make the designs mine, I finally hit on an approach I think works, and then I was staying up all hours and working all day to get them right. Seriously, I have been on a frickin' tear trying to design these cards. Which in some ways feels great, but is doing really unpleasant things to my sleep/work/eating schedule.

( Click through to see designs )

From the Art 110 Midterm:

"The plural for the word medium is __________"  (The correct answer, in an art context, is media.)

Thus far, answers have included:  concept, mediums, techniques, materials, and medians. 

Some of them, thankfully, did get the correct answer.  But seriously.... concept?

I kinda feel like a failure.

Because nothing I do will ever be as creepy as this.

(definition courtesy of The Obakemono Project)

Nekomata: In some places when an old cat becomes a bake-neko, its tail is said to split in two, then it is called a neko-mata or "forked cat". Like most bake-neko, neko-mata are unusually large cats, reportedly a meter and a half long minus the bifurcated tail, and often walk about comfortably on their hind feet. They are said to dance and manipulate the dead like puppets, and are associated with strange fires and other unexplainable occurances.

( This was definitely a demon cat... )

The university did this little "Rally for the Arts" thing tonight, to raise support/awareness for the new several gazillion dollar arts center they want to build on campus. (First stage is a new theatre, a new art building will maybe possibly exist about twenty, thirty years from now.) A friend of mine got asked to coordinate some artists being there, he apparently vaguely remembered something about me doing face painting, and apparently they wanted someone there who would do face painting, and the next thing you know I'm there painting faces.

(As it happens, the only time I've actually done much facepainting was when I got the Klutz face painting book back in elementary school, and charged the neighborhood kids fifty cents to paint ninja turtles and stuff, but hey, whatever works. I had to buy everything I needed, but they're supposed to reimburse me.))

I painted my arm before I got there, since I didn't have any existing pictures of face painting I'd done. And then made it clear no one else was getting anything that fancy (that thing took me over an hour).



I also did some simpler things (a star, sugar skulls) around it, but the carp was definitely the piece de resistance.

Since the table had room, I spread out some of the letterpress cards, and sold three (one koi, one windchime, one firefly). One was even to someone who didn't already know me. I want to do a set of New Mexico themed ones next, but finding the time to design them, then the time and money to print them...

I ended up doing maybe half a dozen face paintings before the light got too dim. I did them for free, so my only earnings were the cards, but it was fun. And I got asked if I do parties. And if I was a tattoo artist...

I really don't want to wash the fish off now. And if I twist my arm it looks like he's swimming.

I got in!

Here's the info on the show: Dia De Los Muertos at Branigan Cultural Center. I don't know if all of the writeup is accurate... I mean, I'd hardly say the call for submissions was "last winter." But hey. S'all good. I'll be interested to see if the part about "nineteen artists" is correct, because that's a nice small show. At any rate, it's the first juried thing I've been in since the Spring, and it'll look good on my CV, and hey, it's a show about the Day of the Dead, which is pretty cool. (And the sort of show I'm less likely to be doing when I'm not living in NM.)

And, as always, it feels totally validating to have people who don't know you/owe you money think your work is good. And the Cultural Center means there might be reviews/writeups/articles.

(This is the piece that got in.)

Now to the framing...

Today I went hiking in the Organs again, up to a place called Dripping Springs. It is beautiful, and I am out of shape. It'll be a bit nicer to hike when the temperature finally drops into the seventies.



Apparently I'm now in one of those cooking moods, because I've just made a pitcher of Switchel (a traditional summer farm drink mentioned in Little House on the Prairie that dates back to at least the fifteenth century) and I have a batch of Baby Shortbread Bites with Mini Chocolate Chips and Toffee Bits in the oven.

Both of the recipes are new to me, so I'm excited to see how they'll come out. The cookie batter is pretty awesome, I have already discovered.

EDIT: Cookies are good.

Y'know, I'm actually right now mostly where I need to be with things for the classes I'm teaching and the ones I'm taking... and I'm still being seized with this mid-level "Oh Cloister I'm behind" feeling. Perhaps it is my unfamiliarity with the state of being mostly caught up with stuff?

( New Mystery Creature behind cut )

I got word from Angee at Spudnik Press that none of my cards sold.

She qualifies the statement by noting that there were a lot of compliments on the cards, and that the problem may have been with the venue (the Spudnik booth, which was mostly art prints), the small amount of cards (only 4 designs), and that she thinks the problems were presentational rather than inherent to the cards. I've also been invited to let them hold onto the cards and display them in the SCA Trunk Show and the Holiday Renegade Craft Fair.

I really appreciate all that Angee/Spudnik has done for me, and I do plan to let them try the cards again at these other venues. I'm trying really hard to not take the cards' failure personally, and think of ways I might improve my luck for next time. Suggestions are welcome.