Projects – Page 6

Back and forth

April 26, 2013 by Jes

Some days I feel like I am part of two worlds.

I have my day job, which helps pay bills, buy art supplies, and important things (like groceries). I also have my art work and my art jobs. Usually those are separated throughout the week, depending on what day, or part of the day it is.

Today I felt like I was ping-ponging back and forth between both worlds. Starting first with a shift at my day job, then to drop off artwork, pick up my dad’s artwork, back to a second shift at my day job, and then off to the St. Paul Art Crawl. It was a long day, but I have enjoyed so much of it.

The St. Paul Art Crawl is pretty awesome! We did not get to much of it, because I didn’t get off of work until late, and because I have a lot more artwork I need to be working on the rest of the weekend. But the little sliver we did see was pretty great! I definitely want to go back and hang out in Lowertown St. Paul a bit more.

We went specifically to find Leatherworks MN. I had seen a bit of their work at Northerngrade this past winter, and wanted a better look. They have a lot of great things! It was so nice to stop and chat with them, and happily I have a new wallet and a new little clutch on the way!

We left there to see fire dancers dancing on the street, and grab a bit of dinner at Tanpopo Noodle Shop. I could easily spend all weekend there.

Of course, this is my weekend off from my day job, and it will be another albeit shorter installment of ‘make all the things’ weekend. I have a lot of work to be done, and we’ll see how far I get!

As usual, here are the poems I have written over the past few days. Have a wonderful weekend!

April 24th

Pedaling

pedaling
propulsion
acceleration
first ride of spring
freezing
raindrops bring
the smell of wet pavement
wind
stinging cold
pushing myself
to go faster
faster
faster
coast.

April 25th (Inspired by a headline that kept popping up in my blog reader)

In France

If you are living in one particular province in France,

your morning paper may be brought to you by a small flying whirring drone,

they don’t need to be tipped, but not paying on time will lead to shredded papers.

Your morning espresso may soon be brought by a small tinny metal robot.

His name is Nicolas. He specializes in Lattes. He accepts tips in the form of tiny bottles of small engine oil.

Your mail will be delivered by teleportation.

Beware, glitches in the system can scramble your package contents rendering the item useless.

Call the main lifestyle troubleshooting hotline if you require assistance with any of the above.

April 26th

Fire Dancer

barefoot on black asphalt
she spins and twirls
arms and feet working out
a fast tempo
familiar pattern.
she must have done this a million times.
fire flaring
leaving its own glowing trails
surrounding her in a web of light.
what a wonderful feeling it must be
to be a light bearer
and dance with wings of fire.

The potential for racing

April 23, 2013 by Jes

Another sunshine filled studio day.

Another day filled with the potential of taking crazy turns, with potential for adventure.

Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating that just a bit, but it is very sunny here today, and I feel like there is potential for today to be great. Or not. Either way, I will take the sunshine!

It was a busy weekend full of working shifts at my day job, and one amazing senior photo shoot that included snow and a giant metal number 5! (Yes, you can still take awesome photos in the snow!) This week it is back to working on artwork for my show, processing portraits, and getting ready for the upcoming art festivals. So much to be done!

I’m off for a date with my platen press at my studio today! I am working on printing the map blocks I have carved. I printed one linoleum block last week, but the wood block I was engraving still needed some work. I spent a bit of time on it last night, and I’m hoping it will print well today! Fingers crossed! I may do a bit of typesetting as well today. I’m very torn between making one last book, and making compilation photo prints with words typeset on them. We’ll see where I end up going with that.

In the mean time, here are the poems I have written over the weekend for the 30 poems in 30 days challenge. I’m still going! I’m also a bit sad that the end is close…I’m having a lot of fun with this!

April 21st

Three thrushes
Feathery, brown and white
Flew into the window today.
One did not fly again.
The reflection of more
Tall oak trees
Too much temptation
For their minds.

My uncle sat
Eating breakfast
Telling of their migration
How far they had come
And how tired
To meet a fate so cold and taunting.

He often makes me wish
I was a birder
And paid attention
To the tiny details
Their distinctive markings
And flight patterns
Where to find them on early morning walks.

But my attention seems to be the same
As the poor birds
Landing for just a second
Before flying off into the next reflection.

April 22nd (just a couple of silly sketches of poems – two haikus on the snow, and one other)

Snow ~

I wonder how far
one would have to drive away
to be out of snow.

where should i escape
to be allowed a bike ride
without icy winds?

