firsts

My ether buddy Denise Aumick and I have been trying to get together IRL since May. We finally managed it yesterday. We met in a town on the Hudson River that is the roughly halfway point between our two home towns and talk-talk-talked, then had a meander... and found this intriguing bit of broken sidewalkand wandered into Beadwildered Women -- a vintage bead
and button store with two extraordinarily helpful owner-operators and the as-implied bewildering but very seductive array of cool stuff (alas, no website). I spent too much money, but got this neat pewter medallion that I think is going to find its way into a Moby Dick panel. It made me think of Queequeg. I also picked up some amoeboid doo-dads that I'm not sure I have a use for, but that I fell for in a big way. (and which seemed to inspire the person who was helping me to ask: Are you an artist? And I just said: Yes. And was not cleft in two by lightning.) As soon as my camera battery charges up again, I'll spill out everything and post a shot.

Happy trails, y'all.

rant

Why, precisely why, is the Post Office so maddening? I went Saturday -- yes, I know -- prepared, I thought, for long lines and short tempers. I had an envelope of material overdue to the library -- yes, I know -- and the clothespin people nestled in their foam core in a pre-addressed mailing envelope. I needed an envelope for the library package and to know the weight/postage for the book exchange.
I started a postal collage on the ToC of the book in hopes that each person who gets it might stick down one of the cancelled stamps and/or other stickies from the package as they receive it. So I wanted stamps for the clothespin people package. Stamps. The primary commodity of the Post Office. You would think I had asked the clerk to recite the list of gases that comprise the atmosphere of Jupiter.
It's two-thirty-six, she said.
Yes, I'd like stamps.
Wha... you wanna book?
A book? I thought. They have a book of stamps that adds up to $2.36?
Clearly my hesitation exacerbated the confusion I had sown by this extraordinary request. So the clerk turned to the one other clerk who was working on midday on a Saturday and said: "She dozzun wan the [mumbled string of initials that stand for the register-tape thingy that if I had been in my right mind I would have accepted]. She wans stamps."
The other clerk seemed equally flummoxed: Stamps?
Now the line -- which wrapped almost completely around the perimeter of the airless room -- was getting restive. And I'm thinking of how, in May, the Post Office "lost" a package I mailed to Scotland because the PO doesn't recognize Scotland as an independent location. Anything mailed to Scotland should, I learned, include not UK, for United Kingdom, but rather GB, for Great Britain. Go figure. But do they tell you this when they accept the package? Oh please, would there be any sport in that? So a month went by and then Scots Heather (the recipient) emailed to let me know that the package -- shipped via the somewhat costly Priority Mail so it would arrive expeditiously and could be traced in the event it went astray -- had not arrived. And I went to the Post Office where they gave me a phone number to call. Apparently the PO doesn't handle tracking things that were mailed via the PO at the PO. So I called and gave them the customs number from the receipt and they said -- "According to our records this was mailed yesterday and sent to Turkey." What?! Apparently they recycle customs numbers. (This conversation is when I learned the PO doesn't know Scotland is a country.) They'll put a trace on it. That will take up to 21 business days. Four weeks later -- it's now the middle of July -- I called again. "Didn't you get the claim form?" "Claim form?" "We sent you a claim form on July 1st. The package was lost." So they sent me another claim form and I started looking for the fabrics I had used to make the original collage so I can make another one and send it to Heather in Scotland, GREAT BRITAIN, and some time goes by before I can get to it. Meanwhile, Heather spends 3 weeks in Canada and I go to Vermont for the weekend. When I got back I had an email from her saying that the original package had been delivered. In pristine condition. No extra stamping or franking nor any suggestion of anything out of ordinary in its handling. Now that is what I call Priority service.
All this flashes through my mind while I'm baffling the staff and irritating the other patrons with an absurd request for stamps, so I snatch back the clothespin people, pay for the library package, and go home to my Mother. Who has lots and lots of stamps. Really. She collected stamps for a while and has quite an assortment. She's started using them and so I thought I could raid her stash. And I could, and did, and as of this afternoon the clothespin people are finally on their way to Ohio. Or to Turkey. Or maybe Great Britain (but not the United Kingdom). It's anyone's guess.

clyff dwelling

This was fun.
I've been dithering -- what else? -- about the covers for my contribution to the book exchange. The two books I've received arrived straightforwardly braced with foam core, so I decided to follow that lead and today I cut 2 pieces of foam core to size. But I couldn't bear the idea of naked foam core, so I gelled down some tissue paper -- and I'm completely tickled by the results.

Those of you who do these sorts of things all the time will undoubtedly be all "Yeah, d'oh," but I'm all agog at channeling Clyfford Still, albeit in the most humble way.

So the clothespin people can start their travels tomorrow and I can start on the next thing -- whatever that might be...

class act

I'm back from Vermont. As is typical, I went thinking I was going to do one thing and ended up doing something completely else-wise to what I thought I intended. I like what I've got, and I'm forming a post on't, but first...

Before heading to Vermont, I took Rayna Gilman's gelatin printing class at the Country Quilter. I was a little anxious about this Vermont escapade, and these see-and-do classes tend to give me performance anxiety, so I was not the most ebullient participant*, but now that I have the basic idea, I think it will be fun to Try This At Home. Here are some of the results: Above right, fragmented gelatin plate, ink lifted off with a crocheted placemat, successive colors on a commercial, pale gray, printed fabric. Below left, a mishmash monoprint surprinted with the crochet pattern, printed on commercial marbelized fabric. Below, right, the same marbelized fabric, print made from embossed paper and commercial stamps (circle and spiral).

I think the most successful piece is this one: metallic mesh, torn paper, and feather resists; commercial text stamp on the gray fabric.
And the most interesting things were most accidental. When I pulled the paper resists off the plate, some of the layered residual paints came with it:

*The most ebullient participants

wereJane Davila and Vivien

(Whose Last Name I Don't Know).

Apologies for being slow to report on Vermont, but it feels like a lot to process. Now I know why some of the folks who do the Yaddo and McDowell things find themselves paralyzed by a sense of The Enormity of What I've Done. I wasn't exactly paralyzed, and I don't want to make too big a deal out of the Profundity of a Weekend, but there is feeling of something having shifted.