Ru Temple Design Studio
Some links:
RTDS Gallery
This page journals my efforts towards the May, 2004 Art by the Inch Challenge, which runs from May 15 to June 15, 2004.
UPDATES
June 15, 2004: Final Push: 409 / 5037 / 5000 Photos for earring sales, 19 x 4 x 4 = 304 Photos for web: paintings, 3 x 5 x 7 = 105
June 14, 2004: Web and Paint: 673 / 4628 / 5000
Mermaid light painting, 7 x 8 = 56
Two merfolk painting 5 x 5 = 25
Sunflowers painting 3 x 3 = 9
Book cover paintings (just the painting part) = 246
painting - abstract - 9/5 x 12 = 114
tin = 32
got silly and painted the heads of several pushpins on the bulletin board = 1
painted an oat box cut down, for a pen holder - 4" x 12.57 circ = 50
edited/formatted pictures toward a series on neighborhood doors: 4 x 5 x7 =
140
June 12, 2004: Celtic Art Fair and Oh, Yeah's: 274 / 3955 / 5000
A hand-drawn love note for L on her way out of town for meetings, 3 x 4 =
12
23 pair of earrings to fill in for the handful I left at home oops: 23 x 1 x 1 = 23
signage re the hand bound books, 4 x 6 = 24
A celtic knot stamped & embelleshed on recycled sticker paper to give away =
30
Three books finished during the art fair day: 3 x 6.5 x 9.5 = 185.25
June 10, 2004: prep for Celtic Art Fair 1201 / 3681 / 5,000
A page of bizcards in a 2 x 5 layup = 7" x 10" = 70 square inches. 5 pages of
one format, set up digitally, printed and hand-embellished; 7 pages formatted for
pre-printed business-card blanks = 12 such pages for 840 ^2";
3 legal-sized
sheets with 4 columns by 7 rows of 2" x 2" item tag labels gives 3 x 112^2" or 336
sq. in; another 25 pair of earrings, call it 25 square inches, for a total today of 1201
square inches. Scads of post-it note books ready to finish off but not there yet. Book
boards for nearly 20 text blocks to be cut and glued, and then covered before sewing!
We'll see how many of those get done for the ABTI count, but the pressure makes for
good incentive. SHIFT, adjust: realigning to an achievable goal for the month, I'm re-
aiming my sights for 5000 square inches of art produced this month; what?! you
mean I don't have to be an over-over-achiever all the time? I'm happy with the
month's artwork to date, and this feels more realistic, this time 'round.
June 8, 2004: Edits, Tunes, Ears 50 / 2480 / 10,000
a couple of ATCs (17.5) , and 33 pair of earrings (call it 32.5 for a round day's number). It's so easy to get into production mode with earrings; pull together the semiprecious stones of a certain size, find the good nips and revel in the joys of the good jewelry pliers (yes Virginia there is a difference between $6 and $23 needlenose pliers, and a good tool in the hand is a very pleasing thing!) to bring with to this weekend's art show gig, a celtic fair at Ardenwood Historical Farm in Hayward, CA. ATC's were doodles while celebrating newly-rearranged, clear desktop!
June 1, 2004: Been a Busy Week Elsewhere 1065 / 2430 / 10,000
The valiant ivy-eating goats H hired for her new yard are in the collage of this week to the left. Yon "collage of the week" shows some of what's been going on in my life just recently: finished stitching the oak leaves (more below), out to dinner with art buddies from near and far, a celebratory breakfast with the CIIS library folks above a screen-shot of how I edit, which is how I spent the rest of this past week and into the weekend: technical editing I'll have the student's work open to the left, a copy of their reference list (bibliography) to my right, and my feedback to them in the middle of the screen, bouncing back and forth between the three. I check for consistency in titling and TOC, check all citations against the ref list (and vice versa), and notate grammaer and spelling glitches as I come across them. And learn fascinating things in the process. The surprise about this line of work was how emotionally engaging it can be to help midwife someone through finishing their dissertation. I have the beginnings of a series of doorways in the City (in the neighborhood could be enough for a honkin' coffee-table photobook) but I didn't expect to see the SFGG "condom car" parked in front of our house! much hilarity. I've also stolen a moment or two to go through my pix from May Day this year, and have a rudimentary photo album up, wanting annotation notes and commentary. Loved this kid as a cricket, who'd stop marching and drumming every so often and sit to rest on his durmsticks. (we were pretty close to the end of the 10-block parade route, which is a long way for kids).
