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I don't have any of my own pictures for a postcard today. I took some with my camera, but just got home and it is very late, so I will have to download them tomorrow. I was joking with my hosts in MN that I really didn't feel I could leave MN until the whole Franken/Coleman situation was settled. Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that votes cast for Franken in the November election were counted fairly. Norm Coleman conceded and it is likely that Franken will be sworn in after the 4th of July, finally able to start serving his constituency, only seven months after being elected. The news all day in Minneapolis said this was a relatively swift proceeding, given that it went all the way up to the state Supreme Court. Anyway, felt good to know that was in the bag before I left tonight.

More Art...It Just Never Stops in Minneapolis/St. Paul

I had dinner tonight with a dear friend from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design's Women's Art Institute that we both attended in 2007. Carolyn Halliday is a fiber artist and had so many good reports about shows she is in, and shows and grants for which she is applying. What an inspiration.

We met at the Minnesota Textile Center - a national center for fiber art. What a great resource this is for fiber artists everywhere. Wonderful library, training rooms, and a lot of knowledge of knitting, weaving, dyeing, sewing, stitching, quilting, embroidery....the list goes on. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Carolyn toured me through the facility and then we saw the current show - she won Best In with her pieces entitled Aphrodite's Dilemma. Carolyn knits with metal. Her sacred forest of trees at the WAI critiques in 2007 was one of my favorites.


Here is her current work from the Textile Center show:


Side tech note: I didn't have the Sacred Forest photo on my laptop that's with me here in MN, but did have it in my iPhoto library on my home iMac. I went to Finder on the laptop, ported in to my home computer via "Share Screen," found the photo in the iPhoto library and clicked on "email." The home computer went into my email program on that unit and allowed me to enter my own email as an addressee, then sent it. It then showed up in my email box on my laptop thanks to the wonders of MobileMe. Gotta love Apple for this remote in capability. Note to all: I had to set up these permissions before I left home to allow screen sharing. I could probably click into the camera on that computer via PhotoBooth, if I wanted to see what is going on in my home garage/studio. But that might be a little creepy....

Gelatin Print Making

What a treat! Today we went to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) for a private class with Lin Lacy.

Laurie has a permanently installed piece of public art at MCBA:


And so does Lin:

Here's Lin getting us ready to start:

Lin made us a beautiful breakfast, in itself a work of art, and showed us her newly remodeled home with spacious grounds and a magical lilac tree that I can only dream of having in California (they just don't seem to grow large like that back home). She has bunnies hopping around, a bountiful garden, and a kitchen sink from the Emirates that I would love to have. Plus, a commercial dishwashing faucet that will shoot water across the entire house.

Lin made us each a gelatin plate on Saturday, so these plates were nicely set up by the time we went to use them this morning. We used brayers, found objects, mesh bags and stamps to make textures and impressions on the plates, then simply laid paper over the top of the inked plate and gently rubbed with our fingertips. The results were very satisfying.

Lin about ready to use a rubber stamp on her inked up plate:

Here are some pictures of us at the MBCA studio, and a couple of shots of work I produced. It's all good - those that didn't turn out so well as stand-on-their-own pieces will be perfect for incorporating into collages or as encaustic pieces. Thank you Lin! I'll return in the spring when we will have an encaustic class to return the favor.

Laurie in her printing apron, inking up her brayer:

Here I am inking up my gelatin plate:

A piece I did with some leaves from a tree in Laurie's yard, with a stamp overlay:

A diptych made with cardboard letters:


Another version of the leaves piece with a contrasting border:


A little detour into the type room - it was filled to the gills with typeface. Wow.

In the Cave

For Laurie's birthday, we* all went to the Mystery Caves in southern MN. There are about 13-14 miles of navigable passages, if you are an experienced "caver." We stuck to a very nicely paved route through about 3/4 of a mile of the caves. We saw bats, pooled water, stalagtites that have taken more than 350,000 years to form, and flowing limestone that is just beautiful in it's frozen moment. We also saw an 8 foot deep pool with a beautiful blue bottom.

