Yay! T-shirts!

And the even more coveted tote bag. You have to know someone to get one of those...

And it's only noon on Thursday!

*breathe*

*get back to work*

Made it this far

If only there weren't anything else on the list. Can't print until tomorrow, not last minute at all.

I'm not freaking out, though, no, not me.

The Best of Everything (1967)/ How Sweet It Isn't (1968)

It's cold and wet outside and I don't have to care. Next Saturday is all that matters. The weather report is tentatively good, but I have already decided it won't be possible to bring all the Jell-O to the Market, so I will just bring a couple of pieces and take all the rest of the installation to the gallery for its three-hour tour.

I am about as far into the Jell-O obsession as it is possible to go...and after next Saturday it will all be over for another year. I like spending three months on a big project. The twinges of concern about losing perspective and flirting with grand delusion are just part of the dark side of big efforts. I understand that hardly anyone will see the positive aspects of this project, and most will just see the overdone, overly detailed style in which I seem to work.

On the other hand, I finished and printed a perfectly lovely violets design so I have something new for the Market that allowed me to explore my interest in botanical illustration and also make some money (potentially). It didn't seem obsessive at all and I'm rather pleased with it. I do have to paint in the yellow centers by hand because the three-color waterbase designs are just hard to do and the tiny parts fill up and dry in the screen...with the fine detail of the green screen I just thought the yellow would never work. I don't mind the painting-in. I also printed dye onto some silk squares for hangings, a product that may not sell at all and is technically difficult. The many steps can lead to doing it over a few times. On both these and the eight Saturday Market flags I printed, the dye wasn't strong enough and washed out. I handpainted over it, so now I am really good at that Saturday Market lettering and the details of that basket. They're kind of rough in quality but next time I do it I will have better results. I'm not too sure that hangings are a good product anyway. They're just the progression toward lighter and more valuable items that I'm exploring for my old lady days at the Market.

Still no good idea for the Jell-O t-shirt and not much time to come up with one. There have been off years in the past, so if I have to give away t-shirts nobody really wants very much, it isn't that different from giving away ones they do want. The truth is that I give away at least half of the shirts every year no matter what. It's just part of how I do this thing, the Jell-O Art Show.

Even though as a Radar Angel I have had minimal involvement in the real work, I take a lot of ownership of it, having exhibited at all of the shows throughout the 22-year history, and having made the shirts for many of those years. I guess it is my way of feeling important in a world that has consistently intimidated me and left me feeling inadequate (I'm talking about the art world, but I'm inadequate to many worlds.) Like many people I walk a line of wanting attention for my efforts and squirming in any kind of spotlight. Mostly I just want to do the work. I have thoroughly enjoyed this winter, despite the tough emotional issues I've struggled with. Every time I touched the grief, I worked on the Jell-O. It's no wonder I didn't want to stop. Transformation is a powerful task, as is grieving. Powerful, and ordinary. We all have to navigate it.

Technically, I discovered so many things. Just the other day while reading a recipe for tacky green bean salad I read "soften gelatin in cold water." I had been trying to dissolve gelatin in hot water for all of these years, coming up with lumps and doing an excessive amount of stirring and remelting to get it clear. It is so much easier in cold water! I feel really stupid, but it's a great lesson on questioning one's process right back to the beginning once in awhile.

I've found it fascinating to tend to the pieces while they get to the right stage of pliability to make the shapes I want. The stuff is sticky and not sticky, will bend to stay or go back to where it was, and the process is a gentle encouragement with minimal control. Yesterday I took some time to make foam.

There is a short window of a minute or two when the liquid gelatin will make bubbles, and then it gets too cold. A big spoon works a bit better than a whisk, and there's a lot of technique involved in whipping up the bubbles. I spoon them off the surface and place them in a dish, where they harden up. It's tedious but I needed the seafoam to finish off the beachy part. If I have time I will make some flotsam and jetsam and shells.

It's gratifying to explore the techniques. I'm in love with the medium, so the results aren't really what matters. I suppose it would be good to fall in love with a medium that I can actually make money doing, but there's always someone doing those better. With the dried gelatin, I'm kind of out there by myself. I feel like an explorer, in a constant state of curiosity and delight. That state is probably what got me through my childhood and troubled youth, and I still want to dwell there.

The neighbor kids were out with their light sabers battling each other, with the usual hurt feelings and "it's not fair" disputes. I finally suggested that they be on the same team and do some exploring of the wild lands which our tamed adjoining yards might look to be from a child's perspective. They tried it for awhile, and I was glad I have finally learned how to redirect in a neutral way, now that my kid is long gone from playing in my yard. I remember admiring that so much in my Mom on a long hike when my son was bored and complaining, and I was taking it all personally and not coming up with anything but frustration. My Mom just easily engaged him in some alternate train of thought. I hope I get to be a Grandma like that.

Parenting's pretty much over for me, though I get to watch from a distance while my son discovers things to point out, for the delight of his friends and for my education in all things Now. I'm having to redirect myself. The parenting role is so huge, and I immersed in it with great dedication, so I'm having some trouble feeling valuable in my new role. It's a mystery how people navigate through life. We figure out a few things and then are left in the dust to fondle what used to feel important, or we keep stumbling along trying to keep up.

I may have a strange slanty perspective, but it just makes me feel more like an artist and want to tip over a bit farther. I learn so much from seeing other people do it, whether or not they find balance and live lives that seem acceptable to others. My guru said this week to start working on judgmentalism by learning how to judge myself less. Start with me. I guess I can work on it.

I'll put it all out there. I'll be embarrassed and earnest and look like the dithery fool old woman I am. I don't know why I think I can hide anything anyway. Like Jell-O, we are all transparent, no matter how seductive our brightly colored exteriors. And there is no judge! There is no prize, nothing to win, no contest.

