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Archive for the ‘Reed College’ Category

Neighborhood Color

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Before we take the neighborhood tour, some fiber talk. I finished quilting my 12 X 12 identity piece.  I have to finish off the corners of the satin stitching and photograph it and I can check it off my list of things to do before Kansas City. I also finished the scrap piece that I started when Mia was here on Thursday. This is Scrap 050209.

scrap050309

These are only about 3″ by 5″. This one has scraps of an old silk dress of mine and a blouse that belonged to Sue Benner’s mother.

Today when we took Maggie for a walk, I took my camera along. You know it is spring and the end of the semester, when Reed College puts up signs telling us we can’t come on campus until next Monday and things like this spring up on the lawn. The event starts with a parade of seniors, through a throng of students accompanied by exuberant music, as they turn in their senior theses.

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This was parked on the street with some weirdly dressed folks coming and going.

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It was a beautiful morning. We had lots of rain later in the day, but with plenty of sun breaks. I took som photos of some of the beautiful color. All of the photos can be seen in my Eastmoreland Neighborhood Flickr Set.

RED: Japanese Maples and chairs

neighborhoodred

FUCHSIA: Azaleas

neighborhoodfuchsia

PURPLE: Ajuga

neighborhoodpurple

YELLOW:

neighborhoodyellow

PINK: Dogwood in our backyard

neighborhoodpink

GREEN: Our front yard

ourneighborhoodgreen

Mr C and I went out for dinner and now we are watching the first season of The Tudors. The costumes and sets are just incredible. Being Episcopalian, this story was part of our theology class last year. I love seeing the different ways this story has been told. This one is quite spectacular. I must say, I have never seen such an attractive Henry, before.

Tuesday Trivia (Drivel)

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

I didn’t accomplish much on Sunday at the screen printing workshop. It was hot. I was tired. Here are the pieces that I did do and Saturday’s pieces after washing. Here are the bubbly scarves. I may have to cut up at least one of these for something else. All photos are clickable.

I used the same freezer paper screen for this deconstructed print. Most of the dye washed out. I used some that was sitting on the shelf, per Judilee’s suggestion. I still like it as a background for something.

Same problem with the deconstructed screen on organza. The last print I did was pretty good, I did that the second day and maybe my print paste had more soda ash.

On Sunday, I made a photo emulsion screen of a closeup of birch tree trunks from a photo that my daughter Lisa took. I did two different sizes. Here I have printed it on white cotton with dark gray and brown dye.

I also did the aspens with the same dyes.

I wanted to use Bordeaux dye on red silk for the pomegranates. I used it to print the trees on gold and it came out brown – I like it.

On the organza, it is winy in color, but pretty.

Here are the red silks with the Bordeaux. They are very subtle because the silk does not take a second or more dye like cotton can. It has fewer dye sites.

I came home early on Sunday night with the anticipation of going to Terry’s house to have dinner with Jane Davila, who was teaching at Sisters last week and in Portland, on her way home. I made a dessert of fresh peaches, vanilla ice cream, balsamic vinegar syrup and toasted almonds. We arrived at Terry’s to find out that Jane and her husband were not there as he was not feeling well and they were going to try to get an earlier flight home. I was disappointed, but happy that Terry had prepared a delicious meal which we enjoyed immensely. It was nice to have a home-cooked meal, by some one else. We sat on her lovely patio and enjoyed the evening.

Monday was a very busy day. We had to be downtown at the planning commission at 9 am for a hearing on the property across the street from us. It is a beautiful arts and crafts mansion that Reed College purchased and renovated as a home for their president. He didn’t want to live there, so they set it up to be a small conference center and overnight guest house. Wait a minute, we all said. This is a quiet residential lane. We can not have that kind of traffic on our street. If you would like to read more about it, there is an article in the Oregonian. We will not know until September whether we will win this one or not. I had to leave the hearing early to go over to Trinity and help the web gurus work on the new navigation layout for our updated website. that was fun!

In the afternoon, I had my annual oncology doctor’s visit – well it is supposed to be annual. I didn’t go last year because I consider myself cured!! I was pronounced fine and I promised to come back on time next year. Mr C was so sweet. While he was waiting for me, he was sitting across from a patient a little older than me, with cancer, and her 2 daughters, probably in their 50’s. He said they looked so old and tired and sad and when I came bounding out of the doctor’s office, I looked 39 years old to him. Wish I felt 39!!

Look at what our friends from Schenectady, NY, sent us!!!! Yum!!

I have probably mentioned that I grew up on a farm in upstate NY. My dad made maple syrup in the spring. One of my jobs was to can the syrup. When I was doing it, we had tin cans. I still have some. Of course they are empty. My dad used to joke that he sold his less desirable syrup to Vermont. I am a maple syrup snob, and so Bill and Joy were happy to indulge me with some real maple syrup.

Enough trivia drivel for today. i may have some nice bathroom photos for you tomorrow.