We had fun in the car playing a word game with Jon, but truth be told, I enjoyed a nice nap on the way there, and the way back. Lunch in the state park and a strange encounter with some Luddites in Forestville who had a steam powered copy machine were also part of the day. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take their picture. :(

* Paige, Karen, Laurie, Jon and Laura

Here are some photos of the day:

Saturday's ArtCation Activities

Today I was intending to go see an exhibit on pieces of things together at the Walker Art Museum, but I got lost down at the Mill Ruins area of the river in downtown, then made a wrong turn off the freeway and found myself at the Port of Minnesota. Who knew?

There, I found large, shiny piles of black coal - the kind your parents warned you would be in your Christmas stocking if you didn't behave. We don't see coal in California - it's not a major part of our energy menu. But coal as an energy source here in the midwest is huge, and seeing the piles like that make it all the more real.

Here are some photos from today. Tonight there was a salon at the Phillips-Spayde home and we were treated to Jon's one man show on the History of the Vibrator. I'll have pictures and more about that tomorrow. We're going spelunking tomorrow too!

Collaging in Minnesota

Today we did a mini-workshop on collaging techniques at Laurie Phillip's house with her friend Becky. Laurie is a graphic designer, coach, artist and co-inventor of Vision Cards. We started by listening to Jon Spayde read from Episodes by Pierre Delattre. These are exquisitely written 800 word pieces.

For the art, we took off from Claudine Hellmuth’s tips, using the caulking material to transfer images, and the watered-down paint and shape masking as techniques for creating interesting backgrounds. We also used Anna Corba’s painting techniques for making interesting papers to use later in collaging.

Here is Becky using the fan to dry paint on her piece.

Here I am - happy, smiling and doing art.


Laurie shows off her painted paper.


The cigar box interior and exterior we finished:



The small collage we did to showcase many of the techniques:


Tonight is BAD ART NIGHT. It will be fascinating to see what comes up for me here.

Fishies

These fish prints were challenging for me. Initially, I liked the way the images came off the press. Using the fish cut from paper as masks on the plate left stark white places, or in some cases I textured up the fish with ink and set it on the plate to reprint and it produced a nice mottled image. But then I got these home and they looked amateurish next to the red and black pieces I'd done toward the end of the day on Sunday.

I let the fishies sit for the day, then pulled them out tonight, and started embellishing with watercolor, colored pencil and pastels. Now I really like them! I wish I'd photographed them "naked." I'll have to remember to do that next time, so that there is the "before" to go with the "after."

More detail shots are posted at the end of this entry. Click on the images for even more detail.

Workshop #1 Complete

The weekend went by too quickly at Aurobora Press, in San Francisco. Today, there was a Giant's game going on in the background, as the studio is just a few blocks from the ballpark. So, there was a lot of foot traffic in the alley, but we were immersed in our work.

I started the day continuing with the fish, and getting more sophisticated with layering and textures, thanks to the good instruction from Master Printer Deb Sibony. But in the end, partly due to my desire to always use out all my inks, I worked with the red and black on my palette that I had not been using in the fish pieces. The result, six 13x13 monotypes with 8x8 plates, are works I'm very happy with. I used a scratch tool to incise the circles after laying in the black and red ink with a brayer using the techniques Deb taught us today.

I love to use the circles in my work, and I was able to do several ghost prints from the plates, alternating with adding Olivera oil to the centers of the circles along with more contrasting ink. When I got home, and back to my vast pile of ephemera, only a few pieces of torn paper were needed to complete the series. We return to Aurobora in about a month. In the meantime, I have a lot to do to make the fish series more complete. I'll show some of those base images in tomorrow's blog. It's late and my feet hurt.

First Day at the Aurobora Press Master Class

Today was my first day in Aurobora Press' new location and the first day of the five month Master Class workshop I'm taking there. Aurobora recently moved from Natoma Street, behind the SFMOMA, to 370 Brannan in SOMA.

The new space is light-filled and beautifully remodeled by Michael Liener. It is also within a very short walk to the South Park area, which has several nice restaurants and a tree-filled park. I'm going to enjoy being in this location for this Master Class.

Deb Sibony, Master Printer, setting up the press:

And mixing the inks:

My first plate, all inked up and ready to print:

The first few monotypes - the Fish Series: