blue skies
January 21, 2010
It was an insanely fine day here in this little corner of the Great White North. Here, have a look:
Yup, that’s the same old path up the same damned hill AGAIN. One of these days I’ll walk somewhere else, I promise. And when I do, I’ll be sure to photograph the snow over there for y’all. I’m quite certain it will look TOTALLY DIFFERENT and Not At All Boring.
I don’t teach again until Monday afternoon, and as we’ll be critiquing a drawing assignment and then having another session with the live model, I don’t really need to do any planning for it. I’ll still be heading in to the school over the weekend, however; there are a couple of shiny new woodblocks waiting in my office and I’m looking forward to getting started cutting on them. I’m also planning to poke around the print shop a bit and get a better look at what letterpress equipment is in there, and think about what sorts of projects I might be able to do while I’m here. Then there’s that whole lithography shop worth of equipment and supplies that’s been recently donated to the school and hasn’t even been fully set up for use yet, and it’s pretty damned tempting to try and start working on a stone, since I wouldn’t have to worry about getting in the way of students with it. If I don’t get too caught up in all of that, I’m going to try and spend a bit of time working up a drawing for my next tattoo (which I’m planning to get while I’m here in North Bay) featuring one of these cute little fellers:
Posted by jodi on January 21, 2010 at 9.21pm
found art
January 20, 2010
Found printmaking:
The license plate impression in the snowbank was much crisper when I noticed on the way into the grocery store on Sunday; by the time I returned with my camera on Tuesday, the warm (between -4 and 0°) weather had slushified it a bit. LET THIS BE A LESSON KIDS, always bring your camera with you everywhere, even if you’ve just barely dragged your arse out of your bedroom and covered your nakedness long enough to tag along with a free ride to the grocery store. You’d be totally kicking yourself if you went grocery shopping without your camera and there was something crazy and bloggable going on like, say, a dude bringing a high powered rifle shopping for no reason. Still, slushified or not I think we can I.D. the person who threw that Tims cup on the ground.
Found drawing:
Here’s hoping the tire tracks through J+L’s heart are just tire tracks, and not a metaphor for a DOOMED LOVE. Of course, this is the dead end of a road that leads to a university building so it’s safe to assume that J+L are fairly young, and aren’t all young loves DOOMED, really?
Posted by jodi on January 20, 2010 at 6.55pm
were you looking at my knickers?
January 19, 2010
You totally were. I SAW you.
From this etsy seller. All of a sudden, in the middle of all of this winter-love, I’m eager for summer.
Posted by jodi on January 19, 2010 at 1.03pm
up hill, down hill
January 18, 2010
Morning walk to the Monastery: deer tracks.
Evening walk home down the same path: street lights.
Posted by jodi on January 18, 2010 at 7.46pm
comfort
January 17, 2010
My good friend Elise mentioned vegetarian shepherd’s pie a few days ago and I’ve had a fierce craving ever since, which was mostly a craving for tempeh and Grit yeast gravy. A Sunday afternoon is always a good time to putter away at such meals.
This isn’t a dish I grew up with, nor is it something I’ve made very often. I’m lucky in that I don’t really know what it’s supposed to taste like, although I’m enough of a foodie that I can make a pretty good guess regardless of how many decades it’s been since I ate a mammal. I generally don’t cook a lot of vegan versions of meals that would usually include meat, and having no emotional attachment to the dish gives me the freedom to just make something up without being hung up on finding an authentic flavour. My only real priority was that it be rich in protein as well as being a perfect vehicle for that beautiful gravy (one of my favourite flavours).
This is just a guideline, not a recipe. Something I can refer back to next time.
