Wrong, totally!!!

I was completely wrong about when the class starts...this Monday, not two weeks later.

And I'm befuddled about how to use this blogspot. My attempts to write this vanished twice when I tried to add photographs. Try again. It's always try again. With most everything.

Ten years go, I had a poem published by 24th Street Irregular Press in San Fransisco...a tiny book that the publisher left in various places, hopefully to be found. Mine was  #107th that he'd published. I liked the idea of something that was both discoverable and throw-away-able.

I'd been making fold books, usually hand sewn pages, but sometimes folded from one page. I'd mail them to friends, and for a while sold them at Printed Matter in NY... but after reading both the Zoe Strauss explanation of her 10-year project and Sally Stein's essay, I thought about doing a class project that would involve a gorilla exhibit... something like that...

and also about what I will do as a project along with the class. I've done that for the Workshop since I retired...usually I make books that involve more complex binding, but probably I'll make signed editions of 100 single-page fold-books if I can get friends in L.A., New York and Tucson to help me leave them around in odd places. I spent the afternoon making three mock-ups, two in color...

 A coffin that one of the Pharohs was buried in, Museum of Fine Arts.

 Chart in the specialist's office.

These (glazed) figures were so wonderful to make, lunky and cranky, but hard as hell to glaze. I finally gave up and just used a wash of zinc or something like that on them so they look more primitive and bone-like, but these creatures took so long and I never could figure out what use to put them to, so I gave up.

 For several years I photographed the outsides of buildings that were being renovated and covered with drapes of plastic. But to put that into an homage would have taken a lot of effort and been too far outside of my usual mode of working. However, on one of my first outings after I'd been sick and in the hospital, I was surprised to find myself so fascinated by a row of winterized boats that I was out of the car and photographing without thinking about the effort. Digital is so easy, it takes so little effort to take the image even if you'll never use it. Black and white film is a much greater commitment.

There's nothing to do with graffiti, but it's so fabulous to look at ... on the wall under the railroad bridge where I walk the dogs. Usually, it's just color, but this one piece had significance.