It's still way too cold out there to be officially spring, so I am hunkering down in the apartment in close proximity to the space heater and pouting and resting up for a busy upcoming week in the Library that includes a junk art / thrift art workshop Monday and an apocalypse-film trivia night Friday, plus all the tasks I put off this week since I was only working half days.
For the workshop, I've been sorting through my supply hoardings and evaluating what I may be willing to sacrifice, but it's making me crazy. (I did however find a stash of silver pendants from my etsy-selling days, that I will be making available in the online shop--rabbits, foxes, carouself horses, oh my!) Since I've been spending a lot of time in the studio in the evening this week, I've been turning over again the idea in my head of more open studios (an opportunity to unload the original pieces that don't really sell online, plus make some extra money to help with the rent (which will probably be going up again at the end of the summer.) The difficulty is arranging my library schedule to accommodate and actually having a decent amount of inventory in terms of books, prints, and paper goods, which is always up in the air. I feel like I'm missing out on the benefit of actually having the space there and available to the public, and not just as a workspace (which also usually means it is super chaotic and messy with all the bookmaking. ) Just taming the paper trimmings alone is a feat, let alone the dozens of books mid assembly and in parts. I used to do it more about a decade ago, but the dgp schedule wasn't quite as full of releases in those days, and things a bit more orderly and roomy in there. Summers are always pretty slow in terms of traffic, but it might be a good time to throw the doors open again since I'll be getting sprung from the library a bit earlier Friday evenings (this also depends on how exhausted I am on Friday evenings, which plays a huge role in my willingness to be "on" for such things. )
This week, in addition to plotting and assembling what seems like a thousand orders and author copies, I did manage to get HONEY MACHINE printed and ready for assembly. These are the Plath centos and accompanying collages, and while I trimmed the series down to a more manageable and coherent number which flow better, they seem to work really well together (you can see some samplings here, here, here and here.) Work continues daily on the POETS ZODIAC (I'm posting them regularly on twitter and instagram) and somewhat daily on THE HUNGER PALACE, which I'm also sampling a bit on twitter as I go. I'm still hoping to round it out by the end of the month, but I realize that is a mere 6 days away so I really need to dig in this week. (and then it's April and onto NAPOWRIMO).
And hopefully spring, even if it feels like I'm beginning to doubt it.