Just the doing. No reason to agonize for weeks over a cheap white t-shirt I'm going to give away to lukewarm response. Out of the hundreds of t-shirt designs I have come up with, this will just be one, like all the others. On the world scale, not even a significant part of the inventory at goodwill. Possibly a place in three or four bottom-drawer t-shirt collections.

And yet: the agony, the drive for greatness, the attachment to originality. All to be a tiny tiny minnow in an infinitesimal puddle.

Somehow It's Always Right (1971). Make Some Fun (1979). It's Alive (1995).

You Can't Be a Kid Without It. (1988)

Six more days, then it jells.

If it was there, you'd eat it...1970 slogan

An essential part of the Jell-O Show is the Tacky Food Buffet, where anything goes as long as it is technically edible. It's awfully fun and I usually have a t-shirt table set up in the same room so I get to observe people trying things and laughing.

Naturally there is lots of Easter candy, (best if it is leftover, post-Holiday), the usual Peeps, orange peanuts, and jelly beans. I think a substantial portion of the Kerns Art Center budget goes to junk food for the masses. I myself usually make fortified Jell-O in candy molds so it can be popped out and displayed on white or clear plates, and I sometimes get fancy if I have a day or two before the show to make them. I like to use Christmas and Valentine's Day molds, for fun, and sometimes throw in things like the Virgin Mary made from a mold I have, just so someone can bite off her head.

Those take a lot of time but I will make some, just because they are always there and people would miss them. The artist always needs new ideas though, so this time I looked around and I had some pudding (Health food brand rather than Jell-O) so I thought I'd cook some up, add some extra gelatin, and make Pudding Plops. They worked pretty well, and I even ate some last night to see if they would be edible.

The taste was not great, but that might have been because I used almond milk instead of cow's, so I will get some milk and real Jell-O pudding for the show version. Taste is not, of course, the primary feature of tacky success. The texture is interesting. One expects pudding to be smooth and creamy, not toothsome and springy. I did find them quite edible, and they can be served on toothpicks, so we're definitely going to be eating some plops.
I will resist extruding them into poop-like piles, too graphic. I added coconut and pecans to mine so I could actually eat them and not have to throw them away. They aren't the kind of thing you can gift to the neighbors.

Of course graphic is tacky, as the recurring kitty litter and dirt creations will attest to. One year I pressed letters into white bread and made words, starting with "Tacky Food" and going on to scatalogical terms referring to the reality that you were eating something that was not at all good for you to eat. They weren't popular, on a table that gets scavenged and devoured rapidly. I had to throw some away, even after demonstrably sampling them with pretended delight. Not sure why this photo is so giant, blame Photobucket, where you can see lots of old Jell-O art photos in my albums at mcwho_photos

Other famous tacky foods have been things like tuna aspic, chocolate-covered brussels sprouts, and these fabulous casseroles and appetizers that one artist makes from real recipes put out in the earlier days of Jell-O. Vienna sausages are tacky, especially dipped in gelatinized french dressing. No matter how bad it looks I always try everything presented as food art. Sometimes the recipes are fantastic.

My most famous tacky food was the Jell-O sushi, real sushi with strips of gelatin substituted for the vegies or protein. Regular rice, nori, and wasabi. Those were tasty. One fantastic idea that I've never made is to make a torso and have removable organs, that you could fish out and eat. Like an Operation game. It would be terrific fun to make and zombie-like in appearance, a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

I well remember when the tacky food was the only reason my son would come to the show. Kids always go wild and overeat the junk and it's somewhat amusing to see horrified parents try to control the input. The timing of the show is before dinner for many and lots of bargains are struck. No matter what, everything gets eaten, except for the occasional tofu dog piece wrapped in fake bacon.

Eat at your own risk. If you are new to Jell-O Art, this might be a good place to start...bring something weird to eat. You want to work in a really clean kitchen and use all precautions but as far as I know no one has ever gotten sick, except for sugar overload and orange mouth from cheese doodles.

See you there! This last image is the shell that my figure will be standing in, not quite finished. It's about two feet across. As always, the photos don't really show the glory.

What's Jell-O?

I took one of the Jell-O flowers over to Seven Stars, that wonderful preschool on the corner. I am happy to report that NONE of the children had any idea what Jell-O is.

They're only three-year-olds, but still, it is refreshing to know that they haven't been totally consumer-washed already. Of course, now I have introduced them to it, in a way.

So I'm calling it gelatin around them, just to keep things pure.

I got all trussed up in the wings to pay them a visit but forgot it is Spring Break and they were closed for a few days. I see they are there today so maybe this afternoon I'll try it again. Something really fun about going over there as a fairy or angel or strange old lady who thinks she is an angel...they just take things at face value.

I was trying to get pictures the other day, all dressed up, and as I was heading across the street I saw this old guy who I've often seen walking. I felt I had to explain, so I asked him to take the picture, but he was a little reluctant to get too close...so the pictures weren't useful except for letting me know that the outfit I had on wouldn't really work, and the bottom set of wings doesn't hang right at all. Need a better plan.

I've been trying to come up with a good t-shirt design for the show, time's running out. The theme of a toast brings things to mind, bubbles and champions and such. The one thing I keep getting stuck on is what Ruby Tony Darcy said when she got her terminal diagnosis a few years ago. Yep, "I'm toast."

But I can't really go there. It occurred to me this week, rather belatedly, that I was going for kind of a self-portrait at first. My Jell-O Art has always been some kind of personal statement of progress I've made in the last year, or what I've been thinking about, and instead of my original plan to have the figure (me?) emerge from the tree trunk, like Daphne, and metamorphose into some kind of winged creature, I made a big shell and now she is emerging from the sea.

