June Gloom

What a really gloomy day it was today, actually a little drizzly, or maybe some people would call that a heavy mist. I can't believe I really thought we wouldn't have any June gloom. How silly is that. You can see it even in this photo.

You can see the lights on in the gallery next door to me, Gallery 21, which is has a rotating show that changes every two weeks. And then back there in the corner, you can definitely see there is something, another studio, my studio. And the lamp helped especially today, on a dark, gloomy day. I had about 10 or 12 people come into the studio. I'm not really ready yet. I still haven't hung up my etchings, and I haven't priced all my jewelry.

This week I'm concentrating on getting my pieces done for the jurying on Saturday. I need five pieces of paper art and five pieces that would be considered three-dimensional mixed media. I've got five pieces of paper art in various stages of completion. I made a great deal of progress today. I'll finish up tomorrow. Then I'll concentrate on the three-dimensional Thursday and Friday if necessary. I've got several of those pieces finished already and the others in various stages of completion. Using a combination of coming in on Friday and burning a little midnight oil should get me where I want to be.

When I first started the paper art, I made several pieces I wasn't too pleased with. They seemed manufactured, copies of earlier ones I had made. Then I started cutting up pieces of card stock and fiddling around with it, taking some scraps to use in the pieces. That was when I made some I'm happier with. I like taking leftover pieces of paper or metal or fabric or whatever and using them to make something. It's more creative than taking new materials and fabricating something.

One of the things I did was to make a little book with a sewn binding. I've studied the diagrams in the various bookmaking books, but they all seem so complicated. So I just did what made sense, and it worked just fine. Having a good paper cutter and a large work table made a big difference. It's so nice to be able to spread out on the table. It's a wonderful place to work. I'm very happy now. The more I use it, the more I enjoy having it. I never could have done what I did today without that big work space.