In my Farmer’s Market newsletter last week I learned that our own dear mayor proclaimed June to be Farmer’s Market Month. It sort of is anyway, since most markets open just as all the produce gets going, but it’s nice to have things official. They actually enclosed the entire notice, and of course because I used to format legal notices for the newspaper I read every word. And then I thought about what it should have been like. (And WAS like, for all I know.) And then I drew it.



I regret that I don’t have time to paint this because I’d really like to. Maybe if things are quiet after this Cyborg thing I will do a little unit on mayors. I still know practically nothing about what mayors actually do, apart from snippets our own mayor drops on twitter. There is clearly much more to being mayor than walking in parades, fixing potholes and proclaiming June to be Farmer’s Market month.

Speaking of parades: there was a parade of mayors! I can’t believe I missed the parade of mayors! Evidently many mayors from all over Oregon where in the Rose Festival Parade, parading. Considering my interest in city business (esp. in the area of Those Things That Require Notices To Be Published) and mayors it would have been such a treat!

I must not be a very good Portlander because I’ve never managed to make it down to the key attractions of the Rose Festival. The first time I had the chance I’d just moved here, and I sent my family down to the shore to see the big boats mostly to have some time alone with the moving boxes for a few hours. Last year no doubt I let my knee get the better of me. This year I was shepherding Anthony’s family around for the Big Big Graduation Celebration. It’s still fleet week so maybe I will get down there and draw boats tomorrow evening. A change of scenery from all these robots in my brain.

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He's not a beer

I like thinking about the mayor doing mundane things. (Or, in the case of that TV show's premiere at the Hollywood theater a few weeks ago, not so mundane things.)

I think a lot about the Mayor now that he's following me on Twitter -- which I know has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that I identify myself as a Portlander on twitter. Not wanting to seem rude, or stand-offish, I followed him back, and now I receive all sorts of wonderful snippets from the Mayoral desk. (Or, more probably, his web-presence staff.)

Either way "he" is very attentive, very vocal. For some reason most of his replies to people seem to be confirmations-of-receipt of pothole complaints. But he also tweets about parades, meetings, weather hazards via ODOT, local craft fairs, leaf blowers and socks. It yields the comforting impression of a sort of old-fashioned down-home little town mayor who really is concerned about those potholes on 78th and Stark.



It's safe to say that if this was a political tactic I have totally fallen for it. It's just as well it sparked an interest, for I only have a vague understanding about how local government actually works. I think after the last couple of rounds everyone is fairly solid on presidential elections, and if you like libraries or other things that often have taxation initiatives on every ballot you tend to have an opinion there. Mayor though. The only other mayor I've given much thought to is the figurehead of Townsville from the Powerpuff Girls. A charming fellow, but not exactly an accurate example of the noble post. One would hope not anyway.

So probably what this means is I need to learn more about mayors. What it is they do, what authority they have, why we have them, and so forth. I really should learn more about city governance in general. I worked extensively with the city of Greeley when I was doing the legal notices for the newspaper there, but I always dealt with the wonderful clerks, and never the mayor -- I don't even know who the mayor of Greeley was at that time. For shame! Could a young illustrator visit the mayor's office or workplace? Go on an informational tour? A day in the life of a mayor!? A girl can dream.

In the mean time there's probably books. And in the meantime there's the city of Portland website. I suppose that's a good place to start.

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Slappy Cakes: A Post In Two Parts

PART ONE: THE NARRATIVE

Our recent visit to Slappy Cakes was special for a number of reasons.

For a start there's the sheer gimmicky pleasure. How often in a restaurant can you cook pancakes right on top of your table? We ordered one batch of regular batter and one batch of weird batter, and had both savory and sweet drop-ins. These arrive in little boats that can be combined and swapped around to your heart's content. Pure culinary freedom.

Of course, (if you are insufferable like me,) this may mean you find yourself sauteing apples in butter and sugar on the bare griddle before pouring the batter over them, not doing the conventional batter-then-fillings route, because the first batch was oddly crunchy and needed something else. If you are not insufferable, it just means you have a magical breakfast adventure.

For us it was also magical because it's been so long that we could go out for breakfast like this. The weird pattern of a housecleaner's Christmas bonuses (see previous entry) means I end up with some cash well after the main event, so unless you truly celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas you have a nice little cushion for the last week of December. And while most of it goes to bills, and repaying the little Christmas dent, shouldn't some of it be spent out with someone you love? Especially when you can visit a novelty restaurant nearby?

One thing I should say: don't make the mistake we did. Do not forget that squeeze-bottle-based pancake cooking should naturally lead to fantastic pancake art. We were far too full to indulge this realization by the time we had it. Our subsequent creations were wonderful but had to be left uneaten, and it was a crying shame.

