books, wax, gore, anatomy, and good lunch

it’s been a pretty great week… and it all started with a good lunch. i LOVE picking things from my garden and going to the farmer’s market for whatever i’m missing.  saturday was a yummy day filled with fresh blueberries, strawberries, baked-today sourdough bread topped with a tiny bit of cheese, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, basil, cucumber… i wish oregon allowed year-round gardening as it’d be blissful to me.

having never made a hand-stitched book (surprising as i’ve created dozens of books), i set out to make one for my sweet friend debbie for a swap we’re doing of epic proportions.  (don’t peek, sweet friend, else your surprise will be spoiled!)  i wish it were really in these hues, but this photo was purposefully antiquated.

i admit that the binding leaves much to be desired but i put my heart into it and it wasn’t a total failure for a first try, i’m hoping.

my third book binding experience of the week didn’t go as well.  i was creating a book to go into a tin that was going to be attached to one of my pieces for the black and white zine but it ended in tragedy.  short version: i cut the crap out of my finger on the edge of the old tin (gore to follow, close your eyes if you don’t like the sight of blood).

the tragedy was not my finger but the outcome of the book.  initially i thought it was a wee scratch and ignored it, but after fiddling with the pages i realize i ruined the book.  seriously, who wants a book with alicia-DNA all over the pages?  i can think of only one point two people.

now that it’s dried it looks cool, but still — i’ll just have to keep the darn thing. maybe i’ll fill it with gory old medical photos, secrets or lies.

while on the topic of “bad things” here is a crappy-sweet story.  starts crappy.  gets eerie.  ends sweet.  k.  husby and i get into one of our rare and petty arguments.  all married people argue now and then.  he’s a jerk, i’m a jerk, blah, blah, blah, he says something about how i should have faith in us or our relationship or something to that effect and i pissily spout off that all i have faith in is the fact that it would be a damn miracle if we make it another week without killing the other one.  (i was not serious — i don’t kill people.)  so, he goes to bed, i go into my studio which i had just cleaned and there is a fortune cookie fortune right smack dab in the middle of the floor.  i don’t have fortune cook fortunes.  and i had never, ever seen this before.  it said: for the truly faithful, no miracle is necessary. creeped me out.  in a good way, but yeah — where the hell did that come from?

so, the next day i made him a metal-covered matchbox assemblage with the fortune in it and a little scroll that says something secret. 😉  yeah, shush.  i’m sweet sometimes.  anyway, this is not great, but it was sweet and don’t you dare tell him i said so but it brought tears to his big gorgeous hazel-brown eyes when i gave it to him.  i’m only sharing because of the fortune showing up in my studio from who knows where!?  i’ll give you ten bucks if you can tell me.

i had so much fun playing with the wax that i ended up making this beeswax collage with anatomical image and yes, of course, a bug.  it’s a real bug.  and no, i didn’t kill him either (or her?).

i’ll probably add more to it later (eek, yeah — looking at the close-up now i say it’s not finished yet).  i searched all over our neighborhood for an icky webby place to photograph this, by the way. i succeeded and didn’t have to look far.

other than that, i was quite excited when i found not one, or two, but FIVE old pieces i had started several years ago before i moved in with the husby (well, before he was “the husby”).  i had this little gallery showing of some of my abstract paintings on wood and i sold most of them.  not sure where the others are, which is what i was looking for when i rediscovered these instead.  these are five i had never finished.  they don’t even have their keyhole hooks on the back.  i’ll have fun finishing these over the next few days, i bet.

or so i hope.  🙂