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)

Snow Day

I posted this first image on FB, propagating the rumor that E.C. LeBlanc made this art in the 80's, but nobody caught it or thought it as clever as I did. Oh well. That is the good and bad side of FB scrolls, things move down and out of notice, rather quickly sometimes, which can be a relief. On to the next.

I'm loving the falling snow, we just don't get enough of that down here at sea level. Unfortunately it canceled the panel discussion about SM and OCF Then and Now that we were having tonight at the Lane County Historical Museum. It's rescheduled for March 10. I was looking forward to sorting out those memories from my early days at Market. Maybe this will give me some time to look around at old journals and photos and enhance what I remember.

It's strange to be doing somewhat the same thing but not the same thing at all. I started out in 1975 painting signs, (the new Humble Bagel was my first customer) and gradually changed into a t-shirt artist, covering a lot of area. I tried to make a list of all of the shirt designs I have done, and after several pages decided I would probably not be able to list all of them. I could sort through the boxes of old art; I probably still have it all.

Of course it has not been all about my craft. I've said before that Market made me who I am as I made the Market in return. When I got interested in the early 80's, I was quickly convinced to chair meetings for a few years, and learned all I could about the consensus process. We had a lot of contention at some meetings, which was not so much about real issues as about real personality clashes and lack of communication skills. People so easily get caught up in their fears and the imagined slights and threats and insults and doomed futures. Drama is juicy and hooks us and feeds our emotional needs. Like addictions.

Over the years I have become more adept at identifying bullying behavior and learning how to disengage, but it's sometimes really hard to walk away without righting the situation. I find that I have a great sense of justice that I think is generational.

It blurs the goals and drives passion, but thinking that justice will prevail is just naive. There's no authority figure watching and adding up points to award to a winner. Tactics and tricks may seem to push the situation but usually things get decided as a process, by doing whatever seems best at any point of change. Often those who are responsible for the decision defer, and take the path of least resistance. Justice isn't even discussed; doing what is right is so subjective that people don't always even think about it. They do what seems practical, or something entirely dysfunctional and misguided.

All we can do is keep working for what we think is right, stating our opinions as honestly and openly as possible. Sometimes people "see" us, sometimes not. Can't do a lot except look within and observe reactions. I see a great stubbornness in me when I feel bullied, so I try to retreat and not respond when I think someone is trying to dominate me. I don't respond to "power over."

I think back to my basic understanding of power, that it comes in three forms: Power over, power with, and power from within. I choose to look for and honor power from within, because that is what makes power with, possible. Power over is not an appropriate use of power, and will nearly always fail in the long run, because it seeks to dominate and not to allow the best expression of needs and practical solutions. Such a simple analysis, but not a mainstream one.

Strengthening my inner power is my priority, but that doesn't mean getting rigid and closed. It means seeing fears and what lies behind actions and words, rather than being caught up in feeling righteous or smug. I don't think my work in these areas is hard to see in me. You would think that sitting at a table with me for several years would allow you to see me as I am, not a strategist, not a dominator, but someone who works thoughtfully for what I see as the common good.

Alas, I am human and still have room to evolve further. I don't see what I can't see, just like everyone else. I still have that little people pleaser girl in there, trying to make the adults happier. I still have the freedom I tasted as an independent young person, changing the world and thinking big. I also have years of patience, and solid experience standing on my own two feet, working hard, solving thousands of problems step by step. I have a good solid foundation and can still dream and do ridiculous things like make Jell-O art, elaborate jokes, and be silly in the snowfall.

I also still have the A student, conscientious student government leader in me from high school. Our school was new and we had to write constitutions, guidelines and rules for all of our organizations, and I was in many of them. I began taking minutes back then and have done so for the last 45 years. I'm confident that I do a really thorough job, examining every phrase and word for embedded prejudice, underlying assumptions, and bias. I make sure to phrase everyone else's statements neutrally, trying not to make judgments myself, and trying for a positive light if appropriate. I go over them a few times, working at what vibrates and has tinges of that dramatic light of trickery.

