2017, Year of Activism

2017 is here and many of us have a new reality to face. And by "many of us," I specifically mean "those of us who are passionate about the environment." We have a new president who doesn't believe in climate change. I believe science is telling us we have reached a critical state, and we must do everything we can to protect our planet from further abuse. I believe clean and renewable energy is a good idea - for both the environment, the future of energy, and world power-struggles. And as a swimmer, I also believe we must stop polluting our oceans and waterways and destroying the animals that call them their home.

But I'm only one person, and in the last days of 2016, I found the artist in me powerless to resist a call to use my art to illustrate the very issues I feel most passionate about. I'm not sure how it happened, but images made their way into my consciousness, and at times, these images even kept me up all night.

As a result, the most direct and graphic work I've ever created (and perhaps, most disturbing to some), is the following three diptychs of etched linocuts that I made in December 2016:

"Coral Bleaching"

"Bycatch"

"Shark Finning"

If these images inspire people to "Google" the issues, or even better, be mindful of the oceans or the environment, then I feel I've done something with my talent (or lack thereof), and my presence on the earth is not just a waste of resources (which I used to believe).

2017 is also my second year in a new sport, open-water swimming. I started 2016 by conquering my fear of swimming alone in the ocean - in La Jolla Cove. (You may remember the blog about that.) It's been a long time since then, and I've succumbed to hypothermia in one race, overheated in another race, and finished my longest-ever open-water race - the Swim to the Moon 10K in Michigan.

This year, I must conquer the biggest hurdle I face as an open-water swimmer: acclimating to the cold. I wrote about my experiments in cold Lake Erie in September and October, 2016. But that's only the tip of the "iceberg" - the water temperature in those swims was in the mid-60s F, and the water I must eventually face may be well into the 50s.

I have a plan and I will talk about it as it unfolds. In the meantime, I've re-entered the 9-mile swim in the Ocean Games in Ocean City, MD. I vowed to finish it this year and do it as a fundraiser for brain trauma (the cause it supports). The race is in July, and I would be grateful for your support, which you can do through CrowdRise or through the widget in the right column.

Water, Grass, and Grit

I'm back to pool swimming much to my dismay after my last post, but there aren't any open water opportunities in Cleveland in the winter. I've been logging as many days of swimming as possible while still working on my art and doing contract work in programming. I've also been running and biking (indoors) because old habits refuse to die. Frankly, sometimes, my mind just needs to get out and run. Fortunately, during my runs, I've been finding random natural things in the Cuyahoga Valley to use in printmaking. It must look silly to people driving by as I'm running along with handfuls of dry grass and twigs trying not to break them.

My playlist lately centers around one album: Turin Brakes new release called Lost Property. In fact, even when I don't want to run, this album gets me out the door with my headphones. Because it sounds so great with headphones.

As for my printmaking... I've been trying my hand at collagraphs. It started with printing things I found while running in the valley and then I decided to try printing water, or, more precisely, the effects of water. These are all artistic experiments at the moment. I glued my found natural objects to cardboard or matboard plates and made water patterns on plastic or primed cardboard plates using sand and carborundum grit (and water, obviously). I've had a little success - but each one is more of a learning experience than a finished piece. Now there are an infinite number of things I want to try using grit to hold ink and there doesn't seem to be enough time in a day. But, for kicks, here are my favorites of the collagraph prints I've done so far - they're all black and white proofs, but soon will be experimenting with color (I hope):

No Regrets

Recently, I came to the realization that my 50th birthday was less than a few months away, and I've completely stagnated (mostly at work but somewhat in life also). Coinciding with this realization was a series of what seem to be cosmically-related events:

• My path crossed with several people I greatly admire who are working as artists. They've encouraged me to consider doing the same - that I "have what it takes."
• I've been welcomed into a group of self-employed creatives - artists, designers, writers, musicians - who share information, tips, help and support on their work and business at Creative Juice.
• I accidentally came across THIS blog post (note: the blog is pretty amazing to begin with, you might want to bookmark it for future reference).
• And I read THIS article (containing what might be my favorite line ever: "Pressure a creative to finish a piece in a timeframe with which he or she isn't comfortable, and you better be prepared for a nuclear explosion.")
• A former art school mate and friend I've not seen in almost 20 years got in touch with me through this blog. He has his own studio and gallery and is self-employed selling his ceramics.
• I ran into (literally, bumped into during a weekend run) a good friend from the Zoo who reminded me of what it was like to have a job I was really passionate about (at the Zoo) - when I felt I was making a difference in the world.

