Here's a photo I took several days ago of the view from my worktable. I have to kind of laugh because if I point the camera to the right of where this photo was taken, I can never get a shot that doesn't look like it's crooked. Spanish Village was built for the Pacific Exposition in 1935, a temporary group of buildings that would be torn down at the end of the exposition. But a group of artists asked the City if they could rent it, and it has survived. The construction is casual and nothing is a very straight angle. If you sit in the main patio and try to sketch the buildings as you see them, your sketch will look like you don't understand the rules of perspective. For that reason, it's usually best to concentrate on a small area rather than a panorama, even in a photograph.
The wireless network has been down here in Spanish Village for several days. I'm not sure why, but anyway it seems okay now. If it's working, I don't question it. When it's not, I have the choice of going to troubleshoot it or taking the lazy way out and give up. One problem I run into is that if I wait until after 4:00 p.m. when the studios are closed, I don't have access to the one where the repeater is. I have no idea whether they have unplugged it, something they do upon occasion.
I was watching Good Morning America at the gym this morning. One of their reporters was visiting Plymouth, Massachussets, where the "residents" were preparing for Thanksgiving. There were various dishes on the wooden table in the thatched cottage. And the residents were dressed in 1620's costumes, attempting to show visitors exactly what life was like in those days. Even the conversation of the one of the residents reflected that she thought of herself as living in that time. But when they talked about the various food dishes they had prepared, the reporter said the recipes for the food could be downloaded from the ABC website. What did we do before the internet?
I've written some poetry that deals with the internet. I'd like to combine them with some of my etchings, a task that I'm currently working on. I have two large copper plates that I'm thinking I'll combine with a photo etched one to create some text in my artwork. Originally I talked to my professor about printing an etching and then putting the paper through the computer printer to print the text, but using a photo etched plate might be better. Then I could do the whole process myself. I don't know for sure at this point what I'm going to do. I have to think more about it.
I spent yesterday in printmaking working on a small edition of prints taken from one of the photo etched plates I created last week. Unfortunately they were over exposed, and a lot of detail was lost. But I mixed up some printing ink that was stiffer and used that, wiping carefully so that I didn't wipe off too much ink. Rembrandt use to print his etchings like that. Sometimes each etching was different from the next even though the plate was the same. He achieved differences by wiping more of less ink off the plate before he printed it. Nowadays, the acceptable way to create an edition is to print 5, 10, 25, 100, or however many prints, that all look more or less the same. But there's no reason why I can't make 10 prints all of which are different.
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