gracias.......kiitos........thanks!

Hey Beautiful People! I'm writing to you from the airports in San Jose, Costa Rica and Mexico City, returning home today after a fantastic two weeks. The residency was very productive for both me and Christian, and we met some great people. I plan to spend some time today preparing my last blog entry about the residency itself, but just recieved an email that triggered another thought for the blog. This is the time of year when you see the various media sources, blogs not excluded, giving you a recap or list of their favorite transgressions of 2007. I thought for my version of this time-honored tradition that I'd thank a few of the fine folks who made this blog a more rewarding part of my life in this past year.

Kicking it off, I am so grateful to ONOMA and the Fiskars company and art community for granting me a short but sweet residency in Finland last February. It was great to travel abroad after a long hiatus, and that residency opened a lot of new doors for me with my artwork. I met many people, Sade, Ron, Erika, and Raija, all of whom I still keep in touch with and keep that memory fresh for me.

The Fiskars residency wouldn't have quite been the same if I hadn't met Christian Bannister, who filled my iPod with new music that led me to a new body and way of working during that Fiskars residency. We subsequently collaborated on the Points of View piece for that show in Finland, as well as the Chandellear for the Vault in October, which led to our working together for the past few weeks at this residency in Costa Rica. The thought provoking conversations we have are very inspiring for me both as an artist and as a human, and I'm so grateful to have him in my life. We're already talking about our next residency next winter. I can't wait!

I made my first real blogfriend in 2007, Mr. TJ Norris. I have had the experience before of knowing of another artist's work before actually meeting them and seen how that opened doors more readily to a friendship that may have not transpired otherwise. TJ and I are both artists, true, but it was through our respective blogs that we actually became comrades, or "art twins" as he says it. TJ lives for art--is involved in the local and international art communities, and shares his experiences almost daily on his blog, which was recently named "Best Local Art Blog" by the Willamette Week's art critic Richard Speer. I know how much work it takes to put one of these things together and keeping it alive and fresh, and it's a labor of love, not profit. I was really flattered when TJ named me as his favorite local art blogger on his Best of 2007 list. The feeling is mutual, TJ.

I'm very grateful to Gavin Shettler and Kelly Rauer at the Portland Art Center, who with jurors Bruce Conkle (as seen here in a photo taken by Marne Lucas) and Mary Ann Deffenbaugh, offered me the opportunity to present my next installation in that fabulous venue next year. I'm also very thankful for the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Kriss Parnell at Keystone Mortgage, and the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation for their financial and in-kind support for this project. Much of my 2008 blogging will center around this project, so stay tuned!

Thanks too to Francisco Sanchez who has continues the Julia and David White Artists Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica after its founder passed on a few years ago. The colony is a wonderful opportunity for artists and writers to have a visually inspiring and contemplative place to find their creative muses. I'll post a follow-up entry about my residency here in the next day or so, but for now I wanted to give a muchas gracias to all who made that residency possible.

I have virtually met many artists through the blog this past year--many artists whose work I talk about here find out about it through web searches take the time to write and thank me for it. These small acts of gratitude mean a lot to me and make my blogging experience more meaningful. I wrote about Czech Republic metalsmith Pavel Herynek earlier this year, and just now recieved the beautiful e-card and new year's wishes you see here.

Another artist I wrote about in September, Indian multimedia artist Ranbir Kaleka, not only wrote to thank me, but also graciously agreed to answer a few questions about his work for a blog interview. I'll leave you with this mini interview now--I had intended to continue the discussion, but was a little overwhelmed with my workload last fall. Knowing how busy Mr. Kaleka is as well, I have decided to post it now.

Here's my question to Mr. Kaleka: I was really captivated by your piece "Crossings" and sat with it for some time - I think it interested me personally because my work often combines old and new technologies (object-based and craft-influenced installation with electronic sound art.) This piece of yours is a series of four paintings, a very traditional art form, with video projected onto it. I think it's a brilliant way to tell stories about history and tradition and bring them into the present day. I know that narrative was a big thread of this exhibition--can you please tell me more about how you view the marriage of these two media in telling your stories and convey your intended messages?

And his reply: Unlike the ‘Crossings’ piece where there are areas left untouched, I have also made work where the entire canvas is painted, so when I speak of the marriage of the two media my points of reference include other works as well.

The traditional art-form of painting is a major component in my installations. I respond to all forms of art but the very physical act that goes in the making of objects engages my senses very much. I am not talking only of large self-assured gestures and marks but also the tremor of the hand and the doubt visible in a work or the meticulous line and blending of the miniature artist. The touch humanises the object. This "Aesthetics of the Handmade" makes the common unique. (The absence of personal mark-making in the powerful work of Donald Judd or Anish Kapoor takes us on a different journey, but that is another story...different forms of art need not negate each other).

