Cabbages and Kings
I finished the walrus some time ago. The working title is Edmund and the Lingering Hunger. By the time I’d drilled out the holes and got the thing up on the wall, I was sure that the background was all wrong. So I went over the rock, the sea, and the mountain with oil pastel. The end result, strewn pastel shavings aside, was much better. Unfortunately, when the light is bright (and it often is, since we have windows on three walls in this room) it brings out the green in the walls and the orange in the rock and ruins the whole thing. Now I try only to look at the walrus at night.
Thinking about painting makes me queasy, especially such literal business as a walrus. I’m far more comfortable with the scale of a page and a pen or pencil. But when I was actually doing the painting, I switched over into that part of my brain that is intuitive, non-verbal, and compulsive (okay, generally compulsive is the order of the day, but it functions differently in this combination). I miss working that way.
Fortunately, it looks like I will be teaching art for the majority of my next year’s classes — Ceramics and Drawing to go with Creative Writing, Art History, and College Prep English. This means I’ll be taking classes at three schools over the summer, courtesy of my district. That delicious triumvirate that I sampled while painting might well be revisited during much of June and August. I wonder if we can design our robot with a built-in pencil sharpener?
Other things: moving furniture around and making rooms function better. Doing our best to resuscitate the post-spider-mite-infested rubber tree:
Also, this being a long weekend, I have ambitious cooking plans again. Right now there are two quiches in the oven (bacon, broccoli, mushroom, cheddar, wine, etc) and I have makings for sour cream coffeecake. Tomorrow I’m getting supplies for a stab at Mediterranean food (deep fryer falafel, any takers?). It’s possible I may get all my garlicky spreads in order by Monday, so long as I don’t get too caught up finishing Neuromancer.