my super sweet friend carolyn and her partner garet are in the process of moving to vermont. she is establishing a private conservation practice and garet is a very talented graphic designer. snow boarding, maple syrup, and wheat starch paste, i am there! check out carolyn's website.
folks making dream catchers at the summer camp craft workshop. click here to see more. the next class will be accordion books. accordion book structures are simple, fun, and functional. we will post more information about the next class very soon...
i purchased super natural grass fed ground beef and a whole chicken and more spices from the spice man...
then went to shem's loft...
then to thrift world and purchased a ton of cute garments...
then to komart, an amazing korean market. i got a ton of snacks for my next gathering of friends...
f is for frank has a new blog. see what shosh and casey are up to at the studio...
just returned from baltimore. jules posing in my room...
national bohemian beer and formstone...
plane ride...
our pal is spreading the word...thanks holly. see you there...
we spent part of the afternoon gathering supplies for the summer camp craft workshop. the 99 cents store is our favorite supplier of stuff. their selection of bins beats the container store by far. we took more than one walk through, so many great finds...
these are tracings of losses in the wallpaper that we are treating. the lines are transferred to japanese paper used to fill the losses by pricking with a needle. the paper is then torn along the perforations.
this is a super simple, but delicious dish. once you get it started you can leave it on the stove top and take care of other business. i think i should definitely not be a food photographer/stylist, these shots look like the scary recipe cards in my mom's betty crocker recipe box from the 1970's...
3 chicken legs...get free range chicken at dallas farmers market (or 2 lbs of meat or something else)
1 tbsp of tikka, vindaloo (i used the vindaloo masala spice mix), korma, or curry...(purchased spices from the spice man at the dallas farmers market)
1 tbsp oil
1 medium chopped onion
salt to taste
1 1/2 cups water
1 medium chopped onion
1 cup of coconut milk or yogurt (i used the coconut milk)
Add cooking oil to medium size pot. saute onion on medium heat, add curry powder and stir. add 1/2 cup of the water and stir to make the sauce. add the meat. add the salt and stir. add the remainder 1 cup water and cook covered fro 30 minutes stirring occasionally. if sticky add more liquid. add tomato and cook for 10 minutes. add coconut mild and simmer for 3 to 7 minutes. serve over rice. this is a love potion, i have seen it work. after eating go swimming and then dry off.
there are many market options in the oc. i really like the painted exterior walls of mi super...
and thrift town is just a few steps away...
i am hunting for belts. i found two skinny belts at thrift town, but i was hoping to find something thicker...
beaded things are nice, missed a loop.
we went to an opening that had a funny crowd and featured prints from flatbed press and to the dma. the museum was very crowded, it was nice.
this is a detail of a parchment daughters of the american revolution document that we humidified and flattened. the portraits are of mary and martha washington.
this is a before treatment detail of a parchment that i treated at nedcc. parchment is extremely sensitive to humidity.
this is a parchment that i humidified and stretch dried at nedcc. the parchment was extremely cockled and had deep wrinkles and creases. stretching is not often required and is considered a last resort.
the image above is a fragment from the conradin bible (ca. 1265), an early illuminated that i treated at the walters art museum. i examined the manuscript fragment under magnification to check for flaking pigment. several areas of black pigment around the raised gold coins and areas of red glazing were loose and flaking. i consolidated these areas by first applying ethanol as a primer, with a small brush, and then re-adhered the loose flakes with a 1% gelatin solution. the magnified pigments created an amazing landscape of texture and color. they were really beautiful...
flaking pigment..
holly recently mentioned the large international section at the fiesta on hampton, so i spent the evening filling a cart. they have the most colorful plasticware...shades of pink, pale green, and melon. i purchased cute dish towels, plastic bins and plates, topo chico, and more...but no little rainbows.
dish towels...
see more here...
the upcoming paper nerds workshop is dedicated to SUMMER CAMP CRAFTS! this is a great way to celebrate the end of summer. shem bedos is our guest camp counselor. she is an expert dream catcher fabricator and she has been known to make huge dream catchers with HULA HOOPS...woah! click here for more info.
we took a tour of the rachosfsky house today. i really liked guy ben-ner's treehouse kit. another artist in the collection named, sterling ruby, is featured in the latest issue of art on paper (we just got a subscription to this mag. at work!!!).
we had seven very talented students attend the japanese sewn binding class this past sunday. the next workshop is on sunday august 17th, from 1:00 to 4:00. we will celebrate the end of summer with a workshop dedicated to summer camp crafts. folks will learn how to make dream catchers, god's eyes, safety pin jewelry, beads made from junk mail and paper scraps, and more. click here for more info. about workshops...
two lovely ladies spent last night helping me make gifts for two other lovely ladies. shem taught me how to make dream catchers. i wish i had taken a photograph of her showing up at my door step with an arm full of willow branches. this is my first endeavor...more to come. tish, you are an amazing kitchen hand...and the place was spotless at the end of the night. thanks!
this is a detail of a print we recently completed treating. it is so nice to work with interesting objects and materials.