PART TWO: THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES



This was a very satisfying picture to whip out. I started it a few days ago (the last time I had time to sit and paint), and then finished it tonight in one sitting. Excellent. I am very pleased with how it turned out -- not always true for us artists and madmen. I think the blocking is strong and the lines are crispy and where they need to be. I think I want to do more with the lamp, but I worried that going there tonight would "over finish" it somehow so the jury's still out on that until morning. It's in a perfectly shareable state, and feels very real and completed, which was my only goal this evening apart from eating dinner.

It has been incredibly unsatisfying to try to get this scanned image to look like the real picture.

The first problem is just my method. I like to paint with bright colors. Colors that bounce around well in real light and have astonishing vibrancy and life. Lately, without expressly setting out to do so, I have also been doing a lot of limited color combinations, that are often two or three colors very close to one another on the color wheel and then one wild card from the other side (think peachy red, orange, orangey yellow then light teal.)

Teal (cyan) in particular is very hard for computers to see for some reason, at least in the way that I see it and the way it plays with other colors for me. For just about every picture I post I spend a lot of time trying to coax the monitor into seeing things my way -- changing the contrast a little, tweaking the colors in an attempt to get closer to how it really looks.

At this point I actually have my stand-by Photoshop tricks narrowed down to a few routine changes, and that's usually all things need. Occasionally though a painting is challenging and this was one of them. I had this greenish-teal that needed to come through, and a buttery-bright table, and a vermilion, plus the dark purple which to me mostly needs to be deep mauvey purple but which the computer wants to see as almost fuchsia.

Nothing I did really looked right, and in the end I mostly just gave up and settled for something serviceable but not really accurate.

In addition I have this weird problem with visible light in general. You'll notice above my desk there are two lamps. The one on the left is a squiggly long-life bulb. The one of the right is one of those "happy" bulbs that they sell at natural food stores. I have two different bulbs because both give off a slightly different colored light.

Here is an unedited digital photo of the painting I just finished, laid under the squiggly bulb to my left.



The same, under the other bulb.



See that?! No?

Let me make it a bit easier for you.



See? REALLY different treatments from my lamps. Pictures aren't always that crazy different under the different lights, but this one was incredible. And of course the problem is I am seeing a mixture of both lights and perceiving my color that way, rather than just with one light like the computer does. So I'd rescue the teal and lose the yellow. Then I'd bring back the yellow and lose the blues in the teal and everything went green. And I could either have fuchsia with vermilions or weird pinky reds with darker purple. To say nothing of the lavenders. Those really didn't work at all.

Of course ideally you'd be here in my apartment and I could be showing this to you live, without the worry of monitor calibration or any other nonsense. Very possibly you don't notice the difference, or if you do you think, "oh darling what does it matter." It maybe doesn't matter, but it does bother me that one light thinks that color is blueish, the other light thinks its tealish, and neither light picks up the subtlety of the purple that I keep talking about.

This is not a problem that is going away. If anything it will get worse as I begin to sally forth into the world of Making Prints. I will have to make a much bigger effort to mind my RGBs and CYMKs, and really learn about shadows and highlights in Photoshop, not just the mid-tones. I suspect I will need to jigger with my scanner as well. I suspect I will have to do real research on this stuff. As a person who firmly believes in painting by hand, it is a skill I will absolutely have to develop. Good thing I don't mind doing things the hard way.

Little fly

Back in October I had rare Art-Morning when a client pushed their house back a few hours. It meant I got to listen to NPR past the news and into Think Out Loud (a local call-in program), which that morning feautred Esperanza Spalding, a Portland-born jazz musician who is about my age.

The interview/discussion was incredibly stimulating, and it was such a pleasure to paint while listening to Esperanza. I downloaded the podcast and have listened to the show several times since then because it makes me feel like I can do anything. And her music makes me feel like I live in a real city with a real transit system with leaves blowing around between the buildings on the streets downtown. It's epic music, very controlled and complicated.

This sketch has been hiding behind my opera sketches, and I actually just tore this page out of my notebook so that the drawing on the other side could go into my Sketchbook Project Sketchbook, but I didn't want to forget about this darling quickie of Ms. Spalding, because I do want to do her justice one of these days.

When necks disappear

Because it would make life very difficult otherwise, we spend most of our backstage time without our heads and wings. This means we walk around with these rotund bodies, thick arms, billowing pants and tiny little pinheads sticking out on top.

When we get our stage call we all file into the room backstage. There our wonderful dressers help up hook our wings into our harnesses (hidden by the layers of clothing) and tuck our neck-seams into our overcoats. From then on we mostly rely on mime -- it's very difficult to hear people talking as quietly as they need to when we are onstage. We go from being individuals to being strange uniform beings, varying only in height. Then later as we wait at our various entry points we regain individuality because all of our props are different.

