Sponge Dance

I really wasn't looking forward to today.

This project is awful... nothing is going right. Rodney assures us that our problems are average problems and are to be expected. I'm glad we get to learn from our mistakes but I'd rather not have to go through this.

There were three things that made today almost an okay day.

1) Rick Ankiel hit a GRAND SLAM in the 6th inning to propel the Cardinals ahead of the Reds.




2) The headbands that we ordered last week arrived today and five of us rocked out while printing in headbands representing our homeland.




3) After the Cardinals game, I went back to the studio, put on my headband, got some major things accomplished, put the needle the Michael Jackson Thriller LP and danced my little butt off.

(Sorry for the quality... not quite as smooth as in person, but that was taken with my phone! The miracle of modern technology!)

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How to Fix Things

I forgot how exhausting sponging can be. Especially when you're trying really hard to do a good job. Sharon and I got going around 8:30 and went until 12:00. That's a solid three and a half hours of Wax-On, Wax-Off. I was glad that I finally got my first round of sponging over with. The bad thing was that I missed a long and rather important demo on the other side called "How to Fix Things".

After sponging, I went home for lunch and turned on the Cardinals game which conveniently started at noon. After the lunch hour was up, I trudged back to Tamarind... only to get there, be overwhelmed with how tired I was and how much I had to do, and turn around and come back home. I hung out on my futon for a bit and watched the rest of the game. Then went back to the studio to face the music. (The Cardinals lost to the Astros AGAIN, by the way.)

At first, it seemed like these counter etching projects were going to be super easy. I mean, all we're really doing is adding more information to a stone or plate we'd already prepared and then printing it. But adding things is a lot harder than it seems and all sorts of problems manifest themselves. Of course, Rodney had this planned out. He knew we would screw it all up. Which is why he was prepared with a crucial demo on "How to Fix things"... which I would miss out on.

My stone was no exception to the failure that was spreading through the studio like head lice in a daycare center. Remember those lovely big black borders I was painting on my stone in the last post? Well... they didn't exactly come out as planned. They showed up, but weren't inking up fully. I had to reinforce the borders with super-greasy-shop-black and then put it to bed for the night. Hopefully, as my stone sleeps with it's blanket of blackness, it will soak some of it in and be more receptive to it next time I roll up. That's the plan anyway.

I'd hoped to work more on things tonight but I was so mentally and physically exhausted that I decided to go home around 5:30pm. I'd been wanting to make the Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper sauce, but I needed someone to share with. I baited Patrick by offering to let him watch the Brewers-Cubs game at my house. The dinner turned out super-great:



I also made cookies!



Unfortunately, the dinner and the cookies just couldn't overcome the outcome of the baseball game. Milwaukee made it interesting, but with the bases loaded and two outs in the 9th inning, they just couldn't pull it off. The final was Chicago 5, Milwaukee 4. Poor Patrick.



Here are a few more pictures courtesy of Valpuri. She was actually able to get a picture of Mick's face! Something I haven't done yet. You know the top of his head well. Now here's the rest of him (making a funny face, no less):



This is Alex thinking, I wish I had a different printing partner. Why'd I get stuck with this crazy?



And while I do not condone flashing gang signs, it is an inside joke between me and Valpuri... and it must be done.

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P-3 and P-4: Counter-Etching

For the past few days, Rodney has been locked away in his office reviewing the final manuscript of the Tamarind Book. Normally, Rodney is glued to our hips, constantly circulating through the studio, offering advice and demonstrations. In his absence, we mostly just sit around and read magazines and stare off into space. Kind of like this:



Just kidding... I'm sure Yuli was thinking about something very important. Or maybe trying to translate what us native English speakers are saying.

Yesterday morning we had our class with Marge. But Marge is also very busy with the Tamarind book so it was MOVIE DAY for us! We started with Four Stones for Kanemitsu, the 1973 Oscar nominated documentary about a print made at Tamarind. The master printer in the film is Serge Lozingot, who had the best hair ever and never wore gloves and smoked in the studio. I'd like to grow my hair out like Serge's. I'm sorry but I couldn't find a picture. I'll keep looking.

