New Orleans Marks and Remarks

During a weekend party, I met a couple who were trying to find a ride to New Orleans. Before realizing what was happening, all of the party-goers had publicly agreed on our behalf that I should offer my car and we should head South. So we did. Within 24 hours, two strangers, soon to be "friends for life", were at my door with road trip groceries in reusable bags identical to my road trip groceries in reusable bags. It was the beginning of a series of signs that us hardy souls were meant to be hurdling down to the swamplands of Louisiana prepared to sleep on yoga mats in a friend's shotgun house. It also helped that we were ready to don costumes at a moment's notice.  We drove the 17 hours from Chicago to New Orleans through the night, getting to know one another. The whole brassy trip - from music in the streets, to drinks on balconies, to strolls through the cemeteries - confirmed once again that whenever possible, just say yes. Above is a strategically obscured page of markings I created while on the trip. Below is a famous tomb full of markings. The people, the music, the architecture, and yes, even the smell. Gosh-wow, I just love New Orleans.

One-way ticket to Mexico

The idea to go to Mexico to teach -or at least learn- appeared as quietly and as logically to me as the idea to cross a street when the light turns green. I should go now.
In case I fell asleep at the wheel, I found a subletter, a car sitter, and a 1978 issue of National Geographic to remind me that I really was going. So this National Geographic (pictured below) featured this woman who trekked across the Australian outback by herself with 4 camels. I randomly found the issue and IT SPOKE TO ME. I found out this woman also wrote a whole book about her solo expedition. I immediately located it and devoured it. I have no intention of walking hundreds of miles in Australia or getting to know camels better but I think it was research for Mexico. Did I read books on living in Mexico? Do I speak Spanish? Absolutely not. Did I read a book on a woman in the desert for several months by herself? Obviously!

When I got to the end of the book, I sketched out a sculpture and finally "realized" that sculpture with what little supplies I haven't packed away and only hours before boarding the plane.

Someone already asked if the sculpture is a book. Yes, it is. You can read it and interact with it.

I have been joking that I have put more work into planning a good theme party than I have this move to Mexico.  So, dear friends, if this blog is how you are hearing about my departure, don't be offended. I barely got a chance to inform myself. Weeks after adopting the aging issue of a National Geographic as my bible, I just happened to notice the article on the next page: MEXICO.

Art at its laziest.

Here's another good "post-grad school" activity where you don't even have to get out of bed to do it. Draw stuff on your iphone. I made my first painting today and--well--it felt good. I'm ready to tell you that I did it and none of my analog works have fallen off the wall and punched me in my digitally-glazed face...yet. I do believe my oil paintings are staring from across the room, peeling with envy. They smelled an iTunes download. I imagine my paintbrushes and my pencils get together at night (all Toy Story style) and talk about how to win back my love.  I heartlessly downloaded the free app called DrawCast right in front of those fat tubes of paint.
I'm now accepting recommendations for other free painting/drawing applications to download on my phone. But it better be good because in DrawCast you can even mix colors by tapping your finger on two different digital swatches to come up with a new swatch. Who knew you could have so much fun without turpentine?

I'd say the glass is half FULL today. Drink it up, David Hockney!

Where is your light source?

I had the privilege of meeting the inspiring, insightful, "illuminating", and hilarious cartoonist Lynda Barry this week in a roundtable discussion at SAIC. I even mustered the courage to show her some of my own drawings from my very prolific period called: 1st through 3rd grade. She inspired me to go back to my own childhood drawings and remember what I was thinking then.

This pencil drawing is from the pad of paper that was always kept by the phone to take messages. I was 6 years old and my mom had the wisdom to hold onto it. I'm guessing I was thinking about the sewer system underneath the streets. I'm not sure if the lady's careful disposal of trash despite her unruly elbow was an early comment on environmental action. Lynda Barry did mention that I had a keen sense of light sources in my drawings. Sure enough, the drawing above includes the car's headlights in the background. Lynda included a light source above my name when she signed my copy of her book, One!Hundred!Demons!. She just plain rocks and has become my newest light source.

Book gets press(ed)

You might remember a post from last year showing my Computer Book in progress in North Carolina. It was an obsessive book I carried with me on my daily walks, slowly turning the text into Os and 1s.
I'm happy to report that this sculptural book work is currently being shown this summer in Oklahoma City along side some very accomplished artists for whom I have great respect!
The show, at Artspace at Untitled in Oklahoma City, was called Altered Books. Here's some press from the exhibit:
An article from a local paper: http://www.newsok.com/article/3475517?searched=altered%20books&custom_click=search
and then watch the beginning of this video carefully. The Computer Book gets a little cameo role for a few seconds!

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.

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.

Tuesday Doodles adhered to Book!

After teaching and preaching the wonders of a sketchbook to teens this summer, I found myself practicing what I preach these past few days. Sketchbooks for holding ideas and images together is great and it's even greater when you get to make the book from scratch...sewing, gluing and filling. The whole thing.
You may have guessed I have accumulated many Tuesday doodles over the past few months... and I've thought, what better place to keep them than in a personal book I bound by hand myself?!?! Why did this concept only occur to me now?