I have some backstage paintings brewing, but I'm struggling a little with the lighting. Blocking is no problem, but to really get it right I need to capture the high-contrast blue and orange lights back there, and how that chef always stands right under the light, but these two are in dark grays near the tablecloth. I took fastidious mental notes last night, but I may need to turn to field notes for this one. I may walk around tonight in the light of neon lights with some paint swatches and see how it changes things.

Closing in

As you can imagine, I've been kind of busy lately. Some of these images may be replaced later with paintings or clear-er drawings -- if you want or need to be updated about that you can follow me on twitter.



So my primary function in this Opera is to walk (very) slowly and smoothly. I am to follow a route, move props around, and wear a silly costume, but the most important thing is to keep things slow and smooth. Although my initial route is a long way up-stage (thus I receive less walking notes than those brave souls down-stage, who are right there in front of the choreographer and audience) I think it's fair to say that I took to this fairly easily. I credit both my lengthy stint as an alter sever as well as, weirdly enough, knee surgery.

When they go inside to find out how you came apart, you have to learn how to go back together again. Everything you assumed you can do isn't so easy when there's stitches and crutches and swelling and staircases in your way. Two dozen years on this earth and I had to learn to walk all over again, asking other people to go up and down the stairs so I could watch them and try and figure out why I couldn't do with effort something they could do without thinking. It was a minor procedure from the doctor's point of view, but for a dreamy wanderer who could thoughtlessly walk to the ocean if given the chance, it was life changing. Surgery gave me a knee and a fuller understanding of what it means to move a body around, and in this case it means that if you tell me to walk slowly and smoothly, it turns out I can.

So I know my movement had something to do with it, but more likely it was my boldness and my smallness that inspired the director and choreographer to pull me aside after a week or to into the rehearsal schedule. They had a special job that needed doing. A job requiring smallness.



In Act III, a cake on a tongue has to glide up the center of the stage to eventually pop through a hole in a curtain. The cake-on-a-tongue lives on top of a little black box, with a pushing bar and wheels, and someone who is small yet wiry has to kneel in there and push it across the nubby floor of the stage.



When they were telling me this I began to glow with excitement. "You want me to be a cake pusher!!"

The director (who is impeccably British) paused and said, "I like to think of it as the cake-trolley driver."

Since then "driving the cake" is what people have referred to it as in the production, and when the rest of the supers are dismissed over the intercom our minder usually says something like "...except Maggie, who needs to stay here to drive the cake." This has led those uninvolved to assume incorrectly that there is a lot more to the job than there is.



I get a lot of imaginative questions about it, and I think I'm going to stop setting the record straight about how low-tech it actually is and just start encouraging the whimsy. Why not. Or maybe they think it's motorized because I'm just that good at moving smoothly, and that's no bad thing either.

Aside from being a delightful spectacle, this means that I get to spend a long time waiting to do my thing, and some of that time is spent surreptitiously gawking backstage.



It is a glorious jungle. All ropes and curtains and false walls and scaffolding. There is a rolling shelf covered in enormous wrenches on pegs. I saw baskets filled with the gingerbread children. There are television monitors at every wall and every corner showing a live image of the conductor in black and white, and one of these hangs quite artistically from the ceiling near a spindly staircase that winds so tightly on itself that it's difficult to imagine how one could actually ascend.



Walking backstage is like walking into the back of a huge clock, with all the wheels and springs turning over to make something happen. It is dark and impossible to know how many people are back there, pulling ropes and sliding levers and carrying pieces of set around. They are quietly talking into their radios, they are dressed invisibly in blacks, and they are quick to return a smile but also hurry you out of the way if you don't have a job to do back there. All utility, all functionality. They have a job to do, and one aspect of that job is to make your life much, much easier.

Now, instead of a director explaining to us what will be there, it is there. Now when we get off stage there are people waiting with towels so that we can wipe the raspberries off our stage-shoes. Someone from the dressing rooms will have already brought our walking-around shoes downstairs for us in a big rolling bin, so that we can leave our stage-shoes with the poor souls who must ream ground-in raspberries from the treads. One night someone fainted from the heat inside the costumes, and the next day we were all provided little handkerchiefs with cooling gel inside (that had to be labeled with our names, soaked in water, and drip-dried well ahead of our call). There are people who tell us where to stand, when to move, and how to leave, and who hold up flashlights so we don't have any trouble getting there.

So much in life depends on the unseen superheroes that quietly move heaven and earth to make a thing happen, and I am in constant awe of them and the machine they create with their collective efforts.

