Amazing stories on this week's This American Life. Hear about Nauru, (more scary descriptions here ), and Julie Snyder's miserable MCI experience (blogged about here. It's scary, powerful, smart radio. Here's the latest Amnesty International report on the refugees in Nauru.

So much happens under the radar, in the middle of nowhere...

scary.

Rachael

I walk to work and spend about 8 or more hours in a space where art classes are held. I interact with artists, teachers, parents, people so afraid to try to learn art that they ask, ask, and ask again but don't take a chance on a class, people very happy to change clay to solid forms and be changed in the process. It's my job to make sure everything runs smoothly. And it generally does.

A bunch of the people I work with have private studios in a big converted warehouse space in the neighborhood. Tonight was their open studio, holiday art sale thing. Lots of open doors and lots of work on view. While there were some good things on the walls, the cumulative feel of the place was of a warehouse. Not a warm space. Not a community. Just a bunch of people who come there to paint.

It's the freedom within and the community outside a studio that seems essential for creating consistently good work.

I'm still working at understanding this new place. It's getting colder and colder. Winter setting in and with it a fear of a rut if not an actual rut. We'll see.

goodnight,
Rachael

While my bread was nothing like I hoped it would be ( it expanded ridiculously, tasted acidic, and was simply wierd) I am over it now. I have a head full of pictures and ideas (about why we make art, what artists can learn from other working folks, and why it matters that non-profits, educational institutions, and museums in this country pay their employees such itty-bitty wages). But I also beg time to sort this stuff out before I write. To write about these things, not just blog 'em. That's me putting some thinking off, sure, but also being honest.

Honestly wondering if I messed up the comments function while trying to avoid some smarmy spammity stepping spam....spam's about what my banana bread looked like, 'cept the bread was brown and spam is...



gross.
Goodnight.
Rachael

better breads here

Yep. I have about an hour before the banana bread is done. This is my most ambitious bread yet. It required the measuring of several ingredients (including mashed bananas and a lightly beaten egg) and the pressing of several buttons. I like my bread machine. It's easy.

While waiting for bread, I found out:

MoMA's got a big budget online project section of their website

the Wolfsonian has it's collection online (ish), not everything but they do have the Renato Bertelli continuous profile of Mussolini online and quite a few other fascinating and bizarre things...not just political propaganda...

Eric Carle has a museum

But now I'm sleepy and will draw until the bananas are baked and I can rest. This should be good bread and I'll be off to my good bed.

night,
Rachael

Just amazed and thankful these days. There's a lovely plague of babies (one is my adorable, freshly born healthy niece and another is a very talented artist friend's first little girl) and the weather is mild and the bread machine is working fine and I have time to read and think and write and paint. Spent some time the other day sifting through the latest issue of Modern Painters which had some good words and pictures about the work and product of painting.

I keep thinking that the best work I do is when I trust my hands and turn off my head. I am not not thinking mind you but I am spilling and splashing and seeing if the blue is right and trying to push the greens back and float the red balloons foreward and see if I can create a rythym of marks and motions. I have been trying to write with the same attention to the craft of words and the course of story and well, the results aren't quite in yet. I don't really know what I am doing this for.

I'm just thankful for the doing. A painting I finished today (Salvage Theory, 30 inches tall by 22 inches wide, ink and watercolor on paper) is enclosed as are my hopes that you and yours are safe and warm, worried not and making much good trouble.

take care,

Rachael