Just needed to share.

I found this image a few days ago. I don't remember what I was googling. But I feel the need to share it because I'm kind of in love with it. If you don't know me, or aren't familiar with my work and obsessions, you'll probably be weirded out. But then, if you don't know me/my work, I have no idea how you've happened upon my blog.

So here it is: (from here)

I can’t help the way I feel (2003)
John Isaacs
“In this work lies an interest in a possibility of the emotional landscape of the body becoming manifest in its surface. Visually, the way in which the flesh grows, erupts, and engulfs the body can be seen as a metaphor of the way in which we become incapacitated by the emotional landscape in which we live and over which we have little control. The body also appears to be suffering from some kind of malignancy, as in cancer, but for me, the image of the figure, coupled with the title, leads one into an open contemplation of the plight of the individual.” - John Isaacs

Cold and flu season, right on time.

There are so many wonderful-to-ogle things in the blogosphere... I'm getting sucked in, I feel it. It's like when I used to LiveJournal, and got sucked into the goings-on of my friends' lives, except that this feels so much more legitimate. Pretty things are legitimate!

Anywho, I had a really great printing day last week, following a really great paper-shopping day, the result of which was a bunch of great Valentine's day cards. But then I got sick. So I'm just getting around to posting pics and links and such now, many days later.

The first thing I must share is my drying rack -- not for its fabulousness (yarn, clothes pins, and scrap lumber, oh my!) but simply because I've been whining about not having one and now I do. Sort of. So here, bask in its glory: Not worth picturing but which makes me giddy with pride is my new, genius registration system that makes everything line up wonderfully and resulted in absolutely no registration errors during my batch of card making. The only errors were due to bad ink passes (totally my fault) and that brings my success rate to something like 98%, up from around 64% not too long ago.

Back to the cards, though, because that's what you should be ogling. Most of the batch was gold on burgundy, which looks really great. But I also tried to find a color that worked well on the red paper I picked up. Less success there -- tried a salmon-y color and straight white, neither of which had the same pop that the gold/burgundy combo did -- but they're available too, if you like them. The shop page on CarlyBodnar.com is working now, so you can get them there. So go get some!

Valentine Test Prints

Printed a test batch of valentines day cards. (The design wraps around the back, fyi.) Very cute, although gold ink was frustratingly sticky. (Typing will be very limited because right after printing, I cut a chunk out of my finger with a kitchen knife. Left hand, thankfully, but still makes lots of things difficult.) Now I have to track down large quantities of this card stock I printed them on -- it was given to me by a friend, so I have no idea what it is exactly, or where it came from. Once I find it, they'll be for sale, but not just yet...

Andrea Zittel Lecture

I went to the Andrea Zittel talk last night at PSU. Packed house -- a bigger turnout than I've ever seen for a Monday night artist lecture. I felt lucky to snag a spot on the floor from which I could actually see the projector screen and wasn't blocked by other people's heads. And this was in the new room they have for the artist lectures -- I can't imagine everyone trying to fit in the old venue.

(I'm not going to recap the whole evening. The lecture will supposedly be made available on Art Talk AM, though at the time of this posting it's not.)

Anyway, it was really great -- the lecture, the crowd, the general vibe. I caught myself admiring Andrea Zittel's dress before I even realized it was her, and once I realized that it was, I couldn't help but wonder if it was her own creation. It's true that her personal uniforms are now from a few years back, but it definitely looked like it fit into that vein. (Or maybe it was related to this smockshop tangent.) I was also surprised at her age. Turns out she's 43. She seems very youthful... and it's hard to get a sense of perspective on an artist's progression through just looking at articles and whatnot, but her talk actually helped me do that much better.

I found her to be very approachable, personable. And she had a lot of interesting things to talk about, like how freedom can be found in the loopholes of society, flying under the radar, rather than having and accumulating more and more. (Something I should really take to heart.) She also talked a little about her choice to not make money off reproducing her work, mass producing her creations for sale. I found that very refreshing... it's not a stance that I hear much in the art world (not to say that it's not common, but I think it's either not voiced very loudly, or it's repressed).

Perhaps the most interesting thing she talked about was a residency where she spent a week in a "vacation from time," as she called it. The residency was in a basement studio, which lined up perfectly with a project she had been wanting to do. She wanted to see what natural rhythms or cycles developed without the structure of time. I guess she ended up feeling like hell from it, but I think that would make an awesome ongoing residency program. I, for one, would love to be a resident in a program like that (see previous post).

All in all, I found it to be a lovely evening, very encouraging, if not inspiring. I need to go to more Monday night lectures.

My circadian clock is broken.

I took a nap this evening, and now I'm up all night. I woke up from my nap at 11pm, and have to be back at work at 8am, so really, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do a little redesign of my site. My fingers are very cold now, but I got done what I wanted to. At least the first bit of it. I'm just hoping the delirium helps me out mood-wise for work.

Work was going to be pretty rough anyway -- we sold out of all our sale stuff in the first hour of business yesterday (not kidding) and despite what I told pissed off customers yesterday, we're not actually getting more of anything on the trucks overnight, so people are going to be even more pissed tomorrow. Yay. If you need me I'll be hiding in the admin office.

Oh, and speaking of work and my inability to sleep: Shift Work Sleep Disorder. I knew it.

Now I suppose I'll do some bookkeeping I've been putting off in my more conscious states. What's more fun than that at 5am, eh?

The Artist and the Day Job.

Someone I interviewed with a while ago called my manager to check up on the references I had provided. Kind of caught me off guard -- I wasn't expecting to be in the running since I wasn't able to commit to full-time. And I'm not sure that I'd want the job if they offered it to me. I actually ended up going to the interview because I forgot to cancel it with reasonable notice, and I figured it might be a good connection to have made for the future. And my interviewers were great, and it's something that on a lot of levels would/could be very fulfilling -- but I also have a gut-level hesitation about it. Part of it is benefits. Paid time off and (cheap!) health care, I'm increasingly realizing, are pretty damn valuable. The other part is trying to save all, or at least the majority of my feelings of fulfillment (not to mention energy) for my art. I think right now it's important for me to have something of a shit job, and be able to come home and throw myself into the art and make that the good part of my day.

And yet I keep looking for more jobs.

The artist and the day job: the epic saga...

PDX Must See: Thomas Wood etchings

If you're in the Portland area, and have any appreciation or knowledge of etching, you must go see Thomas Wood's prints at the Augen Gallery's NW Davis location. Images online absolutely do not do them justice. I'm not the type of person that buys art, because usually I'm just too critical of it. Plus, I'm not the type that can go look at the same piece over and over, like you go back and re-read books. But these prints I could sit in front of for hours, I think. I almost bought one of his prints last night. I really don't have the money, but so beautiful... and the more I screenprint the more I can really appreciate well-registered prints, and he's got multiple plates on many of his prints. Super rich colors, textures... very realistic but surrealistic... very satisfying.

Ok, I'm done. Back to my painting. I got the painting wall in my studio clear enough that I can actually do some work. (Yay!) The rest of the office/studio is slowly, ever so slowly, getting cleaner as well.