This ...

is what the 'Give It Away' part looks like.

All the colors of the rainbow

So, where was I?

I spent some time over the last few weeks thinking about my art supplies. I enjoy reading other artists' comments about materials, and particularly, the colors they use in their palettes. Since I recently taught a course that included color theory, I thought I'd try simplifying my backpack and carry a paint kit outfitted with just the three primaries. So I did test swatches of my reds, blues and yellows and came up with a combination that I carried with me for a few weeks. I kept a muted set in a smaller Altoids tin (on the left side of the painting below):

20100528_SketchStuff Click to see this photo's flickr page

This is what I learned:
–  I'm too impatient to mix up my greens and purples from these primaries. For the painting above, I didn't mix the greens. Oh, heck, no.
–  I like my colors; I really love the cool and warm and neutral versions of my primaries, and I like the different versions of secondary and tertiary colors too. Why did I ever think I could be happy with just three, muted primary colors?
–  I don't paint with orange. Like, ever.

Another thing I realized is that I don't squeeze enough paint out of the tubes, trying to not waste any of it. I end up having to squeegee out pigment from my barely-loaded brushes onto my pages, or end up with washed out colors after the paint has dried on my notebook pages. Lots of water, but just a little bit of pigment. Ugh.

So after not-too-much thinking, I decided to give those tubes all a good squeeze and go on a 'Use it up' campaign. Paint isn't going to do much good being conserved, languishing and drying out unused in tubes sitting in a bin next to the dryer. Squeeze as much life and color out of what you have!

Sounds good, huh?

I ran into a hiccup in this plan, when I finally realized that my honey-based paints were too goopy for me. I'm messy to begin with, yes?, and although I love how soft and buttery the M Graham watercolor paints are, I started to realize that many of them stayed moist enough to be a bit of a challenge for me just to store. I’d try to squeeze out a sample size from a tube and end up with stringy threads of paint (think: honey) leading from my palette, across my table and smeared on my fingers. The kicker, though, was when I realized that some colors actually absorb moisture from the air in humid environments and then they get even MORE runny. I discovered this over Christmas in Hawaii, a big puddle of cobalt green dripping from my paint kit. Egh.

I read through a few blogs of artists and read carefully the part that would have alerted me to this problem and tried a few more brands.

You're thinking, “Hey! Buying new paints?! How is that 'Using it Up'?!”

[I'm ignoring you]

So, I looked at color charts on my computer for a few more weeks, peered at other artists’ suggestions and loitered in front of the paint rack in the student store as if it were the frozen entrée aisle at the market, and slowly filled in my collection with Daniel Smith and Schmincke tubes that dry nicely in my travel paint kits so I can toss them into my backpack, and they re-wet nicely.

Yeesh, what an ordeal.

The good thing is that I'm set to go and have plenty of paint to go there with.

20100616_palette Click to see this photo's flickr page

I’m going to use up the honey-based paints, and the not-so lightfast paints as well. I was a little concerned about this – paints that will fade unusually quickly. The only nonpermanent expression of art that I could think of that seemed worthwhile was, well, food, but in this case, I figure: What the heck: Use it up.

I have papers and paints and want to go ahead and use them. If you’ve gotten this far, here’s the deal. I was going to post the ‘Use It Up’ (UIU) series and have people let me know if/which ones they wanted and send them (the little paintings, not the people) off to new, good homes. But, lying up late at night, I thought, what if people have stopped reading my blog to the point where no one will be watching for my UIU art? The horror!

[Do I over-think things much? Give me a sec to mull over that.]

So, whatever. This is what I’m going to do: I’m going to make art and send it off to people whose mailing addresses I have, that I owe some art to. And ask for people to let me know if they're interested. If I have a list, I figure I’ll feel more obligated to stick with this whole ‘Use It Up’ campaign, which, in my head, was more like ‘Use It Up, then Give it Away’, anyway. If you (you, in Canada and Scotland and Germany. Yes, you) want to help encourage this, email me your mailing address. wendeedesign [at] yahoo [dot] com.

I’m planning to give life and those tubes a nice healthy squeeze. Anyone game?

Happy Summer!

