3 July 2009
done
Thursday was our final day of work, culminating in the big Scholarship Auction after dinner, where everyone could donate something to benefit the work-study and scholarship programs here. It’s always a lot of fun, and I have bought cool things for not a lot of money in the past. They serve wine with dinner (to get us in the buying mood) and people come from all over to snap up work by internationally known craftspeople and their talented students. It also means the end of the session – this really was our last day. Of course, it was mayhem in the studio. There was still tons of cardboard around from the Parade preparations, and from the minute breakfast was done it seemed as if everyone was running through the studio at full speed, with two or three prints going at once – myself included.
I was finishing up my own gum print, but starting to worry about the piece I was making for the Auction. Aside from pictures of llamas and things, 2-D work rarely does very well (with the odd exception), and I had prepared my students not to get their feelings hurt if some great photo they made didn’t bring in a lot of money. After all, it all benefited the scholarships. I had to take my own advice, too, so I did as usual and tried to make some odd object (photographic or not) as my offering. This time I got it in my head to make a Luck Book of “hollow-cuts”: (reverse silhouette cutouts) of some of the four-leaf clovers I have found over the years, including several I had found here this time. It was a cute idea, but I lack some of the necessary skills for making a good book (like precision and cleanliness…) I had done the cutouts a day or two before, but I needed to get going on the binding if I was going to get it done by dinner time.
Fortunately, I had people here like Ila and Amy (the Paper & Book Studio assistant, whom I’ve known for years.) They had plenty to say about how I could bind the book, even without the black book cloth I’d forgotten to bring. (There was none at the store, either.) Ila and I were both hitting the wall of exhaustion after teaching, however, and even with her sleepy guidance I managed to screw up two attempts at the first book. It was almost ok, but not good enough to show or sell. I went to get a kick-ass coffee from Crystal at the coffee shop, and got right back to work, re-making the book covers and doubling the binding, all done with thin black paper. I waxed the covers for shine and durability, and even made an embossed clover on the front. It looked pretty good – black and evil and lucky all at the same time.
The auction went pretty well, but seemed a little lackluster, although my book and my students’ work went pretty well – Betsy made an awesome Cyanotype Backgammon board, and even Andy’s Michael Jackson gum print sold for 50 bucks. But honestly, I was just too burnt-out to enjoy it all. I did manage to buy Jim’s genius pinhole camera, made from a wine bottle – a “Pinhole Noir, vintage 2009” as he called it – but didn’t really bid on anything else. A couple hours of passivley watching the auction (and a Pernod or two) had me nodding off. I crawled home, past the perfectly moonlit hills, and crashed out.
Friday is just cleaning up all morning, then an all-school Show and Tell. And then, we’re gone…