A friend who is also a professional minutes-taker said that she knows she is doing a good job if she gets criticized from both sides. That's a bit of a grim view, but it made me work even harder. Since my interests are wide, I usually do have some involvement with the subjects discussed at the meetings, so it's really important to me to frame things positively without favoring any position. I know I do good work, and it is service, because even when I do get paid, it's not much, and spending several hours at my laptop gives me a pain in my right shoulder. It's service.

And not many people are willing to do it as thoroughly as I do. So I don't expect to quit any time soon.

In other news, I gelatined some ribbons to the wings to see how they might be worn, and it looks like it will work, with some adjustments. And it's snowing.

From Hope

I never married her son, though we created a grandson for her together, and she always treated me with love, respect, and support. She died this winter at 94, and in fact this week would have been her 95th birthday.

Hope Burlingame Martin was a wonderful painter and decorator, specializing in tromp l'oeil painting, which is using perspective to paint ultra-realistic scenes and objects on flat surfaces. She decorated lots of furniture and one of her last projects was to paint some tiny chests, like the one shown here. It is about 8 inches high, twelve wide. I swear she painted a little me on there.

Anyway, this week I met with her son, who gifted me some of her collection of fabric scraps, laces, and fine textiles. She had boxes and boxes of silk, linen, and other decorator fabrics used to make drapes and upholstery, a business she started with her late husband. She collected dishes, too, and gave me her set of some Stangl Terra Rose, because she knew how much I love my little Fiestaware collection.

In the mix were a few vintage beaded dresses and two kimonos, heavily embroidered but not in museum-quality shape. One dress is perfect, and fits me right down to the tiny, buttoned sleeves that fit my thin wrists. I think if she wore these dresses, she was probably in her late forties or fifties, and they are so elegant and beautifully made. I doubt I'll find a place to wear them, though you never know. Maybe I'll win a Pulitzer or something.

The hours I have spent admiring, sorting, and taking care of these lovely fabrics make me wish I were doing it with her. I tried at one point to go through her sewing room with her but she was never warm to the idea of getting rid of anything, and I felt grasping and inappropriate trying to force her to. She loved all of those items, the way I do, not necessarily to use them for anything, but just to preserve them and keep them alive for a few more decades. Lace collars, the embroidered borders from the bottom hems of quite a few slips or nightgowns from the Victorian era, and Chinese silk panels that are faded and falling apart, are now my treasures. I'll have to designate someone to receive them, as she did, writing my name on the box of newspaper-wrapped plates and cups.

It's so poignant to own things when you know some of their history, or can sense the presence of others who owned them. I know some of the seldom-used linens, napkins and monogrammed items belonged to her own mother-in-law, and to her mother. I've mixed them now with things I received from my own mother, who recently celebrated her 85th birthday. I have quilts, table covers, and embroideries, and a few things from my own grandmother, braided rugs and afghans.

Hope used a few of her valuable things for everyday, which is my tendency even though it ruins their lives as collectibles. I hung a few things in my bedroom just for awhile before I pack them away. There's nothing I would sell, though the brothers will be selling some of her sets of silverware and the dishes that are really valuable. I told Mike to steal me a setting of silverware, but I doubt he will. Inheritances are often sold, and their identities lost, or they are collected and loved by people like me. Collections are fascinating. Hope had exquisite taste, as well as a sensual appetite for bright colors and any kind of fine work. I remember how carefully she had one of her houses painted, an exact shade of blue she loved. She was very particular about exact colors, but not at all intimidating in her perfectionism. As far as I know she never criticized the art of any of her "daughters", and in fact I found a perfectly ugly silk scarf I had painted and given to her, which she had never worn, but still stored away in her drawer with care.

