ART & life

Ah, yes, working for Blick does have its benefits. Speaking with local artists, art students and art supporters is great for filling my brain with ideas and my heart with passion. And I do get some pretty sweet deals on the materials I use.  Working daily in a comfortable atmosphere with creative people is all sorts of fun.

Yesterday at work I had a conversation with this laid-back, friendly woman who works as a sculptor.  She's been doing bronze castings for years, but has recently had some problems with her hands [an artist's injury] and is moving into doing coil constructions with clay.  We talked about wood firings and pit firings and how a potter friend of hers will help her construct a kiln in her yard; the clays she could use for it.  I described some of the wood firings I did in school with Professor Chaney, in his massive anagama.  Whites, greens and reds in the naturally settled ash glaze pieces unexpectedly.  Delicate and dainty porcelain can become powerful and robust in the wood kiln.

She told me about her interest in paper clay, in which any paper is recycled and mixed into clay slip to create a light-weight, porous, low-fire sculpting clay.  Very interesting.  She gave me some sculptors to look up and explained her love of figure sculpting.  She spoke fantastically, with passion, and as a true artist - one unconcerned with the affairs of the world, who wants simply to create all the time.  She did mention the thought of hiring a studio assistant to do the heavy work for her [extruding coils, mixing clay & whatnot] so she could focus on the sculpting.

I asked if she had a website with photos of her work, she replied no.  I checked her out with the clay and tools she needed, seeing her name briefly across the screen as I scanned her discount card.  I wrote down my website address for her to check out my work, which I told her about a little bit.  The next customer approached as she rolled out her clay & waved a friendly farewell.

I spent maybe a quarter of an hour total that afternoon attempting to look up her name in the database, in order to follow up & keep in contact, if she were to need a studio assistant [me?] or someone to help out with the firings.  Oh, I do hope she emails me!

see? i told you i need to travel more...

visited 22 states (44%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

eight.

1.  i love Echo Hill Country Store.

2. working on developing new bread recipes.

3. received the brochure about CreationFest.  read through & realized how very high-school-oriented it is.

4. acquired my Berks County library card today.

5. enjoyed browsing around in Young Ones today.

6. so glad my Corolla is old. :o)

7. painting is fun again.  loving the dioxazine.

8. i need to go on an adventure soon.

Bread

Ever since I've realized home-made bread over the past year, I've sort of become disgusted with grocery store breads.  Even the ones labeled, "whole wheat!  multigrain!" are far from wholesome.  Just take a look at the ingredients list.

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP


means sugars are added to hyper-speed the yeast's rising.  which means flavours, textures, and B vitamins are lost.

The "12 Grain" store breads consist of (again, please read along) Enriched Flour (means iron, thiamine, and other vitamins & minerals must be added back into the flour mix as they have stripped the whole wheat kernels of nutrition) and "2% of less of..." the remaining "11 grains".

I say screw that.  Right now I'm rising a loaf of whole barley & brown rice (which i had to simmer for an hour - no instant here!), oats, corn meal, whole grain rye flour, wheat bran and a wheat flour.  It's SO grainy; no "2% or less" at all!

...i sure hope it tastes good...

hey sugar

i am so sick of reading "sugar/high fructose corn syrup/maltose/maltodextrin/cane juice/fruit concentrate" on every single pre-packaged food available.

it's even in bread.  bread you buy at the store.

this is why i do my own baking.

i fuind it scummy how food companies will claim "made with fruit" on the front label, when on the back you read "fruit concentrate" which is fruit boiled down & sifted until there are no vitamins, no fiber, not any good thing left except the fructose.

it's sick.  it's ugly.  it's because consumers are addicted to sugars, which makes more money for the food companies.

what an ugly, distasteful truth.

What to Eat

Currently reading What to Eat by Marion Nestle.  She's a professor of nutrition at NYU.  Cool.

Apparently she's done all sorts of extensive research on what food companies want us to think and buy, who owns food companies, why grocery stores are all laid out the same way, and what goes into genetically modified, organic, conventional, and local foods.

If you've ever been to a grocery store in North America, it probably has either flowers or the bakery section by the entrance [to stimulate appetite by smell], long long aisles of prepackaged foods [to keep you interested while walking along slowly], bright shining bins of produce [waxed over & labelled with various countries & states of nonlocal origin] and all that placed between you and the important stuff [milk, bread, eggs, meats - all located furthest away from the entrances] so that you look at more things they have to offer than you need.

The author states that 70% of grocery store customers create lists before shopping.  10% of shoppers don't buy more than their list includes.

Next time:  Sugar - How invasive it is in our diets.

failure

failure:  emily drinks real milk, phil drinks real milk,
    french dairy farmers of 1944 drink real milk; 
    milk is boiled to scorching, milk is skimmed
    milk is bleached, milk is tainted. 

failure:  using coordinates & clues &
    global positioning units for geocaching for hours & finding nothing.

failure:  reading "best meteor shower of the decade", reading "11 pm to 4 am",
    not reading "best view around 4 am", seeing only 4 shooting stars.

failure:  setting goals, breaking goals daily,
    seeking help in the wrong place, self righteousness, self decay.

failure:  landlord remodeling, research demographics &
    rent rates, nowhere to go, close store, lay off employees.

failure:  job searching, another opportunity for failure?

aspiration:  new job, new town, more meteors;
    drinking real fresh milk straight from the milk bucket.