With the trauma of the tsunami heaped upon our personal Eugene tragedy, it has been hard to hear references to Mother Ocean, words like unfathomable and swept away and other expressions we normally use a lot. I didn't intend to reference it at all, was just thinking about the classic picture of Venus emerging from the sea standing on a scallop shell, by Botticelli. I thought making the shell might be easy and fun, and the tableau needed something in the center to hide the ugly feet. So I made the shell, and she will now stand on it, with waves coming in.

Now the feet won't be hidden, I'll have to cover them somehow. Was thinking of making them some stripey socks but will probably just dress them with real socks. I don't know yet, and that's beside the point.

The point is I rather intuitively made an opulent, transformative ode to death and rebirth. I guess I am gloriously emerging from the sea of woe to live on earth in the glory of Jell-O. Even though in reality I am somewhat of a dumpy old woman, in Jell-O Art Land I am Venus herself, coming to spread love and joy to all.

So for the t-shirt, I will try to brainstorm on uplifting wings, joy and transformation and effervescence. Can't focus on death and acceptance and don't want to glorify alcohol, just want to be a bubble of foam washing up on the shores of creativity...

I'll draw something soon. The Radar Angels effervesce once again!

This is the mask. It's pretty sturdy and stuck to the stick, so almost a practical choice of headgear. Not the tiara one might wish for to participate in the Market Opening Day fashion act.

But close.

A Toast to Jell-O!

Here's the poster for the show, created I'm pretty sure by Jennifer Andrews. Stellar use of colors, so many colors of shiny metal. Very sparkly too, and I might have to copy those bubbles somehow. I have no idea what I'm doing for the t-shirt design.

Getting the sculpture finished, though. Set it all up to see what needs more work, mainly the stuff on the bottom and mounting the mask.

I put it on a stick, so you can hold it up in front of your face.

While wearing a set of wings, which will be removeable from the figure and worn around the show, I hope.










Have to get the bird mounted somehow, too. Love Jell-O Art weekends, that is for sure.

Soul requires jiggle

Here's a piece I wrote in 2008 which puts my odyssey with Jell-O Art into words.


The Way
Jell-O. Just add water. Sweet, pretty, fun, and it jiggles. Just like me!

I’m a Jell-O Artist. A group of women artists called the Radar Angels started the Jell-O art show in 1988, and it comes around on April Fools Day, always different, always whipped up at the last minute to last only three short hours.

Why Jell-O?

People love Jell-O. Jell-O is real, but fake. It is not food, but masquerades as food. Its colors are unnatural and gaudy, brilliant and transparent as glass. It attracts, delights, and amuses. It’s universally known, well-established, an icon.

Jell-O is a commodity. It comes in a box, a recognizable, effectively marketed, cultural box. We all live in that box, the one artists are always trying to get out of.

Jell-O is a metaphor. It represents the art that is available to the common woman. Make Jell-O tonight! Create a sensation! Make some magic!

Jell-O Art subverts the American icon. It transcends the domestic box. As women and the children of women, we resonate deeply with Jell-O Art.

As an art material it is both easy to mold and entirely uncooperative. It’s cheap and disposable. It’s dependable, and has unexplored possibilities, but they are limited in scope. It’s accessible.

There is no established Jell-O art hierarchy. There is no criticism or judgment. There is no good or bad Jell-O art. It stands on its own, or jiggles and melts, on its own clear and brilliant terms.


Art is a response. Jell-O responds (poke it), and evokes emotion. Ooh. Aaah.

Art is self-expression. The artist reaches within, and pulls the soul out to examine and display. The soul can’t be compromised. The soul can’t be boxed. Soul requires jiggle.

Art is a vehicle to connection. It brings us together, where we learn and grow. We find each other, at the great big potluck of life, where there is always Jell-O.

Art is business. Artists become commodities, with their products. Jell-O Art is outside this world of art marketing, although a piece of Jell-O art once sold for $400. Most of it goes into the compost.

Art asks questions. The questions are endless. What is truth, what is real, what matters? What can be expressed? What can be turned upside down? What assumption can be examined? What icon can be assailed?

Artists create. The process is as important as the result, to the artist. The process starts with the question, and attempts an answer. Often the question is: who am I? Who am I at this moment, in this world? What can I say? What am I feeling? What kind of Jell-O do I like best?

I created. Through making Jell-O art annually as a spring ritual, I discovered my creative process. When I realized I had one, I went from a self-taught, outsider artist with no credentials, to a capital-A Artist. All along, the questions were in place, but it took Jell-O for me to find the answers.

It’s alive. Don’t say no, say Jell-O.

Jell-O Magic

More Thoughts

Why I am doing this instead of working on my Jell-O, I can't say, but I think it is because I have a lot on my mind, and it's pretty quiet around here.

It's Saturday, and spending some hours at the Park Blocks got me in the mood for that 12 hour day of intense effort that results in exhaustion, exhilaration, and a few bucks in my pocket that are sure not there right now. When I get home from a Market Saturday I am usually mute, talked out, full of energy but not for people. I usually am so grateful for the quiet and the lack of demands on me, because that is one demanding day that takes me a day to recover from.

But I have been thinking about this blog and what I am doing here. It's not a conversation, there's nothing much coming back most of the time that might change my mind or my sentence or shift my thoughts in a different direction. It's a bit of a conversation with an unknown listener, or one I project, and I do, of course, censor my words and write carefully so I don't tell lies and I don't hurt people. But I'm just talking to myself, in the quiet, in my controlled, safe space.

