Holiday Hints

December is creeping up on us, and holiday shopping season is in full swing. I hope that some of you will be wanting to buy some of my work as gifts - to yourself or others. So, just a couple of words about my schedule.

Apart from the scarves, I'm making everything by hand, and I've been struggling a bit to keep up with demand for petri dish ornaments. I will continue to make them this week and next, but from December 7th to the 11th I will be at the Downtown Holiday Market all day, and thus unable to make any more. And since they take at least three days start to finish, we're really talking about December 15th, at which point it may be a bit late. So - to avoid disappointment, please order ornaments by December 5!

If you're in the DC area, please do come visit me at the Downtown Holiday Market from Friday the 7th to Tuesday the 11th. (The market continues most of the month, but those are the only days that I will be there - the vendors rotate.) And please, if you are planning to come and you want something specific, please ask in advance (via email, twitter or etsy) because I can't bring all my stuff with me every day. I would hate for you to come out and be disappointed.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't sound bossy or pushy - I love you all and I thank you soooo much for your business. But alas, I can't send Teapot the kitty to the Post Office for me. And we already know how helpful he is with the resin.

The Fat Cat Sat...in the Resin

Yesterday, my petri dish ornaments were featured on BoingBoing and Neatorama, so I suddenly had lots of sales – yay! So I had to hustle and get everything I had into my etsy shop. I also decided to make a small batch of new ornaments with the last of my resin.

The resin I’m using takes a full 24 hours to dry, so I poured it yesterday afternoon and left it overnight to dry on my work table.

In the night my cat, Teapot, started acting strangely, racing around frantically from room to room. I ignored him and tried to get back to sleep. About 5 am, I gave up and got up. I discovered a petri dish full of resin quite far from where I had left it the night before. Its surface, still sticky, was covered with odd marks. Then, when I fed teapot, I noticed that the fur on his butt was standing up in stiff tufts as if he had used hair gel. I put two and two together. The fat cat had sat in the resin.

He spent much of the next hour trying to lick it off.  I’m still not sure whether I’ll have to give him a haircut. Tune in next week for more adventures of crafty cat.

Previously.... Teapot helps with painting.

Ornaments Have Arrived!

The first bunch of petri dish ornaments are in the shop now. Each one is individually hand-painted, resin-coated and gift-boxed.  I wish I could make them a little cheaper, but the resin really added to the cost. To ease the pain, I've fixed the shipping so that, no matter how many ornaments you buy, they all ship for the price of one. 

More are in progress, but I made sure the first lot included kitty microbes, swine and bird flu viruses and lots of other microbial goodness. 

Sneak Peek

New Christmas ornaments for 2012 in progress. This year each one will be hand-painted and coated in resin.

Look for them in the etsy shop next week.

Last-Quarter Plans

Wow, we’re already most of the way through 2012. Astonishingly, I only have two more shows this year. But, like Tim Tebow, I've saved some of my best stuff for the final quarter. So if you want to see my work IRL, try to make it to one of these:

October 14        MPAArtfest – this is a new one for me, a really nice fine art show put on by the McLean Project for the Arts. I decided to go with just abstract and science art for this one. Coffee cups and cats can wait for another day.

December 7-11         Downtown Holiday Market – I’ll be spending five days in front of the National Portrait Gallery as part of this wonderful downtown DC shopping experience. You should really come, and go to the museum at the same time, and bring me a coffee. I’ll remind you.

In the meantime, I’ll be hard at work creating new stuff for my etsy shop, including paintings, Christmas ornaments and (if all goes well, fingers crossed) some new scarf designs in time for the holidays. Stay tuned.

BTW, I painted this yesterday: Nice, huh? I’ll be bringing it with me to McLean, unless someone buys it before Sunday....

Serious Stuff

Onward and upward with Artologica! Even though I am ridiculously old to be doing a lot of things for the first time, it’s better than never doing them at all. So I’m delighted to tell you about two pieces of news. First (the first first? Oh dear), I’ll be co-moderating a session at the ScienceOnline Conference in January with Dr. Cedar Riener. We’ll be talking about visual metaphors in science communication. Sounds pretty serious, huh? I’m practicing this face:

ScienceOnline is just about the best thing ever. I went last year and I met so many great people and learned so much, I am delighted to be part of the official program this year. If you’ve never heard of it, go have a look at the website.

The "second first" is one I told you about earlier, but now it’s actually happened. The novel with my painting on it arrived! There I am in print on the cover of James Meek’s book The Heart Broke In. I’ll be blogging about the book itself soon. It releases on October 2nd, so you can all go down to Barnes & Noble and take pictures of it and tweet them to me. Or buy the book - James would probably appreciate that more ; ) 

Caught in a Bad Translation

On my trip to storage the other day, I found another piece of my past. This is a painting I did many years ago, probably around 2003. It's another watercolor grid, this time with a deeply romantic stanza from the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov.

Way back in the day, I studied Russian and lived in Moscow for a few years. But now my Russian is fairly rusty, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't too far off in telling you what this painting said. I couldn't find an English translation online, so I ran it through Google translate. Well, as they say in Moscow, kha, kha, kha!

Here's the original Russian:

Одной тобою жил поэт,

Скрываючи в груди мятежной

Страданья многих, многих лет,

Свои мечты, твой образ нежный.

(Up to here is what's actually on the painting)

На зло враждующей судьбе

Имел он лишь одно в пре‹д›мете:

Всю душу посвятить тебе,

И больше никому на свете!..

Here's my rough translation

For you alone the poet lived,

Concealing in his turbulent breast

The sufferings of many, many years, 

His dreams, and your sweet image.

In strife-riven, evil fate,

He had only one subject,

To devote to you his whole soul

And to no one else on earth.

We get the picture. The guy was seriously smitten, and the lady didn't want to know. Here's what Google translate gave me:

One thee poet lived,

Skryvayuchi chest rebel

The suffering of many, many years,

Your dreams, your way of tender.

For evil warring fate

He had only one thing in the pre <x> Weather forecast:

Devote his whole soul to you,

And nobody else in the world! 

Now, to be fair. To be fair, there is some old-fashioned wording in there. The poem was written in 1830. I have no idea why one letter in the word predmet (subject) is in brackets, which obviously threw off the algorithm. But how's that for modern romance?  Poor old Skryvayuchi chest rebel had only one thing in the pre <x> Weather forecast. Oh baby, y u no share ur way of tender?  No wonder he died young of a broken heart.