et laissez la folie nerveuse commencer …

This is a new challenge - to have to select vendors, get prices for a check to buy materials, even before I have a clear idea of what I want to do ……..

It is quite a challenge to go out buying stuff when you don’t know what you really plan to do, and then taking it back, and then submitting for final reimbursement after the work is finalized.

This project I essentially have to buy before I’ve even had a chance to design …..Add to this the fact I have to submit info next Monday to have check by Friday to buy stuff to begin work December 20.

This is near craziness … and the brain=spinning began in earnest last night.

Ay caramba! to change up the vernacular …

It seems practical to make project more scalable, to be approached in stages. If I can figure out the base and get the big piece constructed …. then I can figure out how to finish the piece in January and get more checks then.

Whew - this is not a particularly hard or unfamiliar job - it is just the time-space constraints that are so challenging. What is really missing is the added “brain burst” from all that collaborative wrangling I experienced in our Art Book groups. As messy as that type of work can be, I am realizing how much the combined mindpower of a group can be much more than the simple sum of the whole when properly harnessed. I have even toyed with the idea of calling up Julie Radke, Steph B-P, and the others just to get their spin …. sounds like a plan.
I need a LOT of ideas in about 48 hours …….

Lucky for me once again the spontenaity of doodling on paper has saved my butt in one sense. I am thinking of making Mask Books for the mobile pieces. These are stationary partially open books with the covers in mask themes, and shapes related to traditional Commedia characters, and the “inside” is to teach the folks who come to the Mardi Gras about these characters. I could calligraph the condensed version of my character summaries on one “page” , find a good illustration like Picasso’s Harlequin, for another page, use huge text for titles in one Flyleaf, and am toying with a “mirror” like effect for the remaining page, so someone would be looking into an illustration of the costume and see their face inside.

[insert sketch idea here]

[think think - jigsaw luan or other stiff material, paint, laminate, ....... it might be do-able]

I like the book idea because it is a theatrical form of teaching that the idea could be reinstalled without the big mask in other contexts - like my field project report for example. It also could be used in future in teaching kids. Or I could develop a paper product …… or redo the mask-books in a better form after Feb. 5 Mardi Gras.