In which my drawings are useful

Alright everyone, this right here is one of the best parts of my job.  I mentioned a few posts ago that the Echo folks had me illustrating a seed-saving tutorial.  I used big markers on heavy canvas, to create sort of a flip chart which can survive being rolled up and taken to villages.  Not that these are particularly amazing illustrations or anything, but it's a true pleasure to work on a project that will directly be useful, and possibly helpful.  Here it is in action last week at a seed swap meeting in a Palong village.  This tribe is seriously displaced, having left their homeland in China and then needing to flee Burma and now trying to find a place to be in Thailand.  It's a longer story than that involving land rights and citizenship issues, and far more convoluted, and I don't know most of it so I won't try to tell it. 

Of course, the Palong women who are listening to this presentation probably already know more about saving seeds than I ever will.

I realized long ago that I'm not cut out to be an actual agricultural development worker, or an environmental educator, or an ecologist who has the knowledge and equipment to save the world and everything in it...even though that's where my interests and passions lie.  However, I can draw, and therefore can offer that skill to the people doing the groundwork.

Palong woman weaving

Aritifcial with pepper

I've been in Thailand for a full week now, feeling very settled into my work and play.  I'll be spending about 3 days per week at ISDSI, and the other days working on freelance projects (a girl's gotta keep generating income) or exploring the city or taking advantage of any mini-adventure opportunities that come up.  I spent yesterday working for the ECHO Asia office on a series of large illustrations on canvas sheets, depicting seed-saving techniques...I will see those sheets in action tomorrow at a seed-swap event in a village populated by displaced hill tribe people.  On the other end of the humanitarian spectrum, I'm designing a t-shirt for the ISDSI crossfit gym.  More about that later.

And yes, in case you were wondering...the food continues to be amazing.  One of my goals this year is to learn how to prepare some of these dishes.  To the right here, you'll see the ingredients for som tam (green papaya salad).  I learned that food should contain something sour, sweet, salty, and hot to get a good balance.  In this case: lime, palm sugar, fish sauce, and chilis.  The fish you see over there was awfully good too.  My friend Laura referred to the crispy basil/lemongrass/garlic scattered on it as "the magic."  I'm not entirely sure that it doesn't also contain crack cocaine, since it's very addictive and I want more (just kidding, Mom).

I started Thai language classes today, and my head feels like it might explode from all the newness I tried to absorb.  I hope some of it sticks and doesn't just pass through my brain without stopping to visit for a while.  Fortunately today's class was all about food words.

I'll leave you with this menu, from last Sunday's restaurant adventure.

I don't know what it means, but it looks cool

Yay!  I'm in Thailand!  It's a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon here, and I'm optimistic that the jetlag is done with a minimum of fuss.  My trip over was a fairly uneventful 36 hours, and the first week has been busy getting adjusted and oriented and generally arriving.  I feel like I never left, picking right up again where I left off last year.  The people I'm mainly working for, ISDSI, sent everyone on a retreat this weekend to a beautiful national park with a waterfall.  More photos might make their way onto my blog in the near future, but for right now I'll just show you the amazing Saturniid moth that visited us last night.

soil as soft as summer

One of my favorite songs, and particularly apropos as I am packing to fly to the other side of the world.

Last year, in Bangkok

(I'm flying to Thailand in a week or so, and remembered writing the following in the airport last year during the arduous journey home.  I had forgotten about the statue of the three-headed elephant.)

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I’m in the Bangkok airport in a plastic chair across from the waiting room for monks, midnight Thai time on a Monday night, waiting for an early morning flight which will stop in Japan on the way back to the east coast and winter.   I have a stuffed head, no voice above a whisper, and shall we say "female complaints."  Am exiled to the outer circle of airport hell because I was given the wrong information about which terminal to go to in Chiang Mai, and therefore missed passport control and cannot check in again until a few hours before my flight.  All the comfortable places to hang out are inside the gates.

