Something Old, Something New

Heather:
Well, after hanging four years of shows in Macon, I am back to it here in Iowa. This week I am helping the Octagon's esteemed Gallery Curator, Heather Johnson hang the next show and I feel right at home. Heather J's style is different from mine (she likes to hang the paintings symmetrically like butterfly wings; each wall section is anchored by one large painting and then paintings of similar size are placed on either side until the section is full) which I think works better for this gallery space than my installation philosophy. The way I like to hang a show is to detract attention from the whole wall, pair paintings that compliment each other and make niches of theme or color that pull a viewer in close. Octagon's gallery is a lot larger than Macon Arts and is a less attractive room with gray carpets and uneven sheet rock walls. So the show has to make more of a statement from farther away.

Something new for me is I have been signed up to teach two workshops in the Octagon studios! One is a teapot workshop, hopefully occurring in January. It will be four weeks long, one two hour session per week. I'm hoping that on the fourth week I will have fired everyone's teapots and we can have a round table critique! (this may be a little ambitious). The second is harder - a children's earthday class with the goal of making a hand made version of a chia pet. I'm going to research chia pets tonight. I have never heard of making your own chia pet but I can sort of work out how to in my imagination. I'll have to try it out myself before subjecting a bunch of kids to possible disapointment.

Our Open House at CASA is in November and I've got some works in the pipeline for that. It takes me a long time to get from actually forming a piece to having it glaze fired. I started working with earthenware which you don't have to fire twice which will save time. But I'm still working with good ole porcelain too - something old and something new!

Politics and Davi

This will be a bifurcated post. The first part will be about politics, and the second part will be about Heather helping me with a project for a class.



I am loving reading the news these days. I am disturbed by it too. I am loving seeing the reign of incompetence and idiocy that has been Republican rule come to an end, and I am loving watching the conservative movement implode. Certainly there are some good-guy smart conservatives out there (Andrew Sullivan is my first stop for political news every day), and I think that we NEED conservatives. But not populist social conservative ninnies. The bad guys are losing. It's sad to see John McCain's wagon hitched to a sinking ship, but he knew the risks.

If you are a Burkean conservative (a moderate-liberal pragmatist), or a thoughtful libertarian (meaning not an ideologue or a resentful old white man), then you have a reasonable point of view. Chances are, if you are one of those two types of conservatives, you want the GOP to blow itself up as much as I do. It's been a strangely satisfying sight.

Like watching any grotesque thing in its death spasms, this has not been pretty. The deregulated credit system is going haywire, sending the world into a recession. The planet is warming up. Racists and idiots are marching around accusing the next duly elected president of the United States of being a terrorist. Sarah Palin is...well...she keeps talking. But it looks like we might have legal abortions, social security, diplomacy, progressive income taxes, and freedom of speech for a while longer. Hell, we might get gay marriage and electric cars too. (I'm being hyperbolic. I'm not THAT optimistic...)

Anyway, its about time Americans got beyond prejudice and stupidity enough to quit electing Republicans. Too bad it took a major economic crisis, several hundred thousand deaths, and the erosion of civil liberties to get them there.

Anyway, I'm super happy that Obama looks like he's gonna win.



In more immediate news, Heather is helping me with a pain-in-the-ass project that involves manipulating a bunch of data on spreadsheets. I am smart enough to think of stuff to look for, but not good enough with the tools or experience enough with data manipulation to do very much of this for myself. The result of this is that she is being my little assistant. (Heather here: more like little savior. Give credit where credit is due. I saved your butt with my biology-major knowledge of Excel!)

I'm buying her lots of meals this week. (Heather: Yum Yum!)

Watching the debates.

Heather: We've been following the politics and the credit crisis news pretty closely. It is such a turbulent time!

This is my advice for the most painless way to get the news these days: do not watch political news on tv. Only watch the debates themselves. It is at times like these that I appreciate being too poor to have cable. Iowa public radio gets news from the BBC which I listen to often. I can't believe how huge this credit crisis is. it is effecting Japanese markets, British markets, markets all over the world; even sending the government of Iceland into a tailspin. The country of Iceland may actually go bankrupt because of the housing bubble! How crazy is that?

I've been listening to some great interviews on the radio - "Fresh Air" had a great interview with an Alaskan journalist on today. "Talk of the Nation" seems to have pertinent shows with real content every day - I remember them doing a silly show on ice cream a few years ago; the world is their oyster now that we have so much to talk about. "This American Life" has done some really great in depth shows on the credit crisis.

I am flabbergasted to learn that businesses routinely rely so heavily on credit. it has to be more expensive to borrow money for stock or operating costs every month than keeping a reserve. I couldn't sleep at night if my company ran that way.

Well, I'm off to search the web for today's presidential debate. Wish me luck!
-Heather