This week, some of the collages from a new series incorporating collage and watercolor pencil made their way into the most recent Art in the Library Exhibition.

You can see more of them, here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/15659520@N00/albums/72157658659003533/with/22879807315/

Much of my attention this fall has been on Library and Aesthetics of Research related things, which have really started to take off.  It's a project that has spread from merely a wall exhibit on the first floor to vending machines. the zine exchange, and all sorts of other adventures (the Easter Egg Art Hunt, ARTCACHE, the Library Sketchbook Project, How-To Workshops, The Little Indie Press Festival, and other events. )  Its finally brought a little bit of the creativity and fun I have in my outside-of-work life into my work-life and it's really nice . There's no longer such a weird disconnect between the two of them. Art work vs. grunt work.  I still do all the boring library tasks I've always done like invoices and reserve processing, but we get just a little bit of shenanigans thrown in.  This weekend's Little Indie Press event was really amazing, to see so much happening in all corners of the print word--book arts, illustrators, comics, zines. We've got a couple more endeavors planned out for this semester and a whole slew of them lined up for next semester, so stay tuned....

It's been a weekend bound to the library, but nonetheless a productive one, albeit on work-related tasks and Aesthetics plotting (also our horror movie trivia night questions for next Friday as well as finalizations on the Indie Press Festival coming up over the weekend. )

But the most fortuitous thing is that I managed this week, after a couple months of avoiding it entirely, to finish up the strange machine series, which means I am closer than ever to finishing the apocalypse book.  I kept my word about forcing myself back into the words once November rolled around, and I kept at it, even if it meant getting something down even when I was half asleep.  There is still a bit of polishing and ordering to do, but otherwise, the zine project release is nigh and heading toward layout, as is the completion of the longer book as soon as I finish up the zombie girl poems (these are infinitely easier to write  since they are not so much historical and researched based as strange machine.)  If I keep going I may finish it before the holidays, which would make up for my dragging my feet though most of the summer and early autumn.  Hell dragging my feet for the last couple of years.  Lately, the books seem to come like that, slowly, then all at once.

Then of course there are the other things I am dragging my feet on completing--the blonde joke series, the Dali inspired pieces, the hotel project I have all but abandoned since last winter.  But I am comforted by the fact that there are to many projects, too many directions, rather than a slow trickle of them.  At least I can move back and forth when I get stuck, the importance is to keep moving.

I realized a week ago that it had been 15 years since I interviewed for the library job to the day.  In a couple, it will be the anniversary of accepting the job (absolutely terrified that I couldn't pull it off--get an apartment, move all my stuff, afford to even move to after making so little at the previous job.)  I was off Friday and couldn't go to the 15 year Service Luncheon, but it happened nonetheless, and while apparently I have, in fact,  been here that long, it certainly doesn't feel like a second more than 5.  (I think I fell into a hole some of those years..)  I just now realized that today is the also the  10 year anniversary of my first book being accepted. The thing I thought would never happen and then somehow did.    The other books have been easier to get published, and most of them easier to write and pull together, so at least there can be something said for time and experience, even if neither of those things seem at all logical.