The stitched 13.5 x 13.5 inch canvas with an oak leaves-and-acorns pattern, (part of Francis Barnhart's fiber arts estate and gift from our friend and dance maven buddy Richard, her son) is done, done, being blocked and will become a side panel to a tote bag, because I just can't see it hanging around bored on a wall or being kneaded by our dearling cat as a pillow: so that's 182 square inches; plus the 16 x 16 = 256 square inches of the original size of this collage, plus the four loaves of art-bread with 3 kinds of cherries, hazelnuts and almond-hazelnut butter (627 cubic inches in area) make a quick 1065 additional square inches.
The auto-update ran on my system, and I seem to be without my former autofill file, and guess who cleverly forgot to write her password to the abti website elsewhere, and won't be able to update without it! *duh*
May 22, 2004: workin'... 54 / 1509 / 10,000
The past few days and the next few days are helping a friend prep her new house for moving in: clearing years' worth of ivy out of the back - she rented a herd of goats for the purpose - incredibly cute and efficient! There are an almond and plum trees she hadn't known were there (because they were buried in ivy...); my art consists of a sketch of the floorplan showing all outlets, and mapping what fusebox circuits every fixture and outlet conect to, and sussing out the attic (and underhouse) crawlspace in preparation to reqire the place; pulling hinges off this doorframe, making a trip or two to OSH for hardware and advice, pulling the electrical socket receptacles that'll be replaced when we run the new wires, and other little bits.
Got talked into helping herd the goats into the truck when the goat lady showed up to collect them. Got pulled off my feet by a goat and my lower back is in serious hurts today. This is not so good. I stayed home from this day's fun of scrooching plywood across attic joists so as to make moving around up there for rewiring, easier, and have been taking it easy on the back. *creak* Still not king. Not eighteen anymore, either, dammit. My art for these days' wiring sketches are about 4.5" x 6" or so each: the main level electric wiring schematic, and the attic showing where joists / joist wall and furnace ducting are. No pic 'cos they're at the house being worked on; though I do have pix of the goats, out the kitchen window, from their second day (having alread made the back fence visible).
Mqy 18, 2004: 17 Stickie-Note-Pads 153 / 1455 / 10,000
I felt like quite the production maven this morning, cutting a few layers of fancy paper at once for book covers. Finished 17 of the handbound post-it note pad cuties, logged on to find a bulk order for some of the same! Yee-haw!
Pic on the left is the one that I'll endeavor to leave at the SFO airport baggage level this evening when I go pick up an art buddy who's visiting in town. We're not going to stick around to photo it in situ (may we avoid getting arrested! Laughing, remembering the television clip Aisling did regarding Book Crossing) a couple of years ago! Written on the top sheet of the hand-bound notepad is "this is an anonymous gift of art - enjoy! artbytheinch.com" -- so if it's picked up by someone who then wends their way here is by no means anonymous any more, but tremendously fun all the same.
Update: left it on a mail-staging box at Liberty and Valencia (near where I was parked); it was gone, gone, gone by the time we got back home from the airport...
Today's my day with art up in the navigation/logo area at the Art by the Inch home website. I have no idea how to count the size: the original silk detailed in the photo is about 14" by something around 9", was emailed to Tricia at "500 pixels wide by plenty of tall" and shows up on my screen at the abti website as 2.5 x 4 inches. Since it's a piece that was completed during the November, 2003 challenge, I'm just going to not count it for this go-around. I seem to be rounding down a lot in my counts, and this just feels good and right to me this time 'round.
May 17, 2004: Road to Mandalae 254 / 1302 / 10,000
Today was mostly about cleaning up my packing-for-artshow mess, unpacking
from the art show, cleaning house, cashing checks and paying bills and
housecleaning in delighted anticipation of visits from an art pal during the week
(yaay, tomorrow night!!) and then a musician with the Lark in the Morning Camp
house band, in town to play Saturday night's English Country Dance in Berkeley. Did I
mention cleaning today? Splurged and got a new hand-vac, and a bin for storing the
silks that slides neatly under the bed... ahh.
