Coffee with mom and Lori

 

Mom had us over for coffee. Individual turtles have shrunken to about half their size. Perhaps that is better for me - less guilt. 

Drawing for Emma

 William was invited to go dine with his friend Emma and a bunch of her friends. Margaret noticed on FB that it was Emma's birthday, so William sketched the robot and it's inventor, sized to fit into an elegant little frame we had. 

Dad's rings and pins

Mom set aside dad's jewelry box, taped shut, for me. Opened it. Found his two rings along with some items he never wore including some time pins, cufflinks, and a series of different CA pins from a span of years. 
 

Cards with mom

 Cold today so I just played cards at her residence this morning. She's forgotten how to play gin rummy, but after six hands, she started to get it again. 

Painting again

 I had no plan for my painting today. I started adding colour. It wasn't working. I painted over it again. And then again. By the end it wasn't terrible, but it was far from good. Basically I just painted until I was too exhausted to paint any more and having taken a poor starting point, I never got to where I wanted. 

Fire at Country Corner Donuts

 News today was that a fire broke out in the soup warmer and caused a lot of smoke damage early this morning. Will be closed for a couple of months. 

Ayesha defense

 Ayesha, after five years working with me and Kathryn, defended her MFA in interdisciplinary art today. No lunch through, since I had to go directly to class afterwards. 

Office in shambles

My office, at the best of times, is a chaotic mess. Since mid-December, my vents have been disassembled and not put back. Not only does this increase my mess significantly, but by being not finished, it prevents me from cleaning it up. I don't even know if I am on a list or if I am forgotten. 

Chicken, no foam core

 I've not been cooking much. For the past two weeks, but have been making large portions of stew or chili or whatever and eating it for multiple meals as we worked. Today I actually barbequed a chicken! Had coffee with mom and Lori in the morning. Basically normal day. 

Heather Cline party

 

I had no time or energy to make perogies this year, so we had to suffer with simply eating at Heather's party this year. Lovely time, but I did make us leave by 9:00 as I could barely stand. We stopped at Neutral Ground and looked at the artwork at night on the way home. 

Install complete

 

Geremy arrived at one. William was just finishing the furnace room and we were figuring out what order the boxes would go in. Geremy knew how to put up the vinyl letters, so that was a life saver. We put the boxes in one at a time. They needed to be put through the small doorway in the glass case, then rotated 90 degrees, then situated and the lights placed in the holes at the top, and the repeated. One stack at a time, with lights between each of the four stacks. There are seven stacks. We got them in place by five. 

Assembling boxes completed

 Today we finished 27 of the 28 boxes with the final one, the furnace room, nearly done. To tired to finish. 

Assembling boxes

 

Into the gallery

 With help from Lori and Al, we got all of the boxes into the space. Only one of them actually has the artwork inside it already. The rest we need to locate objects and characters from our collections and put them in place and glue them. Today we did little more than sort. It seems that about 30 characters are still at home, waiting for some spray glue. 

Portrait of the king

We have printed off photos of the bird people king using the Canon Ivy printer I bought William for Japan that he was too exhausted to use while there. Each portrait of the king is the from the same source image but the background is changed and many are zoomed in or reversed. Each room will likely have a portrait hanging in it with those portraits being photographic while the characters in the scene are drawings.  
 

Delusions cut in

We've been working on this project for 10-12 hours per day for a couple of weeks now without a break. Sometimes I look at pictures we have taken and have no way of interpreting what is going on. What are these numbers William has? Probably make sense to him. 
 

Piling up objects

 We are running out of places to put things. 

Characters

 With each character, William draws them then traces them onto a second sheet but this time drawing the details of the reverse side (their backs). They are then spray glued to foam core and cut out. 

Boxes and piano

 I have spent much of the last couple of days creating the 22x24x16 inch boxes for William's project. While they dry (I cannot make too many at once due to a shortage of clamps and space) I was continuing to build objects. I think we have enough chairs, so I made a piano.