practicing what I preach
January 12, 2010
My students are not used to being expected to fill a whole sketchbook for every drawing course they take, and most of them carry around a big black hardbound book that they use for all of their studio courses. It makes me sad to see how little they’ve drawn in books that in some cases they’ve been using for a year and a half now, and how many of those precious pages are instead filled with notes from art history class. I told my life drawing students that I expect them to draw every day, in order to develop good working habits if nothing else. I also told them that I would bring my own book to class so that they could check up on me and know that I’m keeping the same commitment I’m demanding from them.
These are the books I brought with me to draw in while I’m here. The one on the left should look familiar: it’s another of my 20-spread drum leaf books made entirely of old prints. I used to draw in these every day, but got out of the habit when I got busy with my thesis work and never picked it up again (see, kids? If you don’t draw every day then you wind up having NO WORK ETHIC AT ALL). In the centre is a longstitch binding by Stacie Dolin, another gift she brought me when she visited Windsor last fall. I’m especially looking forward to drawing in this one, as it will feel good to go back to blank pages after drawing on top of layers and layers of ink for so long. On the right is a perfect bound notebook I made using a variety of recycled papers. These should keep me going for a while. Of course, I haven’t started drawing in any of them yet (don’t tell my students).
Grace asked for clarification on what buffet has to do with Manifest Destiny, and I’ll write something about that later. Soon. It’s just that I goofed off all day today and now I have this syllabus and lesson plan to finish for tomorrow morning. Ah, the last minute desk jive. My favourite dance.
Posted by jodi on January 12, 2010 at 8.15pm
ON CROSSING opening reception
November 10, 2009
Courtesy of Peter Zimmerman, here are a couple of photos from On Crossing, my two-person show with Jessica Mills that opened on November 6 at the Windsor Printmaker’s Forum.
It was fantastic having Jessica here, in a my-two-separate-lives-colliding sort of way. I wish I’d had more time to show her the wonders of Windsor, but we did manage to hit a few highlights: Artcite, an assortment of my favourite bars and restaurants, the Lebanese bakeries along Wyandotte Street, and several dilapidated buildings and skanky Walkerville alleys. I think she liked it here.
Posted by jodi on November 10, 2009 at 11.58am
On Crossing installation
September 26, 2009
Some images of On Crossing as it looked installed in the gallery at the Graphica Creativa Biennial in Jyväskylä, Finland. The piece is now on its way back home, where we’ll show it next in November at the Windsor Printmaker’s Forum.
Images courtesy Jyväskylä Art Museum.
For more installation shots of the piece, visit our page on the Graphica Creativa ‘09 website.
Posted by jodi on September 26, 2009 at 9.39am
waiting
July 24, 2009
This is what 15 weeks' worth of garbage looks like for our family of four. The two on the left are 2/3 full and the large one on the right can fit a few more bags, but the cat litter is being stored elsewhere, so it evens out to about this many bins, full. The city and its workers have reached a tentative agreement, so we're hopeful that when we get back from vacation these will have been emptied. Finally. Otherwise, the strike has actually had some benefits for our city. People bitched and moaned at first about the parks not being mowed, but as the weeks wore on and the wildflowers began maturing and flowering, attitudes slowly changed. All manner of wildlife, some that had never been seen around here before, are cropping up in our public spaces. You started hearing people instead talking about how lovely it all looked, speculating on how we could keep some of that wild beauty intact after the workers are back to the job of cleaning and mowing. And finally, the city announces that some of those spaces will indeed be left unmowed. Something lovely comes to our town so unexpectedly. After the Toronto show last weekend (which went well) I uploaded a big batch of the new dress prints to my etsy store. Go and have a look if you like. Here’s one: I’m going to be away from the internet for a couple of weeks, but when I get back I plan to spend a bit more time here, posting more often. I know, I’ve said that before. I think I might mean it this time. Posted by jodi on July 24, 2009 at 6.33am July 9, 2009 I’ve been working long hours in the studio this week finishing up some new work for the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, taking place this weekend July 10 to 13 in Nathan Phillips Square in beautiful downtown T.O. If you’re in the neighbourhood be sure to come by and say hello; I’m easy to find, in booth #311 right near the corner of Queen and Bay Streets. I will be wearing dresses from The Wardrobe Project so that I’ll match my work in an obnoxious way. Fun! Here’s a sneak peek at some of the new