Spring is lingering and summer will soon begin, so I thought I should reflect… I should put some things in the past tense.
I finished some visual art projects recently. I solved how to get the information about the bats and WNS onto the pillows without compromising the design. Thanks to Mom and her discovering fabric that closely resembled pillow tags, and thanks to Benjamin, for suggesting a different transfer method, I was able to print the following onto the tags:
IMPORTANT: Bats are vital pollinators
and necessary mammals in our ecosystem.
Many bats eat insects and help to keep insect
populations balanced. Half the bats in the US
are listed as rare, threatened, or endangered.
Worldwide bat populations are declining. Many
bats are dying of a disease called WNS or White
Nose Syndrome. If you like bananas, peaches,
avocados, guavas, and chocolates, and you like
to sit outside in the summer, without an excess of
bug bites; support the care and preservation of bats.
________________________________________
ROUTINE CARE: To learn more about bats,
and to help stop the spread of White Nose
Syndrome, please visit: www.savelucythebat.org.
_________________________________________
UNDER PENALTY OF CONSCIENCE, THIS TAG
SHOULD NOT BE REMOVED EXCEPT TO SHARE
THIS BAT INFORMATION WITH A FRIEND.
_________________________________________
DISTRIBUTED BY MICHELLE SEAMAN, ARTIST
WASHINGTON, DC 20009 COPYRIGHT 2012
www.michelleseaman.net
It was fun making the tags look official. I then sent the pillows to Leslie at Save Lucy, and she was happy to receive them. She can sell them at her educational workshops and take the money for further research.
Benjamin finished the Save the Pollinators website, and we are slowly getting responses. We still need to push for more donations for Leslie and the bats, but it’s a process, so we will figure it out…
I completed Ebony’s ink and color pencil drawing. Both she and I were happy with it. I added the names she wanted along the bottom border, and I was able to mimic the splashes of color she liked to abstract the drawing a bit. I liked working with both media, and I plan to do more of this. It felt good to draw for a friend and make her happy.
We also made some good progress with music this past season. We finished “Allegories,” released it through Leonardo’s label, and had some critics review it. I know I may have already posted about this, but it was quite the accomplishment, so I repeat. Even my drawings of bones and lyrics were reviewed! So nice!
For a while, after working on such a large project, Benjamin and I took a break from practicing. BUT THEN we had a really cool breakthrough! Benjamin took out his new classical guitar, and we sang together. He harmonized with me, and I sang! We’ve tried this before, and we haven’t felt like we were hitting the sound that we wanted—until now. We recorded ourselves, listened back, and this song will be on our next project! YAY! For now, the song is called “Truth or Dare.” It is a bit on the folky/slow core side, and it’s about my brothers and me running around in the woods when we were little. I am writing. It’s not poetry, but it’s close. More on this later…Oh, and I can hear melodies with my xylophone! This takes some practice, but it is sweet to hear these light sounds kind of floating over the bass lines.
AND (now I am moving from the past into the future perfect) we may have a gig soon! I don’t want to write about this too much, because it’s not confirmed yet. We are practicing, however, as if we will be performing, so I will write again when it’s more solid.
In the interdisciplinary world, I have been asked to participate in a new project involving field recordings, cassette tapes, and handmade paper. I am to design an edition of 25-50 ‘cases,’ for these European sound artists… any design I’d like, as long as it fits the artists’ aesthetic. The man who is heading the project wants an organic feel…this is why he likes hand made paper. This is a good challenge for me. I am, as usual, nervous and excited.
As far as the job hunt goes, I am trying to remain hopeful. I have felt like I have been in a blue funk about this for awhile. Struggling to keep my mobility and trying to find a job that would challenge me more than my current one has been exhausting. If I could get one interview, just one, I’d feel like at least something was happening. But I don’t want to end this entry on a negative note…
Art always balances somehow. The more being an English teacher challenges me, the more my own art pushes it aside. I have art. I have Benjamin, family, and friends. And all of this is good.
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