Bottom layer:
-olive oil
-2 onions
-2 carrots
-about 1/2 bulb garlic
-about 1/4 head cauliflower
-approx. 1 cup cooked green lentils
-1 package of tempeh, crumbled
-a good handful of whatever fresh herbs you’ve got on hand, chopped (I used fresh rosemary and topped it up with a small amount of dried oregano, but next time I’d leave the oregano out)
-a few dollops of balsamic vinegar (2-3 Tbsp, maybe? two shakes from the bottle)
-a small amount of concentrated vegetable broth: I boiled up about 1/4 cup or less water with a vegan stock cube
Cook the onions in olive oil until they’re golden, throwing in some cayenne and freshly ground black pepper, then add the other vegetables and cook until it’s all soft and smells wonderful. Throw in the lentils and tempeh. Then add your herbs and balsamic vinegar and let it all cook down a bit. After the vinegar smell mellows, pour in your broth. Stir it all up and it’s ready to roll.
*I would probably fry up the tempeh a bit first next time rather than just tossing it in straight out of the package. This time I just got lazy.
Toss it all into a casserole. I don’t know what size this will fill, because here in this furnished student accommodation where I’m staying there are only teeny tiny casseroles, so I used three (the two smaller ones are so small that I think the boys eat cereal out of them). Top it with about a 1cm thick layer of mashed potatoes: I made a small batch, 4 potatoes, with a dollop of Earth Balance and a sploosh of soy milk, freshly ground black pepper and just a tiny bit of sea salt. Bake it at 400° for half an hour and those potatoes will be just ever so slightly crispy on the edges.
Now top it off with loads and loads of nutritional yeast gravy. Because a comfort meal wants fat.
Posted by jodi on January 17, 2010 at 7.32pm
lazy Saturday, big ideas
January 16, 2010
So here’s the thing. Since I finished grad school I’ve had difficulty readjusting to my normal life in general, and profound difficulty in particular in finding the creative means to move forward in my life as a professional artist. It has been like pulling teeth trying to force myself into any sort of working routine, and I’ve mostly been failing at that. My months-long near silence on this weblog is evidence to the deep chasm of creative vacuum in which I’ve been floundering. Then I got this new job, a limited term (5 month contract) assistant professor position at Nipissing University, filling in for two courses for someone who’s on maternity leave and one course for someone who’s on sabbatical. And, just as I’d hoped would happen, being around art students again and talking to them about their work is pulling me, emotionally, out of that slough of non-production, firing up my desire to make art again.
So then I make a flippant remark (about buffet restaurants having something to do with Manifest Destiny) and y’all call me out on it. Which you should, and please continue to do so, because I say a lot of bullshit things without really thinking and need to be called out on that and forced to explain myself. But thinking and writing are some of the things I’ve let myself get out of the habit of doing during my long wallow in self pity and creative blockage, and right at the moment all of those reawakening muscles are being used up in my teaching.
Also, I really don’t have much more than flippant things to say on the subject. In thinking a bit about what I meant by my remark and how best to clarify it, I realized that the whole thing could easily come across as something else, something repugnant that is in no way what I mean by my flippant remark. So I actually need to write something that’s not really about buffet and Manifest Destiny at all, but about some other things only slightly related (and much more important to me). But, quite frankly, today is not a day on which I am willing to spend the effort on it. I’ve got lessons to plan and slideshows to assemble for this week’s classes. I’ve got drawings of my own to work on. And I’ve got a strong desire to stay in my underwear all day,
kick back on the surprisingly comfortable pleather couch in my new accommodations (note obligatory student housing Van Gogh poster), and finish this obnoxious yellow-green shawl:
It’s going to take me a bit of time to get back into the habit of writing, just as it will to get into the habit of making work. It’ll happen.
In other news: I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical spaces in which I’ve been working (or trying to work), about how I’d ultimately like to arrange my working life, and what exactly I’m hoping to achieve with my printmaking. I currently rent studio space at the local artist-run print studio and have a supplementary work space (mostly for the sewing part of my work) in the front room of our house. Working at the Printmakers Forum is good in terms of having access to printing equipment I can’t afford, but the truth is I don’t like working in a shared space, and I especially don’t like my studio work being in any way connected to my community service (I’m also on the Board of Directors for the studio). I need to set up my own print studio. I need to put pressure on my dad to finish the etching press he started building for me almost ten years ago (the hard part, the rollers, is already done), and I need to start piecing together a working letterpress setup. I need to find a space to house both the print studio and everything from my front room space, and get my studio work the hell out of what should be a common living space in our home. And I need to find a way to make it all pay for itself.
