Wetness

 We had a lot of it this weekend.  But it could have been worse.  It was a big rain storm, and seemed to remain in the area longer than usual.  Our September had 10 inches more than usual.   There was some heavy rain in the area, which I could see through the windows, as well as hear, but there were also periods of relatively little rain, good for taking care of outside business.   A lot of local roads were flooded, but I had nowhere I needed to go.  New York got it much worse.  The storm stayed over the city for hours at a stretch, dropping 8 or 9 inches of rain over some places, which caused some serious flooding, but the worse parts of the storm missed New Jersey, and then it went out to sea, so we got 3 to 4 inches at worst.  This meant that the basement in my shore town home hasn't been flooded yet, and for now all my art is off the floor in case the water seeps in later.  My Studio is in a different shore town, but when I was there last no flooding yet, and all my art is also safely off the floor should they get any.  

The rain seemed to finally end this afternoon.  I wouldn't say that it got sunny, but at least it got brighter from time to time, and the drops stopped falling.  Forecasts say that it's done and we should have nice weather for the next several days. Not that it matters- my artwork for the show that happens in Ocean Grove is already in the building, so it's just a matter of putting it in another room, or up on the wall, whatever they want.  Still haven't said anything yet.

Final Step(s)

 Yesterday was the one sunny day for this week- otherwise it's been all wind and rain.  Today wasn't rainy early on, but it was expected later, so I wanted to get to the Studio early today.  Plus I had some business to take care of.  After dropping off a few things in my space, I walked down the hall to the basement public restrooms- in the old school cafeteria, aka the green room.  A few years ago they put motion sensitive lights in all the basement hallways, which means you don't have to turn on light switches, but the hallways tend to be a bit dim, especially if the lights are slow to come on, which is often the case.  So there I am walking down the basement hallway, when suddenly I hear that I have stepped into a puddle.  Hadn't even seen it.  Luckily the shoes I wear can handle shallow water with their rubber soles.  Odd place for a puddle to be.  After I finished that bit of business, I went to the office  (stepping over the puddle this time) to report the issue.  Most people were in a meeting, but Andrew was at his desk, and he's the one who needed to know. 

So I told him about it.  He wanted to see it, so I led him there.  He was a bit stumped, as we don't normally get much water around there.  However, this did make me think it was probably a good idea to get my stuff off the floor the other day.  Anyway, time to work.

A few days ago I used a computer to create some labels for the back of my framed prints, a standard procedure for exhibitions.  Today I taped them to the backs of the framed prints, along with making and inserting a few mat board spacers I had made.   It's the last thing I have to do before they collect the work, something they haven't said anything about yet.

Because I knew this would not take too long, I only brought one disc with me, but an unusual one as it was a factory produced disc, not one of my home burned specials.  This was Vitalogy by Pearl Jam.  How I bought this disc is also a bit different, as I acquired it because it included some artwork from my friend Dave Lasky.  (how this happened is too long a story to tell here)  However, it is also a good album, one of a few that I kept in my car to listen to on my commute home from the state university I worked at for 15 years.  And this is why I have a copy of the official album with me right now and it is not in storage.  One odd thing I always think of when listening to it is that we have a local rock station that never plays anything from it.  When a new album or single from Pearl Jam came out, they would play a few of those songs for a week or two, then abandon them and only play songs from the first album, which doesn't interest me as much.   Seems like lazy programming to me. There's no mention of the band or album on this blog, so I guess I never brought this to the Studio.  I should change that.

Later on the meeting was over and I got more information about the plans to sell chicken out of the cafe on the 3rd floor, and idea that I first heard a few years ago, before Covid killed off most of our programming.  The email only mentioned tomorrow, which sounds like a bad day to go out.   Turns out there will be other chicken days coming up, so I don't feel to bad about missing the event.

Weather Concerns

 

I had a weather concern earlier today.   There's a tropical storm moving up the coast right now.  Not expected to turn into a hurricane, but still seems to be massive, and would not be surprised if the expected winds (may be over 60 mph around here) knock out power at some point.  Based on the weather, it's going to pass by in bands, with some lulls in between.  I live far enough inland that waves and local flooding should not be a problem, but I was a bit worried about my art.  Not what I have here, but what I have in my Studio.  I finished my framing last week, and those works are scheduled to be hung in about a week, and left the works in a plastic bag, leaning against my table, resting on the ground.  Since that is the building they will be hung in, made sense to leave them in that building for now.  But that was before I knew about this storm.