I'm pretty sure that most people who read it know that. I doubt many people even read it, especially the long posts that don't have pictures. I don't believe most of my family members even read it, or people whom I consider my best friends. It's not required.

I'll admit that it surprises me that my closest people don't, but I've learned that I can't expect much from my family or friends, or rather that it is wiser to be grateful for what you do get instead of having expectations of what you should get. That is just expressing what you want, really. I want them to want to know my deepest self, and what I say and think about, but they often want other things themselves, and it generally isn't intentional at all that they don't hear me. I could make it mandatory, but that probably wouldn't make them want it any more, maybe less.

I've been surprised, as well, that some people have taken great offense at me discussing the 8th St. issue here. Again, I thought it was clear that a blog is personal opinion. I have actually been really careful to use positive language, keep names out, and try to say things that I felt might advance understanding and harmony, not undermine it. I feel that I have been honest about my own shortcomings or wrong thinking, and have tried for a very balanced view. I may not be a great judge of that.

I suppose I can treat their offense as criticism and let it roll over me, but I'm actually really bad at getting criticized. I take it way too personally. I've had to work hard in my writing group to just write anyway, and stay strong about what I want to say and how to say it. In the blog, it's easier, because there isn't a critical structure, it's not a workshop. If people disagree I assume they just pass off my words as tangential rambling that doesn't need to concern them.

But I feel the need to mend things, so I'll have to think about how to do that. I'll have to be mature about the disagreeing and take the opportunity, if I get it, to ease things. It's one of those classic situations where I won't apologize, because I don't think I did anything wrong, and besides, they need to apologize to me, etc, etc, and so on. Some effort is needed, and I want to be big enough to offer it, if I can think of a way to do that without compromising.

I guess I can just suck it up and go buy vegetables from people who think I am their enemy. I did that at HM, and they didn't refuse my cash. If they still think I am their enemy when I am giving them my hard-earned dollars, well, then maybe just that will make them think again.

I've spent years building bridges over there, and I can just continue that work. We can safely disagree about things in our world. It doesn't extend to the personal, or doesn't have to. I'm pretty sure I made my points, and things seem to be going in a more cooperative direction at this time. I can be the first to drop the opposition stance, which has been hard for me to hold anyway.
I don't think things are going to hell in a handbasket, I mostly just didn't want the street to be closed. I don't even drive a fricken car.

Plus, I'm out of carrots, lettuce, spinach, onions, garlic, eggs, and all things farmed. I need them, and maybe someday they will acknowledge that they needed me once, and though they tossed me aside over this one issue, I'm still here, wanting to be friends, wanting us all to thrive.

One of them might even need a damn hat once in awhile. It's time to make peace.

Parallels

While I was attending a memorial service today, my Mom, who is 85, was attending one for Russell W. Peterson, who recently died as an old man. He was a wonderful environmentalist, fought Big Oil, and served as Governor of Delaware, and my connection to him is that my Mom transcribed his papers, speeches, and books for the last twenty years or so. He was a good writer, but not that good with punctuation, and my Mom had to navigate his handwritten, chaotic yellow legal pads with arrows and crossouts and present him with an organized, neatly typed document worthy for putting into the Library of Congress, where his writing is headed.

She had an intimate relationship with his words and self-expression which no one will probably recognize, though he did. I loved hearing her talk about it and I hope when she is farther along in her own grief process, we will write something like an interview about this role she played. As she was talking I noticed a similarity to the role I play taking minutes for SM, and now a couple of OCF committees. I listen to discussions and try to present an organized, coherent summary of what people said that led to something more concrete, an action or an opinion or just some kind of movement forward in whatever the committee or Board is trying to accomplish by meeting. Nothing I type is going to the Library of Congress, but it does become a permanent record of some usefulness in limited ways, and I'm proud that I have some skill at it and can help in this way.

Everyone, at the memorial service I attended, wanted to help in some meaningful way. This is the major impulse I have recorded in my grieving process for Jack Harnsongkram. I am not super close to the family, though we certainly know each other and have worked together at the Market for at least 30 years. Our sons, Richard and John, are the same age, and we got together a few times when they were babies. We're not close, but we're solidly connected.

I mention Jack's name because I learned something important today from Colleen, one of my mentors and co-creators, which was that she learned from Compassionate Friends that one thing people tend to do around death is hesitate to speak about the departed loved one, for fear of causing additional grief. That has been my concern, that I will add to the burden of Saman and Sarah instead of doing the helping that I want to do. Thanks to Colleen I know now to be bolder about keeping Jack alive in the ways that we can, by speaking clearly about him and about the challenges of loving each other and keeping each other cared for.

Sarah asked that everyone try to keep his brother, Richard, in our hearts because he is here, and he lost more than we can imagine. I do know a few things about being 21, and about young men of that age, and I know about the struggles and joys I experience with my own son, so I will be looking for ways to open my heart to Richard when I can. It might just be looking into his face and saying Good Morning. It might come through more attention to what my own son wants and needs and using that understanding in a broader way. Whatever help I am able to give might not be a direct thing from me to Richard, but it might transfer to another young person, at another time, in another situation.

We just can't know all of the good we do. One kind look or word, one moment of listening, might mean everything to someone in the moment. Today on the way downtown I witnessed a young man climb a big incense cedar tree, and I do not know how on earth he accomplished it. When I saw him it was because a cry of triumph got my attention to him standing on a branch far too high to reach...maybe twelve or fifteen feet from the ground! I really don't know what he did, and how he got down, but for the short minute I was passing under the tree, I made a point to express my admiration and delight at his amazing accomplishment.

