11-1-04
That was a busy weekend. This is 8:30 Monday morning and I'm putting off writing another chapter in my textbook in order to type a few words here. Eric Clapton's Unplugged album is playing through the speakers on my laptop as my mind slowly spins up to speed, aided by a cup of instant coffee.
      Saturday I put the finishing touches on the five paintings, took the final photographs and cut one matt. Sunday I spent an hour balancing my checkbook on the computer, then cut a couple more matts and began framing, finishing at 1 AM.
    Cutting matts is not so much a tricky business as it is a series of simple steps carried out in a precise order. I have a dusty old double matt covered with tiny scribbles, numbered and highlighted. It's supposed to guide me through the process if I've not done it in a while.
   The main trouble spots are related to dull blades on the matt cutter. I've found I get about 4 matts to a blade, depending on the size of the paintings. Occasionally I blow a matt, but I've learned it's just the price of doing business. This time around it went smoothly and most of my troubles were related to my aging frames.
    Whenever I have a show of new paintings, I look around the walls of my house (and dad's house) to see if any of my existing frames will fit the new work. If I see a frame that will fit, it's out with the old, in with the new. I keep the old paintings in a box under the bed. This box gets heavier each year and currently weighs about 30 pounds. These are my failures, or, as forward thinking artists call them: learning experiences.
    These old frames date back about 9 years and they are looking their age. Like a desperate father looking for a husband, (any husband!) for his aging homely daughter, I try to spruce them up each time I re-glaze with new work. Trouble is, they are wood painted with glossy white paint. Because wood gets bruised, and paint chips, there is only so much one can do. I have to have them down to the gallery by this Saturday, and buying new frames is not an option in my budget.
    I'm hoping this is a common problem with chronically hard up artists. I'll take them down to the gallery and see what Deb thinks. Many art collectors routinely reframe their purchases, preferring much nicer frames than artists can afford. We buy for utility and simple presentation, rather than elegance. Perhaps they'll pass inspection. Well, it's 9 AM, I've had my little break, guess I'd better get to work.
    

10-30-04
Work and more work: seems to be the story of my life these days. Still, most of the work I'm doing is quite rewarding. Because this is 4 days away from a presidential election I am reminded of another very busy time in my life when the work never seemed to stop.
    In 1992 I was working graveyard as a pressman in Olympia during a presidential election. You know all those election brochures we are getting in the mail? I printed those during the long hours of the night seven days a week for 30 days in a row. If you look carefully at the candidate brochures you will see a tiny oval union seal with a number alongside. If the number is 30, it may have come from my old printing press: a two color Heidelberg GTOZ.
     Capital City Press was a union shop and the boss was careful to point out that they made enough money during the election season to keep the shop open the rest of the year. In other words, don't even think about taking a day off on the weekend, there is too much work. The overtime money was great, and after the first couple weeks we developed quite a camaraderie.
     There were only 4 of us on the night crew, and after one quit, we bonded together in a smoothly functioning team, grimly bearing down to carry his load. I can remember sitting out on the street in downtown Olympia during our 10 minute break at 4 in the morning, talking about how bad it would be now that one of us had quit. How could he walk out like that? We were in this together and it was unthinkable.
     When the day crew showed up in the morning the three of us, Mike, Cheryl and I went out and got happily tipsy in the one bar that was open at six AM. Afterward we stumbled around the town arm in arm, clearly drunk and receiving frowns of disapproval from the office workers walking to work. Cheryl was irrepressible, and very lovely, goading Mike and I into more drinking long after we were ready to go home to our wives.
    I can remember sitting in a crowded restaurant and trying to shush Cheryl who was making a scene. Mike and I were tipsy, but Cheryl was 3 sheets to the wind. The morning office workers eating breakfast looked on with disapproval as we hauled her out of the restaurant and linked arms down the street.  I never actually hated the printing. When the boss left me alone, I got some decent satisfaction from running press. Trouble was, I could never run it fast enough to keep my bosses happy.
     I'm glad I'm out of that business and into something where creativity and compassion are valued above units per hour. This week I taught my students:

• how to assemble a sliced up stretching interface in Dreamweaver
• how to save an interface to html in ImageReady
• how to draw a hallway with a pencil in proper perspective and proportion

10-25-04
Worked the weekend on my latest lesson plan. They take at least 10 hours now that I am making them press ready, but I think I may be able to submit them to a publisher by the holidays. Now it's Monday and I have an e-commerce site to build for a client. Tomorrow begins another week of teaching. No rest for the wicked I guess. I took a couple breaks for bike rides and walking the hills. My only real break was yesterday when I took the paintings for the show over to my friend Mary Lou.
    I first met Mary Lou in 1989 when I went into the local library and saw a bunch of paintings hanging in a conference room. I had recently begun drawing again and was interested to see the other artist's work. I discovered that it was an art show put on by the Peninsula Art League and was invited to the next meeting.
   I brought in my drawings and received a warm reception from the members who were mostly older retired women, with a sprinkling of other ages and a few men. There were some very talented painters in the group and I soon met Mary Lou. She paints impressionistic landscapes like mine, except she is quite a bit better at it and fluent in several mediums: conte crayon, oils and pastel.
   She had some great suggestions for improvements to my paintings and I will try to improve them a little before I frame next weekend. Now though, I need to get to work on this e-commerce site. If I finish it early enough I can go for a long bike ride and maybe veg on the couch for a couple hours before preparing for my first class of the week tomorrow: perspective drawing.

