Tenacity

Recently, my husband decided he wanted to "fix-up" my old '94 Toyota pickup. First, he buffed and polished the exterior. Next, he power-washed the engine and removed all the fir needles and moss that had become lodged in the windows, vents, doors, etc. Things were looking good...though he kept talking about turning the truck into his personal "boy toy."

One day, I came home to find he had pulled out the bench seat, the carpeting and the dashboard. The only way to drive the truck was by sitting on a plastic stool (needless to say, it didn't get driven except to jockey around cars in the driveway). He then started working with wood and building boxes for, oh my God, speakers and amplifiers for a new stereo system. I should tell you that he has never actually installed a car stereo before and both of us were unsure of how successful he would be.

He worked on this stereo set-up for days - full weekends were spent in the garage building (and rebuilding) boxes. He also spent many evenings after work with the project. After getting the boxes just right, he began to do the wiring, which he described as "60 wires that I don't know how to connect yet." When I looked at the gaping dashboard and saw the chaos, I knew that I would've quit right then. This is the dashboard:

Horrifying.

Anyhow, I believe in him. I've seen him tear apart motorcycles and rebuild them to running condition, with only a manual by his side. This afternoon, I walked down to taunt, I mean, ask him how it was going when I heard music coming from the interior of the truck. Glory be! He hooked the thing up and, with a little tweaking of the amplifier, he was able to get full-scale, downtown LA, throbbing bass.

We both did a little jig in honor of his genius (though my jig looked better). Here he is, basking in the glory of his accomplishment.

All hail, the tenacious one!

Portraits from yesterday

As I said yesterday, I took a number of photos of my friend, Crysta (4 rolls of film and a number of digital shots to be exact). Here are a couple shots from the G9 that I took. I think they turned out really well (fortunately, she's very photogenic and was an accommodating model). I'm hoping the film shots will be well-exposed and will produce something she and I like.

In my garden

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with a friend this afternoon and take a bunch of portraits of her. She was very tolerant of my "four camera" method of photography, which involves (of course) four cameras (Lubitel with a flash, Fujica 6x4.5, Nikon 35mm film, and Canon G9) slung all over my person and switching on and off a photo flood. I have to take the color film to the lab and get into the darkroom to develop the black & white (I'm hoping I got decent exposures). I may post one of the digital images here in the meantime if she's okay with it.

Because it's so nice, I decided to wander around the garden a bit with the macro function of my G9. I was lucky enough to find this red ant covered in pollen in a dandelion. Unfortunately, this is the only somewhat sharp image I got. At one point I got so close to the ant that he landed on my lens - too close to shoot but it was cool looking - like a dark, ant-shaped cloud.

Hungry ant

I also shot this blue flower - pollen is so cool looking in macro!

Too long on my kitchen counter

Poor celeraic! What did you ever do to deserve a fate such as this? You promised lovely celery scents and tastes as a stock for some delicious soup, but that was never to be. You languished, waiting for attention and for all your possibilities as a culinary delight to be realized. Weeks later, you were a mere shadow of your former, fresh self - a shriveled up, coarse root that could only justify your sad fate by being so wonderfully photogenic.

Celeraic

The rains have returned

Last week we had a bit of a respite from the rain and chilly weather. Oh well, it's April so there's nothing surprising about cold, windy and rainy weather. For all the lousy weather we live with on a regular basis, Northwesterners never tire of complaining about it. We ought to find something else to kvetch about. Fortunately, the days are growing longer so that seems to make up for the periods of dreariness that come and go. Plus, the rain makes for pretty photos...

More rust

More rusty surfaces from the latest Tacoma Tide Flats photo tour...

My intention is to use this surface in a digital collage but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's still cool-looking as a stand-alone piece.

Recent encaustics

I spent Wednesday afternoon in the garage working on some encaustics. This first piece is something I've been working on for a while...I'll add something and hate it so I remove it. The only thing consistent was the blue ground (which you can now only see through the photo) and the photo. I actually broke into the color wax I've had squirreled away (I found a $20 electric griddle that seems to work well) and tried to lay in some color to the surface. I think the transfers show up really well over the color (the map is a sailing route in the South Pole and the circle is some sort of medieval distorted view of the world as 6 spheres). I'm not sure what it means yet but there's something about journeys and identity in there.

