Measure Twice - Cut Once

Think Twice- Cut Once


     It was Saturday morning, and I was running around from eight-thirty in the morning till eleven at night, trying to finish my Christmas gifts. It was turning out to be a race against time, and I was stressing out a little. Why do I do this to myself. Though I do think that this style of last minute preparation is really inevitable for me. It just like taking a final. I don't quit studying till I enter that classroom, and I don't stop puttering around with gifts till I have to hand them off to their expected receivers."Here, take it. It's the best I could do".  Nineteen framed gifts was the total count up today, and two sore thumbs from sanding and waxing in the garage. I have found a new love for finding and fixing old wooden frames, since being acquainted with a simply waxing procedure back in November.

   But this morning I made a mistake. Grandma came to the house with her box of recipes with the intention of making dinner for all of us. I was working in mom's house alone and everything, including my brain, was a mess and strewn about the house.

    Ever since Grandma made a taco deep dish a few years back for me, she has always kept in mind  that it has been my favorite meal of hers. She would once and a while make it for me if I was home. Well today seemed like a special day and Grandma started talking about making this dish as she sat looking at her recipes at the table. Me being a confirmed gluten intolerante, grandma began to get creative and think of substitutes for the Bisquick mix that was needed for the topping. "We could use oatmeal flower and make our own."I agreed with her! And we could add our own rising ingredients, salt and whatnot to complete the rest. Who needs Bisquick!? So I hurriedly opened the pantry and looked around for the bag of oatmeal flower that mom had recently ground up for the Lefse party this past week. I saw a bag, but it seemed different then the one used previously. "Well, Mom must have ground more oatmeal and put it in a different bag," I thought, not taking seriously even the fact that its contents were a little different looking as well..  I measured out the two cups and gave it to Grandma along with a few eggs that were in the fridge.

Grandma left and I went back to making a mess in the house. Frames and their glass pieces were on the counters in in splendid randomness.

I left Mom's house around six thirty and headed over, across at the field, to eat supper. Still in the process of cooking, we all waited a while in the living room watching a oddly long infomercial to pass the time. 

Dinner was set and Grandpa, Grandma and I sat down to eat. It was really good! Had a touch of sweetness that I found interesting, but I thought this not unusual. Just different. 

Mom and Earl came by later and sat down to also have a bite to eat. It occurred to me now to tell Mom where I found her flour in the pantry and confirm that it was indeed ground oatmeal. Mom seemed confused at what I was saying, but soon it dawned on her what her daughter used instead of wheat. . . chocolate cake mix. I couldn't stop laughing as I sat in the living room listening to Mom and Grandma as the two of them realized the situation.

Now grandma usually find my mistakes funny, but today it was different. "All that work, and I wasted a pound of venison!" I quickly sobered up.

Sigh.... Merry Christmas to me I guess. To all those out there, Chocolate Taco Cake, just might be the next big thing.

Lefse, L&M, and the Promised Land,

This bitter sweet week 

Who knows what lefse is? Isn't it that weird bread/pastry deal that you can buy at the grocers in plastic bag for quite cheap? Isn't it a scandinavian thing? Cause scandinavians eat stuff like that? 

Well Tuesday I was formally introduced to it, and I was also made aware that there are very special tools that are needed in order to make this edible tradition correctly. My mom held a Lefse party and a dear friend of hers showed up with equipment in hand and an apron on. I never knew it until that day, what deep respect I would soon hold in regards to the local L&M store when I learned where one might attain these tools. I kept saying throughout the afternoon, "L&M sells this stuff?" How ridiculously wonderful! They sell everything!

Now the next assignment was to do a photo shoot of Grandma and Grandpa. For the first time in my life, I have never seen Grandma be so ready to undergo to a project like this!

 It is known to all that live on this blessed earth, that special relatives seem to find some kind of satisfaction in mailing out photos during Christmas, showing their persons in rare exotic places, having the greatest time of their life. They are tan, happy and currently ahead of their somber card receivers, as they are currently entering the Promised Land. . . Or perhaps other dear family members find more satisfaction standing by some highly prized item that they have spent most of their life, time and funds on. 

 The first day I went over to Grandma's house for break, she laughing showed me a card in her office, of a couple standing proudly by a very fine piece of driving machinery that looked like it had never been touched by normal people hands. After I looked at the card, she said, "Grandpa and I should stand by that old truck of ours." I readily agreed. And what do you know! It so happened!  Grandpa was (assumingly) told to put on his clean overalls and Watson (my dog) wrapped in a scarf, and very unamused, called our house and told us they were ready for the photo shoot. We quickly got ready and headed out, cameras in hand. 

 Let it be known to all that my dear Grandparents are ready to hit the high roads!  

 I theeenk that I'm done with my mother's wall. I'm not all out loving what I did, but there are certain details that have sparked continual interest. Maybe next year, when I paint over it, those ideas will have matured. Great fun!

Awareness

    In all honesty I was scared to come home. Lot's of personal situations, and the overwhelming fact that I was going to be running around for whole month not knowing what to do with myself, and crashing where I ended up: my sisters, my brothers, my Dads, my Moms' etc... tiring. It was time to pray. And I have been praying for a miracle. And the word that comes to mind is awareness. There is healing when one is aware of the source of pain instead of simply reacting to it.

     The trip wasn't easy. It was twenty hours of Sig time, but I love to travel and I love to drive, so it evened out in the end. The weather is so contrastable to Memphis, that it was almost laughable. I found myself looking out the car windows at a rainy day, as I left, to fourteen inches of snow the further north I drove.