I was reminded that I'm a part of this machine when I overheard some of the rope people talking to each other, saying "your cue is the tongue passing."

I then had a brief yet vivid expansion of circumstance, a gestalt shift where I saw the thing for what it was: not as a clock run by unseen magic forces, but as a Rube-Goldberg machine. Because the tongue's cue (my cue) is the door opening, the door's cue is Carla with her binder and headset, whose cue is the sheet music in front of her lit by the little blue LED, the music itself, and (I assume) the notes from the director/choreographer.

Thus I cue the ropes.
Which cues Maureen and Sandy to move.
Which cues me to keep moving.
Which cues the first curtain.
Which cues someone to gallop from behind me all the way to the curtain and open the opening.
Which cues me to push through.
Which cues the black curtain just behind me.
Which cues the magicians to transform a German Expressionist forest into a gritty, cluttered witch's kitchen.
Sandy and Maureen take cake and sing a key line.
Which cues me to withdraw.
Which cues the curtain.
Then another.
I exit, stage left.
Carla says "Maggie's clear"
Which cues the last few walls of the kitchen.
Which cues the real curtain.
And the next scene begins.



Everyone plays a part, and if one little component is missing the thing cannot happen. Therefore during rehearsals I wait a long time to be dismissed, because while my part is relatively minor in the scene change it is essential, and if we need to run the scene again I have to be there. So doing my special job during rehearsals means a good deal of waiting through the third act. I cannot be reached via intercom in the house, so most of my off time is spent loitering near the stage entrance, or in the green room on a couch, listening for my dismissal announcement and to the music and singing which also is transmitted over the intercom. I watch snippets of the Simpsons from the locker room television. I read the State of Oregon safety regulations posted on the crew cork-board. At one point the other night I sat upstairs with our two dressers, eating candy and talking them through the various plot points of Act III as we listened, giving them a context to the goofier sounds.

They weren't familiar with the story...because nobody bothered to tell them? Or because they haven't bothered looked it up? Probably both. A lot of things happen at the Keller, every night, and we are just a just another thing. There's no need for the magic of any given production. There's just the practical aspects -- what needs to be where, at what time, in order for everything to work smoothly. And that means they can produce the raw materials for the magic without letting the plot points stand in their way.



It seems like the magic is gone in a different way for one of the soloists, who spends a certain amount of the waiting time in the green room griping about things. That's sort of a cliche, and having not been around big deal people in a while I'd sort of forgotten people do that. Most of the soloists don't, I hasten to add. There are crabbier moments, and I imagine this was just one of those. I was surprised by it though. I hope they love what they do, it certainly seems that way to me on stage when I see them at work, or even when I hear them over the intercom. Every job has its pitfalls, I just forget that for these guys it is not an amazing new adventure with so much new stuff to take in, it's just another gig, just another stage in just another town.

The magic is NOT gone for me, and because my tasks are fairly menial (and because I have a host of helpers to take care of the details) I am free to marvel at the Rube-Goldberg machine uninhibited. The trade off is that at the end of the night as I gather up my things and walk to the parking garage I have to refocus on all of the details back into one head, because I am not an international star and no one will take care of those things for me in life.

Walk the darkened streets without a flashlight-escort.
Find my car, drive home.
I reset my own props, placing things for tomorrow in my bag.
And I put the bag in the place it goes.
I put the coffee grounds where they go.
I put my sandals by the bed, lay out clothes for tomorrow.
I get myself in the head space for the next scene -- a dream sequence?
I change costumes from "somewhat tidy artist" to "pajamas".
I get my book and wait for my cue.

Taking it all in all, if the trade off for keeping the magic is having to work hard and take care of every department yourself, I'll take the magic.

LAST TIDBITS

1. You can see video previews of our production here.

2. You can download the most adorable study guide.

3. Learn more about Going to the Opera.

Keller

The first time I ever saw the Keller Auditorium was when I accidentally found the Ira Keller Fountain. At the time I was showing a couch surfer from Montana around Portland, and it was a lovely, serendipitous thing to happen upon. I saw the auditorium building from the fountain, saw how big and austere it was. A Sunday performance of some kind went to intermission and from the doors spilled wealthy-looking patrons in fine dress -- so different from us ruffians splashing around in cold water across the street.

Last night was my first time inside the Keller, and like my entire Opera experience, it started through the back door.

Past the security guard in his tiny smoky-windowed office.



Up two flights of narrow, bare stairs. Past the doors with the soloists names on them, and into the big room that said simply, "super chefs". Into a room with real showbiz mirrors with bulbs encircling the edges, casting eerie lines in our eyes' highlights.

