A Week Until the Opening!

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Done! Everything is at the museum and the opening is next Sunday. My brother and his wife are flying up from Florida for it and I am so excited. Here’s the official postcard… (the opening coincides with the museum’s annual member juried exhibition, so it should be a festive evening!)

My to-do list was LONG but it got DONE. Yes!!

Fun things were on it, like making a yarn-and-pushpin map out of the Seattle aeronautical chart to mark our adventure routes…

Fixing the broken magic wand was also on the list…

Although Ryan did the title page lettering for the original book, I chose to write it for the new edition as well as the framed wall folios. Here is my pile of practice scraps…

Making labels for the framed wall folios…

It felt so satisfying to have everything packed in boxes, labeled, and sitting on the loading dock. Thank you so much to Itinerant Studio for giving me such a great space to work in for the month of May. XO!

Hope to see you on Sunday!

Springfield Museum of Art
107 Cliff Park Road | Springfield OH 45504
June 30th, 4-5:30pm

Read more about the project HERE. Read my original blog post about the trip HERE.

This Week

I took a little break from the studio last week and went to Venice with John. We stayed at a convent guest house on a quiet part of the island, spent a lovely day on a little boat visiting islands in the lagoon, found Italy’s oldest paper shop, had a picnic and nap in a winery garden, picked up my magic red shoes from the shoemaker, and ate prosciutto & melon every single night. Best of all, I am feeling rested and not so stressed-out, and my schedule has shifted because of the time change: I get up at dawn and I go to bed earlier and my insomnia seems to have gone away. I also read two books in the week I was in Venice and realize how little time I take to just sit down and read when I am home. I wind up feeling guilty for not doing something “productive” and that’s just ridiculous. Here’s to more books!

At the end of this week I deliver my exhibition to the museum, so I am now back to work. I will post more soon. Hope you’re having a wonderful holiday!

This Week

In addition to studio time in Springfield, I spent this past week teaching bookbinding to inmates at the Marion Correctional Institution through the Healing Broken Circles program. It was my first time in a prison and I didn’t really know what to expect, but I must have looked like I knew what I was doing because the guys remarked that I didn’t seem nervous. Was I supposed to be? It made me sad to think that maybe that was the norm. I’d be way more nervous walking past an OSU frat house on a party night. Seriously.

It was an interesting endeavor trying to find warden-approved supplies to bring in. Hunting down plastic replacements for metal ones. I couldn’t bring in bulldog clips, or paper clips, never mind any kind of cutting tool. Or needles. I was determined, though, to do sewn bindings, and managed to find plastic needles that weren’t super huge. Since they were too flimsy to poke holes through multiple sheets of paper on their own, the sewing process required some prep work: first, use a pushpin to make holes, then make them a little bigger with a toothpick (to make room for the too-big needle eye), then, finally, sew.

Class was great, everyone was so welcoming and friendly, and I had so much fun. I stuck my foot in my mouth on several occasions: “Okay, now let’s talk about Japanese stab binding — er, um, maybe I shouldn’t say that…” (much laughter)

On our last day I was given this beautiful little book (whose pages you see in this post) as a thank you from the class. It made me cry right there on the spot. Courageous? Hardly. It was an honor and a privilege to be there, and I hope I get to go back.