With the next piece, I drew with charcoal directly on the board and then applied the medium on top of it, hence the smearing. I then framed it with the reddish brown and applied metallic watercolor to the surface. Unsure about meaning with this one either...knots? Being bound up? Charcoal squiggles? I like the look of the smeared charcoal so I think I'll play around with that some more.

This last piece is just a first step. I was listening to a story on the CBC about flying squid and went looking for pictures of squids in flight. I found a photo of one in the air (about 1 foot off the water from what I could tell) and messed with it in Photoshop to turn it into a black & white line-drawing-like figure. I then transferred it directly onto the board using nail polish remover (ugh! don't get me started on how nasty that stuff smells). I then applied a layer of medium and a thin layer of the metallic watercolor. Not sure where I'm going from here, but it definitely needs color.

Flying squid

A morning in Seattle

I went to the Frye Art Museum in Seattle this morning to see a sculpture show by a Taiwanese artist named Li Chen. The work was beautiful in its decay and roughness. He used clay, rope, wood, and wire to build his figures, which aspire to immortality and greatness but are finite and earth-bound.

Detail from Eternity by Li Chen

Figures from Soul Guardians by Li Chen

If you haven't gotten to see this exhibit, it's worth a trip. Admission to the Frye is free and there is free parking! The museum is closing in a couple days for renovations so get there while you can.

After my museum visit, I made a trip to Kinokuniya and bought some stickers, pens and books (I really must stop buying books!). I then wandered into Uwajimaya where picked up some Sencha tea (a bargain at $10 for 100 teabags), roasted chestnuts (supposedly organic) and tiny mochi that came with their own plastic pickle fork.

All-in-all a really fine day.

Work-free Monday

What a delight to have 9 days off in a row. Yesterday, it was wandering around the Tide Flats taking photos. Today it's been chill-out time with practicing Czech (the few words I know), a yoga class, errands, and working Lightroom and Photoshop. I printed a couple of the pieces I was working on. This one I printed on a Pictorico Unryu paper (it has beautiful threads running through it). I cropped it and split-toned it. I really like how it looks like a drawing.:

Ducks in the muck

This next image is the bigger piece I worked on that includes the above image. Didn't like how it printed on a fiber paper so I'll have to try it again with different ICC settings perhaps.

Ocean triptych

It's so beautiful right now - I'm an idiot for being inside. I need to get my outdoor clothes on and work in the garden while I have the chance.

Rusty Tacoma

One of the great features of old, industrial cities is the decay and rust that can be found despite all efforts of city councils to modernize and "prettify." Tacoma has a great industrial area that has many abandoned spaces side-by-side with functioning buildings and industries.

Today we took an early morning photo wander around Tacoma's Tide Flats area with a friend. I schlepped my Fujica 6x4.5 and Zero Image pinhole cameras along with the Canon G9 (I can never be accused of favoring one camera over another). Took lots of rust photos with the idea of using them for textures in digital collage. However, I may just keep some of them as stand-alone photos since they're so cool looking.

I took a G9 macro shot of these rusty nails that were scattered on a cruddy old forklift.

Rusty nails

It never ceases to amaze me how many photo-worthy scenes I can find just by stepping in close.

Spider and the fly

This spider spent quite a bit of time in my window catching flies.

Here's one of the flies that didn't survive.

Should be doing other things

I ought to be doing something productive, but instead I'm meandering around the computer. I could be in recovery mode from Artfest, or I could just be lazy (probably the latter).

I just upgraded to Lightroom 4 so I've been noodling around there. New features and some things that I used to hate (boosting brightness and contrast on import) are apparently gone. Hurray! I'll have to spend more time with it to see what else has changed.

Here's a shot I took the other day of a placid ocean and cruel looking clouds in Port Townsend.