Hope A 9/21/16 Hope A 9/21/16

Bless this Mess

For August's postcard, I knew I would be packing up, forwarding my mail and looking for housing in New Orleans. I had also been cleaning up and getting rid of things that would not fit in the truck (who knew we would be leaving behind even more on out actual moving day). I gave a spirograph to a friend with a pre-schooler. Spirograph had been a part of my 80's childhood and recently I had been inspired by the idea to free hand draw patterns while on a cross-country flight. I liked the color combination of similar warm colors. I also had been thinking of how to bring attention to the local news, though I plan my postcards 2 months ahead--a few lifetimes in news cycles. I wanted to acknowledge the difficulties we face as a nation while making a lighter postcard for now. I was surrounded by the physical disorder of packing, and the mental disorder of daily upsetting news.

Talking about race is important. And difficult. I didn't want to ignore it but I also didn't know what to say that month. So I made a postcard in honor of the messy situations we face that make us stronger, keeping it broad even as the important questions simmer.

Even as I write this, there are protests in North Carolina over another police officer using deadly force against a black person. The stories begin to blur. Unarmed. Asking for assistance with a broken down car. Mentally ill. Unarmed. Deadly force. Deadly. Over and over and over. What will it take to get out of this? Can we re-think the ways we maintain order and safety in our society because our current system of fear, bullying, threat, and incarceration does nothing to lead us to a more compassionate, productive, inclusive society.

This was supposed to be a post about my friend's tattoo. About feeling a mess in my 20's but now, nearly 40, feeling clearer in my purpose. Then I read the news all day. Keep talking to each other, keep fighting, build the bridges. Burn the monuments to fear and power.

If you want to go down a workhold of numbers and statistics, check out the Guardian's ongoing count of people killed by police.

Hope A 6/21/16 Hope A 6/21/16

by water

Some days I try not to schedule anything. No classes, no meetings with friends, no work. Maybe an idea. Usually involving the ferry or a bike ride. I am not good with this kind of open-ended day, the choices become overwhelming. Which is the opposite of my intentions. So I TRY not to schedule anything but I usually have an idea. One recent afternoon I took the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, which is enough for me but then also walked through a weird mall downtown, took a bus to Land's End, hiked until I found a place to sit, and then went to a mall in Japantown on my way home.

Hope A 6/21/16 Hope A 6/21/16

MAKE PAPER

The same weekend as our show opening in Oakland, ProArts hosted its annual open studio tours and we were asked to participate. Jenny Williams, who has facilitated other great workshops at the space arranged for us to lead a papermaking workshop. Though one of us is a meticulous papermaker, some of us are a little more loose with our methods. Also, holding a water-intensive workshop at a bookstore posed a few issues but we brought some prepared kozo fiber, demonstrated ways to use it sculpturally without beating it. We also beat some of the fiber by hand with mallet, pulled tiny sheets, pressed them between boards and brushed them onto the bookstore windows to dry. Overall, a successful day.

Okra used for formation aid to help the fibers settle in the vat.

Liam stands on old woodblock carvings re-purposed as boards to press out water in the new sheets. The sheets are between felts between the boards.

kozo fiber wet and ready for beating and an example of what the dried fiber can look like without beating.

brushing sheets to dry on the bookstore windows as andy works outside.

Hope A 6/14/16 Hope A 6/14/16

EXQUISITE SUBSET

About a year and half ago, a friend talked me into attending a conference of papermakers. Sometimes I am not confident in my skills and identity and so around papermakers I tend to identify as a printmaker and vice versa. I once declared myself an enthusiast of mail art, because I love postcards but I didn't realize there is a community of people who participate in mail art and though in some ways it has influenced what I do, it is not the most accurate description.

I digress.

At this conference I met other papermaker-printmakers and we started a critique group, a salon if you will. We met, ate food, shared what we were working on. A new member joined as one left, and then another new member to make 4. We decided on the name subset as a reference to the overlap of our abilities and interests (including an interest in Venn diagrams). We applied for residencies and had shows on our own and then decided to get a show together.

We started with the idea of showing our individual work maybe linking them together by theme, like an exquisite corpse. Then we had the idea to try a few collaborative pieces. For one meeting,w e each brought something we had started but couldn't finish, blank paper, abandoned prints, half-finished books. We lay them on the table and then watch chose a few pieces to try to work on. We brought them back to the next meeting, lay them on the table again with additional unfinished pieces and chose again. Over 2 months we met about 5 times to exchange work and in this way created a body of weird paper works that somehow worked together, a bit of a pleasant surprise as we hung the show hours before the opening.

