Texas National and other Exhibitions

I just found out that I was accepted into another show, this time in Texas. The Texas National 2013 Exhibition will be held at the Cole Art Center in Nacogdoches, Texas. The show is put on by the Stephen F. Austen State University School of Art.

The Juror this year is Peter Selz. According to the Texas National press release, Selz is "...past curator at MoMA and founding director, University Art Museum at Berkeley; renowned art historian who curated shows on Giacometti, Graves and Rothko, has written for many art publications, recipient of numerous awards, and author of The Art of Engagement..."

"Taka Kozonaka" for the Texas National Exhibition

I actually entered the show because of the juror. I have made an effort this year to enter more national shows. Call For Entry.org makes it easy to apply to a bunch of shows at once, so I got myself organized, uploaded a bunch of images to their site and started applying. Over the holiday break, I basically applied to everything that seems reasonable, but this show I believe I chose for the name of the juror. He is a big name, but he also was curating important shows at an interesting time. I read a little about him after I was accepted into the show. He seems to be a fan of good art as opposed to trendy art and it is interesting to see him talk about Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.

"SRAM Gears" for The CVG Show

The interview I link to above includes a portrait of Peter Selz, titled "Portrait of Peter Selz." Interestingly, the Texas National press release also includes this image, but it is labeled differently. On the Texas site, it is called "Portrait of the artist" and in that context I thought it might be a portrait of Phong Bui, the artist who drew the image. When I initially looked at the image I guessed it was Selz, but the title, next to a description of an art historian, confused me.

"Ooishi Pod" for Women's Works

My strategy of applying to a bunch of shows this year seems to have been pretty successful. I applied to  seven shows, I was invited to show work at four and one is still in review. In the Fall I had work in the Mighty Tieton 10x10x10 show (I just went back to look at my posts and discovered I wrote but never published a review of the show), which I would have entered anyway and which motivated me to start applying for a batch of shows on Call For Entry. I also have work that should be on its way home soon from The CVG Show in Bremerton and I have work that I just sent to Illinois for Women's Works.

"Aka Marumado" for Tieton 10x10x10

The Texas National Exhibition runs April 13 through June 8, 2013 for any of of my readers who plan to be near Nacogdoches this spring and summer. "Taka Kozonaka," the piece I will be sending to this show, was one of the very few non-bike-parts pieces I finished this summer while I was working on my bike parts project.

Graffiti and Street Art

This weekend I finished "Graffiti and Street Art" by Anna Waclawek. I wouldn't have picked up this book for its cover design or the blurb on the back, but I was looking for a book about graffiti and this was one of the few options. Luckily, the content of the book was much better than what I was expecting.

not an inspiring cover

Before reading this book my knowledge of graffiti was pretty limited but probably not more so than your average college art instructor. It certainly wasn't a standard topic when I was in college and even in graduate school there was no formal way to educate oneself on the topic from inside the academy. When I lived in the midwest I probably would have generally supported the validity of graffiti as an art form with no real idea about the history or significance. Once I moved to Yakima, I started to see graffiti as an urban nuisance and a gang-related crime. I didn't see much evidence of anyone exploring the expressive or "art" aspects of the medium, just tagging garages and abandoned buildings. I painted over graffiti on my garage and sometimes the fence and got annoyed at the vandals and at the neighbors who didn't get their graffiti covered quickly. Visiting "home" in the midwest, I marveled at the fresh clean garages and fences on every street.

graffiti inside the tunnel at the local park

In the last couple years I have started to see more expressive graffiti in Yakima. I see what Ms. Waclawek informs me are called "throw-ups," which are the large, filled-in signatures, as opposed to the linear signatures or tags that show up on my garage and on abandoned buildings, fences and even trucks all over Yakima.

a "throw-up" at Jagz barber shop

The Salvation Army and Jagz barber shop in town have both commissioned graffiti style artwork as advertising or decoration or even graffiti prevention on their buildings. On the way to YVCC there is a line of fence that has several throw-ups, though I have no idea if these were allowed or requested by the owners or if they were put up illegally. From an artistic or visual culture perspective, these works are much more pleasant to look at than the ubiquitous tags.

