July, at Rivet Gallery!

public service announcement

Okay folks, I know I've said this before, numerous times, but I feel like I need to iterate it again.

I keep seeing these long rants on "natural" body products' sellers pages, about how their stuff is made without "icky" chemicals, and how natural essences truly have some cosmic depth and amazingness that "chemicals" do not have, and how they are inherently better for you, for the earth, and everybody.

I often observe the words "safe" and "ethical" tossed around.  Saying essential oils are safe because they are natural is like saying nothing in the animal kingdom can harm you, because it's part of nature.  Nature is also full of deadly things, and things which can harm you, and I keep seeing people throw these substances around with wild abandon, gleaming with the satisfaction of being safe and natural.  Also, the harvest of a number of extracts is far from ethical, requiring large volumes of rare and endangered plants, as well as the destruction of natural habitats to supply to the ever-growing demand.

Essential oils are NOT magical plant spirits in liquid form.  They are complex mixtures of chemicals (yes, chemicals. You and I are also made of those "icky" things), some odorous, some not, that make up the volatile oil of that plant.  It is really, really important to know safe practices for these, if you are producing consumable products for the public and selling them.  The same caution that is taken with synthetic aroma compounds should be taken for essentials - and that includes not using things just because they smell nice.  They are volatile compounds, many of which absorb directly into the bloodstream, very quickly.

The boom of the DIY body product/aromatherapy industry has made all of these natural compounds available to anyone, and I hope that people are taking the time to really research what they are mixing together in their hand-labeled bottles.   I know there is a danger of this sounding like jealousy (I don't know why though, I use both natural and synthetic ingredients), or just bitterness in general, but I promise you, it is not.  I just want to see makers and sellers in the home-based bath and body industry take serious precautions in terms of safety, before somebody gets hurt, and some of our freedoms, in this respect, are lost.

catching up

It's been a long time...

...not much has really happened out of the ordinary. We both keep working at our jobs and working at our personal projects at night. Spring is finally coming on, and I have a lovely bunch of daffodils from our backyard in a vase on the kitchen table.

I've been sculpting and painting a lot of faces:


Which in turn get attached to fabric bodies I've sewn on my old machine:


I've been experimenting with putting sawdust and wire inside some of them, so they can sit up on their own, and be posed:


A few weeks ago, Shoparooni in Cleveland had a show/contest/event for customized vinyl Munny toys. For the uninitiated, a Munny is a 7" tall blank vinyl toy that looks like this:


I used glass eyes, epoxy clay, sculpey and paint, as well as a small metal wagon I found (and rusted). My Munny also came with a small bear, so I customized that too:





I've also been working on a larger scale, experimentally. This guy is over 52" long!




Whew...I guess I HAVE been busy!

Autobahn is this coming Saturday, so if you're in the Southern Ohio area, come on down - it's cheap, fun, and lasts all day! Great line-up of bands, and coffee drinks available too.

vacation time

A few weeks ago, Jon and I went on an uncharacteristically "All American" vacation - to Walt Disney World in Florida. He'd never been (though growing up in SoCal he's been to Disneyland countless times), and I hadn't been for about 15 years, so we thought it would be fun to check it out. The great thing about vacationing at their resorts is that everything is immediately available for you - all you have to do is open your hotel room door, hop on a bus, and you're driven to whichever park you choose that day.

At the Animal Kingdom, I got to touch an Agouti (and was told by the animal handler than nobody had ever guessed correctly what he was, when asked, I was the first true nerd to know!)


We ate our way through the parks...



Jon at the Lego store, purchasing some A la Carte pieces.


Animal Kingdom is Disney's newest park, and divided into large sections, one called "Asia" and another "Africa", where they house animals and attractions relating to those regions. I was incredibly impressed with the amount of authentic detail that went into creating these areas - this is only a little beverage stand in Asia, but every inch of it has been detailed so well. I took a lot of pictures here, for reference - they aged things very realistically; good textures.


Our resort, though part of the Disney resorts, was a little off the beaten path, and about as quiet as you can get when surrounded by families with children. It was really pretty, and was on a series of manmade rivers.



I don't ever want to see or hear anything Disney-related again for as long as I live, but we had a really, really great vacation. It was so nice to actually relax and not worry about anything - no cellphone, no appointments, no work, no email. I desperately needed a break like that.

stitchery

I recently acquired this little beauty:

It's a 1920's Vesta VSIII "Portable" hand-cranked sewing machine.  I put the word "portable" in quotations, because while it's not tied to the floor like a treadled machine with a built-in cabinet, it's about as portable as a wooden box filled with bowling balls.  The whole thing is steel and cast iron, with a white porcelain crank handle that folds up when nestled in the wooden carrying case (which locks with a large metal key).

