Spam, and I don't mean Spiced Ham

Quite some time ago, I took off the comment requirements on my blog as I was finding that the Captchas were getting more and more difficult for people (including me) to read and Blogger catches almost all spam.

I am quite puzzled as to why people, or bots, bother to put spam on blogs...they are caught by Google and never see the light of day...sometimes one gets through, but then I catch them and delete them as I do maintain this site with a pretty eagle eye....

Every once in a while a comment is made which puzzles me....it MIGHT be spam, and it might not.  I have deleted those as well...but recently I left one up because I just couldn't figure it out...although it doesn't seem to relate to the post....it was a person advising me to take chemotherapy for my stage IV cancer....uh..I've been doing that for a long time...15 years ago, I underwent 9 twenty-four hour doses of Taxol over a 9 month period.  This, and the radiation, mastectomy and prophylactic oophrectomy kept me with no evidence of disease until Feb. 2010 (or the end of 2009 when my pelvis finally fractured, although I had been saying I had pain up until then).  At that point, I took Abraxane by IV weekly for 3 weeks, the one week off for 9 months.  That failed after about three months and I tried hormonal therapies, which failed after 2 months.  For the last three months, I've been taking a chemotherapy called Xeloda, which is administered in a pill form.  So...chemo is an old acquaintance of mine....

What would you do, scrap the comment, or leave it up?

and now....I'm craving spam.  Too bad I don't have any...fried spam for breakfast is a "food" from my childhood that I often think of...but never purchase as the sodium levels, fat levels, and most everything else about it just isn't good for you..but the taste buds remember fondly.  I bet dollars to donuts that I wouldn't like it if I gave in.

Playing around with Gelatin Plate Printing

From left, Ruth Treon, Gwen Brown and Becky Goodwin

Today the Batty Binder's had an all-day quilt-in at the Elizabeth Township Community Center, a very cool place in the center of the first rural historic district.  Since I had missed leading the art quilting exploration at the end of June for our little art group, the Twisted Stitchers, I offered to do it here instead.

So...we dove into gelatin plate printing.  In this case, since I had never done it, but owned the stuff (that is, a Gelli plate, brayers (the rubber rolling thingy in Ruth's hand), paint, stampy stuff), and had read about it, I sent the group some links to some websites about doing it and loaded up a carload of supplies such as various stamping blocks., found objects, home made stamps etc.  Like me, Ruth Treon had also purchased a Gelli plate (a silicone plate which is always ready to be used) but had yet to use it.

I made my plate with 6 cups of water, and six packets of gelatin.  Someplace I  had read that it would be easier to take it out of the 9 x 12 pan if I put a layer of plastic wrap in the bottom.  Bad idea.  The plastic floated up and half of the gelatin was below the plastic and the other half above, so when I unmolded the gel it was a mess.  But since one of the reasons  I wanted to use real gelatin rather than just the silicone plate was that the surface would be imperfect and break down over the use of it, I just unmolded the mess and worked with that.  You can see it as the blob of blue and purple nearest the edge of the table.

Ruth didn't have any problem with hers at all.  We brayered the paint over the plate, then used either paint swirls, stamping bits, or found objects.

 This was one of my pieces...I first used Dynaflo blue fabric plate on the printing block...it was fairly light and I thought a bit un-interesting.  So, I poured some of the fuschia onto the block...only to find that it was really old and had started to turn to jelly...so it didn't really spread.

So....I over stamped it with the bottom of a Hostess cupcake "wrapper" (the brown plastic part has an outline which has always reminded me of the sun) dipped in gold metallic paint.

This one is one that Debbie Black did and it turned out really interesting.  She used the small Gelli Plate that Ruth brought.  First, she took a foam brush and painted the plate in one direction, then in the other on a diagonal which gave it the cross hatch effect.  She then pressed a decorative cast iron stove plate from my trove of "found objects".  Since the plate didn't give up the plate print very well (I think because it had some pointy bits which didn't allow you to make good contact), she painted the stoveplate with brown paint and took it over to the padded printing area and did a positive print next to it.  I think it turned out pretty well.