work I’ll be showing: In other news, I received the catalogue for Graphica Creativa and it blew me away with its beauty (as well as making me feel like an international superstar). Perhaps I’ll scan some pages to post here later on so I can toot my own horn (and Jessica’s!) some more. Don’t forget you can catch the exhibition through the end of September at the Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking in Jyväskylä, Finland. After that we’ll be exhibiting the work right here in Windsor, Ontario (stay tuned). The Incredible Print Show at Artstream has closed, but it looks like you can still view the works online. It’s a great chance for those of you in the States to pick up one of my more popular prints without having to pay the exorbitant Canada Post shipping charges, and there are loads of other fantastic prints there as well. In yet other news, there’s some exciting possible job stuff on the horizon that I’d really love to talk about if only I weren’t too superstitious to do so before I’ve actually received a formal offer and signed a contract and all that nitty gritty. Soon, my pretties. Soon! Posted by jodi on July 9, 2009 at 10.04am June 11, 2009 On Crossing, my collaborative project with Jessica Mills, is part of Graphica Creativa ‘09, an international print triennial at the Jyväskylä Art Museum in Jyväskylä, Finland, which opens today. If you’re going to be in the neighbourhood this summer, you can see the exhibition until September 27. View the Graphica Creativa ‘09 invitation. My participation in Graphica Creativa ‘09 was made possible by an exhibition assistance grant from the Ontario Arts Council. Posted by jodi on June 11, 2009 at 10.34am February 27, 2009 These last few weeks have been crazy-busy, exciting and exhausting. Some highlights: I taught my first workshop out of the Windsor Printmaker’s Forum, a two-day whirlwind introduction to stone lithography. It was fast-paced and fun, and we got an incredible amount of work done in less than twelve hours. We’d scheduled it for Monday and Tuesday of the university’s Reading Week to accommodate some professors who came down from North Bay to attend the class, but there was enough interest in the community that we’re planning to schedule a weekend workshop very soon (stay tuned!). After the workshop I spent the next day and a half building slideshows in preparation for our Pecha Kucha Night, which, if you didn’t get the message last time, was the event of the season. A week later I’m still a little hung over from the excitement generated that night. The day after Pecha Kucha Peter and I took the day off to drive around the county, paying a visit to the Ridley homestead where they have recently welcomed an incredibly soft and lovely baby llama into their growing fibre family. First-year shares in this homegrown fibre co-op have sold out, but if you keep your eye on Old School Fibre’s etsy shop you might be able to snag one next season. This week I spent two mornings at the University of Windsor teaching a lithography demo to the senior printmaking class. We did our best to speed through about four weeks of instruction in six hours, falling a little short but not disastrously so. I got to spend some time in my old haunts, working on a press I love, and one of the students is even interested in coming out to the Printmaker’s Forum and running for a spot on the board, which is beyond awesome. In local news, Windsor’s very own Phog Lounge was named this week as best live music venue in Canada by CBC Radio3. The National Post even called Windsor “the nation’s undiscovered indie rock supercity”. But hell, we knew that. If you were unfortunate enough to miss the big announcement you’re in luck, because CBC television cameras captured the moment of the big reveal live. Click to relive the glory! This weekend we’ve got some sooper-seekrit family stuff going on out of town, but if you’re staying behind in Windsor you should check out these two events tonight that I’m disappointed to be missing: -a live music benefit at the Kildare House to raise dough for Rafiki Kenya -opening reception for La robe-ruche (The Hive Dress) by Julie Faubert and Héloïse Audy at Artcite Inc And don’t forget, if you feel yourself starting to wobble, use the zen to keep you steady. Posted by jodi on February 27, 2009 at 10.40am December 8, 2008 Betty Goodwin, one of my biggest influences, has died. In my thesis report on The Wardrobe Project I wrote of the influence her Tarpaulin series (1974-1978) had on my working methods. Countless times I have shown her work to friends, colleagues, classmates and students. I have stood in awe before her works in galleries, marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of her smudgey marks. Every time I have taken an eraser out of a student’s hand or urged a student to pay closer attention to richness of surface in a drawing, I invoke Betty and her work. The above image was originally nicked from this web gallery in 2006 for a flickr set of drawings I put together to show my drawing students. Posted by jodi on December 8, 2008 at 2.26pm November 13, 2008 new, old, abandoned, in progress. in no particular order. 