(part of) The Salvation Army graffiti style mural

Other than my personal experience with illegal tagging on my property and the second-hand experience of larger scale local graffiti works, my experience is limited to watching "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and confronting concerns over lettering style in my experimental "Mural in a Quarter" class at Yakima Valley Community College. In 2007, students in this class designed and installed a mural in the Sherar Gymnasium Foyer at Yakima Valley Community College. As part of the process, the students had to propose their design to a college committee for approval. Their initial designs were met with hesitancy because of some graffiti style lettering and the students were asked to revise their plans.

the completed mural without graffiti style lettering

In the context of a city infested with tagging and starting to exhibit more expressive throw-ups, I wanted to learn more about graffiti. I went looking for an academic treatment of the subject and "Graffiti and Street Art" was the most promising looking book I found at the Barnes and Noble in Seattle.

graffiti on Jagz barber shop

After a disappointing introduction, I enjoyed the book and eventually was impressed with the treatment of the subject. The book starts with a history of signature graffiti (tagging) in the 70s. I think it is this first section of the book where I find the writing to be repetitive and elementary. The history was useful, but I felt like the author was trying to hard to make the early tagging into Fine Art. The author also tries to deconstruct the symbolism in the tags and larger graffiti pieces, but there isn't much that needs explaining. A crown means king, a star and underlining add emphasis. The graffiti culture also was less interesting to me.

A Yakima "Street Art" poster

Most of the book talks about what I call expressive or artistic graffiti and street art that is related but distinct from the origins of signature graffiti. I was most impressed with the inclusion of unusual media including yarn bombing and delicately cut paper installed in the street. There were plenty of high quality illustrations, almost all were in color, and I thought the author did a particularly nice job of supporting her written ideas with visual imagery. The artists represent a wide range of contemporary graffiti art and "post-graffiti" street art. The author will use several artists to support a topic in an early section and then refer to the artist again with new images in a later section. By the end you feel like you recognize the work of the various artists.

graffiti on the Baskin Robbins building

I had never heard of artists cleaning dirty city walls to create reverse graffiti images visible in the contrast between the dirty and newly clean sections of the wall. My husband actually wrote on our sidewalk with a pressure washer, essentially cleaning the sidewalk in a pattern that spells out a name, but I didn't make the connection between that and graffiti writing or art. How fascinating, how beautiful and how unexpected to create this "illegal" art in a manner that is ambiguous in its legal status. Is it illegal to clean city walls? 

anti-tagging message below The Salvation Army mural

Elementary Clay Outreach

It has been my goal with this blog to try to write twice a week or, at the very least, once a week. Usually I don't have any trouble keeping up. Lately, however, I have found it hard to keep myself motivated. I suppose I can figure it out, I've had a major schedule shift for my daily workout and am teaching a different set of classes this quarter. This quarter I am also supposed to be writing my self-assessment for work but I am finding the task to be harder than it should be.

Sometimes I reach a point where I realize that just doing the work will make me feel better, but I still don't want to do it. I don't spend a lot of time in front of the TV or on the computer, but I still manage to find ways to avoid if I want to. And avoiding what should get done makes me feel that much worse for not doing it.

As for writing in the blog, I have been feeling like the most important issues rattling around in my brain right now are verboten. I spend oodles of time thinking about some issues that have to do with the classes I am currently teaching but most of the issues seem to be a little too sensitive to discuss openly and I because I haven't been writing about the issues, I haven't figured out if there is something I can say publicly about them. In writing the first three paragraphs here, I am aware that I am creating a most audience un-friendly post. However, I am also aware that one of the reasons I set myself this twice a week goal for writing the blog was because of the benefits that come from writing the blog, namely, the opportunity to think deeply and personally about the issues that are rattling around in my brain. I will now proceed to use more pictures and write about something that does invite an outside audience in.


2nd Grade Clay
I do have a couple of things coming up that I am at liberty to discuss. One is that I have agreed to teach a clay lesson to some second graders at Apple Valley Elementary in West Valley. The YVCC art department was contacted by an Apple Valley PTA mom about presenting some art lessons to their students because the students don't have art classes. I repeat, the students don't have ANY art class. The horror!

