In my drawing class, our current assignment is to make an artist’s book incorporating drawing. Oh sure, twist my arm! So to begin, I went shopping for some books to alter. I was looking for something small and intimate, with chipboard covers I can work into. I decided on some Little Golden Books.

I found a couple with illustrations I really like. This is a 50’s edition of Heidi. The illustrator is Steffie Lerch.

The top illustration and this one are from a Little Golden Book called Riddles from A to Z, with illustrations by Trina Schart (is it me or do these sound like fake names?). I love these. Okay, no way I am working with this book. This is a keeper, for now at least.

The funny thing is that, looking closely at the Riddles book, you can see that someone got a little crazy on it with a pink crayon. Here I am thinking that I’m so daring altering these books, when the truth is its nothing the crayon set hasn’t been doing for years.

Meanwhile, in sculpture class:

Wood project #1. Made from two 2×4’s and a sheet of plywood. Love having access to the shop. The orbital sander makes me happy.

And an in-class drawing from the bone lab. This is a harbour seal skull. I see a bit of cross-referencing between this and the woodshop critter above.

So school is getting to be a lot of fun. There are also a lot of interesting connections between my museum studies classes and the visual arts classes. It’s like looking at each area from the other side of the fence.

This is a bit of a crunch time, with job searching (my museum job ends at the end of February), making a website for Gary, classes, and work. I’ll see you around when I get a chance!

I finally got to see some prints from the Pentax Spotmatic — and it seems to be working great. The image above is from the first roll of film I developed. I made the contact prints today, and scanned this from them. So, it’s really blown up and my scanner made it look all soft and atmospheric. Actually, though, the images are nice and sharp.

Lots of fun running back and forth between work and school, but it is keeping me busy. Hope to catch up with you soon. Will post more this weekend.

Where has the last month gone? Into sketching sessions at lunch, birdfeeder stakeouts, digging up the garden bed, riding the bus to work and home again, working my day job, thinking about going to school, taking notes on the garden, catching up at home after the work week.

At Beacon Hill Park, I’ve been visiting the great blue heron a lot at lunchtime. For a while he was hanging out right along the shore and I could sketch him at close range. I’ve been playing around with doing some monoprints based on the field sketches.

So, I actually have been making a few things, but just haven’t had that extra time to post. I guess that’s good, in a way. Anyway, I won’t be around here much for another couple of weeks. I’ll be going back to part-time hours soon, so time won’t be so scarce. But first, company is coming! My mom arrives tomorrow. See you in a few weeks!

I did some drawing, scratchboard, and prints on Friday, and froggy here is my favorite of the series. Still working with the speedycut blocks, brayer, and cut-paper prints for simple shapes.

I’ve been working hard on my New Year’s mission to make a new recipe a week from the Rebar book. Since I posted about the ginger-squash udon, I’ve made Curried Chickpea Soup, Lotusland Linguine, and, tonight, the Bhangra Burritos. The first two I would definitely make again. The chickpea soup and chickpea curry filling for the Burritos have a lot of flavor in common, and as a soup it was hot, flavorful, and tangy. The burrito filling is a lot like a dish we cook which we refer to (erroneously on purpose) as Aloo Gobhi. We got the recipe from the DVD extras from “Bend it like Beckham,” in which the director, Gurinder Chadha, makes Aloo Gobhi, with her mom and her auntie kibbitzing behind her in the kitchen. Gary’s not big on cauliflower, so we use the chickpeas instead, but we fondly refer to it as Aloo Gobhi just the same.

So, the burritos were not much of a departure from our “Aloo Gobhi,” and unless I want to go the whole nine yards and make homemade wheat tortillas, I’d just as soon serve it over rice and save some time. The Lotusland Linguine involves a ginormous mound of vegetables with a very tasty peanut sauce. The peanut sauce was easy and really flavorful. The veggies were good, but there were so many different kinds that the prep took for-EVER. Even someone as pro-vegetable as myself was next to tears and ready for a hamburger. Next time, its just broccoli, onion, and red pepper for me.

And that’s it for this week’s Rebar Hacker report. Hope you’re having a perfect weekend (just like our New England Patriots).

Working on: Christmas card prints. This is my first week after finishing up at the paper, and today was spent getting reacquainted with my home workspace, and trying to get ready for a renewed effort to build up some freelance design work.

Gary and I have been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares lately, which is reliably entertaining television. (We need something to help stretch out our Battlestar Galacticas on DVD . . . I think we’re on the last DVD that’s been released, and I can’t think about what we’ll do when we run out.) If you haven’t seen Kitchen Nightmares, there are two versions: the british one, which features Ramsay doing his own voice-over narration and liberal amounts of unedited cursing, and the new american one in which most of Ramsay’s colorful language is heavily bleeped. The original version has a little more personality, but both follow the same basic format: Chef Ramsay is called in to help rescue a failing restaurant and relaunch it in the course of a week. Each restaurant seems to be failing in its own spectacular way, but the shows follow a comfortingly familiar arc. Chef Ramsay arrives, he samples the food, he’s appalled by the food and the management, he inspects the kitchen, finds a shocking array of health code violations. And always, the first step in turning the place around is a really good, deep cleaning.

So today, that’s what I did in my office. I wish I had “before” pictures of my shelves of art materials. Each time I start working on or thinking about a project, I pull some stuff out. Little by little, everything got unorganized. It was like a craft glacier moving slowly out over the office floor. Today I went through my backlog of paperwork, cleaned out the files, put things back in their bins.

The reindeer prints I’m working on are speedycut prints with water-based block printing inks. I made two blocks; the tree branch, and the deer. I used the brayer to roll ink on for the background color. I felt like it needed a little extra something, so I’m adding the little “flakes,” which are made using a craft punch, then added with glue. Its a fun process. Each one is a little different.

Have I told you about my dream client? He’s the husband of my wonderful friend-of-many-years, Lynne. Like Lynne, he’s a pediatrician, and he’s opening his own practice in the next couple of months. I received the most beautiful email from him describing what his practice was going to be like, how it would be different from other practices. How the staff would be courteous and helpful, the offices stylish and modern, with Eames furniture and Flor carpeting. How the practice would be ethical and humanistic, and how he would not resort to colorful stethoscope puppets and “kiddie” stuff to pander to kids.

Personal aside: I hated being talked down to as a kid. I found that kind of thing very transparent and insulting. When I think of my childhood doctor, I have nothing but warm fuzzy feelings, and I can’t think of anything “kiddie” about him. He was kind and calm and competent, and that was all he needed to be. No colorful puppets were required. Of course, my mom will probably tell me I hated going to the doctor, but I remember the routines of examination being kind of interesting yet comforting. The doctor’s office was full of intriguing devices that became like old friends; the little brown reflex-testing hammer and those bright lights for looking into ears. It was kind of like going to the museum and visiting all your favorite objects, things that were so unlike the objects of your home and daily routines.

Anyway, getting back to the story: my dream client — let’s call him “Bill” — asked me to create some artwork for his marketing materials. It was carte blanche. Make anything you want. Let your imagination be your guide. Like I said, a dream! Anyway, this is one of my sketches I’ve been working on. Its kind of a play on “an apple a day”. If you have kids and live near the east side of Providence, RI, talk to me and I’ll tell you about the best new pediatric practice in town. Trust me, its gonna be good.