New skin~

she drove fast
faster
floored it until
the car vibrations matched
her racing pulse
as if by driving fast
she could unzip herself
an old shell falling away
a brand new layer underneath.

April 23rd (First line inspired by a Dorothea Lange quote)

You are out there on the thin edge
between history and the future,
this thin line called the present.
A tight rope walk through a black hole;
don’t look down
the sound below will be deafening.
Hold my hand and smile
lets give them a show!

One more

April 18, 2013 by Jes

One more long work day before a long weekend mostly spent at my day job, but with one photo shoot thrown in for good measure.

Today my goal is to see how far I can get binding books and making covers and colophons. Thanks to a studio day on Tuesday, I now have a set of prints from one linoleum block, and more to carve out of my wood block.

Everything keeps moving.

Poetry challenge:

April 17th – (I found a quote I wrote in my journal quite some time ago. It is a quote by Dorothea Lange, and I used part of it – “You’re right on the thin edge” as part of the inspiration for this poem. The rest of the inspiration came from another ‘Three Things’ edition from Hazel and Wren.)

1.
You’re right on the thin edge
of the threshold
a wooden beam
painted, sanded smooth
separating you
from a suffocating sea.
The door open wide
asking you to go out,
the sea to come in.

2.
The waves lap
with interest
a question in their rhythm
coyly wondering
how you might taste.

3.
Inside the tea party continues
tiny cucumber sandwiches
on whole wheat bread
with butter
and over sweetened tea
lace table cloth
and fine china
each tea cup staring
asking what it would take
to make you break.

April 18th – (no particular inspiration for this one, in fact it is kind of blah and short. I may write more later today.)

Wind
leaves and branches bend
the oak leaves still have not fallen.

I shiver
shut inside
turn away from the oak leaves
back to my work.

landing for a minute

April 16, 2013 by Jes

The last few days have been a blur.

Having a weekend off of work was amazing, having so much time to work on artwork for my show. I managed to get a few major things finished, or closer to completion. There is still quite a way to go, but I am closer.

I appreciate all the encouraging comments many of you have left on Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr over the weekend as I was posting photos of what I was working on. It means so much!

Yesterday was filled with so many ups and downs, being back to work, listening to what happened in Boston…

Facebook is a good place to find quotes, and this morning was no different. At the top of my timeline this morning was this: “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” ~Gandhi

There are many heart-breaking sad events in the world every day. What happened in Boston is sad, and sadly not the only one. But I believe, at least for myself, that we have to keep believing that good is possible, to keep putting positive energy out into the universe, and keep making beautiful things.

Today there were will be more creating, more printing, more paper cutting, and more writing for me. There will be a lot less broadcast radio and tv…but perhaps that is just my way of coping.

Last night John and I had a chance to go to one of the films being shown during the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival at St. Anthony Main Theater. If you have a chance to go see any of the movies during the festival, GO! We try to see as many as we can. The movies we can’t see get added to our list to watch later. Last night we saw Allez, Eddy which was great! A story about a family who has owned a butcher shop for generations, and the youngest child who has dreams to be a bicycle racer instead of a butcher. I hope we make it to a few more movies before the fest is over.

I have still been writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month, and even though I was busy with artwork this weekend and didn’t keep up on blogging, I still wrote my daily poems. Here they are in their usual raw unedited form:

Saturday, April 13th (more a list poem and journal of my day)

art supplies:
paper for a flip book
fresh linoleum block
exacto knife.

dresses:
4 green dresses tried on
emerald green
teal green
greenish blue with lace
green tea green with lace
finally fit.

dress shirts:
3 shirts tried on
shiny satin red
darker linen red
white
darker red and grey finally picked
and a grey sport coat with white pin stripes.

lunch:
pizza
back corner table
by the window
people watching
mustard yellow pants
blue hair streaks
many leather jackets.

home:
baking raspberry muffins
white bean pot pie
coding programs
gluing photos and boxes
drinking white wine
that tastes like citrus
like summer.

somehow you make the mundane
the small details
seem amazing.

Sunday, April 14th (inspired by a line posted in Ojibwe on Facebook by Heid Erdrich)

Every day is a good day.

Each day will change everything forever.
there are a million options
a zillion ways each day can play out
an infinite number of ways a day can end.

But each day we are here
each day we start together
every day we end together
is just the very best
of an infinite number of possibilities.