10-17-04
Today is wet and windy. The barometer has dropped from normal: 29.5 to stormy: 28.7. The trees are starting to whip around outside and we could easily lose our power. We'd planned a sea kayaking trip with some friends who have extra boats, but the rain and predicted small craft advisories made that unwise.
     Sue's back up plan was to drive up to REI to buy some work shoes, but after I'd paid bills this morning I had $45 in my account, only slightly more than her account. Clint offered to loan her money, but she already owes both kids money and wisely decided to put off any spending until we both get paid next week.
      I took a dozen unframed paintings down to State of the Arts Gallery in Olympia this weekend. Deb, the owner, asked me to frame 5 and have them there in 3 weeks time for the holiday show. I've known Deb for about 12 years, ever since she first opened her gallery by the Washington Center and I walked in with my portfolio.
    She has sold a bunch of paintings for me over the years and is an excellent business woman with a cultured eye for what will sell. I was a little worried about the quality of my recent paintings, but her enthusiasm over my work was refreshing. She quickly picked the wheat from the chaff, asked me if we were done and turned to the next customer. The gallery business is brutal, but Deb is a survivor.
    As if the picture framing work wasn't enough,  I have the usual 10 hour lesson plan to write before Thursday, plus a hot freelance project for a local client. It's nice to be needed, but this is getting ridiculous. After this quarter my lesson plan time should drop dramatically. This Dreamweaver class is likely to be my last new class for a while, and all the rest have existing lesson plans.

10-10-04
Work has once again interfered with writing this journal. I enjoy the process of writing, but as I've said before, one has to choose between writing about life and living it. My main challenges lately have been getting up to speed with the 90 new students I teach this quarter. There are actually only about 30 new students, but I'm teaching them in a couple different classes (and a managed lab), plus our on-going students.
     Each student has to be entered into both an electronic and a paper attendance and grading system for each class they take from me. I also have to enter each student by hand into the database of our custom designed online grading system.
       While this is initially very labor intensive, it pays off quickly as I can give them their weekly project grades and comments online, instead of on hand written individual sheets of paper. Also, once I have the paper forms typed up, printed and snapped into my three ring binder I have a quick and reliable method of tracking attendance and grades, backed up by the online grades and Excel files.
     Writing about it all makes the process sound terribly complicated, but I've learned to streamline the record keeping down to the point where I can finish the grading for each class in about an hour, or less, per class. On an ideal day, I lecture in the morning and grade during the lab in the afternoon. Experience has proven this to be a rarely achieved ideal. Instead, I spend the labs assisting students and do the grading after they all go home at 3:30.
      On a good day I will finish grading by around five-ish, print out and copy the next day's handout by 5:30 and head for home. It sounds great: nine to five thirty, half hour lunch and money in my pocket. Unfortunately, as every teacher knows, we don't work bankers hours.
       Pictured here are a couple paintings I have recently completed. The building is Stadium High School. I actually painted it a year ago but never actually put in the finishing touches until yesterday. The banana drawings are kind of a long story: I have a fear of yellow.
        I have yellow pencils, paints and pastel sticks, but whenever I use them it doesn't look right. I had a magazine article where an artist painted bananas in this style, but with watercolors. By studying her painting I was able to figure out some of her secrets.
   Because I didn't think it would turn out, I purposely used two mediums that shouldn't be combined: pen & ink and colored pencil. I figured, what the heck, at least I'll enjoy the ink work, and if the colored pencils destroy the pen drawing, well, at least I got some drawing practice. To my amazement, the bananas turned out fabulous.
      I liked them so much I did another banana drawing 2 nights later. The second drawing is a little different owing to my having eaten one of the bananas, increased yellow (ripeness) and a slightly turned viewpoint. Also, I didn't spend as much time on the initial ink drawing, choosing to actually start in color, change my mind and draw ink over the top of the color, then finish in color.
    As if I wasn't busy enough already teaching and freelancing, my gallery contacted me with an invitation to bring some paintings down. As soon as I finish writing here I have to spend my Sunday putting finishing touches on about 10 paintings, getting them ready for her inspection.
     A couple of my friends have had either illnesses or deaths in their immediate families recently. It reminds me of an old quote from Tony Curtis: "I'd like to live my life so completely that when the grim reaper comes to my house like a thief in the night, there is nothing left for him to steal."

Click here to visit the previous month.

home  |  journal  |  landscapes  |  seascapes  |  structures  |  still lifes  |  climbing
web design  |  art statement  |  pricing  |  easel places  |  site index  |  photos  |  email