...May 1st?!

Wowies. Long time no post. Please accept my most humble apologies! A lot has been going on. A LOT.

First, my house almost burned down. A fire was started about two or three miles away, north in the wilderness area in the foothills, on Saturday afternoon. It’s since burned about 600 acres, I think, but miraculously, no houses burned (many were evacuated, like mine), and the fire started going north instead of any other of the cardinal directions on about Tuesday. This took it far away from civilization; a huuuuge blessing. Also, to my knowledge, none of the firefighters have been seriously injured in this ordeal, though one did get stung by a bee. And to add yet another blessing and relief, the weather has been perfect- no wind, though it was very warm the first couple of days, and then yesterday and today have been very cool and humid. All of this is a big deal- the foothills where it started are steep and rugged, and hasn’t burned in forty years. It could have been disastrous, and nearly was, but God kept us well guarded.

Next up:
Commissions! I currently have several commissioned art-things in the works! This is exciting and makes me happy. I hope I can find time soon to work on them…

Work! Pretty much my favorite professor at Scripps has hired me for a short period to help her class (Typography and the Book Arts) finish the semester’s work. This is my third year working for her (I worked for her during the summers of 2006 and 2007), and the third time her offer has really been a life-saver. She’s even bumped my pay rate up 25% from last summer (which was about a 25% bump up from the summer before that!) :) The work can be tedious and exhausting, but…I kinda like stuff like that. And it’s fun to work with cool materials, help out, see what the students have been working on, and take peeks at the book they’ve put together (and from my own experience in that class, it takes a stupefying amount of work). Professor Maryatt is herself a treat, and being a well-known figure in the art/book arts world, it’s a huge honor to work for her and learn from her. She has connections EVERYWHERE, and never hesitates to do things for her students. Also, she’s buddies with/does work for Ed Ruscha—he’s like, seriously, a famous artist.

Coming soon…art prints! Hand-painted fabric!
I’ve just ordered some paper from Mohawk papers, and I plan to have a few of my originals made into prints, which I will then put on Etsy. It’ll be a good way to sell artwork for less, without having to sell originals and/or pay myself ten cents an hour to make “cheap” enough artwork. I’ve also ordered some fabric paint, which I will use to make awesomely printed/painted fabric! Textile design is super cool, but I can’t afford to do it commercially. So I’ll just have to do it myself.

Books on cd. The greatest invention ever. I loved The Return of the King. The middle-aged British dude narrating really got into the voices and sang the couple of songs Tolkein wrote with gusto. This book, which I had started reading at least six times before giving up after the first couple chapters, is so much better in an audio format. Listening to it was also an excellent escape for parts of my brain that would get bored with a lot of drawing, and it was an excellent escape in general, because it allowed me to forget about my troubles for a bit. :) Since the Tolkein, I’ve listened to Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, which was fun but frivolous and completely pointless. I just started listening to The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, which I don’t really like so far (I’m not sure if it’s the narrator’s voice or what). Oh, and I found an awesome, free online resource for anyone if you want to try out audio books- librvox.org. It’s got a LOT of classics, because most of the classics are in the public domain (hence, free) and nice volunteers come and read them. I’ve started listening to Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift, which is read by a youngish-sounding British woman, so that’s a little weird, but so far the story is pretty good! Yay audiobooks!

That’s all for now. Hopefully this was somewhat coherent. after staring intently at various things all day long, my eyes keep wanting to go out of focus…not to mention my brain. My brain definitely wants to go out of focus. Whatever that means. See? Time to stop writing before I hurt myself.