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| Looking through the window into my favorite coffee shop
I went out just to look in the windows at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Loft Literary Center. The coffee shop that's part of the complex, patronized by artists and writers, was my home away from home before the virus. Washington Avenue this evening was devoid of pedestrians (unlike the park or the Stone Arch Bridge which was probably again thronged with pedestrians, joggers, runners in groups of two, three, and four--WTF Minneapolis?)
Anyway, there's alway a window devoted to a large piece of art at MCBA. You remember art exhibits, right?
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| The window of the gift store at MCBA |
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| Minneapolis--as beautiful as ever. |
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| My yoga and t'ai chi chih studio
These two regular practices have been part of my life for some time. This routine has never been more important to me. What's getting you through?
New pandemic paranoia: Panting joggers, runners, and bicyclists who speed by me with huffing and puffing (droplets?) as they pass. Walkers seem to be much more respectful of the 6-feet rule. I wish we could all have masks. I'm working on a less-traveled route.
New favorite pandemic amusement: Kitchen island ping-pong. Unfortunately, the net and the paddles are nowhere to be found. Yesterday a friend and I tried wooden spoons as paddles, then rubber spatulas. Ultimately we settled on the metal pancake-flipping type spatulas. Without a net. The laughing was an immune booster for sure.
I counted steps on the most circuitous route possible through my condo, including bathrooms and closets. 300-- If I go around the dining room table and the kitchen island four times. How many times a day can I do that? How many steps can you walk through your space?
I am a student of the book arts, and yesterday I worked on my first small drum-leaf bound book with content. Here are the first three pages. If I never get my full-length memoir out into the world, there's this.
 
And I also worked on this zine about seasonal depression. It kinda translates to a pandemic lockdown, I think. It's hard to read because of the way it needs to be laid out, but you get the idea. All the marbled paper snips were marbled by me. It's pasted up the old-fashioned way rather than designed on a computer. Because paper.
Start on the bottom left, then move to the bottom right and work your way up and around.
Orange really is the most amazing color. What's your happy color?
Gratitude once again to all health care workers, and to the groceries clerks, delivery people,
law enforcement personnel, and everyone who is working.
xo
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| View from my desk.
Our governor, Tim Walz, was quoted in this morning's paper as saying that Minnesotans need to view this pandemic not as a blizzard, but as a winter. If it doesn't snow where you are, insert your own weather metaphor. Not as a wildfire, but as hell. Not as a hurricane, but as ....I dunno. A washing machine stuck in the spin cycle...for months?
I went to my paper making internship (because I work alone in a huge space) yesterday and spent seven hours dipping handmade paper into a vat of indigo. When I wasn't doing that I was spraying down handmade ochre paper for flattening. Ochre and indigo are two excellent colors to spend time with during a pandemic, I think.
And my boss gave me an old scanner which I hope will function with my vintage macbook air. That would be swell.
I've been calling friends. Have a date to FaceTime with more friends tonight. Gonna keep doing that.
The teaching myself to draw is crazy. After a couple of days, I realized I couldn't figure this out without help. I bought "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." And I'm very excited. What the author has to say about drawing is stupendously good. I just thought it was innate talent--that I don't have. You just need the skill set, she says. I hope she's right and I'm wrong. It's like learning to read, she says.
The first assignment is to make three pre-instruction drawings. OMG.
How are you? What are you doing? How do you feel? Tell me.
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