1: sweater recycling centre: set up a knitting machine in a gallery space. unravel discarded/secondhand sweaters directly into the machine and knit one long continuous panel (full needle bed width). cut and sew new sweaters from the panel. leave panel attached to machine, spread across the floor with garment shapes cut out. sort of like the study for a remnant factory installation/performance, only with knitting. this one is a go just as soon as i get off my arse to find a space to do it in. right now it has to be a space that i don’t have to pay for. 2: sarkasmatron: a giant box decorated like a carnival ride/vending machine, set up in a public space. sit inside and wait for people to put in a coin then dispense little slips of paper with handwritten sarcastic messages or insults. this is something i’ve been talking about doing since ten years ago or more, back when i lived in london. i can’t imagine it going over all that well in london. this project will probably never happen but it would be loads of fun. 3: listening project: listen to all of our records in chronological order. blog listening experience; host listening parties so others can join the conversation. peter and i now have all of our records (587 as of last entry, not counting all the classical stuff which isn’t being included in the project) entered into a database where we can organize them by release date. still working on expanding the collection but we should be ready to start listening soon. 4: waffle house north: buy the empty lot next to the mcdonalds at huron church road and college (or even better, buy the mcdonalds itself) and open a waffle house franchise. this will make waffle house the first thing travellers see when they enter canada via the ambassador bridge. planning to start playing the lottery to fund this project; benefactors welcome. 5: wall of boggle: replace a wall in our house with stainless steel, then paint over it to match the other walls. glue magnets to the backs of thousands of scrabble tiles. fill the wall with scrabble tiles, randomly placed. play giant games of boggle. peter and claire got bored one day and magnetized one set of scrabble tiles and stuck them on the fridge. i think peter has given up on the wall idea. not sure if i have but also not sure how to actually make this work in our 4-square craftsman house, which doesn’t actually have many big walls. 6: footpath tapestry: have all of the people crossing a busy park or intersection carry a long (really long, skein long) ribbon, string, yarn, whatever. when two people meet one will pass his/her ribbon over, the other under. a weaving will be created across the space that draws its pattern from the way in which people move through it. kind of like a maypole dance only less uniform, stretched out over a broad public thoroughfare. this too is something i wanted to do years ago, since my first year of university, inspired by jostling encounters with disconnected people hurrying across the space between university college and middlesex college on western’s campus. after i moved to windsor i wanted to instead create a weaving (on a smaller scale) from patterns of traffic approaching and crossing the windsor-detroit border. 7: food spectrum: only eat red foods for one month. only eat orange foods for the next month. only eat yellow foods for the next month. and so on. see if my skin changes colour, or if certain colours cause me to lose/gain weight. blue and indigo would have to be one colour or i might die from not getting enough to eat. i don’t like blueberries. 8: wrapping: wrap all of my stuff with string or strips of cloth. or ask people to loan me things and then wrap the things i borrow in strings/strips of cloth. walk down my street and wrap all the things i see in cloth. maybe not people’s cars. i don’t know what this is about, really, i just have been thinking a lot lately about wrapping things. i think my hands just want the feeling of wrapping things. i suppose if i just start wrapping things i’ll figure out why i’m doing it eventually. anybody want to loan me some stuff? Posted by jodi on November 13, 2008 at 11.06am November 8, 2008 Posted by jodi on November 8, 2008 at 11.08am
Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (and more!)
These sweet little dress prints are 5 x 10 inches, a mixture of Sharpie drawing, watercolour, woodcut, chine colle and wood intaglio. Holy crap! There are a lot of layers packed into these little darlings. And I’ll be selling them cheap to help finance the Lendrum I’m secretly hoping to bring home with me.
This is woodcut and chine colle, using the Ambassador Bridge block I carved for the On Crossing project. I have a small series of these, some on Japanese paper and some on rag, and they’re all different.
These teeny-tiny dress prints are 3 x 4 and 2 x 3 inches and have woodcut, lithography (on some), chine colle and wood intaglio. I want to pinch their cheeks.
Graphica Creativa ‘09
chasing my tail in the driveway whenever a car drives by
betty goodwin, 1923 - 2008
swimmer no. 3, mixed media drawing, 1983
ideas
new drawings in progress