It might have meant nothing to him, that someone who resembled his grandmother was impressed, yet, you never know. His expectation might have been that any adult on the scene would have told him to get down immediately. He might think adults have no use for him whatsoever, like many of our young people grow to think when we have no jobs or time for them, or resources, or attention to ask them what they really enjoy doing or would like to try.
I won't know what he thought, and it doesn't matter to me, but all I was doing was expressing my own thoughts and wonder at what I was seeing in my walk down the street.

That's the point, that I expressed myself. That's what we have to do, all we have to do to start things rolling. When we feel something, we let somebody know.

What they think of us is not our problem. If they misinterpret, maybe we get to clear that up, but we learn to express ourselves clearly, so they'll get it, and hopefully we learn to express ourselves kindly and positively so that others can benefit, not suffer.

It's a skill, this self-expression, and we get a lifetime to work on it. Jack was really good at it, though his lifetime was a very short one, and it is sad that we don't get to hear what he would have learned to express. It might have been amazing, or just ordinary. My hope is that our loss of him will remind us to express ourselves now, and more, and more clearly, because we really can't know what the ripples from that will be.

Beth gave a most wonderful speech today, a benediction and affirmation. She is our treasure. She really sees into our souls and expresses our finest sides. I give her credit for helping the Market community coalesce into the strong, emotional, solid force of good that we now represent. As a group we transcend our individual natures that can sometimes be exhausted or eccentric or self-centered or selfish. We hear from her how we can be as our finest selves, as we express our hippie ways, our counter-culture that values giving, being honest, creating, and loving with all our hearts. We have freed ourselves from fear and created something together that keeps us safe throughout our lives, from birth to death. It's no small thing.

She said Market isn't our church, but it is for me. Our services are filled with food and flowers and song and laughter. We meet every week to joke around doing serious business. We don't compete, we embrace our differences and help each other. We have very little to fear from each other, and that safety translates to everyone who comes down to hang around with us.

I realized this week that the new space I will be in was held for years by the same person who held my Holiday Market space for those same many years, Maria Serrot, a regal sort of woman who made beautiful ceramics. Some people think it's one of the best spots, some don't, but it is for sure one of the sunniest spots in the Market, and everyone I talked to described how Maria dealt with the sun and gave me ideas for how I will. I have already been welcomed into the neighborhood and we don't even open for three weeks.

I'm going to dance in that sun. I'm going to sing in that space. I'm going to listen, especially to the young and old, and I'm going to be grateful for everything that is given. The love is there for me, and it is there for you. Take some. Give some.

Narcissistic Souffle

I wish I could take credit for that phrase but I have made it my own, since it often describes my state when I get attention...I get all full of hot air and inflated ego. But it's fun for awhile and I hope I didn't embarrass myself. I'm talking about the panel discussion that we just finished on Saturday Market and OCF at the Lane County Museum.

I filled an entire table with my archives from just those early years, the signs and photos of signs and cards and calendars and all the things I produced back then. I did a little transition to the wonderful things we made at Fibergraphics but there were no t-shirts, and I have made hundreds of those, so we just touched on a little part of my productive life. I did remember to mention the "high touch" aspect of crafts which is another reason why we have managed to carve out such a significant niche. People want what we make, and they love buying it from us in person.

It's amazing to speak about oneself to an appreciative crowd. I know it wasn't about me, but I did feel that I was an important part of what we created collectively. It's like when someone came into my booth and said they ran the Fair. I said, yeah, you and 5000 other volunteers. I did all this while hundreds of other people did far more amazing (as well as far less, let's be honest) things and there were plenty of people who dedicated much more energy than I did to it all. But we all get to own it. It's our communal history.

It's hilarious when we get started, especially the many intersections socially when we try to remember how we met and how we are connected. Your ex- was my co-worker and we were at that one party when...those conversations are really fun. We could have had a lot more of those. I forgot to mention working at Sprout City, kind of a rite of passage, and a lot of my friends worked at the Newf, as we still call the New Frontier Market. We sent our kids to Family School. There are all the other branches of the family, the Deadwood folks and the many other groups that came together on Saturdays and that one special weekend in July, and still do. The Radar Angels and Jell-O Show, the Extravaganzas they used to stage at the WOW, all the many performers we knew and loved.

There were so many things I didn't mention, the bike carts for one. I built my first booth so that it would become a bike cart at the end of the day. It failed as a bike cart, so I commissioned George Braddock to make me one, since he was the only person I knew who could weld. He built me a fine one that I used for several years until Mike and I started the businesses and the load was too big for a cart. Now I use one again, and I've written about it before. There was always a wheeled culture at Saturday Market, handcarts and other types, and it has never gone away. It hearkens back to early merchants, as long as there have been wheels I guess. That's symbolic of how we do things in our culture, with low technology and lots of ingenuity and resourcefulness.

We're a bunch of eccentric people, mostly, but we fit together really well. We find delight in each other. It's amazing that we found each other and this place and time, and that we have managed to keep ourselves so alive and well together. It has been a lot of fun, and created tons of enjoyment for others.

I'll deflate soon, and get back to the slogging of the everyday work like cleaning screens, making painstaking drawings, dyeing shirts on days too wet to hang them out, doing my taxes. Finding the money to get my Fair booth going again. It's step by step. That makes a life. I'm glad I took some steps on some unusual paths. I hope I get the chance to tell more of my stories. It's like when I did the Story Corps recording, it feels like my legacy and it's such an honor to get a chance to tell about it. It's rare that I'm that proud of myself.

I hope I get to hear more of other people's stories. It's amazing to hear how brave and original people can be. I don't know if that gets through to people, especially young people, but I know most of the Market kids grow up to do similar things, though usually more integrated into the mainstream culture it seems, or the online culture anyway. We wanted to live original lives. That can probably be traced back to Kesey or Leary or some beatnik or other, but it really stuck in my generation and seems to be a permanent part of the culture now. It has provided a good ride.