I had to descend into some serious soul-searching. My current job (web developer at the Cleveland Museum of Art) is awesome for many reasons: the institution is great, the work is steady and oftentimes engaging, and the pay and benefits are generous. But there are no growth opportunities in the near future and my creative side is longing for an outlet. Real development projects at work are few and far between and my job rarely finds me problem solving or utilizing my more-than-fifteen years of web development experience. Boredom has set in - the monotony of the daily grind. There are no perks: I rarely get away from my desk (the unfortunate life of a computer programmer), I spend about two hours a day in the car during rush hours, I only get two weeks of vacation per year, and my hours are, you guessed it: nine to five. I worrying about time for training. Or for art. Or, most importantly, for my family.

Frazzled one night at my drawing desk, I blurted my anxieties out to my husband Jim. My potential solution was simple: to quit Ironman (maybe quit racing altogether). It seemed like the logical solution in this consumer-driven work-yourself-to-the-bone-retire-and-die world. Keep your day job, right? I'll never change the world as a triathlete. In the end, no one cares where, when, and how I raced. And I was tired of only taking vacation time to go to races. No time to relax. Something had to give, and I had to make the "right" choice. Geez, I sound like my parents, don't I?

Jim wasn't thrilled to say the least. He reminded me that triathlon is something I love. (He's right.) And I had just bought a new bike. I spent the rest of the night crying and arguing with him.

We both knew that there was another choice: to quit my job. (Giving up my art wasn't a choice - it's always been something I have to do. Denying it wouldn't solve anything and it would keep me awake at night.)

Thus, we entered many weeks of struggling with what it meant for me to quit a full-time job and income and become a self-employed artist and web consultant. I confided in my closest friends, especially the ones who were working as artists. They listened to me rant: about not yet giving myself a chance as an artist, about my misgivings of not having a steady income and living off my husband, and about my fears of trying to sell myself. (Note: selling myself is the scariest thing in the world because I rarely find reason to even LIKE myself.) And yet, my friends and Jim continued to lend support and advice. One of the things everyone told me was that I could "be thankful [I] have a supportive partner."

Strangely, what this life-changing decision came down to was a bunch of cliches posted by friends on my Facebook wall or muttered during the struggle - things like "Making a big life change is scary. Regret is even scarier." That's what it kept coming back to. I never want to know that I was afraid to take a risk because it was just too risky. And so I took the leap. And I resigned from my (awesome) job. And now I'm nervous - no, terrified. And I keep asking myself that same question over and over - what if I fail?

But there's also one question I keep forgetting to ask: what if I succeed?

Here are my two latest lino prints:

Morning Inspiration 1

Morning Inspiration 2

Change Up

These days, soaking in ink is my usual state of being.

Just because I've not posted in a while - not posted in this blog space, that is - doesn't mean I don't have something to post. In fact, I'm crazy busy. But I'm desperately trying to be LESS crazy busy. I'm trying to get to a place where I can sleep at night without worrying about how I'm going to get everything done. And strangely, the things that I worry about getting done are things like my art and my training. I worry about work too. But my "work" worries have become things like: "How am I going to make it through the day on four hours of sleep?" and "Is there anything in my programming future that's more exciting than what I'm doing now?"

Thus, my work worries are also worrying me.

It's a vicious cycle that needs to stop.

The print production process

Anyway, I HAVE been posting... on Tumblr. Mostly because it's images and mostly because it involves very few words. I post my art and the process of creating my prints because that's the singular thing I'm passionately involved with these days. I've mustered the courage to enter two of my prints in a local juried art show of works on/with paper. Although I forced one of my best friends to go with me to the gallery because I knew I would chicken out if I went alone. (Currently sitting on pins and needles wondering if my pieces will be accepted.) I've also registered on Etsy, but I've not had time to price my work and build the shop.

And I would be remiss in not mentioning that I am grateful for the support of a few very dear friends and my husband - and their encouragement to pursue my art as a possible career. I'm getting there (mentally and physically). It's all quite scary to me.

Oh, and I also bought a new bike (thanks Bike Authority!). This is Nigel, my new P3. I named him such because he "goes to eleven" (gears, that is).

Artistic Inspiration Trumps Training

My training is so inconsistent lately that I have very little news to report, but here's a quick overview followed by something else I've been doing lately that I feel like blogging about.

