my messy desk & beautiful cat

I worked this weekend because fashion week starts the beginning of september. I am doing the unglamorous part of it all.  I painted in the mostly black base and it took me literally three hours.  I stayed to work (ahead) on my friday painting.  I realized that I spent six hours not talking to anyone.  I had sung along to a song or two but when I moved from the cd player to my ipod I became even more insular.  My body was covered in almost black paint.  It is under my fingernails, the backs of my arms, and even my belly.  The day before I put the first coast and as the paint began to dry it also began to stretch too much and pull out of the staples.  The area that was popping out was under this vent thing that hangs away from the wall and a little up from the floor.  So I had to shimmy on my belly to re-staple the muslin, before it shrunk too terribly.  I still haven't gotten all the paint off yet.  And I used all my body scrub.  A bit painty on my legs.

AK fashion week. We are doing SIX different shows…Johanna did we ever do six before?  Six large jobs in a little over two weeks. The sizes as follows: 17' x 24', 17' x 25', 17' x 68', 24' x 80', 17' x 24', and the last one we don't have a size or an image.

Breaking that down, just for fun…if I was just gessoing (its sort of like the primer) in a straight line, I would be gessoing for over a mile and 1/2 in length. Fun times.  Back to work…thanks for everyone's ideas…love them. 

Here is my first 5 gallon bucket of gesso…already painted…and drying 

This will have to do for my painting this week…
I AM painting it and it is friday…
a section of one of the pieces we are working on for the anthropologie job.

Have a great weekend…looks like I might be working…

We had a really crazy week here. Long nights, early mornings, and I just couldn’t pull it together to get a painting done for today. I was thinking that I would have to wait awhile for fedex to pick up the backdrops and I could squeeze in a painting, but our guy got here in no time.
Fingers crossed that there are no hitches and it makes it to California tomorrow morning. We painted two huge backdrops for Weeds. And everyone is exhausted. Got the job Tuesday to be completed TODAY. And we did it. The boss lady is really amazing! One of the backdrops was 20′ high by 18′ wide and the other was 18′ high x 23′ wide. Started the second one last night. The joys of working late. I really can’t believe we made it. I don’t know how that happens. Its like the theater and the show must go on. I was here and I am still amazed.

Instead of a full painting I have beginnings on a couple. One more that needs to be stretched. I have notes on this photo here.

(there is another one of these on flickr)

Acutally at work we are cleaning up still after the mad rush of fashion week.
Buckets to clean.
Items to find their way back home.
And backdrops and more backdrops to be checked in.

The way paint swirls thrills me.

My days are so different now.
I have more time moving my body and seeing how it works. I am aware of my thoughts. Aware in a new way. Not quite aware enough to explain I think that will come with time.
I have broomed on so much paint this week I can’t even count. I don’t want to.
Just today though I am at six.
Brooming and cleaning, brooming and cleaning.
We use a big garage push broom to cover the canvas. We pour on the paint with a haws watering can. My arms and shoulders are not quite screaming, but pretty close.

The photo above is the string that pulls at the edge of canvas. I love pulling the string. It just pulls and pulls into these beautiful little balls. Lovely and white.

Yesterday was Johanna’s last day.
She is going to make the trip across the country, showing up in Portland around February.
That means I take over her part of the job.
And I am really really nervous.
I have been working at Oliphant for years and it really doesn’t make sense, but butterflies.
Butterflies?
Really?

About a month ago I did a little work series. I thought it was going to be pretty quite, because summer is notoriously slow for our studio. People can do their photo shoots on location and they don’t really need backdrops, but we got a huge job.
Max Vadukul was the photographer for October’s Interview. The theme was a play on the movie Incredibles, all the ‘incredible’ new actors (not sure why Bon Jovi is there, but that is just me). We painted one like a tunnel, and the other an amorphous image of the symbol.

I love Anne Hathaway. Something about her just is so appealing to me, I think it is her smile. It just seems so real.

You can really see the backdrop in this photo. I love Ziyi Zhang too! (We did some backdrops for a ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ Vogue shoot - hopefully they will be seen.)

So the second day we worked on the red backdrop.

I am totally loving Kanye. There is so much more to his music that sampling.

We did such a good job on these backdrops considering there was so little time!!

Do you ever have one of those days were everything is off?
I got to work in the morning a little before nine like I always do and there was a client waiting at the door as I was coming in. She wanted to look at some backdrops, but didn’t call to warn us, so everything on the floor was wet because we were trying to get five backdrops shipped out to LA & Chicago by that afternoon. The fans were already on, so we just had to wait and the client picked out about five different backdrops to look at. Three of her backdrops where at the bottom of the piles. One, I was looking for the wrong number for at least fifteen minutes.
Then when lunch came, while everyone else was eating I was in the back of the studio packaging up the drops ready to get shipped and by the time I was finished so was everyone else.
Sarah had to go to the doctor and Johanna is on vacation (LUcky), so while I was gessoing more fabric (six backdrops have to go out on Monday) tons of people called on the phone. When I finished no one called and then while I was doing the second coat it was ringing off the hook again.
As I was leaving a client called that I had talked to at least ten (way more than necessary) times the day before wanting to take care of some pricing issues. (Which really isn’t what I do if it is custom work, so I told her we’d call her back in the morning. - she, the client was not happy with the idea).
Then when I got home because I was feeling especially low I realized that I only have a couple of people that live in the city that I could call friends. Most of my friends (and family) live in California (where I am originally from). After that all I could do was crawl into bed and call it a really early night.