It was thrilling that so many people turned out tonight. The Museum could be encouraged to put on some more of these panel discussions. We could get much more specific and narrow with the topics, or broaden them to include more of the cultural aspects rather than the physical ones. It's pretty fun to gather and trade memories. I'm sure lots of people are politely waiting to see if anyone will ask them to tell their stories. I didn't realize how much I wanted to do it.

Thanks Suzi! Thanks all of the listeners! Thanks Colleen for preparing so well and having so much to say about Saturday Market. Thanks, everybody, for making life so rich.

Past Perfection

A timely talk with my friend Pamela reminded me that we are not working toward any type of perfection, but just on the ride. In preparation for the little panel at the Lane County Historical Museum this evening, I've been going through boxes looking into my past. While fascinating, I don't always like seeing where I have come from.

I wanted to gather some of the items I made in the early days of my crafts career, and it turns out I have a pretty complete archive, thanks to the nature of my early efforts as a signpainter. I took photos of every sign I painted, or at least most of them, since I knew I might never see them again. I saved examples of the paper things I made, probably because they didn't sell, or there were so many imperfect ones. When I de-fuse my inner critic, I find some of them delightful and original.

I decided to paint signs after reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography in the early 70's. I was floundering around trying to figure out how to enter the adult world, having graduated from high school as a pretty good girl in 1968. I was raised to be obedient but at the same time sort of an iconoclast. I got caught up in politics at school in DC in 1969, when I went to a showing of The War Game, a movie that showed the government spin on nuclear energy (It's Perfectly Safe!). I was instantly radicalized and that was the place to be. I switched my major to protesting and was tear-gassed, had dinner with Black Panthers, lots of excitement. One of my roommates in a big old house was the daughter of one of the Chicago 8 lawyers, so I touched upon some real revolutionaries. I was still pretty good, managing to lose my matching sweaters and skirts and my bra, but still retaining most of my Catholic guilt and lots of family stuff that I will spare you from for the moment. I do value that political awakening and the radical ideas I learned there haven't left me.

But my twenties were very difficult, and the signpainting gave me a vehicle. I went with a friend to Colorado Springs, where I worked in the botany lab at Colorado College, which fed my love of nature and plants. I followed that friend to the Lower East Side of NYC, where I took a calligraphy class at the Art Students League, and decided all I needed to do was to keep practicing. Woody was an itinerant signpainter, and after some more frustrating years in Colorado, where I lived in a cabin with my own hot springs, I set off in a Willys panel jeep to the Four Corners area to try my luck like he did. It was all very romantic. I met a cowboy and he convinced me to join him on a ranch in Carmel Valley, CA, and I then limped to Eugene where I could stay with my Aunt Lud (now in her 90's), and in the early spring of 1976, here I landed.

I painted a lot of signs, most of them slightly amateur in retrospect, and made many somewhat useful items like spice jar labels and greeting cards. I taught myself to screenprint and made calendars, better cards, and finally t-shirts. I've been making t-shirts for 30 years.

I would probably have given up art by now if it hadn't been for Saturday Market. I stumbled upon it with the idea of using it for networking, and my first big customer was Humble Bagel, which was just opening. When there was an arson under the Butterfly where all of SM's signs and info booth were stored (in 1982), I offered my services to the Board to replace their signs. I'm sure I did some for free and got minimally paid for the others. I still work for SM, doing their totes and shirts, although there were of course years when I didn't do that. Still, I have remained connected for all of this time.

Soon after I started coming to the meetings I was drafted to run for the Board and rapidly became the Chair. It was scary for me, and there are a few pages in my old journals about the various issues I dealt with, but I got the help I needed to stumble through it. We moved to the Park Blocks, we started The New Holiday Market, we hired and fired a few employees for various dire reasons. At one point we were deep in the red and successfully fund-raised our way out of that.

I was still a romantic, which fit well with my charter membership in the Radar Angels and the various relationships I got involved in. I don't see my twenties and thirties in entirely positive lights, but I worked hard always and in the 80's my partnership with Mike Martin was pretty darn productive. We lucked into the Fish Tie Phenomenon of 1986, which we started with our t-shirt of a printed-on collar and rainbow trout. It led to rapid growth and we had at one point a business with five employees, lots of wholesale accounts all over the country, the line of Fractal t-shirts, and much more. It was a good collaboration for a few years, but I was 39 and just had to be a mother, so I jumped into that.

The business suffered from me spreading myself too thin and the emotional changes that came with motherhood, and the next decade was spent raising my wonderful son, as a single parent, while remodeling my house from below the ground up. It is still not all the way finished, but after 15 years we moved into it from next door, switching houses with my shop, which is where all the equipment landed from Fibergraphics, and where I still work.

I have the skills necessary to thrive as a craftsperson, namely good self-discipline, an outstanding work ethic, and many loyal customers. I would have none of it without Saturday Market, and Country Fair, where I learned how to do it all and how to grow as an artist. Outside of the calligraphy class, I am self-taught. I learned most of my craft through library books, and practice, and mistakes. I made some memorable ones.

So looking back is a mixed process for me. I'm not that proud of all of my work, though I am proud of the courage it took to make it. I'm really proud of my dedication to it, and my persistence, and my curiosity and love of learning. Those things have to be cultivated, and I'm glad I placed enough value on my time to keep working. I'm relatively successful now at 60. I see the coming decline, but I'm not there yet. I just got a new spot for Saturdays, back near my old neighborhood, where I was next to Jeff Allen for a long, long time. I've stayed in the same neighborhood at the market and where I live, settling in pretty deeply over the years.