Since the European football (soccer) leagues are through for the season and 'Dancing with the Stars' is done and the long semester is finally done it's like I finally have my sanity back. It's like I have it back, not that I actually do.  A new teaching gig and the constant preparation for two new (to me) classes expanded to take up all my time and (more critically) focus. Now that the semester is done, I'm spending less time worrying about coming up with assignments and grading them, and WAY less time commuting.

Just wanted to let you know I hadn't driven off the edge of the Earth (my commute was far enough that you'd think I had tried, though) and that I've really been wanting to get back to hiking, painting and writing. Happy summer, indeed!!

You didn't expect that we'd watch (English) football, did you?

 

Hugs and Kisses

"Once in awhile, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." - Anonymous quotation

Four years ago I met the nicest big Bear.
[sigh]

Remembering Norm

[Wherein we confirm that my choice in words sometimes has very little to do with what they actually mean to everyone else, but much more what they mean, apparently, just to me]

On Sunday, March 21, the first day of spring, my school lost one of its most beloved instructors, Norm Schureman. I received a message from one of my classmates, and by the time I’d called her back and returned to plug into the internet, there was already a message from the school president relaying the very sudden and tragic news and a flurry of posts on Facebook.

The past ten days have been hard for the school, for our department (I teach in the same department as Norm), and for our students. There’s been an outpouring of support in ways that no one could have quite imagined. There was an impromptu memorial service the very next evening. A physical memorial of student work grew to stretch almost the full length of the bridge walkway on campus, with sketches (copies as well as original work), cards, projects, notes and photos taped to the railing, throughout the week. There were flowers and candles, messages scrawled with chalk on the walkway, a six-pack of beer. Last Sunday, the school hosted a formal service and reception. We estimate that over a thousand people attended, some flying in from out-of-state, some from overseas. Hundreds more logged into the live webcast.

I’ve had people comment about mourning a colleague, that from the outpouring of emotion, the group must have been remarkably close. I forget sometimes, that there’s work that goes from 9 until 5. In school and in teaching, you learn quickly that interactions don’t work when classes end; the learning doesn’t stop at 5pm, or 10pm, or even after Friday, or ever. I’ve been lucky, a few times, also, to have worked with people that you genuinely … like. The faculty and staff in our department were best of friends; not just co-workers. It’s been sad and hard to continue on; it’s been hard to accept that this idea that Norm is gone.

For Norm’s service, our department chair asked for words, just descriptive words, that she could share. I’d been mulling over this for a while. What I would take from my experiences with Norm? My word, I decided, is ‘fierce’. J asked me, “Don’t you mean ‘fiesty’, perhaps?”. Norm was fiesty, indeed. But he was fierce.

Norm expected a lot from his students. In design, you communicate visually through sketches: you draw. A lot. In a school reknown for its design programs, you don’t just learn to draw, but you learn to draw like a fiend. We had drawing/sketching classes for at least three of our four years there. Compare this with the 1–1/2 to maybe 2 years of math I took when I studied engineering. Drawing is as fundamental as, say,  breathing. After we had learned to draw the basic shapes and could render them in appropriate materials, then we got Norm, and he taught us to draw dynamically, and passionately, with our own voices, confident and strong. He held the standard high. He was tough, but supportive and caring and always had us coming back for more. Did I mention Norm was tough? I admit that it took me a long, long time to warm up to his brand of tough love.

The other thing you learn in design is to think. You have to think broadly and quickly, without boundaries, then be able to assess your options and choose the best ones to go forward with. The other core classes Norm taught were Design Process and the beginning Product Design courses. He taught us to stretch, to follow through with our strongest ideas, then build them to make them real. We’d present our ideas and he’d pause, pull his glasses down the bridge of his nose and peer at us over those glasses, intensely, challenging us, without even saying a word. Everyone experienced that look; we all wanted to rise to meet the challenge; we all wanted that hearty smile and hug that affirmed for us that we’d done a great job. There is a lot of work you can go through to make yourself happy and satisfied with the final project for any given class. There are few other instructors, though, that we’d work so much harder to please and impress as Norm. We learned to think, all right.