So, as I am trying to get my head around the idea that there are elementary schools where the students DON'T HAVE ANY ART CLASSES, I am also trying to remember how to teach clay to second graders. When I lived in Cedar Rapids, I taught art classes for the City Parks and Recreation Department. I taught all K-12 grade levels and kids as young as preschool and some adult classes. The classes were small, we had basically no budget and I was pretty much on my own for setting up classes and teaching them. It was a good experience, but it was also 10 years ago.

I couldn't find the real logo version of this so I made my own with my daughter's stickers

For the past two years I have done a clay lesson for my daughter's pre-school class. Second graders have more dexterity and more ability to anticipate the end result, but I'm not sure they are that fundamentally different from pre-schoolers in wanting to play with clay. For that matter, adults taking a one-day clay lesson usually just want to play with clay. With clay, I think a flexible but not too difficult project can work well for very young kids and older students all the way up to adults. I think teenagers are probably the hardest group to please. They tend to be least forgiving and most likely to label the project as stupid or uncool.

preschool bells waiting to be fired

The biggest challenge for this lesson will be that the group includes 70 students. That's right, I am going to teach one clay lesson for 45 minutes to seventy students. What could go wrong? I expect that there will be some adults, but it's hard to guess how many. It is also hard to know how the kids will behave.

I was originally thinking of doing the the bell project I did this summer with the preschool class. I've done the basic project with older kids in Cedar Rapids as well. The bell or rattle sculpture emphasizes the neat qualities of clay, namely, it gets hard when you fire it and can thus make a noise. Kids can simply make a bell with random surface decoration like the pre-schoolers did or they can make figurative bells like my older kids did. The most patient or skillful students can do more surface decoration than average but all the kids will end up with a noisemaker once the pieces are fired.

dog bell made by a little boy in Cedar Rapids who is probably now in college

This bell project consists of a flat base and a coiled, thrown, wrapped slab or pinched body. The trick is to put in a dry rattle before closing the top. With the pre-schoolers I threw a dozen top pieces and had the kids attach the bases, insert the rattles and close the tops. With older kids in Cedar Rapids, it looks like I had them wrap slabs around probably a toilet paper roll support or possibly they free-formed the base with a slab.

bride bell made by a little girl in Cedar Rapids who could conceivably be a bride now herself

The huge group of second graders won't be able to work with slabs, since we won't have access to a slab roller. I certainly am not going to throw 60+ top pieces like I did with the ten preschoolers. I will have to decide whether I want the kids to try to coil-build a rattle, create a pinch pot rattle or scrap the rattle/bell idea all together. I could have the kids make pineapple pots. Pineapple pots are basically press-molded bowls. The kids push balls of clay securely into one another inside a styrofoam or paper bowl. As the clay dries it shrinks and pops out of the bowl. I did this with adults at YVCC for an Empty Bowls fundraiser several years ago, but it doesn't work well if the balls of clay aren't pressed together well.

In looking online, I found this guy making simple clay rattles that are too quick and maybe too small, but could be combined with my bell forms to create slab-free bell/rattles. The most important things to keep in mind as I prepare are that the kids will like playing with clay and should be allowed freedom to squish and stick things into the clay and to scratch and scrape the surface of the clay. If this can be achieved while also creating more than a solid lump of clay, the parents will also be happy. The kids will probably be happy with a lump.

I will probably make a bunch of copies of step-by-step visual instructions for the process. Having taught a lesson at Davis High School in Yakima, I now know not to expect that the classroom will be quiet enough that all the students can hear me speak. I also will want a convenient way to help the adult helpers help the kids.

Inventory in and out

I just picked up my work from The Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University. Yakima River Diaries is over and suddenly I have a lot more inventory and a much messier studio. I did go so far as to unpack the work I brought home, but then I realized that I hadn't upacked the work that came home from the gallery shows I was in over the holiday.

my work at Yakima River Diaries

My studio has also become a temporary home for the boxes, bags, old clothes and printers that were removed from our living space over the holidays. We replaced two semi-functioning printers by replacing them both with one that works for often than it doesn't. My studio is heated separately so over the winter we tend not to spend time out there because we don't keep the heater on and the studio gets cold. Because it is cold outside and because the studio isn't used over the winter, the studio becomes the stopping point for things that should go out to the trailer for recycling or on to goodwill.

