Snowbound
December 30, 2009
It’s 1:15AM, I’m wide awake and, uncharacteristically, writing this on paper. It feels odd, blogging with a pen, but then it’s been an odd day. I’m stranded in a downtown hotel for the night, thanks to an unexpected snowstorm.
Chez Joly (French)
December 26, 2009
- Restaurant website
- Location: Pearl District
- Price to feed two (well) for dinner: About $40 (booze extra)
“Don’t you usually have a PRAAAAY FIX-AAAAAY?” I asked the waiter.
He looked puzzled for a minute, then asked, “Do you mean “prix fixe?” he asked, “Yes we do,” and he showed me the prix fixe menu ($20 per person for salad or soup, entree and dessert) while I blushed a bit.
OK, in most places in the US (outside New York and DC), if you ask for the “prix fixe menu,” you’ll just confuse them. “Prefix to what? Do you mean an appetizer?” they’ll ask, with a little eye roll. If you mispronounce it with long aaaaaaas, they just might get it.
Except in Chez Joly, which is the closest thing to a real French bistro I’ve seen in the great Northwest. [Read more]
Eleni’s Philoxenia (Greek)
December 24, 2009
- Restaurant website
- Location: Pearl District
- Price to dinnerize two people: About $50, booze extra
I parked the car about a block away from Eleni’s (I was meeting Sara there for dinner), got out and tripped over about a dozen tipsy Santas coming from a rally in the park. I looked around and saw HUNDREDS of Santas, dressed in everything from fur-trimmed red Lurex catsuits to the pillow-bellied real deal.
What in the world? As I pondered, a lady Santa ran full-tilt into me, grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me right on the mouth. “MISTLETOE!!!!” she hollered, and handed me a tiny candy cane before running to her next victim.
Lipsticky
December 23, 2009
What could be more fun than spending Sunday night blowdrying your lips?
I should probably explain that: I don’t, as a rule, wear a lot of makeup. I used to, but computer screens have a deleterious effect on mascara (I call it raccoon syndrome), 15 minutes toiling over a hot gloryhole should be enough to convince anyone that acrylic nail tips are a waste of money (they bend backwards in a spiral, like the runners on Santa’s sleigh), and most makeup clashes with my face’s normal attire: Clay, wax and plaster/silica.
Coat of many colors
December 21, 2009
She didn’t tell me her name and I didn’t give her mine. She’d walked up to the bench I was sitting on at Powells Bookstore, killing time until I met a friend for dinner, and she waited until I looked up.
“Are those your books? Is it OK if I move them?” She was about 50, a well-dressed blonde with a stack of cookbooks. I assured her that the books weren’t mine, and she pushed them aside to sit. She opened the first cookbook and I went back to my magazine.
The sculpture that wouldn’t die. Part III. Period.
December 20, 2009
OK, so where are we? Oh yeah. At the end of the first firing of Triangle, this was the tally:
- One destroyed clay sculpture (getting it out of the mold kills it)
- No silicone master as a backup
- One spent plaster/silica mold
- About 8 pounds of unfused frit mixed with talc and hence garbage
- One giant glass donut that should have been a sculpture
Drat. This stuff should really come with an undo button. Fortunately, *I* come with a REdo button, so after a buncha work this is what I pulled out of the kiln:
Bloggery pettifoggery
December 18, 2009
So I’m watching Julie and Julia (great movie about someone who blogged her way through the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by the way, and this is from someone who’s worshiped Julia Child since her teen years and ACTUALLY RAN INTO HER–literally–in Boston. She said, “Hello, how are you?” and didn’t wait for a response.), and the lead character, (Amy Adams, who has been in three beloved movies and is rapidly becoming a favorite actress, which is weird because I normally don’t care for slightly whiny good-girl blonde types), is discussing the relationship between a blogger and her audience…
Hold it! The length of the parenthetical asides in that sentence greatly exceeds the actual content, so let’s make that readable:
So I’m watching Julie and Julia, and the lead character is discussing the relationship between a blogger and her audience…
The sculpture that wouldn’t die, part II (of 3)
December 17, 2009
In Part I, I wandered through a lot of creative angst and a clay sculpture I called “Triangle.” Now, in part II, I pretty much wreck the whole thing in seven deadly mistakes.
The sculpture that wouldn’t die, part I (of 3)
December 15, 2009
Note to readers: I’m going to try to break this up into manageable, readable lengths that stand on their own. I’m not trying to do cliffhangers, I’m just trying to reduce dismay at the lengths of my huge posts…so this is a three-parter.
Sometimes, no matter how often you destroy it, a piece refuses to go quietly. Instead, it hangs around and bugs you until, in desperation, you finish it just for the sake of peace and quiet.
Triangle was one of those. Despite seven disastrous mistakes, it’s finally out of the kiln. Along the way, it taught me quite a bit about what makes my work tick.
Emotives: SHOUT
SHOUTing, part II
December 13, 2009
SHOUT is a big (for me) piece, and probably the most difficult glass casting I’ve done to date. SHOUTing, part I was about the problems I ran into. This post is about how I fixed them.
SHOUT caricatures domestic violence, and as such needed to be large, looming and menacing. I wanted the pieces to interact with each other, at angles that would change the viewer’s perceptions based on how the piece was lit and positioned.
Unfortunately, my little Skutt bathtub was made for glass fusing, not casting, which meant that (a) it was too shallow and (b) probably couldn’t heat evenly enough to support my original design (which connected the figures through a thick glass base with lots of stressful right angles). I could have done it with a work 8 inches tall…but SHOUT needed to shout. (The final piece is a bit more than 24 inches tall)
So I shelved the project, and went on to other things while I puzzled it out.