We also watched a couple of other films. One was an old old film from the 40's of this guy in the middle of a park printing lithographs in a white long sleeved dress shirt and tie. It didn't have sound but was fun to watch because he was tasting all the chemicals! Crazies.

The other was some 1999 University of New Mexico production that was painful to watch. The only good part was when they showed Rodney circa 1999. Awesome.

Yesterday we also started working hardcore on our next projects. Here is a picture of my stone in progress. You can see that I've added some new drawings and solid flats to my counter-etched stone. In this picture I'm using a foam brush to paint a border of super-greasy shop black mix on the outside of my drawing. If all goes well, this border will print just as I paint it, solid black with no pinholes.



Once we got the new drawings on, we had to re-etch our plates and stones. The areas from the last projects that remained on the stone only needed etched half as much. The newly drawn areas would need to be etched from scratch. Since all of these areas are so close to each other, we had to be careful about what strengths of etches we were putting where and for how long. Here is Patrick etching his plate:



Here is the top of Mick's head (again):



In addition to etching our plates and stones, we also had to get our paper ready for the next round of editioning. This time we are using a white Rives BFK paper in the same size as last time. Here is Celina showing good tearing form (maybe):



And a beautiful stack of paper ready to be marked for registration:



In the afternoon today we got a demo on how to proof these next projects. Because there are so many different things going on in the plates and stones, we have to be selective about how we roll our ink. The big black borders will require a lot of ink, the finer drawing in the middle will require less. So we need to roll in a way that will give the appropriate amount of ink to each part. It's tricky.

After class today, six of us walked down to a nearby Indian restaurant for half-off Indian goodness. Here's Patrick putting the smack down while Ana makes raptor noises:



In baseball news, my Cardinals were briefly back at .500 after a win yesterday and had moved into second place. Tonight they lost and the Brewers won... so we're right back to where we started from.

I have to get up early tomorrow morning so that I can sponge on the "Pro-side" (Professional Printing Side of Tamarind... where the Senior and Master Printers work). I was supposed to sponge on Tuesday afternoon but it turned out that I wasn't needed. So tomorrow will be my first day at the job. Here is Valpuri sponging today for senior printer Sharon:

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My First Print at Tamarind!

This was actually three or four days ago, but now that I've got my camera cord, you can see it for yourself.

I present... My First Print at Tamarind or at least my first printing at Tamarind.



I was on the electric press so all I had to do was push a button, but it's still exciting nonetheless. If you click on the picture, you can see my fancy customized Tackach apron with Tamarind, Tandem Press, Wisconsin, and Mizzou logos.

Speaking of excitement, scroll down through the previous couple of posts and you'll find those pictures I promised a while back.

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"I'm Pretty!"

Yesterday

Despite the fact that I had to go into work yesterday, it was a pretty good day overall. Alex and I printed from 11am to about 3:30pm. We both finished editioning our plates with no major complications. Mick and Patrick finished printing around the same time, so after cleaning up, we all rode over to Wal-Mart together to get some groceries for the BBQ.

I decided to make Spicy Spinach Artichoke Dip and I also got some things to make Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce later in the week. I've still got quite a bit of food from my previous shopping trips with Carrie, so I didn't need much more than that. Mick was surprised I wasn't buying more Mountain Dew, but I assured him that I had stocked up before classes started and that I should be good for a few more weeks.

It was fun grocery shopping as a group... especially with Mick, who isn't used to such giant grocery stores. Patrick was giving him trouble because he bought a giant bag of Tater Tots. Mick thought about it for a second and said in his Irish brogue, "I've never had them before." Fair enough. Everyone should get a giant bag of frozen Tater Tots every now and again.

Here we are trying to sort out our purchases in the checkout line:



After grocery shopping, we decided that I would just go straight to Patrick's to start preparing food. Pat had gotten a ton of meat and vegetables to grill. I was glad that I made my dish there, since Pat has a lot more kitchen utensils than I do. Although we both rent from the same guy, his apartment was furnished with fancy things like a colander and serving spoons.