On the injury-front, I've been working hard on healing my hamstring tendon and strengthening other muscle groups with the goal of no more hamstring problems. Ever. There's still a long way to go. My relentless pursuit of squats and bridges and planks is - I think - finally forcing my glutes to take the workload off my hamstrings. My latest revelation is that when I focus on good form while running, I can ward off the hamstring pain for a progressively-longer time. I managed 11 miles two weeks ago and 14 miles on Saturday without serious pain. I might be willing to celebrate when it gets up to 20.

January sent me onto the bike trainer where I've slowly worked my way up to 3:35. Riding long on the trainer is a bigger struggle this year than it has been in the past. One of the reasons may be that I'm trying to ride too hard. Sunday, I focused on keeping my heart rate low which seemed to alleviate some of the struggle. Swimming - although inconsistent - seems to be the one thing I'm NOT struggling with.

When I look at the big picture, the problem has been getting more than one workout a day. There are two main reasons. The first is that my [regular] job has me working late on weekdays and weekends. Not because I'm slow, but there's just a LOT to get done and only one programmer (me). We just hired another so I'm hoping it will help with the workload in the future.

The second reason is that I've recently been hit with inspiration to create new fine art prints. As an artist (or someone who wishes she could be a working artist), I have learned one thing: never f*ck with inspiration. If my art were a source of income, I'd probably suffer from debilitating artist's block 80% of the time. But when uninspired, all I do is flip the switch and running, biking, and swimming become my physical and mental outlet for stress. So, when the rare event of true inspiration happens, I must follow it. It's not like I even have a choice. And I have absolutely no control when and where it happens. All I know is I have to drop everything and "get it out" to avoid becoming agitated, edgy, and losing sleep.

My latest print was inspired by an iPhone photo I took of a bunch of snow-covered trees in University Circle - the "museum-university-hospital" area of Cleveland. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to take this particular photo from the fourth floor window of my workplace (the Cleveland Museum of Art). And then I felt compelled to turn part of the photo into a three-color block print. Strange that I didn't want to do it any other way - not as a painting or etching or drawing. The image just appeared in my mind as a three-color block print. This is usually how these things happen.

Early last year, I bought some new printmaking material called Clear Carve - it's "transparent" linoleum made by Richeson Art. It's billed as "easy to cut" and doesn't require the design to be transferred to the linoleum block because you can put the design underneath as it's see-through.

I cropped my photo to the size of my purchased linoleum block, played with colors in Photoshop, and got to work. Here's is a photographic progression of the process - how I carved the block and printed it. It was done using a "reduction" process - which basically means the same block is used for all the colors - each color is carved away and the next is printed on top of it. There are several layers of ink on the finished piece, but it has a very nice, almost embossed, relief quality to it. The paper I used is the best all-cotton machine-made paper you can find on the market these days - it's called Stonehenge and it's made by Legion Paper. I use it almost exclusively for all my printmaking projects.

Here is the original photo -- thanks to the Cleveland weather, it was pretty much a black and white scene (although taken with color). For the print, I chose and added my own colors to it:

The first color (actually the first two colors, the other one being white) was a light pastel orange, here is the linoleum block and the printed color:

The second color was a blue-green. To some, it looked finished at this point (because most of the tree shapes were carved) - I have always been very precise in carving linoleum, but this new Clear Carve stuff was a more difficult to work with because the "carved" pieces don't break away nicely, so I was expecting some major issues ("easy to carve" isn't how I would describe it, as I have several v-shaped scabs on my fingers after stabbing myself several times with linoleum cutters), but was happily surprized with the result after this color:

And the final color was an almost-black with violet added:

I made only ten prints. But I was very happy with the result, and I'm already working on another one with the other piece of Clear Carve that I bought.

Multitasking

I may be quiet these days but I'm certainly not idle. My training has taken a backseat during the holiday season because of personal commitments and also to try again to heal my injured hamstring tendon with modern medical procedures.

Thus, I had my third PRP shot about a month ago and it was more painful than ever. I was in agony for several hours and then sore for several days afterward. The good thing about the pain is that it probably means my doctor hit the "right spot" with the injection. The bad thing about the pain is that I couldn't use any anti-inflammatory methods to make it go away because the inflammatory response is exactly what we wanted (more blood = healing).

After Thanksgiving, I jumped into my yearly design and printing of Christmas cards. This year, the design dictated the choice of methods -- the colors were very flat and bold, and the design was very hard-edged, so I chose to attempt a hand-cut stencil with screenprinting once again (after 10 years of lino-cuts). Unlike usual, the screenprinting process started out great with color registration working well. Then after printing three colors quickly and without incident, I botched the last color and the whole thing almost ended up in disaster.