Our 19th century building is pretty solid (it was built to last, as things were back then) and has survived numerous hurricanes despite standing within walking distance of the ocean.  However, there was once a basement flood.  Happened back in March of 2014.  Not really the building's fault, but the town, who temporarily solved a pipe issue by sending the water from a rain storm into our basement.  I was expecting it, and had moved all my art off the floor and onto my table.   Molly hadn't, and had much art stored on the floor under her press and the tables.  All that art had to be disposed of, ruined by the water that had flowed through our space.  As far as I knew, my plastic bag was intact, but if not, and the room flooded again due to the new storm, I might not have time enough to buy new mat board and cut it before it was time to hang the planned show.  

So during one of lulls late this morning, I took a drive up to Ocean Grove.  Lots of cars out front (play rehearsal going on) so I was able to get in and out quickly without having to mess with the alarm.  As it turned out, no flood had occurred (yet), but I did take the precaution of moving my bagged framed prints to my table top, well away from any risk of flood damage.  And with that, I was done with my business and headed home.  No problem with wind or rain or traffic lights on the way home.  No need to worry about this over the next week.  

More Art Business

 Another nice day, with another prediction of rain for a few days from now, so another good Studio day. I bought a few pieces of mat board the other day (no foam core available in that so called art store) so I could complete my framing for the upcoming show.  I know from experience that I can use mat board as a backing board, and yesterday I went down the basement to see if I could find any metal frame spacers to use.  (flexible metal pieces that slide between the mat and the frame, which I had in great quantity in my tool box, now in inaccessible storage)  Had enough for one piece, at least of those frames not on shelves.  The rest I'd just double up.  

After dropping off equipment and tools in my space, I stopped by the office, but Jeanne was in a meeting.  I took advantage of being there to show the most recent block to Katelyn, as in the past she had expressed some interest in woodcut.   She did seem impressed with my ink wash drawing, something probably new to her, but I imagine that most people don't know one can use a brush and ink on a block drawing.  She had a few questions about cutting, then I went to my Studio to work on the day's project.

The good news was that I cut all the windows the other day, so all I had to do was cut rectangles for the backing boards and mount everything.  Not that simple.  All three prints needed to be titled, editioned, and signed, with little room to spare.  No linen tape at that store either, which means using one of my old rolls, and it's just not as sticky as it use to be.  The paper on the two vertical prints was too large for the frames, so I had to trim those before mounting anything.  One wire still needed to be moved to the other sides.  And I decided not to take a second trip to my car to get my measuring stick, and just use the cut window mats, and had to redo one of my backing boards.  

But in the end it all got done.   Just using an x-acto knife, it's even easier to cut backing boards on my mat cutting machine than window mats.  Had a bottle of glue in my bag to supplement what was on the linen tape, and even had my homemade calibration tool in my pencil case, so could make all the wires match up to my standard 2 inch below the frame spacing.  For music I had brought the rock/pop book and from this selected my copy of Tom Waits' Beautiful Maladies compilation album.  A recent commercial reminded me of him.  If you want to know more, find it at February, 2020 on this blog.

When all was done, I had three framed prints for the upcoming show.  I left them all there, as this is the building that they will go to anyway.  

I still want to create back labels for each print, but that can be done quickly on a computer.  I put everything away, cleaned up, and stopped back at the office.  Jeanne was available this time, so I was able to find out a little more.  Work is to be dropped off the first week of October, though where has yet to be determined.  The new hanging system should be installed by then, so we can hang our own pieces.  (assigned spaces yet to be determined)  I guess I'll find out soon.

Art Business

 Art is not just fun things like making art, but involves a lot of other things that have nothing to do with the rest of life.  They just have to be done.  But that's part of why I started this blog.

Years ago I decided to start a website, mostly so I could own my name before anyone else did. Plus, it became an easy way for people to look me up and see what kind of art I make.  And my art is different from what a lot of people do- subjects, style, medium, etc.  All this has worked to some extent.  I would not be surprised if some opportunities came out of it. Last week it got a bit more complicated.  Started with a phone call from the host company, trying to get me to add more security.  What about the security I paid for months ago?  They looked into their records and decided I had indeed paid for it, but it was not there.  Getting this resolved took quite a while.  Turns out my site is what they called a "legacy site", up for a long time and very old.   Their tech people didn't know how to handle it.  The good news is that they were able to add the security to my domain.  The bad news is that the whole website disappeared.  Got calls offering expertise in helping me build a new one, but the samples shown were much less than what I had, not done by a web pro.  Plus, I didn't know what had been there because I couldn't access it anymore. 

