"being the janitor of the materials"

skillet poached huevos rancheros

welcome to the bel shore

this week in tinas studio

i have my first big dye project due on monday so ive been busy in the dye lab this week. the dye process kind of reminds me of metal finishing in some ways how the dyes never seem to work exactly the same way from day to day. there are too many variables.

heres me, hard at work, more than 400 yards of thread later, removing stitches to see if they succeeded in resisting the dye.

one more thing: i have learned to crochet.

this week in joes studio

potato spindle

spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibers are twisted together to form yarn. For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools before they devised the spinning wheel in the middle ages and later developed industrial spinning technologies. in class yesterday we made our simple tool with a wood dowel and a potato. we  each left with a grocery bag of wool to spin to yarn which we will dye on wednesday followed by a demo on how to crochet. these are the kind of things that fiber people do. yesterday i found myself online, ordering silk. i dont know where all this learning is going to take me artistically, but it does make sitting in front of the television suddenly productive.

finally finished fotos

i've been having so much fun fiddling around with the photos joe and i took at michael and anjas wedding exactly one month ago and finally burned the cd of images today. whew. it was more work than i had anticipated because of the sheer number of photos we took, but rewarding as i was looking over the photos today in a slideshow. what a fun wedding and a great group of folks!

the road and a nylon

shrimp and corn chowder with fennel

art studios

it feels great to be settled in enough to finally get to work. joe had his first studio meeting with a faculty member today. i'm back to work playing with nylons in addition to learning new skills like dyeing fabric and making nets. joe has an amazing work space with high ceilings, perfect white walls and a skylight. i'm working in a shared space that the fibers graduate students use until my individual space opens up in late october. the fibers studios are some of the only ones that are air-conditioned. here's a peek at our studios.

LACMA

hmm

Today the weather reminds me of home: grey sky and sweater temperatures.

We will finally be connected again to the world at large on Thursday when the internet should be up and running at our apartment. Trying to think about all that has been happening the past few weeks is so overwhelming that I’m not even going to try to work backwards to recap. Its been insane.

I found some quiet time to make lasagna with the sunniest vegetables I could find this past weekend. Other than that, its been homework, unpacking and organization at home. Joe and I can now navigate to Home Depot without the GPS.

Joe has his first class today and the Claremont open studios are this weekend. We will head towards LA for the first time Thursday to see a John Baldessari show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.