We had time to go watch. Back down the stairs to the ground level and through a doorway where world is suddenly carpeted and wide and lit beautifully. Make a sharp corner, and oh my goodness it's the house. And there's the stage.



To watch the performances from the house is to relinquish the intimacy of watching the rough sketches as we have these past few weeks. We are no longer sitting in folding chairs yards away from the table, ducking flying food, privy to very slight changes in facial expressions, we now take in the entire scene as a whole. But it's meant to be taken in as a whole. Really it's meant to be taken in with an orchestra and actual stage singing and an audience. So once again Opera added a few more elements to the bigger picture, and once again I was dazzled.

And the sets are beautiful. Sort of spartan yet textured in a way that makes the light fall on it very beautifully (and in ways difficult to depict). The angles of things remind me deliciously of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, though I think our world will be a little more realistic than that world, cake house and all. It's a thing of beauty, and it's a pleasure to be a part of it.

As this was our first night at the Keller (as a production that is, most people seem very familiar and at home with the space,) the night was mostly spent figuring out HOW the movements and words fit into the physical set to create that fuller picture. All our ring leaders now wore headsets and carried clipboards and binders and seemed to have a lot to do. Messages to relay. Props to fix. Adjustments to make.



As I watched Act 1, voices from the soundboard would periodically cut in. Thank you, music would stop, singing would stop, and the choreographer and director would walk down the isle, over the orchestra-pit-bridge, and to the soloists to give inaudible notes. Stage people and assistant directors would pop out from the wings. Tape would be affixed to the floor. Sharp objects were sanded. Wobbly furniture stabilized. Bag-flinging trajectories asserted. The choreographer would act out something for the soloists to try. There was a lot of pointing to things to look for in the house, a lot of repetition, and a lot of laughter about things we couldn't hear. It was great to watch, but it was certainly a spectator's sport. Our separate scenes are now attended to separately, so there is less of a comradely feeling and more of a we are they players and you are the audience flavor to things.

But soon enough it was our turn. Learning about our own unique challenges like aiming wings through a passage in the dark, adjusting our walking paths to the new dimensions of the table, learning how not to run into a black wall on a dark set with only a mesh screen to see through.

These are not pertinent problems for, say, the children's choir, so of course it makes sense that they were not there. Nor were the trees or the performers not involved with the scene. Hansel and Gretel didn't even go on stage with us until we walked our paths a couple of times, and one could say the whole scene is for them. So it makes sense. Mostly it's so deliciously new and I'm so fascinated by it that I am greedy to see everything. There is just so much to look at.

Unsorted moments from last week's rehearsals

Saturday was funny because by the time we arrived everyone was sick and tired of everything.

As times goes on we have been adding more and more elements of the finished show to the rehearsal. Saturday it was time to integrate the children's choir at last. I had seen them milling around the hallways, but I hadn't actually heard them at work, and they are enchanting.



Their voices are like sunlight shining through immaculate cut glass, a gorgeous merry lark of crystal clear wind. They were feeding off the creative energy of the leads and were absolutely bursting with life.

In fact by the look of sullen, weary faces behind the table it looked as though they had been for some time. By the end of their session -- a hour and a half later than it was meant to be -- the stern barks of "children!" were becoming more and more frequent from behind the big tables.

The next day the soloists, the chefs, the trees, the fish, the children AND the director began with expansive yoga-like stretches after the choreographer's example. Let's begin afresh seemed to be the idea. Since then (as far as we the supers are concerned) the show is run through in rehearsals, rather than focusing on particular scenes. We have graduated into the Real Thing.

This means that the chefs and trees and fish may leave after our bit is done, but I have twice now hung around so that I could watch the other parts of the show, albeit without full costumes.

MOMENTS

1. Maureen McKay (Gretel) and Elizabeth Byrne (Mother) trying to maintain composure in the face of a giggle-fit.



2. Darrelle*, off stage, quietly singing along to the finale with a big smile on her face.

3. Sandra and Maureen both (I think) singing the upcoming pieces in the bathroom during the break.

4. Elizabeth and Weston Hurt (Father) dancing off stage to the music as they waited for their cues.



5. Listening to the littlest boy in the break room lamenting that we have a rehearsal on Halloween. His already limpid eyes became even moreso -- almost tearful -- and managed to reason that at least we are not practicing during Christmas.

6. Seeing Weston cornered by a charming eggheady youth rattling on a lot of statistics about World War I



*I don't have a full name or a website for Darrelle, though she is special to my heart because she was the first soloist who introduced herself to me. We have since had brief but lovely talks about drawing, cooking, and a gloss on the strange gypsy life these performers must lead. She along with Sandra and Maureen are youngish, yet have done a good amount of work already which makes me a little dizzy. Each successive show on any given performer's website seems to be in a different city, far away from the previous city. Darrelle lives part time somewhere else, but will be in [y] city for [x] years, and I didn't really get a sense of where it is she actually calls home.