the new place is coming along. i made the curtains from an old table cloth. spent some money at the indian super market...spices and rose syrup. shannah is helping to hang art on the walls. slowly, but....
mixing paint to tone japanese tissues that will fill losses in the sky on the wallpaper project.
this is part of the sky on the panel of late1800's French wallpaper that we are currently treating. the severely stained and damaged wallpaper was carefully washed, the old linings were removed during the bath. we lined the wallpaper with japanese tissue and stretch dried it on our large work table. old poorly executed over painting was reduced as much as possible. the next step involves hours of inpainting.
this was the first panel that we lined. the other panels were lined together to form a single large sheet.
this is a detail of the trees on the wallpaper.
shem designed this very sweet wallpaper. check out her cute blog.
the super talented shoshannah frank has a new etsy shop. creations by f. is for frank are designed, sculpted, cast, and perfected in their dallas, texas studio. their talents go well beyond pulls and doorknobs. they are a full service studio. their experience in custom architectural elements span from residential to retail. they create handmade accessories, hardware, lighting, furniture and sculpture. check it!
i found this respirator shot this week while backing up our digital images. we now have all of our treatment image files stored in three different places. the picture above shows me performing stain reduction over a suction platen (it is like a very small vacuum/suction table). a cocktail of solvents was used to reduce stains resulting from masking tapes.
this is a before treatment shot of the george washington manuscript that we recently finished treating. i will post pictures of a big wallpaper job that we are currently working on very soon.
i made yoga bags and curtains with my new sewing machine. this is a shot of tish modeling the bag. i purchased the fabric at garage sales...sweet.
this shot is fuzzy for a reason...to hide the identity of a certain gentleman and his arsenal of fireworks. he later stomped out a ring of fire in his neighbor's yard.
i took a ton of pictures of fireworks at fair park, but i didn't like them. here is a shot of an empty hall at fair park. the best part of the evening was watching tons of kids swimming in the fountains.
we hung papers that i made at the museum school in boston. the top paper is made of leak greens. the bottom sheet is a monoprint. the monoprint was created with a xerox copy. the image copy image was transferred onto an old yellowed sheet of ledger paper by rubbing acetone on the xerox copy of a pennsylvania dutch design motif.
leaks...the process of making this vegetable paper is similar to the process of making papyrus.
old yellow paper...
this sheet of paper was made by layering. a cloud shape was cut from a topography map and placed between two sheets of paper made from gampi and kozo fibers. i added a pink dye to the pulp mixture.
this sheet was also created by layering. the torn bits of an old letter (found at a garage sale) were layered between sheets of wet gampi and pressed to form a single sheet. i like how the fragment of the letter proturde from the edges of the sheet.
threw a party, moved out of my house, moved to oak cliff, worked at cac, taught a workshop, had fun. thanks to billy d. you are the best!!! learn more about the workshop on the kera art&seek blog. thanks lydia! go here to get details about our up coming japanese sewn binding class.
cynthia and robert threw a farewell party for the very sweet and talented florencia. the mariachis were amazing...
this is a a pile of very dirty sponges. the sponges were used to surface clean panels of wallpaper. the wallpaper also has severe losses, improper linings, and heavy inpainting and overpainting from a previous treatment.
this one of about 1,000 shots that i took of my niece, jules. she is obsessed with a certain comic book hero...
check out this sweet event...
i took a bike ride on wednesday to and snapped this at skillman and oram around 8:00 pm. it was a really nice evening.
here is a shot taken a bit later...on my way home.
tish and i modeling our new fierce safety goggles. nice...
this is a during shot of the backing removal treatment that i posted a while back. this treatment has been very satisfying. the print was split from a poor quality backing board. the facing paper of the board remained adhered to the print. the print was immersed in a filtered water bath to soften the water soluble starch based adhesive. this image shows the facing paper from the backing board being rolled off of the reverse of the print with a smooth hollytex support. the adhesive residues were gently swabbed away.
we had a great group of people participate in the cyanotype workshop. the piece above was printed on wood that was first coated with gelatin. very neat.
this cyanotype was printed on muslin. each framed collection of items represents a member of one of the sweetest families that i know.
click here to see more images from the workshop...
we spent friday preparing for the cyanotype workshop...
working on a backing removal...
and looking forward to the long weekend.
a client recently brought this print in for treatment. i think it is very sweet...
my cousin becky came for a visit this week. we were born 16 days apart (but i am a capricorn and she is an aquarius). she and i grew up together in baltimore. we watched scoobie doo and he-man, played base runners, drank tons of kool-aid, did homework together after walking home from st. dominic's, put on cabbage patch kid plays for grammy janet, wrote songs for the cure to record, snuck out to go dancing at meltdown at odell's on north avenue, went to our first concert together (new order, pil, and the sugar cubes), dropped something on a gulf course, and shared all of those painful, exciting, dramatic, lame-o coming of age experiences. the picture above shows the evolution of becky and her high school boyfriend, wayne, via prom pictures.
i really like this picture. i think she looks like a character from dark shadows. she got this dress at oh susanna's, a vintage store in fells point. we would hang out there spend our money on clothes, incense, night queen and egyptian musk oils, and mixed tapes of house music.