Let’s go back a few days to when I got locked out of the house.  I had finished work at the international studies institute (water buffalo icon was the last thing on the docket) and took off for the afternoon to explore Nimmanheiman, a “high-so” neighborhood in Chiang Mai.  I successfully got a pedicure, a delicious smoothie with lots of passionfruit juice, and had trolled through a few galleries, which resulted in procuring a seed pod lined with gold leaf and a nice conversation with a fellow botanical illustrator.  Then I walked through some back sois searching for the statue of the three-headed elephant and the weird parking lot which would lead me to my friends’ place with the lovely swimming pool.  Success there as well, refreshed and slightly more tanned I went upstairs and got changed and was planning to head home for a few hours of quiet.  This is where things took the turn.  Laura calls to let me know that the housekeeper probably locked the door to which I do not have a key.  Meanwhile, I can feel the sniffle I had turning into a full-blown head cold.  My friends are gracious and feed me, I’m picked up a few hours later, finally get home and collapse.

Saturday morning: woke up  at 6 AM with lungs at half capacity, knowing I have to run a 5K at 8:00.  We barely get there in time because of a child meltdown over a piece of plastic ribbon which was suddenly his pet snake which needed to have its head taped.  Actually felt better after the run, but then I was locked out of the car which had my breakfast in it, and I got a headache from a combination of smacking my head getting into the rot dang and sinuses and a run in hot weather and diesel fumes and a winding road.  Teaching “art in the park,” not so much.  Staggered home and slept all afternoon.  Art show that evening at a church event, which was great.  But my voice started disappearing, and I could not sleep that night.

Sunday, sabai sabai morning…but no voice at all, not even a peep.  Started packing, incredible how much I picked up here.  Walking street in the evening, a great time and a few last minute beautiful purchases.  Spiral earrings, crazy quilt hill tribe style, Harley shirt in Thai script for my brother.  Hard to have a conversation in a busy street market when I can’t speak above a whisper.  More packing, another late night.

Monday, also sabai sabai.  Skype date with my family (short because still no voice), rode on the outside of the song tau which makes me happy, good lunch, easy final packing, goodbyes all around, a beautiful ride in heavy traffic along three walls of the old city.  Sad whispered farewells, a virtual girding of my loins for the 36 hours ahead, and then I went through the wrong gate…

Birds falling from the sky

Hooray, the first blog entry of a new year!  At least I have some new art to show to start things out right. 

Ben has been in town for the week, which of course means some art adventures.  He was keen to work on some etchings, and I appreciated the kick in the pants to get out the plates and chemicals and work on an idea which has been percolating in my subconscious for a while.  I had been watching big fluffy snowflakes fall and thinking they looked a little like birds in a flock...and what if there was some kind of spontaneous generation of avian life from the clouds?  But now I read today about three places (Arkansas, Louisiana, Sweden) where actual birds are actually falling out the actual sky...dead in shocking big groups from unknown causes.  That's a whole different story from my fanciful, rather pretty vision.

I was just reading up on the recent falling-birds stories, and so far there's no working theory about why this is happening.  I don't have the scientific background to make any viable theories, but it has the feel of canaries-in-coal-mines to me.  What is going on in the atmosphere and environment that would be killing off birds like that?  I become suspicious about human causes, chemicals and other junky by-products we keep off-gassing.  Doesn't help that I was recently also reading about the continued clean-up of the Gulf oil spill. 

It's good to talk about the larger issues of societal responsibility for trashing the environment (which range from poverty to lobbyists), but it's also good for me to look at what my own responsibilities are on my own little scale.  It's time for new year's resolutions....over the last few years I've made and kept two really good ones: never taking plastic bags in stores (3 years ago), and only recycled toilet paper in my house (at least 10 years ago).  What's it going to be this year?

Snow day

Two photos for you this morning, taken after our lake effect snow day earlier this week.  I let the ladies out, and they quested out bravely into the new snow which was up their lower feathers.

 

And then I went skiing, one of the only reasons I can stand the Ithaca winter.

In which I am a tourist attraction

yawn blink blink...I'm emerging from my holiday-induced cave this morning.  If I see my shadow I might hide for another few weeks.