Wonderful things at the Opera

On Sunday -- good heavens -- we were going to stage with the leads. But we started in a blank room next to the rehearsal stage. No giant table, no props, no wings. Nothing. Just a smallish table that someone dragged to the center of the room, and a CD player with our music on it. We mimed a few times, then we were allowed to go into the rehearsal stage and finally see the soloists.

The soloists! You could hear them as soon as we went out into the hall, as soon as we left the blank room. Their voices were encircling each other in a delicious harmony and the moment I heard them my eyes grew wide. This. This is what I'd come for.

We had to pass three of the four walls to enter nearest our chairs without disturbing the performance, and the whole time we could hear the singing at different volume levels (acoustics are a funny thing). And then we got to just sit and be spellbound as the sequence-with-the-trees was run through again and again.

This was a long wait for the disengaged, but I for one was enchanted.







I have skimmed through the scene they were playing (it's the one just before ours). The scene starts as a merry lark in the woods to look for food and turns very quickly into panic, a witch/sandman comes to put them to sleep, they groggily say evening prayers that ask for fourteen angels to come and watch over them. They sleep, the key changes, and we the fourteen winged chefs drift in.

Obviously hearing it as it's meant to be heard is much different than reading the plot overview. But also seeing was much different.

Watching them shift from playful rambunctiousness to fear was incredible, and I was struck by how moving it was. Gretel panicking, Hansel trying to be brave against the rising terror. They were remarkable, and it must be incredibly difficult to communicate all that emotion through one's body (i.e., act) at the same time one is trying to sing in such a big way.



Having never seen an Opera, it was in this moment where I think I finally started to "get" the form.

And later, when we ran our scene through for the first time, in our half-costumes, with the music, and finally with the leads putting on their imaginary party clothes and looking in stunned and humbled awe at the feast we were setting out for them, it was Sandra's (Hansel) turn to be moved.

She looked up and down at us, waiting in reverent silence with our food trays, the music swelling, and her eyes grew misty.

Later when the piece finished she and Gretel and the trees and the forest creature and everyone broke into a spontaneous applause.

We have run the scene several times with them since then. And every time Sandra mentions to us or the staging choreographer how powerful it is, and she makes a point of telling us how touched she feels to see us. It's a lovely thing to be a part of, and it's amazing to me that we in our goofy heads can stir that much emotion into someone whose job it is to stir up emotion in an entire auditorium. Powerful stuff. Rubber heads and all.

Heavy Meta

I must have a thing for fat-suits

A couple years ago I worked at a newspaper in our small college town, for the classified section. Our office was very into Halloween, and that year our department of about seven people decided to dress as the seven deadly sins. Because I was the smallest person and the least self-conscious, I volunteered to go as "Gluttony". I was a BIG hit, in more ways than one.



I borrowed the wig and bought the biggest shirt and jumper I could find at Goodwill. For the fat suit I got two pairs of XL panty hose, put one on like pants and cut a slit in the crotch of the other and put it on like a shirt. I then stuffed them with essentially every piece of lightweight clothing I had. Et voila.



I actually can't tell you what was more fun -- going to the Halloween party at my friend's house (where I met several people for the very first time, who I then later had to re-meet because no one recognized me,) or getting to work all day in my get-up. The entire day was tinged with absurdity because I had to sound so normal on the phone. I volunteered to fax everyone's paperwork, and to get people things from the break room just for the pure joy of being a spectacle. I had to readjust my chair so that I could fit under the desk, and my headset kept getting stuck in my hair.

The following year Anthony and I decided to go to a party as Ann Coulter and Michael Moore (respectively). Anthony wore a striking red dress and some surprisingly comfortable high heals that, (I note with great interest,) he still has tucked away in a drawer. To fill his bra he got those single-serving pocket-shots, and over the course of the evening he would give them away coquettishly to people. My costume was not as successful as Gluttony, mostly because I couldn't find a stubbly beard in time. But it was the same fat-suit formula over jean shorts and a plaid flannel shirt, topped with a baseball cap. Easy. For some reason I have no pictures of us from that party and I know it makes you weep.

Today I went to a building just south of OMSI to be fitted for another fat-suit, this time to be an extra in the Portland Opera's production of Hansel and Gretel.

The building is just off the river, and I sort of recognized it from the time I biked along the Springwater Corridor. Evidently it used to house a TV station which makes sense, somehow, as you walk along the cramped hallways and push through the double doors. The sewing room was filled with a lot of delightful things I didn't get to examine for too long -- I noticed the fish's head, and got a sense of LOTS of work happening (all spools and dressmaker dummies and cloth remnants) -- but it also had very cheerful seamstresses peeking out from closets or behind sewing machines, waving and generally being very welcoming to a Ms. Nobody like me. I ducked into a room with a curtain and a double mirror, stood on an X marked in tape on the floor, and followed directions.



