Falling for the Olympics

I did something very unexpected this past week.

I bought a television.

Please blame it on the Olympics. I'm considering returning the television to the store when the Olympics are over. Well, I don't know. I'm sure another sporting event will be aired again soon. Hopefully on ice...because, sports are so much better on a slippery surface. Man, I love the Winter Olympics.

Someone asked me what my favorite event was and my #1 favorite would have to be Falling and my #2 favorite is Crashing. In fact, there should be a compilation DVD of all of the skiers, skaters, and (curlers?) slipping and falling. I would watch it over and over again.
You're probably wondering who just hacked into Jean's blog. It's me, guys, really.
Jean loves watching sports.
A lot of people never thought I would have an iPhone either. Anything can happen, people.
So yeah, every TV screen I see now makes me wish it had the Olympics running. While pumping gas--- Show me the Olympics!
That would be way better than the advertisements they blare at you in the checkout line of the grocery store.

A kindergartner could do that!

I was doing some sketching over at my sister's this weekend and stepped away from the kitchen table for a minute. My kindergarten-aged nephew took advantage of the semi-blank sheet of paper I left out. Well, I had begun my own little sketch on that sheet, but he was able to finish it in a much more inspiring way. My sister and I, both being very artsy and teacherly, quickly analyzed his great artwork.

I couldn't help but make connections to the streetscapes of the artist Egon Shiele. I was fortunate enought to visit many of them up close when I was in Vienna last month at the Leopold Museum.

Viennese Ball

-Soooo, whadya see in Vienna, Jean?
-Oh, ya know, went to a ball at the palace.



Apparently, well-behaved Americans need to have"Excuse me" written in German on their hand.



You may have already forgotten that I went on a 11 day trip to Vienna, with short trips to Prague and Budapest sprinkled in there. I have decided to show my trip in small digestable pieces here on the blog bit by bit. My first blog topic is the night at the ball!
You heard right. My friend and host in Vienna, Bob, was able to get some tickets to the "Ball der Pharmacie." Yep, the folks who put it on have something to do with pharmaceuticals. Awesome. A ballgown was not in THIS backpacker's luggage. But luckily Austria has a healthy supply of shops. (Cinderella's fairy godmother was on a cruise in a warmer part of the world anyway.) I was able to get a dress that afternoon just in time for the ball.So there was ballroom dancing as to be expected, but at midnight...Michael Jackson came back to life and peformed at the ball!
Note in this video how Austrians are not so eager to cut loose like, ahem- Americans, for example. Go MJ!

Gum in Pill Bottle Form

Europe is, like, so different from America. I've been taking lots of gum here in Vienna.

Books out and about!

I'd like to share with you the exciting showing of some of my book pieces at the School of the Art Insitute of Chicago's Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection. (That's quite a mouthful, I know.)
I had the rare opportunity of curating my work with pieces from the school's collection in the cases pictured here. The pieces will be up for a short while, only until the end of this month, so if you have access to the 5th floor of the school, go take a look!

Also, here is a description from this exhibit:

This series of experimental book forms explores how to transform abstract thoughts from two-dimensional writings on paper into more physical three-dimensional space. In this way, the pieces experiment with new ways of reading in a non-linear manner. In a digital age that challenges the relevance of the traditional book, these pieces also consider other ways to envision the act of writing and reading. Personal journal writing is embedded in winding and sometimes circular paths. These pathways reference rivers, veins, maps, the Internet, and the changing systems of thinking and communicating information.

The other pieces in the adjacent cases were chosen from the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. Many were chosen because of their unconventional book structures. Other pieces, such as the scrolls, relate to the winding spool of handwriting. Some pieces were also chosen because of the use of handwriting or because they reference digital media and innovative formats for revealing text and image.

Project Dollhouse 2009

The first term of grad school is over! Hooray! Now it's time to blog! I thought it would be nice to show a little of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into making, or re-making, a dollhouse. Take THAT art school!
Project Dollhouse 2009 starts with a dollhouse my father constructed over 30 years ago. That might seem like a long time ago, but they had indoor electricity in dollhouses back in those days already. The next generation-my nieces- were the lucky recipients of the renovated dollhouse this Christmas.
Here are some before, during and after pictures of the remake. And by the way...it turns out removing wallpaper is just as much of a pain in the butt in miniature.

Art in Motion

I'm sharing a work in progress tonight with a group. This is another piece that includes torn pieces of my writing with winding "wires" of writing. The problem is that there's no good way to transport it. In she goes to the bag! She, the sculpture, will be going downtown and back today inside my backpack. Wish her luck!

Get your craft (and jam) on!

The holidays are here! Pictured here are images from the pre-holiday craft fair I participated in this past November. I am now showing them on-line because the next Holiday Craft Fair will be this Friday, December 4th, the First Friday, at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. Yahoo! Most of you readers out there know that I think the Old Town School is the bee's knees. But the school will be even greater with its First Friday happenings this week. Along with other crafty types, I will be selling my art prints and cards while folky music is happening all around us. Bliss!
See you at school on Friday! (4544 N. Lincoln Ave.-near Western Brown line stop.)
We'll be in the lobby from 6pm 'til at least 9pm.