This is one of Ruth Treon's pieces. She swirled red paint on the block, then over stamped it with a rose-like printing stamp. She lifted the print off the block. She then took a place mat which had perforations and brayered paint on it, then put it over the top of the printed fabric on the padded print surface and brayered the paint from the place mat onto the pre-gelatin plate printed fabric while it was wet.   I think it turned out pretty cool.

Gwen did some fun things with my plate and some blue, but I didn't get a picture which showed it off to it's best effect.

Technically, when you do this, it is called making a mono-print. A mono-print  is a painting on a surface which is then transferred to another....in this case fabric.  While sometimes you can get a second "pull" from the plate, usually you've already transferred all of the paint or ink to the surface you initially transferred it, thus, you only get one print per inking of the plate.

Here are some additional websites/blogs with info on gelatin plate printing.

Tracy Bunkers

Kathleen Garner

Leslie Tucker Jenison at the Sketchbook Project blog

Where to find unflavored gelatin? Well....it wasn't easy in my grocery store...when I didn't see the familiar package of Knox gelatin in the jello/pudding aisle, I asked the store help....they told me to look in the canning aisle (yes, this is Ohio, so we have a section of an aisle devoted to canning)....only that was Pectin, not gelatin....I finally found it on the very bottom of the shelf next to rennet (that's another story) and it was only the house brand, not Knox.

I had been looking for some Kosher or non-animal gelatin for a friend, and I tried Halal stores and an Indian market, and a couple of health food stores, but never found any.  Maybe she will have to use just the Gelli Plate!

Diane Rusin Doran's "Return of the Grackle"

I mentioned earlier that this year has been one full of fiber...and indeed it has been.  One of the events I attended (but did not enter) was the National Quilter's Association (NQA) Show in Columbus in June.  As usual, the show was very well done with quilts to please the traditionalist as well as the art quilter.

Much smaller than IQF in Cincinnati, none the less I enjoy going every year.

One of the pieces which struck me was this one by Diane Rusin Doran, entitled "The Return of the Grackle. "   Diane took a Third place for digital imagery at the 2010 International Quilter's Show in Houston, as well as a third place innovative at the 2011 Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza.  She also took third here in Columbus.

Diane uses digital imagery which she manipulates on the computer. The richness and the contrast in textures in this piece, as well as the colors really make this piece speak to me. Her quilting is spectacular.  She uses contrasting motifs in order to bring out the texture, and her quilting is of the highest quality.

I also like the fact that she chose the common Grackle, an American native which people seem to get confused with the starling.  I have always loved the bright shiny colors which reflect off a grackle's feathers, and I also think that the sounds they make are interesting and can be melodic.  But the neatest thing is that they use their tails like a rudder.  As they fly, the tail will swivel so it is vertical, and then just before landing, it is spread and moved downward to slow their flight.  They are an amazing bit of natural engineering!

You can find more of Diane Rusin Doran's work here.

Check the facts, please

I have a love/hate relationship with the internet....and with my television.  With the internet, I love how there is a lot of information at my fingertips and how I can "meet" and develop friendships with people across the globe.  But I don't like how people accept what they read on the internet as gospel truth without thinking about what is really being said, or questioning it, or finding out who wrote it, why, and what were their personal prejudices.

In the past, if you heard some of the outlandish things you read on the internet the number of people who would be exposed to it would be minimal and it would be a simple matter of squashing it and proving that the person who made such statements had holes in their logic or were putting falsehoods about for their own purposes.

However, today inflamatory items, blatant untruths, and misinformation get spread about quickly and thickly across the internet....and they continue to circulate for years no matter how many people try to get the cat back in the bag.

Living in Ohio, the political advertisements are fast and furious...as one of the states viewed as a political plum, we literally get wallpapered with TV advertisements, robo calls and other forms of advertisement.  Frankly, it makes me sick.  Especially when advertisements leave things out, make insinuations or ascribe things as being a fault or a flaw when they are not putting out all the facts or are just making associations which logically cannot be made.

It also makes me disgusted that a state like Ohio can have so much more political weight than other states in which I have lived...but that's fodder for another post.

So what's a bear to do?  Well, for general emails and such, I recommend checking out snopes, the Urban Legend site...Some people  claim that the research and articles shown have a particular political bent and usually they point to the advertisements at the side bar...however, this isn't the case...the advertisements are based on what you search on...it's one of those wonders where computers track where you've been and put up ads based on that information.