Took till evening to think about making any art today; looked at the ABTI website and
found a challange re mandalas - hey, I love mandalas, I can do this. *putter, putter,
tweak* they're over at my already-existing mandala page, at http://rulise.net/
mandalae.html - enjoy! I like Eliza's technique of glomping* a wedge, replicating and
turning it, for the chthonic way I seem to get odd numbers of iterations (sevens, fives,
tens). My first and still favorite using this technique, from a photo of a manzanita,
has eleven iterations of the basic motif. go figure!
* Glomping is a technical term of art.
May 16, 2004: before and during the Art Fair at the Women's Building 576/ 1194/10,000
You can read about my wonderful day at the MaestraPeace Mural 10th Anniversary Celebration of Women's Art and Resiliance, today's street fair, over here at my journal page . Art actually made and finished today includes:
while packing and things this morning, I put together & finished another 5 post- in notebooks (3" x 3") 45/517/10,000.
During the morning after we were done setting up, and in the slow part of the early afternoon, I sewed together three more coptic stitch books: two 6x9 and one 9 x 12, giving 216/733/10,000. You know, it's taken me two hours to muck about with the photos, crop and size and load to the web and make the html of the aforementioned page; I'm going to count the photos I took along in my square inches for the day: I took 9 of those pix, sized them all to 7" x 5" (or 5" x 7") at 72 dpi before loading them up, so that's another 315/1048/10,000 - ta-effing-DAH!
May 15, 2004: Later On in the Evening 472/10,000
I count 3 more 6"x9" books covered, drilled and sewn for 162 square inches,
one of which is below left; and seven accordion books covered, glued together today,
below right. The accordion books are 4.5" by 6.5" so folks can put photos in them, or
collage; they stand up in a star book formation really well. this is a new form for me,
and I like them a lot. (Family members look out!)
I've also been putting together post-it notebooks (3" x 3"), some 9 of which included more than half their assembly steps today. 81/107/10,000
May 15, 2004: Prepping for Art Show Tomorrow
If I were to count the booth set-up I spent part of yesterday and this morning
setting up, this ought to be "art by the square foot" since the two walls and table
setup total 7776 square inches themselves! But since they're the 'canvas' for
displaying my works at tomorrow's art fair at the SF Women's Building, I'm not
counting them for ABTI. *creak* - my BACK is, though.
View 1
View 2
I have a few more books to finish sewing for tomorrow's show and onward, and
will post them in turn, and count them as they're finished. Here are two miniature
silk books in the meanwhile:
counting the width across the opened back (4.25") by the height 2.5" I get a
little over 10 suqare inches each. 20/26/10,000
I've painted a ruler for the Altered Ruler challenge that Tricia began so we could
start with a splash today, May 15, and it's up in the gallery there.
6/6/10,000
I'll post project inches/cumulative inches/goal inches after each entry.
May 4, 2004 notes: background
Begun by Tricia Leach in November, 2003 with a 30-challenge for that month, the idea spins off a self-challenge to produce so-and-so much artwork in a set amount of time, similar to the (no affiliation) National Novel Writing Month challenge.
Some time in the 1970s, my mother, a teacher in color design and weaving, reported to me the story of a fellow teacher splitting his class of students in clay according to the following criteria - this half of the class was to be graded by quality: their focus was to be mastering technique and form; they could turn in as little as one magnificent work (but it had better be a master work) - and this half of the class was going to be graded on quantity. They were going to be graded on how much weight in clay projects they finished and turned in. While everyone was going to be taught techniques and methodology, it turns out that the folks with the "quantity" criterion had the most fun, exploring and experimenting and making many, many things - and the "quality" criterion students spent more time fussing over individual projects. The dictum about practice making perfect shone through the final work. The folks who had made many, many experiements turned in the most striking designs as well.
It is in that spirit that I enter this spring's challenge: to make many works, and practice, practice, practice, my arts - applying and working with various book arts forms that are new to me, book-binding comtinuing in the coptic stitch form that I've been doing and selling for nearly a year now, and more arashi shibori work in silk. I have a plan to combine those last two a little more... and that's what I'm intending to work on, this time around on the abti challenge.
Thanks be to Tricia for coming up with this idea! I look forward to seeing other folks' explorations and work this round, as well, and you can see them here at the Art by the Inch Challenge web page. Enjoy!