Now if you can't make it, I have updated some art items over at my etsy site...just in time for holiday gift giving. Sorry if this blog post is really commercial...I will do something non-consumable in my next post. Promise.

Soul Signs of the times

As many of you reading this know, I host a collaging group (a strictly female event) at my home once or twice a month. It is inspired by the trademarked process:
What is SoulCollage®?
SoulCollage® is a process through which you contact your intuition and create an incredible deck of cards which have deep personal meaning and which will help you with life's questions.

It might sound cheesy but I'm over 50 cards in and I've led groups of teens and adults in different settings making them. I can't get enough!
Feel free to visit www.soulcollage.com
We convened without corporate permission last night and pasted together some soul cards. I made the card pictured here right before reading my related fortune from a fortune cookie. I think something is trying to be communicated to me!
In related news, did you know that SoulCollage has a facebook page!?!?

Right side up Today

Now I'm able to show you the doodles again...right-side up. Today is so much more calm and collected and sunny when photoshop is correctly installed once again on my computer. Deep breath.

Upside-down Doodling Tuesday

What's wrong with these pictures? Yes, they are upside down. This past rainy Friday felt like this when I did those drawings-all topsy-turvey and soggy...watching umbrella heads dash around the loop...But these images are also upside down because I haven't installed Photoshop yet on my new hard drive and won't bother to fix it in another program. But let's talk about what's right with this picture: I managed to re-connect my scanner and bring you these unedited images! YES! Perhaps tomorrow I'll post them again right side up so you don't have to stand on your head.

Soooo yeah, now that my techno-tools are getting back in order, I hope to get Doodling Tuesdays back on schedule again, folks. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of those Doodling Tuesday fans out there. You're the reason I doodle. Snif snif.

Spooling fooling words?

My new hard drive has arrived, my pictures are loading...ah, sweet sweet blogging can resume.
I have been continuing to tear up my journal writing and make those winding paths seen in previous works.
The latest piece has been a "spool" of my writing. "A thread of thinking" or "Unraveling my writing."
I'm sure there are other phrases. In fact, it feels fairly cliche so I'm either original with this spool of words or have plagiarized someone else's work. Has it all been done before? Those who have seen it already have told me they've never seen it before.

It reminded me of a story I heard about Paul McCartney writing the song, Yesterday. Wikipedia confirms it:
According to biographers of McCartney and The Beatles, McCartney composed the entire melody in a dream one night in his room at the Wimpole Street home of his then girlfriend Jane Asher and her family.^[1] Upon waking, he hurried to a piano and played the tune to avoid letting it slip into the recesses of his mind.^[2]
McCartney's initial concern was that he had subconsciously plagiarised someone else's work (known as cryptomnesia). As he put it, "For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it."^[2]
See the full story here.

I don't claim this spool of words will enjoy the success of a Beatles' Song, I just hope I haven't subconsciously stolen another piece! Whatever the case, I think I'll continue spooling and fooling around with it.

The Virtual/Real Tangle

The start of grad school has begun with a jumble of information...not unlike the tangled cords that sit behind my computer and are pictured below. I've noticed the same tangle happening in a paper sculpture that is still growing and has been featured in previous blog posts--also pictured below.
But just as I can't quite unravel the tangle of classes, career paths, and tangle of information in this age of social networking, I can't seem to get my simple digital images uploaded to the blog. You see, my computer at home is even confused. It crashed unexpectedly the other day and when I restart it, a blinking icon of a folder with a question mark appears. I've been told in an apocalyptical tone, "That's bad."
That blinking question mark in its innocent Mac friendly font taunts me. It, too, is not sure what to do!
"How will I blog for my people?," I wondered. So I brought my digital camera to my school computer lab but the computer doesn't seem to upload the pics either. Sigh. In the irony of my techno-fuzzy world, I've taken a picture of my camera with my camera on my iPhone. (Yes, I'm now one of those people as of a few weeks ago.) I then emailed the iPhone pictures to myself and posted them here on this blog.



I also took a picture of this very blog you're looking at. Woh, that is so conceptual!
Quiz: How many screens are you looking through before you get to see my paper sculpture? Is it real? Sick, huh? Makes you want to touch a human being or play with mud or something, doesn't it?

Painting and Music: A nice duo with Trio

This past Wednesday, I had the honor to do a "speed-painting" during the duration of a concert performed by Trio in Stereo. (Visit MySpace or Facebook to learn more about this Chicago band!) I was invited to do a painting of some sort so I decided to role out the paper right on the floor in front of the stage. With paint markers, oil sticks and the Magnum 44 permanent marker, I created an image of the 5 band members in roughly 45 minutes. There were many comments on the strong odor this marker produces. Permanent marker is not a sense typically associated at the bar but, well, this was a multi-sensory experience for sure!
Next time, I'm definitely bringing knee pads!

Doodling sculpture

I'd like to think the wandering line in our formation of these dominos this past weekend is connected to the wandering line growing out of my "doodle."

My "doodle" today is the start of a new 3-D piece. It is a continuation of a series I've been working on since I was in North Carolina this past spring.