I will have to reclaim the studio for art before the summer, however, since I am having people visit for the Larson Gallery's Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios on May 18. Luckily spring break comes before the tour. Also, my mom has offered to help us get the house ready for the tour. I'm hoping to clean the studio over spring break and install some of my wall piece in the house. Then spread the serious cleaning out over several weeks. No one in their right mind would plan to clean ahead of time when living with a five-year-old--at least not if they planned for the place to stay clean.

Ooishi Pod--detail

After an enjoyable afternoon in Ellenburg with visits to old favorites Gallery One, Sugar Thai (please move to Yakima) and the Children's Activity Museum, my daughter and I stopped by Bailey's Biblilomania Books because my mother-in-law's dog's name is Bailey. I was impressed with the variety of books, especially since they had more than one shelf of art books and they had at least three clay books. Even Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle only had books on polymer clay. But more than the selection, I was impressed with the fact that the owner had set up a coloring table with coloring pages. This was the first time since my daughter could walk that I was able to look at as many books as I wanted when she was with me.

We took the Canyon Road home because it was a beautiful sunny day--sorry family in the Midwest and East coast. People were out fishing and watching the hawks and big horn sheep. I even saw a heron fly overhead.

When we got back I packed up a piece to send to Woodstock. The piece will be in a juried show, Women's Works, at the Old Courthouse Arts Center in Woodstock, IL. The website is pretty vague on information but the show runs March 7 through April 28 with a reception from 7-9 on March 16. I won't be able to go, but perhaps folks I know in the midwest will be down that way. I would post hours, but based on the outdated state of the Old Courthouse Gallery website, I wouldn't trust the times anyway.

Ooishi Pod (currently en route to Illinois)

Now that my inventory is back home, I guess its either time to enter some more shows or find shelf space in my studio until May.

Throwing Lessons

Tonight The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima is hosting Light Night, a fundraiser for Larson Gallery and The Seasons.

Besides the lighted hair show and music performances and the light themed art show and the fire dancers, there will be quite a few items auctioned off at the event. Some of the items are jewelry, tickets to other events and experiences and artworks.

I have been asked to donate a private throwing lesson for the auction. I think there is some demand for private lessons, but I don't know if this demand is attached to a willingness to pay for a private lesson. Of course students always sign up for my throwing classes at YVCC. I have had several requests to give private lessons, but the only request that has turned into a private lesson was a request from my mother.

I love teaching pottery at YVCC and I enjoyed teaching my mother to throw. It will be interesting to see how a private lesson compares with teaching my mother or a class full of students. The lesson will probably be at my home studio, unless the person who purchases the lesson owns their own wheel. It will also matter whether the person wants to just dabble in pottery or really wants to learn how to throw regularly. My mother took to throwing more quickly than the average student. I often find that students who have been around clay or even other art media have an easier time learning the throwing basics.

Knowing the audience that is likely to attend Light Night it may be that my private lesson student is familiar with art and even owns his or her own wheel. Just yesterday I answered a question for a fellow Yakima artist about her kiln elements and in the last week I heard of two people who were asking about private lessons.

Stencils

I decided to bring home this piece to work on over the weekend so I could try a few techniques in my spare time. I rarely build sculpture at work, since the majority of my classes are throwing classes and sculpture takes significantly more time than thrown pieces. This quarter I am teaching a hand-building class and wanted to work on this piece while the students were coil building to show them some steps in the process. 

my coil built piece after the weekend work

After I built the piece, I wanted to finish it to an acceptable level, though I had run out of class time and had limited hours in the studio outside of class. I decided to experiment with a couple of stenciling processes to see if they would work on this scale and with a high level of detail. 

detail view with some paper stencils adhered to the surface

I had originally intended to buy some large stickers that had delicate lines and patterning but I was unable to find any. I searched Michael's and eventually found some decorative punches in the scrapbooking area. I bought a large daisy punch by Martha Stewart because it was on sale. The pattern it creates is delicate and visually interesting and If you line up the paper differently when starting to punch the second row, you can get a twisting design as opposed to sets of circles. 

daisy punch with twisting paper "stencil"

