Saturday

Sept 1, 2001

arts and crafts

Once again...no walkies. I was supposed to call SuRu at 7am. I wake up at 7:20. I get dressed and go outside. It seems wet, but isn't raining. I phone and we talk ourselves out of it. There are scattered showers convincing us that our decision is righteous.

A Nancy, an artist, has invited SuRu (an artist also) and I (not) over to chat and draw. I take the stuff I use to make my 'thank you' cards: some blank cards, rubber cement, pictures I've printed out from my digital collection and from ebay mining. I happily make my cards while they try to render fruit with watercolors. I offer advice on rubber cement. (I love the way rubber is so forgiving. It doesn't smell too bad, either, but don't use it for prolonged periods in enclosed spaces!) Nancy talks about watercolor techniques and SuRu about her recent oil class. Nancy serves up coffee and then chocolate cake. We enjoy looking at her decorating and her forged furniture. What good taste she has!

It's pouring down rain when we leave. I talk SuRu into taking my mom to Micheal's. The rain subsides and we do this errand. Dad is halfway through the book I gave him yesterday. Must get some reinforcements in for him. I try to take five books at a time and to have a variety...at least some fiction, some not. You'd think that it would be easy to choose them around here, but we have lots of books he wouldn't be interested in like biographies and letters of literary figures, business books, computer books. It's fun picking out books for him, though. Mom is too busy with her hobbies to read too many but she is working through the biography of Madame Curie that I took over there.

FFP and I go and do some buying of gifts for our friends in Portland and end up with a couple of things for ourselves.

FFP fixes shark steak on a bed of mango and spinach and opens some wine and we settle in to watch his Longhorns (not mine!) win at football.

A pleasant day. Not altogether wasted, but not particularly productive either.

watercoloring the purple pear

not good enough?

"I'm a better draftsman." she said.

art is where you find it

reward for art

"I am among the few who continue to
draw after childhood is ended,
continuing and perfecting childhood
drawing-without the traditional
interruption of academic training."

Saul Steinberg

Meta: If you read an online journal from someplace far away but don't really know the person, is it necessary to meet the person or stalk their haunts if you go to that area? I think the answer is no. But from the beginning of the online experience I've had a desire to see the online crowd in person. But reading a journal is a kind of one way experience. The writer may be shocked to find what you know...even though they wrote it.

Just the shape of certain letters makes a picture. I always liked Saul Steinberg who made art from words and numbers. I think he played in his father's print shop as a child, which explains a lot. On my one and only trip on the QE2, I found a back stair with original Steinbergs. For sure they were. But unsigned.