Every year I spend the last six weeks of winter checking my watch every five minutes, waiting for spring to show up. 

It’s the least patient part of the year.  

I often pretend to have more patience than I actually do.

It has gotten warm enough to finally make running a better idea. That warm-on-the-inside, numb-on-the-outside feeling wore really thin. 

Distribution and running. 

Running and distribution. 

I think I just spend most days bouncing between the two.

I lost a week and a half of my life to a combination of pre-benefit invite madness and a nasty nasty cold.

I wish I felt clean. Mostly I feel like it’s going to be cold and wet forever, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life with massive amounts of snot clogging up my sinuses. I missed three different things because I thought they were going to happen, but really, they already did. 

Though I have gotten some work done.

And theoretically it will be spring soon. 

I finally finishes 365 Days by Julie Doucet, which has been hanging around the house since September. It was really nice. Like spending time with someone you really like. I read an interview with her where she says that she didn’t have any female friends when she just drew comics; now that she’s sworn off them she’s got a whole group of women friends. Though she’s still doing something comic-like, I think the difference is enough. Comics are like bluegrass, or fine press books, or tango, or anything else with a clearly defined structure and history. You can be a purist about it, and devote yourself to exploring that, but you can’t move it forward in the end. I also just read Seth’s Clyde Fans Book One which is so incredibly beautiful, but a great example of not moving forward. Not that I minded at all, forward isn’t the only way to go, not when it looks that good.

I’m going to content myself by moving around tiny bits of paper while I wait for my sinuses to drain and spring to spring.

This is part of the next section of the book in progress. I’m still not sure about the rest of it; I may be fussing too much. 

I’ve tried to see a movie at film forum twice this month and failed both times. It should be easy, seeing a movie, no? 

It takes more than will, apparently.

There’s just too many things that I like about Dianna Frid’s work:

The materiality of it.

Dislocation of Snow, 2008.

The shifts of scale, large and small, books/ interior space and sculpture/ environments:

Greenhouse and Grove, 2006.

The link between pattern and texture and language.

Leak, Unique Book, 1999.

The ridiculous humor:

Floyd Collins, Cave Explorer, Unique book, 1998

From her website:

I make objects and images that span a wide range of scales and materials. My works take the intimate form of artist books, fiber works, and collages, or they function as sculptures, large drawings or as immersive environments.

One of the central themes of my recent work has been the relationship between diagrams, patterns and words and the things that these diagrams, patterns and words attempt to depict.

There’s so much great stuff on her website it was hard to choose just a few images. Click here to see more.

I’ve been making these for the CBA Lounge event this Friday – (details here). It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Come by Friday night at 6pm and make some haiku comic books with us. Text, image, printing without a press with Corinna- and our dear friend Ana Cordeiro, brilliant bookbinder, will help us stitch together our creations.

Please join us. Paper marbling’s on the menu for tonight and everyone’s invited….

My co-worker Corinna Zeltsman started this program this year. Come by and try some paper marbling, eat some snacks, meet some fun people. Paper marbling’s kind of like spin art for books, it’s a lot of fun. I love Lauren Rowland, our paper marbling instructor; she’s a hoot.

I made the best pie in the world today. 

Pear Fig Pie with Hazelnut Crumb Crust. 

Whoo. I made it in bits, a crust one day, poaching figs another day. Toasting nuts in my spare time.

The leisurely approach to pie making. I’m keeping this one all to myself. So there. 

The month of January is about Finishing That Book, Dummy. Which means I have, count them, five more days, to be done with the dummy-making phase. No problem. 

It’s a faux self-help book, my book. 

I told someone this and they asked if it would help people. I said “no.”

They said that that was just like me. I thought that was mean. 

The first bit is case studies. These are the cases. 

The portraits are based on images from my high school yearbook.

Next up, the self-evaluation.

This morning I read this, which seemed to ring true to me at the time.

Then I went to work, and proceeded to have an email exchange with a Board Member who was attempting to express an idea. I suggested a word which seemed to capture the idea he was after. He did not, apparently, know the meaning of the word, and so he explained to me how I had used it incorrectly. 

Yep.