The show is up. Today is a day off and I'm sitting in a university library listening to smarty kids saying dumb things (oh who am I to judge?). My to do list is daunting. There's some homework to be done for my education class. I have to finish an application so I can escape for 2 weeks and make art in a different world I've been watching for a while. I shoulda gone to visit Shelly and new baby and maybe I ought to have spent my morning painting and while I'm busy regretting, I guess I should confess some guilt that this is the first glimmer of thinking here in a good bit. I've been mulling over a couple of entries for awhile but have posted none of it. I sit down at the computer and my thoughts disappear. My sketchbook gets thicker and denser and messier but this forum has been quiet. So I guess that means I don't like you. No. It means I am more concerned with what I'm saying where and why.

Case in point. The other day as I waited for my bus I was leafing through my sketchbook looking for a phone number. A woman (Marshay? Marshe? Marcia?) who I'd never met was looking over my shoulder. She complimented me and we struck up a conversation about art. I shared how I draw, some of why I draw, and some drawing tips. I listened to her ideas and questions and I completely enjoyed the opportunity to talk art to a civilian (i.e. someone not actively making or profiting from art, i.e. someone doing honest work). But then I looked up and noticed that the bus was watching me. I'd been outed as an artist and now had to show my drawings and be on view. It's good, it's bad, it's wacky at 8am to do an unscheduled show-and-tell.

Oh, well. I'm a talker. I'm an art maker and art thinker and so here goes with some more:
And the museum I work for just opened a really great show, Extreme Materials. I had no part in the organizing of it and I simply am pleased to see it and be around a show that kids respond so well to.
It's not just smog plates and drug bag quilts that I'm excited about though...I love the idea of Danny and the gang Drawing Together and hope to get to one of these someday.

I'm fascinated again with artist/printmaker/troublemakers from the 1920s and 30s and that has led me back to visit Wanda Gag's house (I'm only visiting virtually, not physically)

And I've been lucky to find an old friend from art school living and working in the area. Jeff and I went to the same small art school that Aaron Igler and Lisa Catalone went to, and we spent two years in a small communty of goofy art students. We were friends then and are friends now, even though we went our own ways a dozen years ago. So now Jeff and I are painting every tuesday in the same advanced painting class. We bring in the stuff from our studios and we listen to the thoughts of a good painter, good teacher who also used to teach in that little school (though he predated us). It's a comfort to know that we are all still making, to find an old friend, and to know that the core of our work habits, our need to make art, and our ability to form a creative community...all that is still there.

In other news, I saw the project below on nyfaand am impressed and happy to share the word. Let me know if you've been involved before, I'm curious and probably will get involved in some way.

GATES Project - National Call for Artists
IGIVEUP.ORG
(Phoenix AZ)

GATES Project - Final Call
You may have heard about the GATES Project, the national project turning symbols of life's challenges into art. A national press announcement is going out very soon. If you're interested please get your application in ASAP so we can list you prior to the announcement.

ARTIST'S BENEFITS
...You set the low bid price
...All artists will receive 20% of the bid sale
...Primary showing galleries will also receive 20% of the bid sale
...Award winners will get an additional 20%
...plus exposure and more

Brief project definition:
This is a charity project with the theme of life’s challenges
...The general public will donate objects to us (symbols of personal challenges)
...Professional artists will then incorporate one or many of these objects into an art work
...Art work will be exhibited in galleries across the USA in Summer 2006
...Work will be juried and then auctioned in the Fall with cash benefits

More about the project here

Answers to your questions are here.
This same link will take you to the Artist's Prospectus and Application
Application deadline: 2-28-06
email: info@igiveup.org
OK, so take care, make art, make trouble, make mine purple (that's for John's Larry King impersonation, mind you),
I'm back to my to do list...
Rachael