    And I have been surprisingly busy!
I have been blessed to help my brother move and in so doing, have been able to paint a few rooms in the house that he has moved into. YES!

    Now I am continuing to work on  a mural on my mothers wall. I started it spring break but had to leaving it unfinished due to a lack of time. I wasn't really intending to dive back in it so quickly, but since I conveniently printed off a bunch of photos at school before I left, (I drained the printers of their ink) and brought them home with me. I thought, "Why not use them on this?" So I got back to work today.

Acrylic Transfers

             Lots of hanging paper now, but after the paint dries, I can rub all that off.

 I brought my weaving materials with me! Mom's kitchen is full of Signe.

 Little Eli Man has continued to capture my heart.

 I went to see a performance with Grandma on Thursday, that my mom and her friends were putting on at the DAC in Floodwood. We get there and settle into our seats around a table, and soon coffee was offered by a nice woman who worked there. We both readily accepted. After a few minutes of chatting with the folks across the table, Grandma looks at me and says, "We need something to suck on." So she takes out of her purse and old eyeglass case holding Grandpas meds, cough drops and a couple candies.  I love Grandma.  There is no woman more resourceful.

It's been a good first week. I think I shall survive this one yet.

Family

     This evening I am sitting at the kitchen table listening to Vicki, Gary and their worship band  practice for Sunday morning, and I am reminded that God has indeed orchestrated this semester for me.

      Four months ago, I was living at my dad's, and fretting/worrying about going back to Memphis and finding a place to live. It was touch and go, and every day I woke up I had decided the opposite of the day before. I didn't know what to do. If I went back to Memphis, I was going alone, and that was really hard.  It was also really hard to admit that I was no where near graduating if I went. What the heck was I doing. There were no safety nets (no family). I was having incredible depression phases, and struggling to get over from a gluten intolerance and it's effects on my have been playing my brain the past 13 years..


     But I knew that in my discomfort I was growing. I remember leaving moms house in tears and very upset, "Well I better go, if I'm going to go at all."

And look now!! I am so blessed to feel like I have never left home. How beautiful...

2D

This class was quite enjoyable for me. I had previously taken such a  class this summer back at home. But since I had audited it, I had to redo.  Everything is done through the use of cut paper, textural materials, glue, and sharp knifes. Every piece is roughly 16x20in.

Positive/Negative Space- First day of class, and I get it wrong entirely. The pieces were supposed to reflect each other.

Positive-Negative Shapes/ Arranging "Empty Space

Emotive Space/ Calligraphic Line/Line Variation

Creating Rhythm

Line Study

Line Repetition

Line Repetition/Movement 

Collage

Value into Shape/ Collage part II

Line Experimentation/ Self Portrait

Line Experimentation part II

Final Project/Visual Texture

Dreams and 2d work

Last night I dreamt that Caleb (my younger brother) and I had to catch up with mom who was in town meeting a woman friend. This old friend I felt was someone I knew from my younger years but I couldn't pinpoint her. Mom, dressed up, was meeting this friend at a open/cafe downtown on a sidewalk, in a unrelated small town on main street. We came up to where they were sitting and I sat down on one of the chairs. Leaning back and looking into one of the store window that was next to me I saw through the windows the ceiling of Duluth Famers Market. The roof still had that pale green paint, and the beams still held history of a burning.

 I mentioned to mom, "Do all Farmers Markets have ceilings like this?"

Caleb and I had arrived late for we were stuck in an odd situation just a few minutes before. I was trying to finish something in the photo room and then clean up the chemicals that were in the pans. Oddly the shallow sink like table that usually held the chemical trays was not a sink, rather it was  a deep brick vat that sank about eight feet underground. It was huge! The light was very dark in the darkroom (makes sense) and very yellow/red.

Caleb thought that he was going to help me clean up and so began to dump the chemical trays over into the water. I yelled out at what he was doing and Caleb to calm my fears, dived into the deep vat and and found that there was a drain that allowed the water to pass through. This apparently calmed me down, though I don't know why this discovery would.

Anyway, here is the makings of my last project in 2d.
To start weaving with photographs was first difficult for I had to take the knife to something that was coined, treasurable. But there are so many ideas going with this.

Final Project_Photo 3

I wanted to create a character that seemed understanding of the power play between advertising and reality, and how I struggled with its spell. A friend and I decided to attend the outdoor mall in Colliereview, and it worked out well. At first I didn’t know what to do at all, thinking that we were just going to finish shooting a video for a previous story, but as things got rolling the air cleared and ideas fell into place.  

The story initially opens up as I am sitting at the kitchen table falling under the spell of the immortal add. The audio playing of War of the Worlds in the background is enlightening to the viewer of this struggle play.  As I walk up to the windows in the next scene, I am showing the inevitability of me morphing, into this fake perfection. But it’s still a struggle! Mrs. Advertisement has given birth to many goddesses like creatures, and the desire and the disconnection war within myself. How can I be happy with this petty little bit of flesh? There is always someone a little thinner, a littler prettier, a littler more confident, standing ten feet tall and blowing my shabby life and image down the gutter with her perfected lips. But yet without me, she cannot exist. And so the spiral continues.  She feeds off of me, and I feed off of her. The glass from the windows was also a nice touch for it shows that there is nothing that really connects us. I am an odd site in the face of superficiality. The last clip of me ends at the table with another clip of the musical ringing forever in my ears. It’s a never-ending battle, for I will always be human.