So, Norm was imbedded in classes that are at the very core of what industrial designers do, the very heart of what you’d learn at school when you study industrial design. I imagine that he touched every student that’s gone through our department in the last 20 years. His father taught and continues to teach at Art Center. His nephew just graduated from the department, as well. His family truly is part of our larger, extended family.

What I came to observe and understand was Norm’s deep commitment. He was fierce, in his dedication to our school, to our department, and above all, to his students. That ‘Norm’ look? It was intense – it gave you a window into the fire that burned, yes, fiercely deep in him. And at our graduation shows - no one was prouder than Norm. His love for his family, his friends, of all of nature around him, of life itself – it was all deep, heartfelt and intense.

In looking up the definition, I suppose there are components of fierceness that are not so flattering in this instance: violent, aggressive, angry, menacingly wild, savage, hostile.

Okay, right. So, that is not what I had in mind.

I’d go with the option that reads “Extremely intense or ardent” except that, for me, it lacks a bravery and immediacy. The words feel a bit detached, a bit sterile. Even the modern slang entry “really good” is lacking.

For me, I have to ignore the definition I find on my screen and go with the definition I feel in my gut, the image that I see in my mind’s eye. The word ‘fierce’ works because it gives me a sense of spirit that Norm possessed, that he passed on to everyone around him, that now lives in all of us. We are all just a little bit more fierce in what we do because of what Norm gave us.

He gave us a lot.
And we sure do miss him, something fierce.

Locked and loaded

Someone wrote me and asked, “So are you updating this thing or not?!”.

I, um, decided to go on sabbatical. I found myself, somewhere along the way, going through my days, thinking of how I would narrate everything, put our adventures into words; what witty things I’d sprinkle in. I found myself a bit detached, like a third party looking in, when really I should be doing the living and hiking and painting of it all. It makes for good stories, but I want to enjoy what I have in the first-person and truly be the hero of my own story.

Another thing that happened is harder to explain. I understand that blogs and photos are all the heck open to the whole wide Internet. Even knowing that, I was surprised to realize is how unsettled I felt to think about the unkind people in my life, reading my words, peering into our lives, coming along with us on our vacations.

‘Unkind’?
Yes. Unkind in ways that has someone excitedly say how damn good it is to hear that my relationship (at the time) sucked, because she was sick and tired of getting my Christmas cards and reading how lovely and hunkydory my life was in the Valley, and how good it was to hear that I’m actually horribly miserable like the rest of everyone else.

Yeah. I went, “Heh?”

Unkind in ways like a person gets invited to my (newly single again) 40th birthday party - - a small, quiet party with people I treasure - - and bellows, “Are there going to be any HOT chicks here?!”

Yeah, seriously.

Unkind in those kinds of ways. Not in ways like they lurk and don’t comment. That’s okay. That’s just being introverted. I know what that’s like.

Sure, once you press 'Publish', it’s all out there. It’s a strange thing to be talking to someone and then to realize that they know way more about you than you know about them (in that creepy sort of way), and you think, "Wow, it really is just all out there". I started to feel these people peering in from the outside, their eyes following me left and right, their warm breath fogging up the windows outside my house, watching my life for entertainment, but not cheering any of my adventures or any of the many, small, hard-fought victories. I’d be reminded of them every now and again, in real life: “Oh, hello”.

It was like you finally decide to clean your windows, then find smudged nose prints all over the place, at a height that you know you couldn’t have made yourself. It’s kind of a creepy, unclean feeling.

[I suppose it’s also like realizing that those racy pictures from your Las Vegas trip that you posted on Facebook are searchable by people at places you’re trying to get a job at, but not quite.
This is what I hear, at least.]

You’re going, “Oh, man! Those people SO do not matter!”.

Yeah, yeah.

So I’ve been working, you see, on loading up my rifle and scaring away the unkind people, cleaning my windows of the reminders of their grubby fingers and noses. I’ve come to a place, finally, where I’ve missed you more than I’m upset about being followed around by ghosts of unkind people.

I’ve missed my bloggy buddies, new and old.

You know the secret knock to get in. Don’t mind the Big Bear. And if you feel like it, yes, please do bring along your weapon of choice. xox