I will be a chef, one of a dozen. Our costumes are a little different than what you see on the website there, but they do involve a creepy head that fits over mine (I have a mesh screen in the mask's forehead to look through). I also have these fantastic Styrofoam wings that have to be attached via a harness and it's a very complicated affair. I had two different people helping me with my costume today in a double-mirrored room, one person making adjustment notes in a little notebook. I've never been an extra with them before, and I don't know how to take my own measurements, so my file was fairly bare. After we finished the fitting they got a tape measure out and recorded every measurement that I think can be recorded. All of my stats are in a little file somewhere, as well as a picture of me both in my chef costume and my regular clothes.

I am evidently in just one scene, a dream sequence, but I know it will involve props that will be scaled-up to make us (and the leads) look smaller. Food is involved, we will be carrying trays of stuff around. Great attention was placed on the fact that my gloves were a bit big, and I was assured that if anything didn't feel quite right it could be adjusted. I may be just a volunteer, and I may have never met any of these people before, never seen an opera, and scarcely know the storyline (in the context of the production), but seems that as far as anyone in the costume department is concerned, I am one of the cast.

I like doing new things in the fall, it is reminiscent of started a class in the new school year.

it makes me sad

There's been a rash of breaking-and-entering over at the community garden. I have not been personally affected*, but other people's plots have been devastated. Grown plants uprooted, delicate seedlings trodden. Crops stolen. Someone near me lost ALL of their melons, about 30 lbs (!), someone on the other side lost all their chard. I learned that yesterday, and that scared me becuase my chard is about all I have left in there right now. We've been (miraculously) living off of it since spring, and it would be a MAJOR blow to lose it.

It takes the romantic golden light right off my idea of creative use of urban space, and sends me back to the reality of living in a city. I get a dull ache in my gut when I think about it, and so every time I think of drawing up a proper guilt-sign for the gates I get too depressed about it and don't. This garden has been such a positive thing for me in every other respect, and it makes this business that much harder to think about.

*I may have lost my only zucchini to the thieves (though it was only about three inches long -- I actually suspect a squirrel took it).

Boiling Kettles

I'm working out this idea I had the other night. It seems there are two forces at work, when it comes to making things. There's the spark of one's creative energy, and there's the resulting bubbling of ideas. The trouble is, these two things are asynchronous.

Me, I have clear and wonderful energy first thing in the morning, but it takes a few hours for my brain to catch up. If I have art time before work most of what I do is sit at my desk and push pieces of paper around, or test out different brushes, or draw a bunch of circles. I am working -- I'm warming up -- but I rarely produce anything that I want to take to completion at that time. It's like I've turned on the burner to "high", but the kettle is still cold, and it takes a while to get going.

As the day goes on I sort of plateau as far as the creative energy goes -- I'm forced to focus on other things -- but the brain REALLY takes off. By mid-day I am almost boiling over with ideas. Take the kettle off the burner, turn the burner off, don't want to WASTE energy. When I get home I have a list of things to do, but the creative energy is cooling down. By evening the creative energy is pretty cold, but the brain is still going, and I have to really struggle to focus on the less-interesting-yet-very-important things like eating dinner. I tend to read a lot at night if I am up late, because it's hard for me to work after dark but I still have brain-bubbling to use up.

I think a lot about well-being and How To Be At Your Healthiest And Happiest, so this non-congruent line graph of creative energy and brain energy has been really fascinating to me. It's important to create an environment that is conducive to making things, so that it isn't a struggle to create things at the precise moment you feel like you need to. But it's just as important to pay attention to your own energy rhythms and use them to your advantage. And, whenever possible, to schedule your life around them, so you aren't up to your elbows in paperwork when really you need to be making kites or whatever it is you need to do.

I know it isn't always possible, but it's a good goal to have.

I was thinking about all this when I went to Anthony's class on Dewey today. Without saying anything in particular, we created an environment for creation to take place, setting out construction paper, magazines, crayons and gluesticks. And everyone blew me away with the wonderful pictures they made. Everyone's kettle seemed to be boiling quite nicely.

I've been sort of scarce here. I know it. It's been hard to stay inside and paint. Partly it's because it's been desperately, unbearably hot in here. But then that's no excuse, since what work I've been doing can be done outdoors.



The latest heatwave makes even THIS impossible though. But now it's week three, which is sometimes a fat week, and I have some leftover funds to hide out in the gently air conditioned cafes. So that's a relief.