And I'm thrilled that I kept journals starting in the early 70's, though most of the ones written by a twenty-year-old romantic are painfully full of angst about love and sex. A few people appear in now surprising ways and there are a few explorations of other subjects, but one thing I found amazing is that I still agonize over the same damn things, in many cases.

One is isolation, which comes with the territory of working alone. I have always worried about working too hard and not being good with relationships. Despite years of therapy, which really did help, I remain much the same person inside. I found this disturbing and comforting at the same time. I can see my progress, but also still recognize myself.

So while I may be part of the living history we will look at again tonight at the Museum, I'm still emphasizing the living part of that. I'm still curious and live a deep interior life, still documenting it for my own education and still working hard and feeling like a beginner. I hope I have a few more decades to get it right, except I have the feeling that I will never feel like I have it completely figured out.

Life is a mystery, it's a wonder we all do as well as we do. When I turned fifty I decided that there were no more mistakes, that things we do are just that, the things we do. They're right as they can be. My choices have been as good for me as it has been possible for me to determine them. I've wasted a lot of time agonizing over whether or not I am doing it right or wrong.

Neither one, apparently. I'm just doing it, just making stuff and selling it. It's incredible, and at the same time mundane and nothing special. I hope it will be fun to share it a little tonight. I'm anxious about it of course, but one of my recent mantras is to turn anxiety into curiosity.

Wonder what new thing I will learn tonight? What will I rediscover that I had forgotten? What will I learn to value that I might have discarded? What great energy might come from all of this looking back?

Stay tuned. It's not over yet.

Downtown Mall

Just have to say those two words to the FM committee still pushing for the street closure. Some of them, relative newcomers to our town, don't remember that unfortunate couple of decades which some say killed downtown and sent all of the shoppers to VRC. We had streets closed to traffic, and they were, at great expense, later re-opened for cars. It's one of those institutional trauma things that no one wants to talk about.

Closing streets in downtown Eugene is bad for business. I don't even drive in downtown, I always bike, and I'm all for getting rid of all cars and parking lots, but that's not the world we live in. Closing the street would hurt the farmers too.

Last night at our SM meeting a couple of members of our "sister organization" came to see what open meetings are like. Actually one of them has been one of our associated members since the beginning, and knew all about it. One of the effects of their presence was to remind us that there are many individuals who make up an organization, and committees or even Boards don't always speak for them. When presented with our research and projections, many of the members of the FM might agree that closing the street isn't such a rosy concept, but the information isn't necessarily being given to them to consider the decision fully. Seeing the farmers at our meeting gave us hope. It was a highly significant step forward.

We've struggled with how to dialogue with them, since it seems inappropriate for us to contact their membership directly with our concerns, at least by mail. The formal meeting we had didn't make much progress, though we all claimed to want to cooperate. The public forum that ought to be in process for a decision like this isn't in place yet, and media coverage can distort issues, so we're going slowly, person by person, to just communicate with our friends. Most members of SM and LCFM are friends, which is one reason why this push for street closure has stung so badly.

It's ruining relations between our markets, something we've been working on diligently, since it is clear that both organizations benefit from whatever collaboration we can make. We all trade back and forth across the street. There are hundreds of long, friendly relationships. Tuesday Market depends on our cooperation. It seems like it is falling apart, and there's a lot to lose.

We think the people driving the decision are few, and in a kind of delusion. They got caught up in a lovely concept that isn't firmly grounded in what is already going on. It looks like a crusade.

At a recent ceremony the words "high and holy" were applied to our time there, and our purpose. It was religious language but had a much broader meaning, and it struck me that "holy" is a word often used to describe passion. It's just short of sacred, and it snaps us into a mindset of deep respect, reverence, and attention. To have a holy purpose is to be above the mundane, to be driven by something universal, to be set apart in a space that really matters.

Religious terminology sends us to a spiritual place, and the ancestral memories of holy purpose go way back to the primitive, way into the astonishment and wonder we experience when watching the Aurora Borealis, lightning, the view from the top of a mountain, the witnessing of the birth of a child. As humans we are drawn to call things holy to set them apart, to mark them and to create space around them where the concerns of the mundane may not matter all that much.

Think about the "high horse" people get on, the passion of crusaders for the environment, the singlemindedness of protesters, activists, defenders of children, all of the causes and stances that people take so seriously. Frequently people involved in causes use hyperbole to express their fears, to try to motivate the apolitical or apathetic, and to promote their causes.

In short, it's my opinion that the individuals pushing for closure of 8th are on a crusade that they are convinced is a holy mission. Their arguments for closure are thin. Everyone agrees that LCFM would benefit from more space, but instead of really working for alternatives, this closure is being presented as the only option. All of the mundane concerns such as how we will actually manage it on the ground are brushed aside, and the fact that a 41-year-old "sister" is opposed to the move is dismissed as inconvenient. All of the arguments for it, that it will create a vibrant destination, are talking about something that is already in place. People already come, they stay all day, they shop all over the area, and none of that needs to be rescued.

Frankly, in my observation, the LCFM is suffering from organizational trauma, and these crusaders think they have a mandate to save it. It's a dangerous position, and the singleminded passion is a destructive force. Quite a few of us came to our meeting last night vulnerable, hurt, dismayed, and frustrated by our position in this drama that has been created against our will, and is wasting our time, effort, and sapping our emotional strength. Many are angry. We're tending to lump all of the LCFM members in a group we can't work with and don't want to interact with. Thirty-plus years of working together is being tossed aside and destroyed, spreading their organizational trauma far and wide.