Cinema has fascinated me since my childhood and I avidly watched great masters making meaning through games with light and the notion of time. What engaged me primarily in making these works was the curiosity: what would happen if I combined the corporality of the painted image which has weight, tactile surface, real gravity and physical presence with the aura of the cinematic/video image made of light. It produced a kind of hyper image with a different aesthetic texture.

In cinema/video projection, black is the absence of light on a white surface. Here I can have actual painted black. Similarly I can have real light in place of painted light. A phenomenal tonal range is possible. Video light passing through thin layers of paint on a white surface bounces back to appear like light from the other side of the canvas like a stained glass window. I can paint imagery which is not in the video projection. Using paint I can absorb light in an area and heighten it in another, this way you can give shape and emotion to an object or a surface: It is as if you are sculpting with light.

I do not see this form as a hybrid or a composite, but a single fecund image-structure. (Today more of us are tuned to sharp cuts and rapid image changes in music videos etc. brought about by nonlinear editing, free from the drudgery of splicing tape ). Combing fast paced video with a still painted image requires another form of attention from the viewer. I believe contemplating on the still image can be very rewarding.

This crafted medium allows me to extend my vocabulary and explore new possibilities in meaning-making. Within me, I visit areas of experience which I have not visited before, an artist can only hope it’s the same for the viewer.
---
(and this concludes our interview)

Thanks to all of you dear readers as well--many of you check in from time to time just to say they are still enjoying it and those messages are very much appreciated. Okay--time to get this show on the road. I will be back home in the very wee hours of 2008 and there's no time for rest. Ciao!

final day

Hey Beautiful People! It's my last day to get some work done in the studio. I am up bright and early--all of the artists and writers at the colony are having an open house at 4pm today, so Christian and I decided to work until noon or so, and then start getting set up for our exhibition/performance. In other words, I'll make this brief, but wanted to share a little side project I did last night. As you saw in previous blog entries, we have two huge picture windows in our room, and I've been loving and definitely influenced by my new vista in more ways than one. Some thoughtful person made one of these hawk silhouettes to keep the live ones from flying into the window. It has probably seen better days, due to time, humidity, and a little window cleaner every so often. Last night I thought about how I could use some of the black vinyl I brought with me to add some new birds that would be a little more reflective of some of my favorite Costa Rican feathered friends.

First is my cartoony rendering of the beautifulBlue Crowned Motmot, which I spied on the property a few days ago:


And then I couldn't resist the Imperial Bird, which has been a frequent flier to the party party in our tummies:

So now it's time for me to start my last few hours here at this very productive residency. I am really happy with the pieces and progress that I have made while I'm here. It definitely continued the work I began in Fiskars and may open some new doors for me in my career. It also solidified the decision to get that flaming scissors tattoo on my back. (You think I'm kidding, don't you?) I'll return later with pictures from the Open House and more. For now, I'm going to plunge into my last few days in this wonderful country and place. Ciao!

Bunny with an Artblog: the FOOD episode!

Hey Beautiful People! Welcome to another scintillating episode of my "art" blog which sometimes strays over into the "art of food" category. Well...I've never heard a single complaint about this from my dear readers, so on I go, into the wild and bloated yonder! The first image I present to you is Christmas morning's breakfast--a papaya that was longer than my face!! We bought it at the farmer's market last weekend in Ciudad Colon, which we hit before getting on the road to Zarcero. Ever since we came upon Francisco's padre's tamale fire that I blogged about last week, I had it in my mind to make tamales while here in Costa Rica. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a huge culinary adventure which spanned many days and hours.

So....do you want the super-condensed version of this story, the mediocre version, or the supergrande version? Que Bueno. Adelante.

Since I didn't take any pictures at the farmer's market, I'll start our story here with the Kinder Egg we bought in town. I have always had a fondness for this German treat. I heard once that the European ones had much better prizes than the ones we get in Los Estados Unidos so I figured we'd see how Costa Rica fared in the whole Kinder Egg scheme of things. Not to mention the fact that Christian had never experienced the true bliss of a Kinderegg, and what better day to do it than Christmas Day????

So if you're also unintiated to the wild wild world of Kinder Eggs, here's how it works: The egg comes in a foil-wrapped package. You "crack" the chocolate egg and inside is this pill-shaped plastic capsule. Open the capsule (which is no small feat!) and you find your prize.

You know....I saw a big banner in the store telling everyone that they were selling Kinder Eggs with Spongebob Squarepants prizes inside, but somehow I forgot that between the Supermercado and the colony. This is Sandy the dorky squirrel, who is probably my least favorite character on the show, but I kinda like this figure anyhow. I am a BIG fan of the show--I even own a Spongebob Squarepants water sprinkler, an icepack you keep in the freezer, and a handmade finger puppet I bought in San Francisco. I also have a pinata that hung in my house in its complete form for several years until I decided to use it last summer, and ended up hanging the maimed remains back up in the living room ever since. It has that dismembered aesthetic that's so well expressed through the medium of animation, it has continued to please me. I have a feeling that it's about to be a part of my basement art collection, which still gets a lot of personal enjoyment every time I do laundry.