Then finally yesterday the site came back, more or less.  The home page comes up now, but the banner giving the address and all my links to the other pages were not shown.   However they were there.  I moved my cursor into the blank area where they had been, and clicked, and found all those pages, so at least I know what was on my site.  Still this has to be corrected, and I'll be calling them soon to figure out what is going on.

But I have another deadline to deal with of an art nature.  (lots of medical things to deal with as well, but that's not the subject of this blog)  I bought some mat board on the way home from one of my last radiation treatments, and set it aside.  You see, I knew there was a tenants show coming up in the Studio building, and I knew what I planned to show, and had some frames I could repurpose, but I would definitely need to cut some new window mats to the right size, and some new backing boards and linen tape wouldn't hurt.  Today I dealt with the window mats.  I brought my new pieces of mat board, and the three framed works I planned to switch out to my Studio, which is where I keep all my framing materials, including my mat cutting machine.  

Actually this is something I made myself, out of some scrap wood, a hand held bevel cutter, a metal straight edge, and some clamps.  A pencil, an x-acto knife, and my metal 40 inch measuring stick make up the rest of the device. I keep all but the ruler (in my car) up at the Studio, and the frames at home.  But today it was all at the Studio and the old framing shop was back in existence.  

As is my procedure, first I cut the mat board pieces to the proper size and set them aside.  On the backside of each, I used the ruler and drew the lines that represented where the window would be.  Keeping that back up, insert each into my device, line up each window border with the metal edge, and use the bevel cutter to cut the beveled windows out.   And that's all there is to it.  I completed the three mats I plan for this show, which will go up sometime next month, which is just a few weeks away.  If need be, I have the old backing boards, and an old spare roll of linen tape, but I will see if I can get new ones before then if I can.  Meanwhile, as I did this I listed to random choices from my pop/rock set, first the live album (one disc version) from the Dream Syndicate (written about in detail back in April, 2020) and when that ended, a compilation from the English Beat, which I wrote about back in January, 2023.  I didn't think anything of it, but I guess one could say that both might have been popular with college radio back in the 80's, but on my show I was playing only traditional blues, and that's how I liked it.

Blood Draw part 9

 

Weather says that today is a sunny day, while yesterday and tomorrow were rainy days, so this seems like the day to go up to the Studio and get some work done.  Not that rain is a real issue, as my car does protect me from the weather and there's nothing I need to carry in today that would be wrecked by rain.  Still, a nicer day to drive.

Got up there in the late morning and got right to work.  For music I had brought with me my rock/pop book, and from this I selected the debut album from the Coral, which I have written about on this blog back in June, 2020.  A song was in my head.   My main goal today was to work on the current block, which is still in the drawing phase.  After looking at my photo of the last time, I decided to make the clock a little smaller, and move it more to the middle of the image, and away from the nurse's head.   This was partly to bring some more dark next to her hair, to give it something to make it stand out more.   So first I drew a new circle, put in some hands to represent the time, and that was all.  I filled in the rest of the background, varying the amount of blackness to make things stand out.  

I do like it better now than I did at the last step. However, I don't know if I'm done with the drawing yet.  I'll look at the photo a little more first, or maybe even the block itself. There's no deadline on this as of now, so I can afford to take my time and be completely satisfied before I cut anything.

I had one more thing I wanted to do today, and that was to clean up things on the Love In Vain block.  I may decide to print it again, before I exhibit it in the upcoming tenants show.  I think the proof I have is suitable, but it could be better.  Today was removing a few bits that picked up ink last time that I didn't want to.  Didn't take long, having completed my work on both blocks while the first disc was playing.

I had two more places to stop on the way home, so I decided to leave things there, clean up, and head home.

Blood Draw part 8

 Not much more I can do about the tenants show right now, but I have been dealing with it and other things for most of the past week.  I had sent things in as requested for the past few days, and hadn't heard anything, but with the holiday weekend, I didn't expect to.   Then yesterday I got an email from Joe Borzotta, asking for the form.  While Jeanne's email said that all mail to her regarding the show would be automatically forwarded to Joe, apparently it wasn't.  No problem- I just replied to his email and attached the file with the form, same as I had with Jeanne.  He replied that he received it, so all is well.  I have met all the deadlines for submitting information, so now its just a matter of framing the proofs.