Consolidating my imagery into a single book is also timely because I have been trying to purge things in my home that I no longer use. The One-Year-Rule is the best and has served me well: If you haven't found a use for something in the past year, get rid of it and trust it will come back to you when you need it. The Artist/Hoarder instinct goes haywire when you do this. One particularly persistent pile of clutter I had to face was a bag of sticks. Wooden sticks, people! I don't need them! If I had a front yard, I'm afraid mine would be the one with the old toilet overgrown with weeds and the rusty lawnmower. But anyway, almost everything in my workspace is being glued into my book...

Woman on Blanket in Millenium Park

On Monday, we took our sketchbooks outside to our front yard: Millenium Park. It was the lunch hour for many and they sat on blankets in the lawn listening to free live reggae music. Have I mentioned I love summer in Chicago? This woman sat chatting to a friend with her back to me, unaware of her excellent posing skills.

Jean and doodles about town...

While I was supposed to be posting my Tuesday doodle last week, I was pushing the wonders of "jaffa cakes" onto my neighbor at Grant Park's Movie in the Parks. Everytime I go to Harvestime grocery store on Lawrence Avenue, I pick up a sugary unidentifiable something from another country. Harvestime stocks an amazing array of imported food products. What I thought were caramely insides from the picture on the "jaffa cakes" package, ended up being some orange flavor instead. Surprise! What have you bought from Poland lately?



I'm sorry. I went to Movies in the Parks in Grant Park last Tuesday and did not do my Tuesday doodle. I was embracing the ever fleeting summer in Chicago. I love summer in Chicago. To make up for it, I'm going to post several doodles this week. Promise!

That's including this one from the Monroe Harbor today:

Doodling Tuesdays!

Enough said.

Doodling Tuesday goes 3-D

So this first picture isn't a doodle, but shows the nice contrast in weather and recreation from last weekend's art fair. Say yes to kites!
Okay, on to the doodle...


I'd like to showcase a three dimensional "doodle" piece that is a still a work in progress. Inspired by a vivid dream I had last month and the form of mussel shells(resting in the lower left corner of the picture above), I have begun a paper sculpture. It is a natural progression from the series of "book sculptures" I was making in North Carolina this Spring. Refer to this post and this post about those previous works. My dream was trying to the solve the problem of making the accordian fold (a rather inorganic structure) move organically out of an enclosed space. Ya know, your standard, run of the mill dream. Take THAT dream interpretors! Side note: I will be returning to the theme of accordion folds in a future post soon. Okay, back to this crazy dream...
so wouldn't you know it, nature's done it already. My coils of handwriting (torn out of my journals) are growing out of these "pods" that are shaped much like a mussel shell.

It can morph out of the wall as well. I'm not sure where it is headed; it's doing things of its own accord. I just hear one word in my head as I'm working on it: MORE. Perhaps these pods will start flourishing in the cracks of my ledges like fungi. Thoughts?

Doodling Tuesdays: Art Fest syle!

Art Fest prep is on the brain this week! I've been scheming ways to lay out my booth. This is a preliminary sketchy doodle from that. You can definitely see the potential, right?

Doodling Tuesdays: a two-fer

You may have noticed that there was no doodle last Tuesday. Today, I bring you a doodle out of one of my handmade sketchbooks. Since it's on two pages, maybe it can count as a "two-fer" for the past two weeks?
My digital camera has been acting funny and I have felt completely at a loss for blog posts without access to images. What's a blog without some pictures? Thankfully, I can still share images through a scanner.

Doodling Tuesdays

Ah, another Tuesday doodle on a Wednesday:

Back to regularly scheduled Doodling

This Doodling Tuesday is brought to you from Chicago this week! We're back to our regularly scheduled programming! This particular doodle is ongoing and growing into 3-dimensional space. So stay tuned for further doodling developments.

Road Home

Pictured above: World Atlas, Altered Book made at Penland School of Crafts, 2009

I was eager to get home this past week...eager to see friends, eager for my own apartment, the ability to walk Chicago neighborhood streets in the Spring, put my dishes in a dishwasher, boil my own water, imagine!

We made it from Penland, North Carolina, to Chicago in 14 hours...but not without a few roadblocks in the Cherokee National Forest.



View Larger Map
The chainsaws were already going and it was at least an hour to turn back to other roads so we waited it out in the woods.
Ciao for now, North Carolina. Helloooooooo summer in Chicago!

Doodling Tuesdays #4!

(This is this week's Tuesday-ISH doodle.) In the whirlwind of Inauguration Day and watching American politicians dance at the "I did something special to be here-Inaugural ball", I missed posting my Tuesday doodle. I understand that on January 20th, 2009, the world came to a screeching halt. I know it's not because of what Michelle was wearing or that Aretha's hat could be seen from the small village Obama's father is from. The world must have stopped spinning because Jean didn't contribute a doodle to cyberspace. Breathe easy, here it is! (By the way, Aretha's hat was awesome...and I use the a-word sparingly.)