The other printers started showing up a little after six and we spent the next few hours grilling and eating and socializing. It was good to be somewhere besides my house and Tamarind. Here's the grill-master hard at work in the wind and rain:



To make the day even better, the Cardinals won again yesterday, while the Brewers and Cubs lost. They are now one game under .500 and only two games behind the first place Cubs.

Today

We had a counter-etching demo early in the morning. Rodney used my plate as an example, which will save me a half hour or so of work later. It's always good to be the guinea pig! Usually, with a plate or stone, once you've etched it, you can't go back into it and draw more. Counter-etching resensitizes the stone or plate so that you can continue working on it. It also serves as a deep cleaning on plates with scummy edges. For our next two projects, we are to practice counter-etching the plate and stone from the first projects, and then draw back into them with different materials.

After the demo we made a long walk over to get fitted for respirators. I have a respirator that I got in Wisconsin at a Home Depot... but I was never professionally fitted for it. I figured I should just go ahead and fork over the $45 and get a new one with the rest of the class.

Here I am with my respirator on:



Here are Ana and Yuli:



The fitting was a lot of fun. There were a couple of people in the class who, because of facial shape or nose structure, couldn't fit into the same mask as everyone else. After a few tries they eventually got it. The man that was doing the fitting told Valupuri (from Finland) that her Scandinavian cheekbones were causing all of her fitting problems. Through the muffle of her respirator she countered, "I'm Pretty!"



It was very amusing.

Once the respirators were properly fitted, we had to do some tests to make sure that they were okay for us to use. We put on our respirators and these giant hoods and then the guy sprayed bitter solution inside the hood to see if we could smell it at all. If you could feel the bitter solution burning your throat, then you knew that you had a leak in your respirator.

This is what the hood looked like... now imagine all eight of us standing in a row wearing these things.



This afternoon, Rodney will be going over the next couple of projects. I'm pretty tired, so I probably will make it a short night tonight. I'm looking forward to coming home and crashing.

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The Rest of My Week

It's Sunday morning and I'm feeling a little bit rough. Maybe it was the long exhausting week... or maybe it was the party outside my window that kept me up until two in the morning. I'm not sure.

The whole "having Sunday off" thing turned out to be too good to be true. Looks like I'll be back in the studio for probably another four or five hours today. We just couldn't get it all done yesterday. We worked hard from 9:30am to 2:30pm... and we still only got our stones editioned before the next group arrived to use the press. To be quite honest though, I was a little relieved when they showed up. The wooden handles on the leather ink roller had caused blisters to start forming on my hands, and my head was so tired from counting passes of ink that I didn't think I could handle another edition.

But enough about the litho things... what else has been going on?

Food

My biggest excitement this week has mostly been leaving the studio to get food with my fellow printers. A few times I went to fast food places nearby and the rest of the time I just came home and made lunch or dinner for myself. The biggest thing I've made so far was probably Creamy Tomato Basil Bisque. Unfortunately, I don't have a blender here... so it turned out more like Chunky Tomato Basil Bisque and wasn't as good. I also made spaghetti one night, which was the best spaghetti I've ever made. I almost regretted inviting my fellow printer, Ana, over for dinner because I wanted to eat the whole pot myself.

One of the printers is Korean and her mom was in town visiting and getting her daughter settled in. She invited everyone over for lunch on Friday and it was the best thing ever. All eight of us crammed down into the little garden apartment and we greeted with a giant feast of Korean Food. It was fantastic.

Baseball

I haven't had a lot of time to enjoy my subscription to MLB.TV. I'm usually stuck in the studio during gametimes and can't get the thing to work on the computers over there. I did watch the game vs. Atlanta yesterday and was pleased to see my Cardinals rally for a 5-4 win. I never would have believed it a few months ago, but there is still actually hope for the postseason. Crazy.