For political advertisements and statements, I recommend two sites, although there may be more.  One is PolitiFact, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning site sponsored by the Tampa Bay Times.  I particularly get a chuckle out of their "Truth-o-Meter."  Another site is run by the Annenburg Center for Public Policy called FactCheck.org.    While I am sure that some people would say that they have one bent or another, it seems like they are pretty even handed about what they bring up and how they investigate it.

These are a couple of tools for you to look into things and draw your own conclusions...mostly giving you background and showing when the emperor has no clothes.  This is a heck of a lot better than living with me yelling at the television, radio and computer screen.  At least my husband would think so.....

Bunnies

It has been really hot and dry here.  Flora and fauna have been suffering.  If you looked at the patch at left in your lawn, you'd probably think it is just a bit of dry grass.  This picture was taken much earlier this year when the grass was green....

Look more closely, you see that there is fur mixed into the mess of grass.

If you lift the mess of grass and fur up, you'll see this...a clutch of baby cotton tail rabbits.  We have jillions here.  They're cute...but for a gardener, they can be problematic.  Fortunately, my garden is so full of stuff that they are welcome to nibble where they may.

Cute, aren't they.  Cotton tails have that little blaze on their forehead and shorter ears than some of their lagomorph relatives.

Today, I went out to check on the goldfish pond and feed the finned pigs.  Lemmie the magnificent went out with me and I saw him dive into the clump of Polyganum persecaria and then tackle something....and tackle is the operative word.  He was completely laid out and his chest was pinning down something...I went over and it was a baby bunny, just a little bigger than these guys...he was absolutely unhurt as Lem doesn't have his front claws, and he's very good usually about dropping things when I ask.  I scooped up the little guy to check him out, and he was frightened, but perfectly unharmed.

I couldn't help but pet him.  He calmed and sat in my hand with ears twitching a little....My daughter has been after me to get her a Lion-headed rabbit after meeting the grand-bunny vacationing with my neighbors...fortunately she was in the shower and missed seeing this little guy.  Lem was brought into the house and I put the bun back into the back of the garden, then laid out some shallow, flat saucers of water as there is so much drought here the critters are all suffering.  He hopped right away.  I wonder what tales he will tell his family when he gets home.

Brother Andrew's Quilts at M.E.E.C.

Brother Andrew Kosmowski is a Marrianist brother who quilts.  I wrote about him last year, here.

This year, he entered two quilts into the Marianist Environmental Education Center's show.  At left is his crazy quilt.

This piece, made from a printed panel with additions is "Cranes and Asian Foxes".  Bro. Andy made this two sided, but it was hung so you only saw the front.

Brother Andrew (aka Bro. Andy ) sent me a photo showing the back.

I regret that the overhead lights made my photos sooo yellow.  But this is just a quilty snippet for you to enjoy.

Working Through a Disability

If you have been following my blog, you will know that I am currently fighting my second go-around with Stage IV cancer...and since I've been on chemo since November 2010, I have experienced a lot of disabilities.  Some are only temporary, some are permanent.  Working with the disabilities sometimes makes me try to find out different ways of doing things so I can continue, and sometimes it means that I have to take a little break from blogging.

I'm also interested how others deal with debilitating health issues, particularly ones which affects their artwork.  In this case, Tom Watson III has an interesting story.  This triptych is made salvaged cardboard.  Tom is showing us his recovery from a stroke in this piece he calls "Stem:  Reassemblage, Series II."  The first piece you see his brain stem, the second it is shattered and spread apart, showing the impact of the stroke.  The third piece it is reassembled onto a watercolor painted background which has been mounted once again on the cardboard.  His artwork is there...but you see that missing lower left corner...things are together, but not exactly completely whole.

I thought this was a pretty interesting piece and I love it when people use art to express what has happened to them.


Of course, very little art has been being done around here....last night we were without power for 4 hours....which I am grateful for as our neighbors on the other side of the street were out of power from the first windstorm on Friday night until this afternoon.  An amusing thing was that I had made dinner for them on Sunday...only to have to wait until the storm passed and that brought our own power outage!  Food was all made and was yummy and the company was good.  With temperatures well over 90 and high humidity....being without power is not something you look forward to.