Every day is a good day.

Monday, April 15th (inspired by a ‘Three Things‘ photo post on the Hazel and Wren blog)

she fancied herself
one who could dance
on nothing but air.
moving weightlessly,
as if the music alone
could carry her
with the wind.

she ate nothing
but eggs
to keep her feet
as light as the birds
so she could dance
ever higher
and fox trot
with the clouds
and mingle with the stars.
the habitants of the sky
so much more interesting
and more graceful dancers
than human partners.

she was the best dancer
of all the humans,
her feet tiny and nimble,
as if they had their own
feathery wings.

she was unaware
that her ego had become
heavier than her
tiny body.
the air grew tired of lifting her
and simply left her to fall.
she plummeted back to earth
past a dusty grey
elephant swimming through the clouds.

“how are you here swimming,
and I am falling”
she demanded to know.
“you chose to be better
than anything that helped you
along your way, including the air.
An elephant never forgets
to tell the air
‘thank you for choosing me’”

Tuesday, April 16th (inspired by that same photo, and a line I jotted down in a note on my phone a long time ago, and a bit from reading the last book in the Wicked series)

be where your feet are
track each step
every foot fall
plot them out like a map
you will always know where you are.
be aware
be aware
the wrens sing to you
the flying monkeys are hot on your tail
when you start flying with them
floating with the stars and lightning bugs
swimming with the elephants
you will no longer be able to be tracked.

~Choose Love~

Maps

April 12, 2013 by Jes

Perhaps more prose than poem today, more story than anything else, but I am posting it anyway.

Digital knew her human
wouldn’t come to her world.
Her human wasn’t that type of person,
the type to code a life in Digital World
and live there.
Her human stayed in Real World,
and used only a few of the benefits
from Digital World.
Her organizational services were a good example of this.

Since her human wouldn’t come to her,
she had to resort to following her human
as best she could
when there was a signal,
when her human took a photo,
released a geo tag into the world.
She hoped that her human would
one day understand
and join her in Digital World.

She made her human little trinkets of their travels,
maps to go with photos,
boxes decorated with Real World memories,
little photo books…
She couldn’t exactly make them herself,
but in Digital World it was quite easy
to find a human willing to help
construct something in Real World.

Her human could never understand
that she was behind
these little trinkets showing up,
that they came from her.
This made her even more lonely.

Summer

April 11, 2013 by Jes

An intriguing title for a blog post, especially if like me you live in Minnesota. We won’t talk about it beyond that, except to say that my title does have a reason. More on that in a bit.

Today was one more day in the ‘make all the things’ weekend! I felt quite distracted today though, and feel like I didn’t get as much done as I could have, even though I still accomplished a lot. Tomorrow is a new day, however, and even though I do have to work part of the day, I will still have a lot of time to devote to my artwork. We’ll see what that brings.

I did start work on my second triptych box!

I’m excited with where this box is going. It will be quite different from the first, though it will have the same form.

The most important thing to me today is the fact that I finally feel like I am pulling these pieces together into one show with one theme. I know it is easy for me to see the connections between the pieces, but not always that easy for someone else to see. I think I finally know how they will all be presented this time, and that I think will tie everything together quite nicely.

Part of my distraction today was caused by The Princess, who seemed a bit upset by the storm and needed help making a place to burrow. I helped her come up with this little set up, and she seemed to settle down.

She keeps life interesting around here.

I had a hard time getting started on a poem today. I finally ended up sort-of using a prompt from Hazel and Wren’s blog to write about a fireplace. My poem is about a bon fire instead of a fireplace, but it was a good prompt to use. It made me think about great summer nights spent with my cousins outside by the pool.

Summer

goldenrod flames reach towards
the oak and pine trees that stand
a tall guard around us
just far enough back
to not get burned.

sparks swirl up
joining a clear navy blue sky
full of as many tiny stars
as you can see from the city.

the smell of chlorine
burned marshmallow sugar
wine coolers
root beer
wet dog
and watermelon
mix together.

a little further out
the flicker of citronella
tiki torches spot the dark
stone path with light
the glow of the pool lights
casting a neon blue green beyond that.

we swim until we feel
like we will never ever be dry again
eat toasted marshmallows and s’mores
until we could explode
then eat a giant watermelon between us.

damp and sticky i bike home after
knowing we’ll do this all over again soon.