What I would most like to do is establish a small press-slash-bindery from which I could provide small run high end printing and bookbinding services and teach courses, and in which I could comfortably set myself up to spend the rest of my time (non-space-paying-for-itself time) pursuing my own studio work. All in a space that isn’t subject to the decisions of other people, and that isn’t in my house. But, despite my time spent in the purgatory of retail management, I feel completely unprepared to embark on something like this with my current lack of business acumen and planning skills.
And while I was wishing aloud for some sort of course in how to do market research and write a business plan and build myself a job and a business out of essentially nothing, Peter suggested that perhaps I should go back to school and pursue a Masters of Business Administration. It would be intensive (13 months of two classes a day, 5 days a week), likely a little more than what I really need, and a journey into a whole world of thinking that’s completely foreign to everything I’ve ever done before, but it would sure as hell kick me back into the habit of constantly working (even if the working wouldn’t be in the studio), and if I did it in Windsor then the tuition would be free. I’ll admit that I’ve always been the sort of person who makes major life decisions seemingly at the drop of a hat, but that has mostly worked out well for me thus far. I’m seriously considering it, and am planning to contact the school on Monday to see if I can meet with someone there to determine whether the programme would be a good fit for me.
Hm. Up until now I’d been toying with the idea of applying to teachers’ college, even though I really don’t have much desire to teach anything but art, or at any level other than university (which I’m already qualified to do, obviously). Is it possible I’m just addicted to school?
Posted by jodi on January 16, 2010 at 2.49pm
y’all are impatient
January 15, 2010
I’m tired. This new job is kicking my ass a little. My head hurts. Dollhouse is on tonight. You’ll get your goddam Manifest Destiny, and be certain it will be well smothered in juicy pink ham cubes. Be patient.
Posted by jodi on January 15, 2010 at 6.31pm
pattern
January 14, 2010
Posted by jodi on January 14, 2010 at 9.57pm
with each coffee its history*
January 13, 2010
I threw up.
*a direct translation of the trademarked French phrase which is the French version of the English phrase, also trademarked, with which I normally title these photos on flickr but won’t here because I’m askeered of big corporations.
Posted by jodi on January 13, 2010 at 9.58pm
practicing what I preach
January 12, 2010
My students are not used to being expected to fill a whole sketchbook for every drawing course they take, and most of them carry around a big black hardbound book that they use for all of their studio courses. It makes me sad to see how little they’ve drawn in books that in some cases they’ve been using for a year and a half now, and how many of those precious pages are instead filled with notes from art history class. I told my life drawing students that I expect them to draw every day, in order to develop good working habits if nothing else. I also told them that I would bring my own book to class so that they could check up on me and know that I’m keeping the same commitment I’m demanding from them.
These are the books I brought with me to draw in while I’m here. The one on the left should look familiar: it’s another of my 20-spread drum leaf books made entirely of old prints. I used to draw in these every day, but got out of the habit when I got busy with my thesis work and never picked it up again (see, kids? If you don’t draw every day then you wind up having NO WORK ETHIC AT ALL). In the centre is a longstitch binding by Stacie Dolin, another gift she brought me when she visited Windsor last fall. I’m especially looking forward to drawing in this one, as it will feel good to go back to blank pages after drawing on top of layers and layers of ink for so long. On the right is a perfect bound notebook I made using a variety of recycled papers. These should keep me going for a while. Of course, I haven’t started drawing in any of them yet (don’t tell my students).
Grace asked for clarification on what buffet has to do with Manifest Destiny, and I’ll write something about that later. Soon. It’s just that I goofed off all day today and now I have this syllabus and lesson plan to finish for tomorrow morning. Ah, the last minute desk jive. My favourite dance.
Posted by jodi on January 12, 2010 at 8.15pm