As we began this project, we also played the parlor game exquisite corpse, each starting a drawing, folding it over so only a few lines were visible , then passing it around to the next person to add to it. I made letterpress prints of the finished drawing and spent nights before the show opening hand coloring them with water color paint and a gold pen.

Of course I made a postcard that fit in this theme.

Keep Writing number 87, exquisite corpse. I can't wait to see what is sent back to me.

EXQUISITE works by subset is open at EM Wolfman Books in downtown Oakland through the end of June.

Hope A 6/14/16 Hope A 6/14/16

READ

I don't read as much as I used to. When I was in middle school, over the summer, I would read the entire Little House on The Prairie set over and over. I would read all day, sitting outside at the day camp I attended. But for the past year or so, I haven't found anything that would hold my interest for that long. I read magazines, I read short stories when I travel, I listen to audio books. I've tried taking only baths and reading in the bath, I've tried reading at night. I wasn't upset but there were books I wanted to have read but I didn't have the focus to sit and read.

One day I was giving away a pile of books (not because I have given up on reading, these were books I have already read). I stopped at one of the many free little libraries in residential streets on my way to work. I saw a copy of Dune. I remember when the movie came out, I remember the images for the movie poster. It was never a book I read or had much interest in. But I do like a paperback with a good design and as a bonus there is a map inside of the planet where the book is based. I threw it in my bag and took it home.

Over the next few weeks I read it every chance i got: in the bath, on break at work, in bed with a tiny light on so my sweetie could sleep. I'm not a huge science fiction fan (though the last book I had read was a selection of feminist sci-fi) but something about the book was captivating. When I came to the Litany against Fear, I made a note of the page number and knew what my next postcard would be.

I had no idea that the passage was famous that it might be on coffee mugs and high school yearbooks. But it appealed to me as I think a lot about fear, about things I am afraid of, about how to look at those things, see them, acknowledge them, and act not react to them.

I was telling everyone who would listen about Dune as if I had discovered a new treasure. And I had. Years after everyone else.

I love worms and I love Dune.

PS I was looking for a clip of the movie without an ad and then I found this. Which I like better.

Hope A 5/31/16 Hope A 5/31/16

Drumpf for President?

For April, I was inspired by the daily news, mostly the Rachel Maddow show podcast I listen to every morning. It is unbelievably easy to find lists of offensive things Trump has said while running for president. It makes me angry and sad. Because he has supporters. People like what he is saying. And that is what is scary to me.

Hope A 5/31/16 Hope A 5/31/16

60 Seconds

For March, I was inspired by a Gabriel Marcia Marquez quote:

For every minute you sleep, you lose sixty seconds of light.

I wrote it down years ago, when I slept less. But now I think of it as more about paying attention, of being awake and aware. Of course, the part of me that doesn't sit still (the internalized capilatlism, as Claire calls it) also likes to stay busy, not waste time. But lately I have been also taking it slow, walking, looking for quiet and just looking around. It is easy to look one but I have been trying mroe often to sit with a spot, notice details and be still. And that is what I asked folks to do this month. See responses at www.keepwritingpostcards.tumblr.com .

oh, when I send these out I mentioned typos. There were two:

I asked people to sit for sexty seconds

and I suggested getting a montlhy subscription. You can get your subscription too. And I will work on proofreading. Most embarrasing it that these were writtne digitally not handset.

Hope A 3/8/16 Hope A 3/8/16

All Quiet...

A few months ago, a friend sent me an email request to participate in a project organized by another friend of a friend. Allyson Comstock is a mixed media and paper artist who was an artist in residence in Antarctica. During her time there, she took may photographs. Upon her return she made postcards of the images and mailed them to anyone willing to participate. Our assignment: use the postcard as inspiration for a piece in an any medium. I, of course, chose letterpress postcard.

The image she sent me was stark and amazing. I immediately began imagining ways to break down the image into layers of the same color, a technique used by a friend in a beautiful print of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My only decision was which month to print the postcard.

Usually for new year's cards, there is no response portion for recipients. But this year I was thinking of all the noise in my life, the audio chatter and the static inside. I wanted silence. I discovered this quote while reading a favorite poem again, and the piece cam together.

This month I asked what are you looking for in the new year OR what is your favorite type of silence. The responses have been lovely, and have even inspired a few people I rarely hear from. Now a few of the cards and maybe some of the responses will be sent to Allyson for a show of all the works that have been produced from her show. I can't wait to see the results.