We're afraid. We're appalled that we are dismissed, when we can see our strength, stability, and community, see clearly how we come together to make solid decisions. We built up our immensely successful market with diligence and care. We have depth. Kim is serving her 20th year as Manager of Promotions and Beth has over a decade, Vi also. Many of our members have given their lives to our organization. It's not just a location.

Downtown is our land, and although we just rent it, we take care of it, too. We've made downtown vibrant and alive, and are working on significant challenges like the scene at the Free Speech Plaza, the sustainability issues that have reduced our garbage footprint so tremendously, and the other many fronts on which our volunteers and staff work. We had 20 volunteers at our meeting last night. We have depth.

When hyperbole surfaces at our meeting, we tend to try to ramp it down. We don't encourage drama. Passion is great and necessary but the truth is mundane. The truth is that we would survive a street closure, and the anticipated drop in income we expect it will bring, and we would be able to fix whatever issues came along with it, over time. We will find solutions to the FSP problems and the other issues we are working on, and we will even manage to repair and retain the friendships hurt by these recent differences with the farmers.

But we do hate to waste our time and energy dealing with deception, delusion, and derangement. Let's get this thing out of the way and get on with the real work on the ground. Saturday Market starts in less than a month. There is so much work to do! No time for drama.

The picture above is the Jell-O mask that I made for the figure, still not put together but almost ready. One of my fellow Jell-O artists, David Gibbs, said that the day of the show is a high holy day for us...part of my exploration of those words. I agree with him. Having it be the same day as Opening Day of the Saturday Market is almost unworkable for me, but somehow I will make it work. I wonder if I am so immersed in my project this year as a defense against the drama. Might explain a few things.

All Jell-O All The Time

It's March already! Fortunately I am moving along rapidly with my Jell-O art ambitions. It's so fun it doesn't seem like work, but some days I work on it from morning until bedtime. I have to force myself to sit down, when my back starts to remind me that I can't spend the whole day on my feet anymore. I'm mixing it up in two quart jars, 6 oz of gelatin to half a jar of boiling water. Stir a lot.

I color it with procion dyes, having long ago realized the limitations of food coloring, though of course if I were to make any for the Tacky Food Buffet I would make sure it was edible. Usually Jell-O brand desserts go on sale before the show due to Easter, and they used to even give away cool molds at the grocery store, some of which I have in my mold collection, but I won't even think about the Tacky Food until the end of March. I also have to come up with some kind of t-shirt, usually referring to the theme, which this year is A Toast to Jell-O, 2011. I even watched the Lawrence Welk show last weekend for inspiration, but nothing comes to me yet. I trust my brain to work on it while I do other things.

So the ambitious project began as a self-portrait, a logical extension of last year's display of 15 or so Radar Angels rendered small and beautiful in boxes. I had thought just to do a head or mask type of thing, but Celeste gave me a couple of full-size figures she made, for my Jell-O Art Museum. That led to thinking of human-size wings, which have been fairly easy to make but are a challenge to mount. I got them to the point where I can wear them, though they are very susceptible to breakage. My idea is to make at least one pair of them removable from the figure so I can flit around the show in the beginning when it isn't crowded.

I decorated the figure with orchids, and made two floral panels to sit around the figure for a sort of garden effect. They need work still. I'm trying to make a bird and a butterfly, and still working on the face/mask/head part.

I spread the melted gelatin in all of my cake pans, pie plates, broiler trays, and some cool bowls that are shaped like lettuce leaves, making thin layers which I then dry out on top of the piano and every other perch available in my living room, where I leave the baseboard heat on way too much while they dry. I'm on my last 5 pounds of the 20 I bought this year, so I guess I will order more. Can't face running out at the last minute to buy those expensive boxes of Knox.

Most of the work is in turning the pieces over, taking them out of the dishes at the right time, arranging the wonderful pieces into recognizable objects, glueing them together with more melted gelatin, and moving things around in my small house. My cat is super annoyed with all of his favorite perches occupied. Presently I have the figure set up in the corner by the front door, but will move it to the art room soon. I haven't been heating the art room, and want to make sure everything is completely dried out, or it might mold.

The drying Jell-O is pliable and only a little sticky and if you monitor the stages of drying you can manipulate it in various ways, prop it up with juice glasses and things to get the curves and folds you want. I rolled some of it up into flowers. It is a bit like paper, somewhat like glass, very much like plastic, and if you don't like what you have you can remelt it and start again.

I think the remelting makes it more brittle, just a theory. Surely some physical change results from changing it from a liquid to a solid and back multiple times. Science! Another reason I am so happy working within these limits, constant discovery.

I have certainly questioned my judgment in spending so many hours making something that will be on display for a small part of one day (April 2). If it weren't so much fun I would worry about some kind of mental disorder (judge if you must) but I think this is what real artists feel like, compelled to make this thing no matter what other people will think. I know it is amazing, and I also know only a small group of people will find it so, and I know it is unlikely to result in any kind of financial reward...though you never know.

I'm a person who likes to work, and it is great fun to have something to work hard on that amazes even me. It's just unpredictable enough to present technical challenges and marvelous beauty and constant innovation. This really represents pure art to me and I'm very happy that I found an arena to work in that suits my experience and talents. I don't care at all that it doesn't result in income. I don't even care if the result is that many people find me unhinged and don't get it at all. I'm planning to take it to Market for Opening Day, too, but this year I will probably cordon it off somehow to keep people from picking it up and breaking things. At the Market part of the attraction is the "high touch" aspect of handmade objects, so people naturally wanted to experience the Jell-O fully and were also not familiar with displays of things that were not for sale. I'll have t-shirts for sale. I really really hope it doesn't rain.

So, here we are so far, with a month to go. We're up to something good! (1985 slogan). Still the coolest (1995). The quickest way to find a smile. (1987)