Here are some photos of the process.

I started out by putting all the stencils on one screen
which was great until the last one with the largest print area
(stencil in the foreground). By that time, the screen tension
had decreased, causing ink to bleed under the stencil.

The first color (smallest area) was red. It took about an hour to print 106 cards. My husband Jim and I measure the time we spend on each color in terms of number of albums that we listen to while printing. Red was a one-album color. I think we listened to a Counting Crows CD. Red also had a near-disaster as I tried to fix one part of the stencil and accidentally stuck my exacto knife right through the screen itself. Lucky for us (and unusual), it held up until the last card was printed.

The second color was yellow. Yellow was also a one-album deal. I think yellow was printed to OK Go.

Third was blue. The blue was a two-color blend, and surprisingly, NOT a disaster as expected (because any time you mix two colors in real-time during printing, something goes horrifically wrong). Blue was also a one-album color - I think it was Travis's "Where You Stand."

And finally green. It took two tries, and two stencils, and two screens. And several albums. Too many to be sure. Here's the can of green and the wrecked first screen which I just tore off the frame and threw away because it had already become a victim of the exacto-knife faux pas.

And... the finished product. It took an additional cut stencil and a brand new screen to get through the green. We lost about 20 cards and about 20 more were barely salvageable. The design is based on the Tree of Life window/sculpture that is part of the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.

My other art project of late was a new drypoint print that I wanted to make to give away as part of a Facebook "pay-it-forward" post I made in early 2014. I decided to try out a new very thin plastic plate made by Akua that I bought earlier this year. Here is the plate and the finished print, titled "Scenes from the Towpath: Fitzwater Bridge View."

A Passion for Letterpress: Refurbishing a Century-old Machine

While in England for the 2013 ITU Age Group World Championship last year, Jim and I did our usual jaunt around London-town, especially to familiar spots to purchase gifts for family and friends. One of our favorite places is Fortnum & Mason, the 300-year-old department store on Piccadilly.

During our stroll around the store, we took in the London Design Festival where SORT (Society of Revisionist Printmakers) Design was demoing their Letterpress printing process. I took some pictures and was helped in typesetting my name to print a souvenir notebook with one of their presses. Here are some photos I took of the event - ink, paper, samples, type, and most importantly, the press - I can still smell the ink (one of my favorite smells in the whole world):

A few months ago, I hooked up with another printmaker on Tumblr, Antiquated Press. One of their posts was about restoring an old letterpress machine, and it lit a fire under me to finally do something fun and productive with the tiny letterpress printer - a Baltimore No. 9 - that my father-in-law gave me for Christmas a couple years ago. He found it at an auction, and knowing my passion for old-school printing/printmaking, thought it would be a nice antique for me to have (the seller included the press, the lead type, and the old roller, from circa the 1890s).

The first thing I had to do was find out if it was in good enough shape to ever print again. Close inspection revealed that indeed it was. Although it had been repainted, all the parts were in some semblance of working order except the ink roller - which had pretty much reached a state of petrification. (Seriously, when I started cleaning up parts, it broke off its metal shaft like chunks of volcanic rock.)

I enlisted my husband Jim to help -- because guys always know exactly how to play with machine parts and solvents (think WD-40). He helped me take the press completely apart, get rid of the rust, and clean up all the pieces. Steel wool was involved. Here are some photos of this process:

The deconstructed press:

The springs, screws, and roller hooks soaking in one of those solvents, something called "PB Blaster":

The chase - which was in very good shape and the inking plate which had dried ink from God-knows-what-century on it:

The body of the press after cleaning it up:

The super-clean inking plate after scraping ink off and and steel-wooling, and the other parts nicely de-rusted and cleaned:

The sorted type (don't even ask how long it took me to sort type with my old blurry eyes and a tweezer after it was delivered in a plastic baggie):

The final task would be to find or make a new roller. Thank heavens for e-bay. Would you believe that someone actually builds these things? I purchased a brand new roller for a Baltimore No. 9 press on e-bay. It had new trucks and rubber that didn't look shriveled up like an old tree.

New roller next to shaft of old roller (after carving off what was left of the old rubber):

And then came the final assembly. The only thing I was afraid of was if everything would actually fit together with the new roller. Much to my surprise, it fit like a dream. Here are two shots of the roller in different positions - on the inking plate and along the chase - perfectly flush:

Stay tuned to see what I manage to print with this thing. The only thing I can guarantee is that any prints will be rather tiny since the platen (the plate that holds the paper) is not much larger than a business card. But I just got my first delivery of letterpress ink, and a friend at the museum is digging up additional artifacts (printing blocks and tools for positioning the printing plate and type in the chase) from his old letterpress printing days.