But I digress. I promised you a story about tamales, didn't I? Well, here we go. I looked on the web for an authentic Costa Rican tamale recipe and learned some new things....most excitingly.....that it's a tradition to make tamales on Christmas in Costa Rica. Hello! I fortunately found this out before going to the farmer's market because they were selling fresh banana leaves there. In the Pacific Northwest, we have such an influx of Mexican culture that I was only used to the corn husked tamales, so this was good to know so I could be authentic with my wrapping.

The other unusual aspect to traditional Costa Rican tamales is this ingredient: achiote. I looked it up on Google and found that it was basically used for color, which I verified by tasting a little bit of it before adding it to my masa. The big thing about buying it at the market was the different reaction I got from the people at the market--seems like most gringos aren't looking for this particular food item.

The tamale pictures I'm showing you here were made by the Colony proprietor, Francisco. I was asking him about the achiote and how much to use--and he insisted on bringing us some of the tamales he had at his house--maybe they were made by his father?? It was Christmas eve and his mother was coming to cook the next day and he was going to have too many tamales around. Too many tamales. Is there such a problem? I have never experienced this myself, but was happy to help Francisco out with his dilemma. It served as a really great tool for me because I could learn firsthand how they were composed and constructed.

We ate Francisco's tamales for lunch on Christmas Day, and then I started in on my big project of making this muy labor intensive food item. When I have made them in Los Estados Unidos, I have bought the ingredients and corn husks, even the premade masa ahead of time so all that needed to be done was prepare the chosen ingredients. This time I was interested in being authentic, which involved separately making fillings of potatoes, meat, and rice. Here's my pollo filling bubbling in the pot. I pretty much stuck to the recipe except that I added cooked corn and green olives and a few canned jalapenos into the chicken mix. I wanted a little more diversity in taste and felt this was close enough to home that it would still be Tico.

It took me at least four hours of Christmas afternoon to prepare the fillings. I didn't even get to the masa that day before we went to meet some of the other artists at Finca Bonanza for Christmas dinner. Part of the delay was that we needed to call our respective families that day. I have been a longtime user of the web-based version of Skype, but bought some web-to-phone minutes on this trip. For $10US, you can get six hours of telephone conversation anywhere in the world--what a deal!!!! It was really great to be able to talk to our families that day.

As I mentioned before, I have been really glad to be outside the United States for this particular holiday, and the most obvious signifier of that this year was the fact that I actually listened to Christmas Carols on Christmas Day. Before you jump to any conclusions about that, I'll tell you exactly what that means: three hours of the Christmas version of one of my favorite radio shows on KCRW (Morning Becomes Eclectic,) and a similar show on WBEZ called Sound Opinions. It's not your mother's Christmas music, although for full disclosure I must admit that my mother was the one who told me I'd like the WBEZ show after hearing it herself. KCRW's show was expectedly diverse, as it was the holiday version of their typical eclectic fare that I try to listen to when I don't feel like I need that extra bit of media fixation in my day. The WBEZ showwas playing some of the most hilarious and bizarre Christmas music I've ever heard--even more obscure than John Waters' Christmas Album, which I adore.

So we went back to Finca Bonanza that night, as I mentioned before, and decided to split their special Christmas dinner with a couple of side dishes. The special was pork stuffed with homemade chili bread with mushrooms and onions and savory spices. Yummy!! There was also a special secret recipe potato salad on the side--the owners of Finca Bonanza are of Dutch descent and they brought this tasty recipe from the homeland. The picture here is of the pejivalle soup that was the appetizer. Pejivalle is a fruit of a species of palm tree, and you die hard foodies can read more about it by clicking here.

We dined that night in the company of our new friends from the residency. Patricia was there, who I blogged about earlier, as well as Lorraine, who has an artblog of her own! (She takes fantastic pictures, many of them of Costa Rica so check it out, dear readers!) This is Fariba and Ishle sharing some sort of traditional Christmas dessert. Fruitcake, perhaps???

Here's the banana (or maybe plantain?) leaves I bought at the farmer's market. Thinking it was non-humid Oregon, I left them on the counter the first day or so after I bought them, and then noticed they were starting to get a little white mold. I had to wash each leaf off individually and then keep them in the fridge after that. Still, it was lovely getting to work with something so close to the plant I see out my window. Banana leaves are thick enough so you can fully immerse and boil your tamales, as opposed to the corn husked ones which are usually steamed. The thing I love about using corn husks is that you can tear off a long strand to tie the tamale together, which looks so nice. I still haven't gotten the knack for tying the twine tightly enough on these, although they held their own just fine in the cooking process.