The punch is easy to use and cuts evenly on regular paper if you put enough pressure on it. My daughter had trouble getting the leverage to get it to punch through, though she may have fared better on a lower table. I punched some used copier paper, some junk mail and one of my daughter's sheets of construction paper to use as clay stencils. I then wet the surface of the clay slightly and pressed the paper on. The paper stencils stick to the surface best if they are wet and are then pressed on. I used a paintbrush at first to wet the clay and the paper, but the thin lines of the paper started to rip so I switched to using a damp sponge and pressing gently onto the paper instead of brushing or wiping with moving strokes. 

stencils on clay surface after wiping with a wet sponge

Once the paper was stuck to the surface, I used a damp sponge to wipe away the exposed surface of the clay. Wiping the clay with a wet sponge washes away the clay and leaves a rough surface. The sand or grog that gives our class clay its grit and texture stay while the clay is washed away. The clay under the paper should be protected from the wet sponge and not wipe away. I have used this technique many times in a class demonstration, but I usually use just one relatively small, thick stencil of paper. The paper stencil, when removed, leaves a raised smooth area of clay the size and shape of the paper stencil. 

wiping in progress

I had never tried the technique on a large scale or with such delicate stencils as these. I punched several strips of stencils out of the different papers and adhered them to the leather-hard clay surface with a sponge. Once wet and pressed into the clay, the stencil stuck to the clay so I was able to wipe the surface with a sponge and not risk the paper stencil moving.

the white stencil section has not been wiped yet

The technique seemed to work relatively well, but the thin paper tended to rip and it was difficult to know how much I needed to wash away the clay surface to leave a visible texture change. I ended up hedging my bets and applying white slip inside the daisy stencils before removing the paper. If the paper stencil does not function well to protect the surface from the sponge wash, at least there will be some surface decoration that comes from all the effort of cutting and applying the stencils.

white slip has been added inside some of the daisy stencils

I have not yet removed the paper stencils, but when I do I will be able to see both the white slip decoration and what is visible of the texture change from wiping the clay surface.

In an effort to try several things on this test piece, I bought a second paper punch this weekend and used the contrasting cutouts as white slip stencils on a second area of the sculpture. I bought the second paper punch at Craft Warehouse but it was a different brand. I was disappointed that it didn't punch all the way through the paper and I had to cut out the center section of each stencil. That's 12 small snips on each piece. It gets quite repetitive and annoying.

paper stencils adhered to the leather-hard clay

I punched the stencils from paper that was in our recycle bag. I used a SpaghettiOs label and some used copier paper. I placed the labels and used a damp sponge to press them onto the clay. Once they were adhered to the clay and as flat as I could get them, I brushed white slip onto the surface of the area, covering the stencils and the exposed clay.

paper stencils with initial layer of white slip

After the slip was dry enough to touch without smearing, I used a needle tool to peel away the paper. The copier paper ripped as I peeled it off, but I was able to get the slipped top layer off. The remaining paper should burn off during the firing  or I can pick at it as the clay dries. The shiny SpaghettiOs label peeled away in one piece, leaving a perfectly clear line. Both papers leaked a little, letting slip bleed over into the decoration. When this happened I scraped away the extra slip inside the lines of the stencil with a needle tool or small carving tool.

slipped area after removing stencils

I still have some more work to do the piece, but the going is slow. Once it is finished, I should be able to glaze both areas in such a way that the clay color difference and the surface texture both remain visible or are even highlighted and made more visible.

Bremerton Show

This weekend I went to Bremerton for the first day of The CVG Show 2013 at Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton. I hadn't heard of the show or the gallery before I saw the call for entries on CallForEntry.org (CaFE). I didn't even know where Bremerton was before I applied.

The gallery is good sized and the city is both larger and much harder to get to than I realized. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the show and how broad it was in media, subject and style. I was also surprised by how strange and seemingly poorly organized the events were on Saturday. Just to be clear, I don't actually think that the events were poorly organized. There was clearly money and planning and time that went into the event. I just couldn't figure out why the events would be set up in the way they were.

