First Heat, Now Rain

Here's a photo I took this evening in my studio. The fabric covered table runs the entire length of the studio and has a shelf underneath where I store things. On top, as you can see, I have my jewelry displayed. On the far right, you may be able to discern the tall stand with the necklaces suspended from it. It's rather hard to see. I want to paint it black or navy blue so that it's not so obviously PVC. However, it works very well to display the longer necklaces. I was sitting at my table this evening looking over at it, and I noticed how the crystals in the necklaces glitter in the light as they moved ever so slightly.

When I came out of my house this morning, I was surprised to find it raining. Well, I suppose if you live in a rainy climate, you'd laugh to hear it called rain. However, it was a rather heavy drizzle. And it was still raining by the time I got to Spanish Village. My outside worktable, chair, and umbrella were wet. After greeting the glassblower who was working outside under her canopy, I immediately disappeared inside and turned on all the lights against the grey day.

I don't mind the rain. We certainly need it, but I find I have to sit outside to draw on my etching plates. I can't see in the studio because the light causes the wrong reflection. I realized I'd have to wait unless I wanted to sit in the rain. I didn't want to sit in my studio and not work. So I spent time looking up some information in one of my books and reading the printmaking supplies catalog. I could have switched to working on jewelry to keep myself busy, but I wasn't mentally prepared for it.

Finally, around noontime, it stopped raining and I went to work outside. One of the Spanish Village artists came to talk to me about altered books. Her mother just died and she says she'd like to preserve some of the memories and feelings she has right now. She expressed interest in my journals and books several years ago when I first started making altered books. She said I had inspired her to create a book, that she had never seen anyone else making them.

She wanted to know how I happened to be creating them. I tried to trace back in my mind, but I couldn't remember, only that I have been keeping a journal for about 20 years, on and off. And I've always decorated them and pasted things in them. Now I find them a great place to store other items such as money order stubs, receipts, phone numbers, labels from bottles, articles from magazines. Anything I want to keep and lots of things I just keep, for no particular reason.

Currently I'm keeping a journal in which I keep track of what I eat each day. It was something my personal trainer asked me to do. At first, I just wrote down food information, but soon I was filling the backs of the pages with all kinds of information. I showed her what I was doing currently. It's so nice to have an interaction like that with other artists, each of us encouraging the other in some way, learning from the other, being inspired.

I've started using the pages in my food journal to draw on. I've created six or eight drawings that would make a nice series of etchings. They're a slightly different size than the others I've created. I discovered early in my etching career that I could buy very nice, thick. acid-free mats that fit in standard size frames. They were particularly nice because they have a larger than usual amount of white mat around the opening, making them look elegant and expensive. So I use to cut all my etching plates to fit within the openings of the mats. Now it seems I may not be able to get them anymore which means I'll have to get them custom made for about three times what I was paying. But the advantage is that I can create a series of etchings in a different size.

I'm beginning to find that the size of things can cause me to modify or change a project. I have to worry about the size of my jewelry wire, the size of my glass dish, the size of the mat opening, the size of the saucer to catch water under my plant, the size of the foot of the computer monitor, the length of the ruler, the . . . . It goes on and on. I just have to laugh and keep going.