One of my fellow student printers, Patrick, is from Milwaukee and he is a big Brewers fan. This pleases me for several different reasons. First of all, I'm very glad not to be the only person in the group of eight who is interested in sports. There are three computers in the student area and one is usually locked into the Cardinals webpage and the other to the Brewers webpage. We'll run back and forth to check the scores and give updates to each other. This includes giving each other high fives or fist bumps when someone scores, and condolences when someone loses. The other interesting thing about the dynamic is that our teams are actually rivals in the National League Central division. For most of the year, Milwaukee has been in first place. But now the Chicago Cubs have taken the lead. The Cardinals trail closely behind in third place. So Patrick and I currently share a hatred of the Cubs as well and celebrate when they lose.

Of course, it's all fun and games now... but once the Cardinals creep past the Cubs and Brewers for first place in the NL Central, we'll see if it remains so friendly. The one things that we can both agree on is that we'd rather have the other team go to the playoffs than see the Cubs go. Stupid Cubs.

Packages

The first of my care packages arrived yesterday. Carrie sent me some of my mail and some magazines and some treats and a shiny new Nalgene water bottle. (I never drink enough water). It also included a new caricature drawing pencil that I had ordered shortly before I left Six Flags. We use CARAN d'ACHE mechanical pencils and mine had gotten so worn that the lead would constantly slip when I was pressing down hard. It was really really annoying. I'm glad to have a new one.

The other package was completely unexpected. It came from my Six Flags buddy Jason and included a nice letter and a nice comfortable Mountain Dew t-shirt.

Neighbors

While my guest house is in a very secure fenced in area off the street with lots of trees around and such, I try to be mindful of what I'm doing when my shades are open. The problem is that three of my windows fall in the fenced in backyard of the main house where my new neighbor Katie lives. While this hasn't actually happened, she could be sitting at her patio table and if my blinds were shut wrong, she could see into my house while I ran around naked. Needless to say, I don't usually run around naked. But the other night, I had gotten into my pajamas and was relaxing at my computer desk, talking on the phone to my pal Sabrina, and I hear this weird knock at my kitchen window. My hair was all flattened and crazy because I had been wearing a hat all day. And I just had on boxer shorts, so I was scrambling to find some pants to throw on. To top it all off, my kitchen blinds weren't shut all the way, so I'm sure I looked funny running around the house, cleaning up messes and putting on pants before I opened the door.

This was the first time that I met my new neighbor. She seemed very nice and informed me that she was having a party the next night. She wanted to assure me that she didn't normally throw a lot of parties but that she was having her fellow grad students and professors over for the evening. The party was supposed to go from roughly 6pm to 11pm and I told her that it wasn't a problem at all. She even invited me over to the party, and while I knew I probably wouldn't go, I gave the obligatory, "Yeah, I might be able to make it."

So yesterday evening, I'm enjoying not being at Tamarind and watching the Cardinals game. It started getting a little dark in the apartment, so I flipped on the lights and sat back down. A few seconds later I hear another knock at the kitchen window. This time I had good hair and was wearing pants, so I got the door and found my neighbor hanging over the fence. She invited me to the party again and offered to bring me food. I told her I was watching a baseball game and that I would come by later. Of course, I don't know why those words came out of my mouth. Because the last thing I wanted to do was go hang out with a bunch of people that I didn't know at all. So then I was trapped. My game ended and I wanted to go hang out at Tamarind or maybe go for a walk. But if I left my house, my too-close-for-comfort neighbor would see me and make me come to her party. So I just stayed inside. I was held hostage in my own house, basically. It was awful.

The worst part is that the party ended up going until two in the morning! And her patio is right outside my bedroom window, so I could hear everything that was going on. I didn't want to shut the window because that would require me to open the blinds and I didn't want to draw attention to myself. Especially after not showing up to the party. The neighbor probably would have knocked on my bedroom window and told me to come out there or something.

Today

I'm going back to Tamarind at 11 this morning and hope not to be there forever. Patrick is having a barbecue at his house tonight and I'd hoped to make something to take, but I'm not sure when I'll have the time to go the the store and make something. Maybe I can make up a big pot of Ramen noodles. (ha ha)

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