I believe the big draw of the day was the juror's lecture. I certainly went to the show in large part because of the juror, Alfredo Arreguin. I was curious to see what he chose for inclusion in the show and I was curious to hear him speak. I assume others who traveled from the east came for similar reasons. The show is a statewide show with no media restrictions and no pre-determined theme (unless you count the juror's tastes). The show seemed to be more heavily comprised of Seattle area artists, but the state's population is concentrated in this area, so that seems reasonable. There were at least a handful of central Washington artists in the show, myself included.

"Gears" by Rachel Dorn

The show itself was probably worth the trip. I thought the quality of the work was consistently good. There were almost 130 pieces in the show and I can't remember more than one or two pieces I thought were questionable. However, the events of the day were odd. The first hint that the reception was organized differently from those I usually attend was when we were asked to pay for guests and to limit those guests to only 2 or 3 people. Since the main event and the main draw was the juror's lecture, I see the reason for the limit, but I was sursprised that the reception and lecture were both capped rather than having a drop-in reception and a limited audience for the lecture. The second surprise was that the week of the show we were informed via e-mail that if we hadn't already RSVP'd we couldn't come. I suppose those who didn't RSVP could have stopped by the show that afternoon before the reception moved up the street.

Regardless, I reserved my spot in time and got myself to Seattle. I worked out the ferry system, more or less, and arrived at Bremerton only an hour later than Mapquest and the online ferry schedule suggested and a few minutes before 5. I went in to the show and made my way around the gallery before heading over to the reception a few blocks up at City Hall. The gallery was crowded but navigable and the downstairs had plenty of room.

The "reception" was held in a different building, presumably to afford more space and room for everyone to see the speakers. Once I found the spot (from the language of our e-mail I was expecting to walk up the street, not several blocks), I walked in the doors and stopped immediately behind a wall of people. Being not extremely tall, I stood behind taller people for a while before the wall distinguished itself into two lines. I was standing on the left waiting for something while others on the right were waiting for something else. I waited a while longer and scooted my way to either side to determine that I was in a food line and the other line was for tickets. I had reserved a ticket but had yet to pick it up. I was pretty hungry and there was clearly a huge line and minimal food and I had come up a bit late. On the other hand, I probably needed a ticket to be allowed into the lecture hall.

I switched lines. The shorter ticket line moved relatively quickly. Once I reached the front I told the woman my name. She handed me a ticket but before I had touched it, she took it back, explaining that she keeps it. I considered the four open glass doors behind me, the throng of people filling the whole space shoulder to shoulder, the set of doors on the far side of the hall and the food line that extended directly to the door and realized that an RSVP might be optional after all and switching lines was probably unnecessary.

I returned to the exterior door and the end of the food line. The hors d'oeuvres were evidently designed by someone whose previous employment was setting up gags or stunts for Candid Camera. There were the obligatory tiny plates and napkins and the start, followed by small toast slices and tiny lamb meatballs, each with a little toothpick. Tiny and a bit strange, this was normal reception fare. Next came a small bowl of chicken, tomato and olive salad. I scanned the table for forks, but, finding none, I scooped some salad onto my already-filled tiny plate anyway.

The next hot tray contained a few lonely bits of pork and no visible means for removing the pork from the tray and transporting it onto one's own tiny plate. I considered for a moment and, with the end of the food line imminent, and a 2 hour program to follow, I decided I needed to eat. I pulled a toothpick out of a lamb ball and attempted to stab a hunk of pork. The pork promptly fell apart. I tried another, but the first pork chunk was indicative of the lot. I collapsed the next pork chunk before dropping my toothpick into the tray. I could have abandoned the lost toothpick, secure in the knowledge that no one else would be retrieving pork from this tray either, but I didn't think.

As I was trying to fish out the toothpick a caterer appeared. I asked how one might obtain tiny bits of pork without using one's fingers. I didn't mention my failed attempt with the lost toothpick which was abandoned in a thin layer of pork goo at the edge of the pan. The caterer walked back to the front of the line, picked up a tiny toast and scooped me some pork, depositing pork and tiny toast onto my tiny but now highly stacked plate. The answer being that forks were, apparently not an option at this venue. Now that I think about it, maybe the forks were really, really tiny to match the tiny plates and tiny toast and tiny meat. I should have looked under the napkins.