Extra days

April 10, 2013 by Jes

I often find myself wishing for extra days. Extra hours, or minutes even. There has been a lot going on lately, and I have often felt like I’m non-stop-running from job to job to project.

Because of the threat of bad weather, schedules were changed at my day job, and I wound up with today off of work. My ‘make all the things’ weekend started a day early!

I made the most of it! There are now prints ready for my next box, quite a bit more of my wood block engraved, test prints done, more ideas thought, and new artwork framed for the gift shop at Bloomington Art Center.

At first, I didn’t know where I should even start. I still couldn’t fathom having an extra day to myself. So, I ~~piled~~ organized everything on the kitchen table, and picked something to start with.

Before long, it looked like this:

Happy chaos of prints, book pages, and everything else. More of that tomorrow!

I wrote poem #10 today. I wrote it earlier today while I was in between bits of projects. I noticed there were no birds or squirrels out here, and the princess was huddled in a corner of the room. Everything seemed to be waiting. It isn’t my favorite poem, but it is one for today.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere seems to be holding its breath,
waiting,
keeping all of us waiting
for the crescendo,
the seemingly inevitable storm
that will plunge us back into winter,
remind us that the ground is still sleeping
and the growing season is still not here.

We will see what the storm brings tonight!

Dear Tuesday, thank you.

April 9, 2013 by Jes

Today was one of those amazing days where things work, bits of projects are completed, the cosmos seem to align, blah blah blah! I completed the last two print runs for the little book I’m creating for my show. I do still have to figure out how to print the cover, but the pages are at least done.

I had a great afternoon making pottery with my dad. After that I had a great evening with John cleaning out closets! … Ok, at least I thought it was great. We now have a few bags of things to take to a friend’s garage sale next month. Yay!

I am very excited to have a long weekend off of work ahead of me. This long weekend will be spent working on more pieces for my show. I have only one supply run to make. The rest of the time will be devoted to gluing, printing, carving, and creating. I am really looking forward to it. I have even named it the “make all the things’ weekend! :)

‘Cleaning out’ has been on my mind for awhile and considering I did exactly that today, it is the topic I chose to write my poem about.

Un-nesting
is what he calls it
when i play whirlwind
pull everything out of closets
examining the fit, color,
texture and memory
of each item
before sorting
keep
storage
trash.

Teaching
is what I call it.
Teaching myself again
that memories are not stored
in objects
but in photographs
and journals.

Maybe just a few objects…

Day 8

April 8, 2013 by Jes

Among other things, today I worked a bit on the wood block I am engraving.

I also wrote another poem for NaPoWriMo. Actually, I wrote two today. The first one is really one I was working on to tie together a few elements in my show. I did write it all today, but wondered if it should count and weather it is really a poem, or more a descriptive string of words.

Either way, here is today’s contribution to the challenge:

Stunningly beautiful
things can happen in
very nondescript places.
Photos you love
could show scenes
that came
from any one
of a million locations.
But Digital knows
where they came from.
She can give you
a time stamp
weather report
and a map for each.
She can help you find them
again.

And the last one for today:

I need to have music
and the electric hum
of the air cleaner
to fall asleep.
I don’t always have to
see the moon
but I need to know
it is there.
I need to hear
him breathing
next to me.
I need to have
the perfect weight
of blankets
be the perfect
temperature
have a glass of water
my cell phone
and my glasses
right beside my bed
to fall asleep.
It is a wonder that
I ever get any
sleep at all.

Sunshine and studio days!

April 4, 2013 by Jes

Yes, I was up late last night, but I managed to finish all the photo jobs that had been waiting for me. Today will be a day full of completing art show applications, printer testing, and working on artwork for my bindery gallery show.

I love days like this, that are full of possibility!

This weekend I will be going to a small local tech conference, and hopefully learning a bit more about WordPress and a few other technologies I have used lately. I’m planning some major updates to my website and blog later this summer, and I’m hoping to learn a lot at this conference!

The 30 days of Poetry challenge has gone well! The poems I have written are nothing great, but I am writing. This has worked well for me (yes, I know, it has only been four days). I do plan on posting more of them here soon. Possibly when I hit #5…

In other news, my Christmas Cactus has a flower! …. Which is strange, because obviously it isn’t anywhere close to Christmas time. I will have to do a bit of research on this little plant soon I guess! For now, I’m just happy to have that bright color on my computer desk!

Have a great day everyone!