Then there's the classes.



For the last three Saturdays we've been heading over to Research Club headquarters. We set up chairs, put tea in the little box next to the sugar, get the teapot going, get the various screens connected to each other. And then we put Anthony behind the desk and let him do his thing.



It's been a treat to listen to this version of all his years of learning. And it's been a treat for us to be able to share his brain with people who are genuinely interested. We've got five classes left in the series and they just keep getting better. I don't know what we're going to do with our Saturdays once they are over with.

What Philosophy Can Do For Art

Exciting news from Research Club. Starting this Saturday Anthony will be teaching a lecture series on Philosophy, Art, and in what ways the two speak to one another.

You can find more information here.

Class Schedule:

Every Saturday From July 31st to September 25, 2010
11 AM - 12:30 PM
215 SE Morrison, Suite 2020, Portland, OR

*** FREE Introductory Class -- July 31st, 11 AM ***

Classes are taught in pairs, so you can try out two at a time if you don't want to sign up for the whole thing at once. But if you do, you get a further 10% off the whole thing. Oh man!

$5 / $10 per class (higher cost is if class is not filled -- so bring your friends!)

Of moths and sneezes

A friend of mine recently discovered that moths had taken up residence in some of her camping gear. Not long after Posie found them, and now the spell is broken and I am all jittery about moths.

About half of my workspace is a huge shelving unit filled with stacks of fabric. Whenever I work on a project everything gets pulled out, a mess is made, and then everything is shaken out and restacked, so things don't settle completely, but I work with fabric a lot less often than I work with the paints or paper. So things could lurk. And then there's the linen closet, where I keep most of my clothes. They're stacked in metal baskets, and most get moved around a lot, but my off-season clothes (like the sweaters I wear over button-ups all through the rainy season) do not get moved around, they instead sit up at the top of the closet inert and inviting. Gah, moths. What if they got into the QUILTS? Or the tent?! Oh boy. And the fluff of devastation pales in comparison to the unpleasant image of LARVA crawling around the apartment.

I have become, as Anthony puts it, "bugged."

My cat hangs out in the fabric shelves and in the clothing-closet. He is very fond of small things and particularly small things he's not supposed to have. (Like the little mesh screen in the bathroom sink drain. He has stolen it so many times that I stopped using it, and now I periodically lose things down the drain.) So, using moth balls may not be the way to go for me. Though I suppose the smell might put him off? It puts ME off to be honest. And in a 495 square foot apartment that many moth balls may make the whole place smell acidic, and I'd rather not. If I can help it.

I am intrigued by cedar balls, but where to find them? I've only ever seen them in tourist-tat shops, and they are always far too expensive. I am also intrigued by these things. I get a little flustered at Martha's insistence that I use something decadent like organza -- something I don't have in my fabric stashes. I know it needs to be lightweight, fairly porous, yet solid enough to hold the herbs inside, so for weeks I've been adding "MOTH AWAY GEAR" to my various watch-lists. Keeping my eyes peeled in the free boxes on some of the street corners here. Trying to think of what kind of fabric I should be looking for. Wondering what organza actually is. It's flitting around my mind. As a moth might.

Meanwhile, I have been descending into allergy time. Anthony has been coming with me this year, and so we have been going through a bewildering number of handkerchiefs in the house. In merely four or five days we go through all the usable handkerchiefs in the box and make it down to the pretty unusable ones. The starchy old ones made of real linen, with delicate flowers embroidered on the edges. The ones my Grandmother carried.

I went for a fresh one yesterday and found the box filled only with these unusable ones again. Then it dawned on me that these delicate, porous things are exactly what I need for the moth away project.



And it means that the pretty unusable ones are usable! Even better!



I used two parts lavender to one part rosemary, because that's what I had.



I couldn't make enough for the whole problem, but I could make enough for the quilts-and-tent shelf above the bed. So that's something. I also don't know if this is going to be effective -- Posie HAD cedar and lavender and she still had problems -- but does it makes my brain feel better. At the end of the day I think that's the most important thing.

Great Blue Heron at Lauralhurst Park

I watched him for a long time, eating fish.

Once I took the train to Beaverton, just to see what it would be like.

On the way back, a toddler was with his young father, and they were looking at all the cars on the sunset highway. They were discussing the different colors of the cars, and then the different directions and speeds they were going.

There was a lull in the conversation, and then the toddler said sadly, "none of those people know we are here."

I have a biweekly house in Beaverton, and so every other Tuesday I drive on the sunset highway. And every time I pass the exit for the arboretum and the the MAX tracks pop out from under the hill I think, I know you are there.

This is the garden, to date

What one sometimes finds on the far side of a cat door in Portland