So, December was a busy month.  I started throwing things overboard to stay afloat and the first thing to go was my blog.  But now Christmas and its attendant craziness is behind us, and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party too (which was a rousing success! and I'm very proud of them!), and the fun of family visits is coming to a close.  Also, market is done for the season, and all I have to do is clean out my display at the Holiday Store.  I rejoice that I don't have to be pleasant and professional to customers for a few months...although I dearly love my customers I am ready for a break from the retail aspects of my business and eager to spend some time in the studio instead.  Right now, big fluffy snowflakes are falling, my wood stove is cranking out heat, and I'm contemplating shoveling out the driveway in a little while so I can go skiing in the woods.

Our last farmers' market of the year is held on the Saturday before Christmas, and the occasion is marked by the annual Rutabaga Curl.  It's a uniquely Ithaca event, sort of a mix of lightly choreographed street theatre and community enthusiasm in the guise of a sport somewhat like bocci ball but with root vegetables.  I get to be the Rutabaga Goddess, a title I have rejoiced in for 10 years.  Which means more crazy headgear (this year I added lights) and a bedsheet toga, strangers taking my photo (which showed up on the front page of the Ithaca Journal this time around), and athletes asking me to bless their 'bagas before rolling.  This year things were enlivened by a band of protesters calling themselves PIECRUST (People in Ithaca Exposing Cruelty to Rutabagas something something) and carrying signs such as "it's all fun and games until a potato loses an eye" and "those who BEET their vegetables will get a RUTAwakening."  And I'm proud to say that I took the second place medal through pure blind luck...even though some people were questioning whether some divine intervention was involved.  It's fun...follow the links and check it out.

I have a new hat

One of the best parts of going to these art-and-craft shows is meeting other artist-and-craftspeople.  And meeting their art or craft.  As you know from my incessant harping, I was at the Plowshares festival last weekend, and came home with a new hat which makes me very, very happy.  The business name is Artsy Fartsy Productions, no website or I would pass it along...but keep an eye (or two or four) out for her work at a show near you.

Lake effect snow today, which means big fluffy flakes swirling around like magic.  I was supposed to work at one of my graphic design jobs today, but moved it to a later day because I have a cold and was not so interested in shoveling out this morning.  It's good to have a snow day, and I might get to that silkscreening project yet.

Old-school etching

Oh huzzah, I spent some time in my etching studio today!  No new plates, but trying to catch up on printing some editions because my print bin is dangerously low for this coming weekend's Plowshares show.  The printing process is a bit of a mystery for many people, so I took some photos with the goal of making a little tutorial about old-school etching.  I love complicated and obscure and old-fashioned art processes.  But it didn't really turn into a fully-functional step-by-step photo essay after all...although I did get a few arty shots to share.

The first step is to ink the plate, squishing the ink down into the etched lines with a plastic mini squeegee thing (sorry, I don't remember the technical term).  After the plate is inked, I gently wipe the surface of the plate clean with some stiff cloth, which leaves the ink in the lines to create the image.

This particular piece involves two plates.  After they are both inked and wiped, I lay them out on the bed of my beautiful etching press (with a piece of newsprint behind to keep the press bed clean).

I lay a piece of printmaking paper (which has been soaked in water and rolled out with a rolling pin between towels) over the plates, then the blankets go on top for cushioning and better contact.  I crank the big flywheel to move the bed between some big rollers, which presses the paper tight to the plates to pick up the ink in the etched lines.

And here is the print being pulled from the plates!  Always an exciting moment.  Now the prints I pulled this morning are drying between pieces of blotting paper with heavy things on top of them.

In a brief lull between shows and work, the Thanksgiving gluten-and-sugar free sweet potato pie is out of the oven, and I'm taking a moment to throw a photo up on my blog and let you all know I'm still alive.  Thought you might enjoy seeing some of the lovely eggs my flock are producing these days.  Please note that there are green eggs, but there's no need to reference Dr. Seuss.

I just uploaded my 2011 Community Supported Art sign-up on my website.  More info to follow...