Also yesterday I got a call from my domain host, asking why I hadn't put security on my site yet.  My reply was that I had put the security thing on my site and paid for it months ago. If it wasn't there, it was their fault.  A quick look at their records showed that indeed I had paid for it months ago, though it wasn't showing up when they loaded the site, and they promised to deal with it quickly.  Later I was told that the problem was that my site is a "legacy site", very old (I built it two computers ago) and they had pointed the security to the wrong place.  That was now taken care of but it may take a day or two to get through the web.   They said for free I could get a professionally designed site, and I don't know about that yet, but I do know I want to update what I have, since the site and its information hasn't been updated for almost a decade.  (the password, which I was required to change years ago, is in storage of course)  The problem is that the example site they give is much smaller than the one I have, which is not something I want.  Also a problem, all the images are on my old laptop, but it can't access the domain site from there- an old operating system I can't update.  (these is a way to transfer images from one computer to the other, but it's a long inconvenient process)  But the biggest problem of all, is that my old site gradually disappeared over the next few hours, so now I have nothing.  When the guy called me back about updating things, I had to tell him there was nothing to update.  I'll keep an eye on it, see if it is back by tomorrow as promised.

Meanwhile, another email from Jeanne (at least that still works, same company) this morning telling all the participants that this is the 3rd Annual Resident Art exhibition. Except it's not.  I had a whole conversation with Nichole about this last year.  Last year we had the second such show, but there was a gap of several years between the first and second shows, so it was not an annual thing.  Nichole didn't understand that annual implies a regular once a year event and just figured it was a word people used in promoting exhibitions.  For the same reasons, this may be our third show, but it's not been an annual event.  I don't care what they call it, but I figured Jeanne should know the truth, if she was still working on promotion. However, when I got there in the morning she was too busy to talk, so I decided I'd stop at the office later.  Besides, I had work to do.

I dealt with exhibition and computer stuff the past week, but there's nothing more I can do with either of those right now, so a good time to get back to work on the latest block. This time I was prepared for the value drawing (done with brush and ink for this one) and had a clamp light and bulb with me, as well as brushes and drawing ink.  I set up my Studio, clearing the table and turning off the room lights.  Then I mounted my clamp lamp on top of a folding easel I keep there in the Studio, in a place that seemed compatible with the shadows on the nurse figure. I used one of Molly's extension cords to bring the power.

Got out my ink and brushes, and filled my water can.  Mirrors set up.   I was ready.  I brought the rock/pop book today, selecting things based on recent exposure to ideas.  For example, I started with an X live album, Live at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go because yesterday I saw a reaction video of Johnny Rivers promoting an album he recored at the famous music venue.  A very old album now, as seen in the black and white clip, a cover of Chuck Berry, and being interviewed by a very young Dick Clark.  You can read my reaction to the X album here on this blog back in June of 2022.   When that ended, I put on Volume 4 by the Joe Jackson Band, also based on a recent exposure (mom talking about one of her grandchildren reminded me of a lyric) and you can read more about that album back on March of 2020.  Results of today's art session can be seen below:

I'm not done with the drawing yet, but made definite progress today. That round shape in the upper center, next to the nurse's head, is a place holder for a clock, a thing I remember from my times in the hospital, as well as my mother having seen one during her stay last month, which also included a lot of blood draws at all hours.  I don't know if I will keep it, change the size, the location, or what.  I will also look at the block for balance of light and dark, as well as check it in a mirror to see if it will work in reverse.   For now there is some tone around the face on the far left, which makes the light colors stand out more, as well as being part of the overall balance.  Back when I was teaching drawing (and this is essentially a drawing right now) I always told my students that in value drawing it is best to get rid of contour lines, and let edges separate values, and I have a lot of this to look at now.  They could do whatever they wanted with eh background, even if not accurate to the set up.  Of course some decisions will be made while cutting, drawing with the knife as they say.   But so far I like what I see.  I put Molly's extension cord back where it had been.

Stopped by the office again on my way out, and this time Jeanne was at her desk and not on the phone.  I explained the problem with calling it the 3rd Annual show and she seemed to understand it easily enough, but decided at this point she just didn't feel like changing it, so it would be called the 3rd Annual show.  Whatever- I passed on my information, and what happens from here I don't care much about.