There are curtains with her needle still run precisely at temporary rest in an unfinished hem. This particular piece may or may not have been hers. At one point the green vines change color slightly, which I imagine to be the work of a child or teen who thought it wouldn't matter, but then lost momentum when faced with the prospect of removing the precise embroidery to replace it with the matching green. I can still see the faint blue pattern of the scallops and floral cartouches, and although I do know how to make French knots and tiny flowers in colored silks, I doubt I will finish it. I'll just love it in its imperfection.

She lost a lot of her abilities over the last decades, gradually and heartbreakingly. There are many little painted chests that were started, have the background coat of paint, sitting on shelves in her home. I may paint some of those, though I will never be able to approach her expertise. I'll try little flowers and vines, and see how far I can get. Her plan was always to sell them down at the Market. The one I have has a set of cardboard pieces in each drawer, cut as patterns for the fabric linings. I remember her showing me the fabrics she picked out for the linings, but I don't have them in my piles, so I'll have to go back and search through the tubs and boxes again.

Though she had to stop making things, she never stopped the beginnings of the creative process, the levels of desire and imagination that drive us to begin the projects. She was always buying brushes, books, supplies and findings and hinges and simpler versions of the projects she wanted to do. One of her last paintings was in a Salon de Refuse show, sometime around 2005 or so, when we entered the Mayor's Art show together. We were both thrilled to be hanging our art in a real gallery, for different reasons. She was, of course, quite used to feeling professional by then, but like most artists, was never finished learning and improving her skills. She loved to mentor others and the artists in her family, of which there are many, all treasure her memory.

Thank you so much, Hope. You gave so much more than you knew to all of us, for so long. I hope heaven is what you expected, a place where you can paint all day and never get tired, and never have to give up a thing you love.

More and better Jell-O Art

I finished making the box for my 6x6 inch (actually mine is 6x6x6) piece for the show at Oregon Arts Alliance. It hangs on the wall and everything, it's pretty light, and the wooden box I tried to make would have been too heavy. I hope the Jell-O stays in it, but it is balanced okay if no one messes with it. All of the pieces cost $30 and they are anonymous, with names only on the back. I'm guessing there won't be much other Jell-O.

Why Jell-O Art? It's just fun. I like how it is low-tech, very accessible, and kind of a kitchen art to start with. It takes all the pressure off, and there is no structure for criticism or monetary value, or any of the things that get imposed on art by the marketing. I have lots of essays I've written about how doing Jell-O sculptures and exhibiting them in a gallery made me realize I was indeed an artist, and take myself seriously.

Plus it is somewhat like glass in the seductive colors and transparency and the magical things it can do if you know how to work with it. As I was telling someone today, if you get it to the right stage of dryness before it gets fully dried, you can bend it and roll it and make it do lots of interesting things. I have more pictures in my facebook albums, on Photobucket at mcwho_photos, and down in previous blogs from last year mostly. I've been doing it for 22 years, so there are all kinds of Jell-O Art projects. Last year the show was also on Opening Day of the Market, so I exhibited my Jell-O Art down there, which had to be history in the making. I will maybe do that again this year.

Here are a couple more of the giant flowers (about the size of a pie plate) that I made on Sunday, and I glued up the wings too. The photos don't really show the complexity, and at the size to fit a human, (these are about 30 inches tall) they're a bit heavy. Should be quite a trick to mount them to fit her.

The idea is that she will be sort of coming out of a chrysalis, which is actually a shirt Celeste made. She made the figure, too. It fits quite nicely on my pedestal legs that I almost always use. Usually I put an apron on her, but not this time.

Having so much fun I might have to really open that Jell-O Art Museum.

Those Who Don't Know History

When the original Lane County Farmers Market started in 1915, the Pomona Grange founders had to fight off a company named Harbor-Sound Investment Company, who wanted to swoop in and establish one, charging farmers $10 a month, instead of the 25 cents a day the Grange was proposing. The grange representatives spoke to the Guard newspaper: "Our object is to bring together the consumer and producer for their mutual benefit. It is not to be a commercial project." They made it clear that this was to be a civic project owned by the community. Harbor-Sound faded away.