Sewing with this machine is such a pleasing task to me, compared with sewing on a modern electronic machine.  I'm sure my modern machine will still get use for projects which require a little more speed and power, but for all of my fabric art, this will be what I use.  

It's so quiet.  All you can hear is a soft mechanical click-thunk-click-thunk as the shuttle moves back and forth.  Each turn of the crank yields three stitches with the needle.  It has a built-in bobbin winder that uses the steel wheel to engage a series of gears that thread and automatically disengage the bobbin when it's full.

Because everything is completely mechanical, I feel a certain comfort and appreciation when using this machine that I have felt with very few things - there is no mystery with it, I can understand what everything does, and why every part exists.  Modern magic is great, but I find myself often longing for simple machines that are extensions of my body, and not replacements.

snowslump

It's been snowy and cold here. Like REALLY snowy and cold. Check out the ice-spear Jon found off the side of the garage:


Northeast Ohio is really wonderful in the spring, summer, and autumn, but for all that lush green, the smell of growing daffodils, and the crisp crunch of fallen leaves under your feet, you have to deal with a long and arduous winter filled with shoveling, endless cold, and exhausting commutes to work in terrible conditions. When the thaw happens though, that is worth it to me, because new life creeping up through the cold ground is intoxicating like a drug in its promise of warmer days to come.

I can't imagine living in a place without real, definite seasons. Jon grew up in southern California, and while it gets a little cooler there in the winter, it's not like a pie cut into four parts like it is here. The changing seasons give me a sense of time passing; it's easier to compose time within a year when it is divided into near-quadrants.

That said, I am really, really looking forward to spring. I haven't seen the ground for weeks and weeks, and all the snow is starting to make me anxious.

GRAND OPENING!

So, updates have been few and far between, for two reasons:

1) I've been quite unhealthy for over a month now, with some kind of creeping winter lung death

and

2) I have been using all of my remaining energy (which hasn't been much, but I've been doing what I can) to get things ready for Opening Night of my month-long stay at the Shoparooni Annex Store!

Come Saturday, I will have transformed the Annex space into a wonderland of candy-colored soaps, perfume boudoir (with testers, apply as much as you like!), a bevy of haggard, handsewn and sculpted plush bunnies, and a wall full of mixed media ink paintings, all available for sniffing, viewing, and purchasing.

The fun goes down at 8 pm, Saturday, January 17th, come and say hello if you can!

Here's more information on the location and the show:   www.shoparooni.com

2009

I had a lot of learning experiences this past year, and I'm optimistic about this next one.

My biggest resolution is to stop escaping, stop being afraid of failure/success, and to let go of many of the restrictions I put on myself. Anybody who knows me well, knows that I am incredibly forgiving toward others, but horribly, brutally strict with myself, to the point where I'll deny myself things I want or need, if I feel that I haven't met my goals. It's a bad pathology, that I'd like to let go of.

In lighter, less soul-searching resolutions, I'd like to continue to simplify/streamline Squeaky Queen in 2009, and try to "work smarter, not harder" this year.

I'd also like to dive more deeply, and spend more time in my perfumery/aromachemical studies.

Another goal is to have some artwork in a gallery (other than my place of employment) this year.

And eat more whole foods. And keep the house cleaner. And be a better wife.


That's all for now.

Satan's snack foods

An open letter to the Utz company:

Dear Utz company,

It is my sincere request that you tighten the security around the recipe for your "Pub Mix" snack product, sold in oversized plastic tubs in wholesale markets across the U.S.  This snack food, with its cheesy bits, sweet bits, spicy bits, savory bits, sesame bits, and pretzel bits is so good, so incredibly addictive, that I worry about its misuse, should the formula make it into the "wrong hands".

Governments would easily bow down to this Pub Mix as a bribe, as anybody who has tasted it can attest to its mighty capabilities of coercion and the angry clamoring of crowds when it is withheld.

So I ask the good folks at Utz to keep their secret safely guarded.  And if you could, go right ahead and deliver a truckload of the stuff to my house, for safekeeping, of course.

Sincerely,

Mandi

hacking away

Well, I've officially penned the final chapter in yet another year of soap-peddling.  It was a good year - I made the switch over to Etsy as my full-time storefront which, even though it might be more "professional" to have your own website, the Etsy deal affords me much more time to NOT deal with updating and HTML, so that I can spend more time creating better product.  Works for me.  

The new soap year, for me, officially begins on January 15, with the grand opening of a super awesome local opportunity, which I shall keep under wraps for now.  But it's going to be approximately 25 square feet of visual, tactile, and olfactory AWESOME.  Stay tuned.

I never did post the finished versions of my pieces for the Stuff This show at Rivet Gallery.  Big thanks, again, to Laura and Scott, for letting me be a part of the Rivet family yet again :)

In other news, I've been fighting a terrible head/chest cold for well over a week now, and am trying desperately to get better.  So I should go rest now.