Super-Duper Week-end

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

The highlight of the week-end was attending a lecture by Faith Ringgold for Black History Month at Reed College. Faith is somewhat legendary among art quilters She does story quilts painted on canvas that have minimal quilting. As a black woman who started her art career 50 years ago in Harlem, she has an amazing story to tell. She was funny, charming, witty, pithy and brilliant. She is still producing work, in her late 70s and a so was a great inspiration to me. She started her art career copying the masters and painting landscapes. One time a gallery owner told her that she couldn’t do that and it changed her life. She says that a black person knows how to take a negative and make it a positive. She started doing her quilts that tell the stories of her people and the rest is history. (For more about Faith, Click Here)

While we waited for the lecture to start, I got some silly photos with June, Terry and Reva. The first is June, Terry and I.

juneterrygerrie.jpg

Then, Reva showed up so I had to get a photo of us.

gerriereva.jpg

After the lecture, Mr C and I went to Steph’s for a delicious dinner of lentil stew with lamb sausage, home made bread, salad and a decadent molten chocolate dessert. Steph and Miles watched Nigella Lawson make them on u-tube so Miles asked to help make them for dinner. So good! We did some Oscar watching. My grandchildren do not watch much TV at all. They rarely go t the movies. Yet, Mia had a great deal of knowledge about the movies and the actors. I asked her how she knows some much. She told me that she reads the NY Times Arts and Entertainment section every day. I could so related to this. Of course, I had no TV in my childhood and I read every thing I could get my hands on.

I spent most of the last few days getting homework done for my class with Liz. I will show some of my work and the tweaking I did after her critiques. (Note: except for the last piece, these are done on 4 X 6 cards. They are exercises, not finished work.)

The assignment was to create a small harmonious composition using 3-4 analogous colors.
172harmonious.jpg

exercise172revised2.jpg

This assignment was to create contrast with color.

ex213colorcontrast.jpg

exercise213revised.jpg

Here, the assignment was to create contrast using size.

ex212sizecontrast.jpg

exercise212revised.jpg

For this piece, we were to make a small piece showing contrast with harmony and balance.

221.jpg

exercise22revised.jpg

OK, now it is up to you to see what I did to make a better composition!!

I will post more tomorrow.

Week-end Potpourri

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

It has been a lovely week-end in our part of the world. We got some short sun-breaks yesterday and a really lovely sunny afternoon, today.

Yesterday, I decided it was time to take the tagine for a test drive. So I called up Steph and invited the family to come for dinner.

tagine.jpg

For the uninitiated, these were developed by the nomadic people in the desert and worked like an oven on an open fire. I decided to make chicken with apricots and almonds. First, you mix cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, salt and pepper. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil and coat the chicken pieces.

spices.jpg

Brown the chicken in the tagine base.

brownedchicken.jpg

Slice onions and make a little bundle of cilantro and parsley.

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Then brown the onions.

brownedonions.jpg

Add the chicken and the herbs and some water. Cover and let it cook. While it cooks, prepare a mixture of honey and water and cook the dried apricots in it until the sauce thickens. Add it to the chicken and cook some more. Then sprinkle it with toasted almonds and serve over couscous. I served peas as a veggie. It was really, really good. I made brownies for brownie sundaes. Mia says, “Grandma wouldn’t give us WW brownies!” Yes, she would and she did. They were very tasty – just small so I gave the non-dieters two. I had nonfat frozen yogurt and they had very rich vanilla ice cream.

Before I did all that cooking, I took a walk during the 4 pm sun break and took my camera. See, here is the blue sky!

blueskyatdusk.jpg

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redberries.jpg

The main reason I took my camera was to get a photo of this. The photo does not do the site justice. It really looks cool.

reedorangefence.jpg

It is a construction fence that snakes across the woodsy canyon on the Reed College Campus. They are building a pedestrian bridge across the canyon to the new dormitories.

The morning paper had an article about an art show opening at Marylhurst University. The artist, Leonard Rudder, has an interesting story. He was an art school graduate from the north east who moved here in 1950. He was involved for a short time with the art community and then just faded away. He worked as a custodian at an elementary school. He didn’t stop painting, but he stopped showing his work. Two years ago, the curator of the show went into the basement of this now 90 year old man and found a treasure trove. We loved his work. It was all very abstract and quite wonderful. Here is one of the pieces that I scanned from the catalog.

ruder.jpg

After our art date, we went to the mall and did a little shopping. I scored some brown corduroy jeans, a sweater and a couple of cotton tees. Mr C found nada.

Early this morning, we were awakened by flashing lights on the street behind our house. Another car had missed the curve and driven up on our parking strip. This one was pretty bad. The old van was crunched against one of our big fir trees. We never heard the crash or sirens, but there were several police cars and a wrecker moving the car by the time we were aware of the situation. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I am going to go night night now and catch up on my sleep.