It was September, the height of the season, and tomatoes were one cent per pound, peaches ten cents per basket. The market caught on, thrived, and grew, on Park Street and all year round, too. More customers meant more producers, until in 1928 the 80 stalls were overcrowded by 90 to 115 producers. Still, anyone who was selling items they did not produce themselves, was ousted. In 1929 the public market became a pawn in a chess game as businessmen fought over where the center of town ought to be located. It was moving east, and businessmen with properties on Charnelton wanted it to move west. Groups of businessmen formed and schemed, and a new public market building was built at Charnelton and Broadway. It was glorious, but they had forgotten some of the essentials.

The producers revolted, and said they had not been consulted, resented being sold out, and would not move from the Park Blocks. The people who had built it up for the last 15 years felt that they owned it. After a bitter fight, the producers finally agreed to move to the building on Charnelton, where they rented space shared with a lunch counter, a grocery store which sold products not carried by the producers, and a commercial meat market. This was the summer of 1929.

When the 1929 crash resulted in the Depression, prices dropped but the public still came to buy what they could. A devastating blow occurred when the owner of the adjacent parking lot sold it to a gas station, eliminating customer parking. The market struggled through the 30's and the war years of the 40's, but declining numbers of small farms and the high costs of the building pinched. Producers were merely renters of stalls, and when the market decided to add more commercial enterprises to the site to pay expenses, rates were raised, and more farmers dropped away.Without the personal exchange from farmer to citizen, there was nothing to differentiate the market from a supermarket, and customers were drawn to the greater convenience and variety in the big stores. In 1955, what was once the Producers Public Market was sold to a Realty company from San Francisco, who resold it to a buyer from Portland. It closed in May of 1959.

In 1978, Lane County officials wondered if a producers' market might thrive in the vicinity of the decade-old Saturday Market. Our founder, Lotte Streisinger, had always held that fresh produce was an essential component of an open-air market. For the next ten years the adjacent Farmers market was managed as a wing of Saturday Market, and struggled and thrived according to where it was located. Next to each other, the two markets thrived.

One of the holders of this history is Shari Reyna, owner of the Fern's Edge Goat Dairy. She remembers the relationships built by trading lemonade for goat's milk, wool for clothing, and indeed, all of us who are longterm members of either market have interwoven our lives for decades. Shari managed the farmers for several years, as a volunteer. When the LCFM decided in 1988 to manage itself independent of Saturday Market, the two organizations still shared an office for many years, and shared expenses for permits, garbage disposal, and other services until recently.

Clearly, we are a community. We have a long history and have cooperated for 30 years and more, identifying ourselves as a unique, producer-to-customer market where you can meet the actual person who imagined, crafted, grew, or cooked up the purchase you just paid for. Your money keeps the producer alive and well and in return you get a lively, personal experience that tourists come from all over the world to experience.

History shows that restricting parking and adding large commercial businesses will kill the small producers and the unique, personal experience. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

You can read all about the early producers' market in the book Market Days, written by Stan Bettis and published by the Lane Pomona Grange Fraternal Society in 1969. For the history of the market we love now, you can look on wikipedia for some fairly accurate details, but mostly, you have to ask us, those of us who are there and have been there.

The founding mothers and fathers of our venerable, 41-year-old Saturday Market are still around. Lotte shops every week, and many of us continue to sell. Shari, Paul, Jan, Toby, Colleen and Dana, Ritta, Saman, Teresa, Gary, Gil, me, Beth, Kim, Vi, Ayala, Sue, Phil and Jan, and many others carry the history and know what our community needs and what works well. There are other farmers who have been working all this time as well. We are the community, we are the producers. Customers will tell you how long they have shopped at the markets, and everyone who does feels like part of a family, part of something extremely special.

The LCFM's appointed Community members and the developers who are trying to impose a vision on something that is already working need to not only consult us, but they need to listen to us. What they are trying to do, putting commercial booths out in the street and displacing traffic flow, parking and customer access, will not solve the problems of LCFM, will create huge problems, and is not what we, the community, want.