So....as I mentioned before, four hours of preparation wasn't quite enough to get my tamale project done on Christmas day. Today I finally got to making the masa and wrapping the little babies, which was another three hours. Phew! Okay...okay....I will admit that it was probably a little bit 'cuz of the skype activity on Christmas, as well as the ongoing online Scrabble game Christian and I have been obsessed with on this trip. But still.....it's been a project. Not that it wasn't fun.....ummmmm--I'm not complaining! Really!!!

I love the assembly part--probably due to my fondness for repetitive tasks that have a one-of-a-kind aspect. Here's a stack of my pre-boiled babies waiting for action.

You boil them for at least an hour to make sure the masa is cooked.

Yummmy--they were sooooooo good! I made 25 tamales in all, enough to feed us for the next few days we'll be here at the colony. I don't think I'll have any problem eating the same meal for a few days straight! One of the things I love about traveling is learning about new food traditions, so this was really a fun and adventurous learning experience. We are already talking about making tamales when we get home. It's so like me to pick some humongous task that I regret in the middle and then soon after finishing, want to do it all over again. Plus, I gotta use that ice chest in my basement for more than my homeade chicken broth!!!

One last shot from the balcony at Finca Bonanza. This is where I spent the last three hours preparing and writing most of this blog entry whilst watching one of my last Costa Rican sunsets and drinking one of my last Imperial cervezas. Sigh. Until next time, dear reader!

Natural Selection is a GO!

This just in: Portland Art Center has raised $60,000 in all of its recent efforts! Whoopeeeee!
Click here to read the Oregonian's report.

Road Trip!

Hey Beautiful People! We had a great holiday--definitely one of the best Christmases I've had in my lifetime. It kinda started last weekend when we decided to rent a car and get out of the studio for a few days to creatively refresh ourselves. Saturday was "my day" when we went to Zarcero to see the famous topiary there. When I finally get my garden together, I plan to include some topiary of my own, and the images I'd seen of the crazy plants in the courtyard of a church in this tiny town struck me as the most innovative forms in the medium.

I took this shot as we passed through the town of Naranjo. Businesses throughout the town had their names made in lights--you can see the actual Soopercoopro store on the right. One thing that was so refreshing about being here for Christmas is that the commercialization of the holiday wasn't so omnipresent as it is in the states, so I felt like I could really appreciate it this year. Our flashing Christmas light ball was our Christmas tree in a sense, as you saw in the video I posted yesterday.

I have always been a fan of the nativity set as a holiday decoration, and you may know that I have been making and selling my own abstract sets for the past decade. We stopped for lunch at a roadside stand where they were in the middle of putting their holiday decorations around. (THREE days before Christmas! That would NEVER happen in America!) These figures were some of the nicest I have seen here, and I found it very curious and amusing to see them strewn around, waiting for their formal arrangement. You saw the image in yesterday's post of Jesus still in the box--I never realized there was a tradition to bring out Jesus on Christmas day here--all of the other figures wait for his birth, so to speak. Here are some of the other figures in the set:
For some reason, Joseph seems to have taken a beating over the years. Maybe there's more to his relationship with Mary than we know.....











Zarcero is a beautiful little town and I'd love to come back and stay here some day. Apparently this is also the center of the organic farming movement in Costa Rica--I bet their farmer's market is incredible! Here are some images from the Parque Francisco Alvarado:







The church was quite beautiful, and I loved this statuary of the angel with the big fish.


Inside the church were some more nativity scenes, waiting for Jesus. I thought this angel looked kinda like Laura Dern.

Sunday, which was "Christian's Day" to pick our activity with the rental car, he chose to hike in the rainforests at Monteverde. It was raining a little harder than usual so we didn't see that much wildlife, and I was sad to miss my opportunity to see a monkey in its native habitat, but we did manage to spy a sloth and a giant snake crossing the road on the way home. We returned with new inspiration for work. We also had a few visits from Marne Lucas, an artist I know from Portland, who happened to be in the same tiny town in Costa Rica for the holidays. Go figure. She has been very interested in doing a residency here at the colony, so I was happy to show her around and introduce her to Francisco.

Christmas morning we woke up, and spent the first 6 hours of the day in the studio. That's my idea of a great Christmas morning! Will document the latest work for you later on--it's taken some interesting turns in the past few days that I'm excited to show you. My wall space is starting to fill up fast! It has been so inspiring to be here--I have also gotten a lot of ideas for sculptural projects connected to the collages. More on that later. I gotta get back to it. Hasta Luego!

Masa Christmas Ball!

Feliz Navidad!