I decided that the mental flexibility required to acquire and then eat one of the baked tomatoes in the next hot plate was too much for me, now that forks had been eliminated as a possible tool in the premises. Unfortunately soggy tomatoes were the last food option before wine. I don't particularly like wine, but as I looked around for other drink options, all I saw was a table with a stack of empty cups next to an array of flowers in a large vase. Perhaps one was meant to scoop the water out of the vase with the cups or maybe just to carry the cups to the bathroom sink. Or maybe the cups were the answer to how one was to consume the baked tomatoes. I decided not to attempt any of these methods but try wine instead. And who knows, perhaps at fancy tiny parties after long ferry rides I might like wine.

I didn't like the wine, but it did lend a beautiful impossibility to the performance art experience of eating soft food with a toothpick while balancing a tiny plate on one's knees and sitting in a snug space in the midst of total strangers.

After collecting my tiny food and wine, I realized that there were no tables or really any place to stand, so I went into the auditorium area with everyone else (and I mean everyone). Since the city hall didn't afford any other place to be, people were sitting in seats lined up for the upcoming lecture. It was about 5:30 when I sat down and awards weren't scheduled until 6. I was one of the last people to sit down and I claimed one of the few remaining seats in the middle of a row between two groups of friends. I had dressed warmly in reaction to the cold ferry and found brief entertainment in removing my coat while balancing food, drink and program and not knocking into any of my neighbors. Luckily I did not have a fork. I suspect a fork would have thrown off the entire operation.

One smart choice by the organizers of the event was to set up a large screen and project a continuous slide show of all the pieces in the show. While we couldn't actually look at any of the work in the exhibition during the reception, we could look at pictures of the work. And, as it turned out, some of the work was easier to see projected about 100 times larger than real-life. The top prize in two-dimensional work was a tiny embroidered portrait by Azalea Rees (the link is not a real site for her, but, sadly, I couldn't find better) that was amazing, but much easier to see and appreciate on the screen than in the gallery with a crowd.

"Silvan in Thread" by Azalea Rees

I was also lucky enough to grab a seat with an excellent and unobstructed view of the screen. After dumping my tiny plate (I gave in and just ate with my fingers) and my unfinished wine, I was able to watch the pictures for 20 minutes before I started reading a book on my phone.

"Life Support" by Steve Parmelee

The awards presentation at 6 was as exciting as any awards presentation in a distant city can ever be. A lot of people I've never heard of were thanked for their generous support. A handful of locals received local awards and the local crowd loved it. Besides some local awards, the The CVG Show gives three awards each in photography and digital media, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional work. There is also a Best of Show. The awards, like all the work in the show were picked by the juror, Alfredo Arreguin. I liked his choices for almost all the work. My pick for "people's choice" was the first place pick in the three-dimensional category, "Life Support" by Steve Parmelee.

"On his Ridge the Earth Gathers" by Kristen Michael

One of the nicest things Alfredo Arreguin did during his juror talk was to give honorable mentions to several works in each category. During the juror talk he showed images of each honorable mention and award winner and talked a little bit about why he liked the works. He gave an honorable mention to an excellent Yakima artist, Kristen Michael and to a ceramic artist, Sandi Bransford, who has work in the Emerging Artist Exhibition at Allied Arts in Yakima.

"Adorned" by Sandi Bransford

Alfredo Arreguin's juror talk focused primarily on the artists' work, especially the winners and runners up. He was funny and charming, but my favorite thing he said was towards the end of his talk. He told a little story about himself as a young artist, studying with Jacob Lawrence. I don't remember it perfectly, so I may have a few details off, the gist is the same. Jacob Lawrence and a couple other professors were in the process of jurying a show. They saw young Arreguin and told him he should apply because they liked his work. He did and was subsequently rejected from the show. That night, after the bar closed, the depressed Arreguin called them up to complain about not getting in the show. He called the first professor who told him it was 2 am and hung up on him. He called the second professor who yelled at him for calling so late and hung up on him. Then he called Jacob Lawrence who talked to him for 2 hours. Lawrence's advice to Arreguin was to focus on his art and don't worry about not getting into shows or not getting awards or not having everyone like him.

As an artist who had just sat through an hour and half of other people's awards, I appreciated the reminder that awards don't matter. I plan to focus on my work and not worry about what other people think. Well, at least I'll try to do that.