Straight from the airplane

Into the studio!! As it should be. The house hunting has come to an end, for now. A temporary end. We are back in Salida, and I went up to the college to use the printmaking press once again!! Yay!

Today, I decided to print bugs. It was a lesson in entomology. Last night, I made some bugs out of cardboard and styrofoam. Actually, only one was made out of cardboard, and three were made out of styrofoam. I drew them from photos found on the internet - thank you google - and cut them out. Then, I glued the legs and things (heads, antennae, etc.) together. The reason I made them as separate parts is because I wanted to see the definition between joints. So today, my bugs were used for art. What I discovered is that glue holds together much better on cardboard than on styrofoam. I also like the look of the cardboard bug much better than the styrofoam. But you can be the judge of that. This first one is a styrofoam bug. This is a crude photo, but I am just trying to give you an idea.

This next photo is one of the last prints I made today, with the large cardboard beetle. What I like, besides durability, is the way the cardboard caused a clear white outline around the bug, because the cardboard doesn't give like the styrofoam. He only lost a leg, whereas the beetle from the previous print lost pretty much all of his parts (head, legs, antennae). In fact, the smaller beetle made of styrofoam I ended up throwing away, because so many parts had fallen off. The reason it is better when the parts don't fall off is because when the parts fall off, you find them stuck to the brayer, rather than on the bug. It becomes a lesson in patience to piece everything back together on the plate, rather than having them already there in one piece. This larger beetle, from cardboard, was saved, since it was still mainly intact. Next time, all the insects I make will be out of cardboard. Still, I had a lot of fun, and I am glad I went up there.

In case you are wondering, the house hunting trip was good overall, despite a few glitches. It seems most likely that we will be settling in the desert, either in Palm Springs or maybe Yucca Valley. So at least we have narrowed it down. Even though we did find a couple of houses that might be good possibilities, we will probably wait to put an offer in on anything until Matthias is finished with his training at Cathay Pacific. Stay tuned! More adventures to come in life and art...I leave you with a photo of yucca valley.