Finding Inspiration while Running

No, this blog is not about my 2014 racing season. It's about finding inspiration for my art while [attempting] running. The other day, I dug out my trail shoes and went for a run after a soaking rain. The trail was lonely, but I was moved by all the footprints and bike tire prints in the mud, despite the bleak landscape created by winter rain in Cleveland. I tried to capture it in my latest print, titled "Scenes from the Towpath: Signs of Life" (this one is much bigger than all my others - it's 8 in x10 in, and it's the largest I've ever printed with my tiny etching press). It took about three evenings of work to produce - using an acrylic plate and only my drypoint needle:

Hello 2014.

Meet my little etching press.

I've been dwelling on a new blog post for so long that I can't remember when my last one happened or what it was about. But I feel a brain-dump coming on so I'll just start writing.

Several times since creating this blog, my first post of the new year has been a recommitment to personal athletic goals. It usually comes after the realization that spending most of my time trying to please others (family, friends, peers, bosses) is a losing battle, that hard work rarely pays off in the workplace, and that I am crap at office politics (well,.. politics in general). After the realization, I crawl in a hole and bash myself to pieces, then crawl out, stand up (slowly), and recommit myself to a new season of running or triathlon. This has been the only thing that depends entirely on me.. and the one way for me to reap the benefits of goal-setting and hard work.

This year, part of me so desperately wants to write that athletic recommitment blog, but I can't. I can't put my "all" into training when I know damn well that my hamstring tendon is still injured. Lately I've had to remove myself from social media because most friends and those I follow are runners and triathletes. After reading and celebrating everyone else's successes for the last few months, I now find myself, not inspired by them, but feeling like a bigger loser, viewing my 2013 season as a huge fail, and declaring my 2014 season a failure before it even happens.

Before racing in London, I had the injury diagnosis. And after returning, I was forced to take time off and focus on healing. Then I survived a car accident. Then I survived buying a new car - which was, perhaps, more stressful than the accident. To avoid going insane, I started compulsively drawing again.

And then came an unexpected light at the end of the tunnel that had nothing to do with training. Somewhere in the mess of the interwebs, I landed upon several artists' websites describing intaglio printmaking with an acrylic plate. I was instantly hooked. My etching press (bought to expedite the process of making Christmas cards) would no longer have to sit in a corner unused for eleven months out of the year. Almost immediately, I was digging out tools, impulse-buying plastic plates and ink, and pulling my old printmaking studio books off the shelf.

This was mid-November - in the midst of the pre-holiday rush. Still hanging over my head was my yearly "other" creative endeavor: block-printing my 2013 card (which due to my procrastination, became its own fiasco of a time crunch). But, I don't f*ck with inspiration. Especially when it is artistic inspiration. I must drop everything and follow it.

And now, after a couple months, I am able to relax a bit and write about it.

For my first prints, I used random photographs I shot on my iPhone. And I couldn't even wait for the purchased materials to arrive. In desperation to get started, I scrounged up some old scraps of plexiglass from an old picture frame and secretly cut it into rectangles at 5:00 a.m. in the farthest corner of the basement to avoid waking up my husband Jim. (If you've ever scored and cut plexiglass, you already know it sounds like a gunshot.)

My first print was average at best, and more impulse purchases were required to find the right ink and all the right tools. I'm still developing my techniques, but I'm seeing improvement (there's that hard-work thing again...). In the even that I never race again, I hope I've found something that keeps me creatively and energetically engaged and has future development and growth potential.

2014 now seems like a new direction. I have some new art and I'm hopeful about my future artistic possibilities for the first time in about ten years. Creating stuff is giving me a sense of internal fulfillment, and if I can no longer compete at the level I'd like to as an athlete, all does not seem lost.

Anyway.. below are a few of the new intaglio prints - starting with the first one - made from a photo of my headlights while I was driving at night. The method I'm using is called "drypoint" - scratching the image into the plate directly instead of etching it with acid (and thus avoiding the hazardous-materials-in-the-house issue). In the future, I would like to switch the imagery and use some of my drawings for inspiration, but my photos are giving me ideas for now.

"Headlights on Boston Mills Road"

"Riverfront Trail Scene 2"

"Le Canal"

"Scenes from the Towpath I"

"Afternoon Near Corn Hill"