Today has to be better. If anything its Friday.

We did it.
I really don’t know how.
No of us do.
But the client called and he loves the backdrops. Everyone does. Hopefully it will be on the cover of October’s issue of Interview magazine. More often than you would imagine the story gets trashed. Don’t like the hair, make-up is wrong, photos too daring and everyone’s work never sees the light of day. Interview is a risk-taking magazine, so hopefully this one will stick! We have had a couple of magnificent backdrops that we painted for one of the big magazines and they didn’t like the hair, so no story. All of that work, all of that money and nothing to show for it!! This business is pretty strange. Sarah tries not to really know what we are painting for, but I like to know so I can keep up our portfolio up to date and keep changing the front page of our website.

Here is a photo of the studio after chaos has left. We are painting at the far end of the studio.

Now Johanna and I are sitting in the office, tying to stay cool and recuperate from the two crazy days and what comes in the door, but the mail person a package for ME. And it is from the incredible and amazing Martha of Naive Knitting. I am in awe of her. She has a series called “Boxing Monday’s” that is coming to a close, but you must watch her slideshow. The boxes are only four & a half inches square, but packed with incredible words and items. Delicate, marvelous and thought provoking.
Love them.
Thank you so much Martha.
She deserves a prize back, I’ll have to wait and see what creation of mine she is interested in!
Here is a picture of ‘my’ amazing little boxes. There is a great little finger print under the word clue. LOVE THEM!!!!

Folks it looks like me might make it!

Sarah putting starch on the backdrop. (Starch instead of gesso, so the photographer can backlight it) We use a push broom because it works so much faster!

The clients came by this morning and checked out the almost finished (because they have changes) tunnel drop that we started yesterday. The second (and larger drop is in the very beginning stages underneath.

They are discussing the colors and I thought these feet were great. Sarah has the lovely string coming off from her. (Sorry about the blurriness, but I was trying to be inconspicuous)

Here is Johanna mixing some yellow or orange for the fireball thing. Check out the stack of buckets that she has been washing.

Here is beautiful Shadow. Sarah is speeding to the finish on this second backdrop. She is really really amazing.

How cute is Buddy? He is Sarah’s other dog. This is right after he had his afternoon greenie. (Shadow is waiting for her greenie in the photo above.) Pretty much like crack for dogs.

***addition…we are working in obsense conditions. It is crazy hot here 95 degrees with the humidity making it feel like it is over 100 degrees…which wouldn’t be bad except we ONLY have an air conditioner in the office. That means in the studio were we WORK it is a million degrees. Our eyelids are sweating, YUCK!****

It has been dead at work. No one calling, no one coming by and then wham, an hour after my post yesterday we began the slam!
I said that we can paint fast and I meant it. A client (who we like, thankfully) called to order two custom backdrops by Thursday night. Mind you it is one p.m. on Tuesday afternoon and he isn’t going into a production meeting until five p.m. That mean we can’t start until after a morning meeting. One of the backdrop is 12′ x 30′ and the other is 16′ x 30′. These are big, even for us. The physical possibility of getting this done by Thursday night is cutting it close to say the least! It is going to be pretty much impossible to finish by normal closing time. The job is for Interview Magazine.
Yesterday we ordered some fabric and Johanna put one coat of gesso on it before we left. Otherwise we would be in a world of hurt. Because the thing that takes the longest, is actually the drying time. I wasn’t there for the morning meeting, but they filled me in when I arrived. The smaller image is this sort of lighted underground tunnel.
Here is Johanna and Sarah working on measuring it out.

The other image in a flame-like thing. As of writing we haven’t even started on it.

Now as fun as that is I get to deal with some fun corporate bank stuff. We eat at FoodWorks pretty much almost everyday and they called to let me know that they had not received my check for last month. I knew I had paid it because that is one (of my many) jobs to do! I looked at out returned checks and it was cashed BUT to a totally different company. I had to walk over to Chase and talk to our account manager who is like 12. He was super great though, we had to talk to two different claim departments. Regular fraud is different from Endorsement fraud. Who Knew? They are supposed to call me back tomorrow. I have never had any experience with this sort of fraud before. (I did get the stolen identity thing and that is pretty awful. They tried to buy a computer!! - another story - sorry, sorry sidetracked) I am looking at it as kind of an adventure through Corporate World….

Here we are frantically trying to dry the base at 4:30pm. Time is not on our side, but we will win the battle! (hopefully)