The "Workshop" went okay, let's just say "lessons learned." I could feel that people were disappointed that they didn't get to actually play with any Jell-O. You have to blame the RG for that, as I never said anything about participation like the normal expectation of a workshop. In fact, I said I couldn't do that. I wish I would have insisted that it not be called a workshop, but maybe a salon or something. It was kind of an exhibition, with a lot to look at, but the set-up didn't work for that as most people had to sit and listen to me pontificate until they got restless and snuck out. I wanted to call it "Ask the Queen" but you know how that whole Queen persona goes over. (I see you rolling your eyes!)
I tried to show why we couldn't make it there, but that didn't really transmit. I mean, if we were all going to make what I call "Wet Jell-O," the jiggly kind, we would need a wall of refrigerators and an intermission of about 4-6 hours to let it jell. It could be done in two days, but the first day would take about ten minutes while we all stirred the powder into the water. So a jiggle workshop could be done, but over a few days. There will never be a time when I have an extra few days before the Jell-O Art Show.
We're deep into rehearsals, meeting three times this week and two last week to finetune our lines, our songs, our harmonies, and our props and actions. This takes a surprising amount of organization, rewriting the scripts and lyric sheets according to what is decided at each meeting. And we all have to get our costumes together, two or three for the Queen. I usually build on existing costumes but this year I had to start from scratch for one and I'm still not ready. Plus I needed a costume for the workshop.
And I have to make a few props, even though I handed over the set job this year, which I usually love to do but takes several weeks and a lot more room than I currently have in this livingroom full of archives. The ones I am making are fun as can be but also still need to be finished.
I had to dust all the pieces I took to the gallery, and my plan was to leave them there for this weekend, but that turned out to not be a great idea since they have spring break camp and we weren't even in the main gallery. So I will take a different set on Saturday, maybe. Since I don't need examples to teach from, that works. And then my car wouldn't start and I had to ask the neighbor to jump it. (It's fine now, but I almost broke it. I probably should stick to biking.)
I took a lot of headpieces to show the amazing variety but a few people wanted to buy them and I hadn't planned ahead for that. I am not the best at making decisions on the fly so it's best if I leave the ones home that I don't want to let go of. I looked through them today and I do have a few I can sell, but of course now it doesn't seem like enough so I decided about an hour ago to make some more.
I brought some bright yellow gelatin to the show to illustrate the ways you can manipulate it while it is drying, but didn't really get to spend much time on that, so I felt my demo was minimal and not very satisfying. There were some good questions, so thank you to those who were thinking about what they needed to know! I had hoped it would be mostly questions, but of course you have to have some background to ask things.
Some did. I saw quite a few of the regular Jell-O Show attendees there, and I know they wanted a much richer experience. I feel like I want to just keep making excuses. Being a Queen trying to serve my adoring public is really a hard role to play. I disappoint myself if I can't please people.
So next year (of course they want me to do it again next year) I will have to come up with an entirely new plan. Somehow I will have to set people up to make something they can take home. Something simple, maybe, like a flower or another type of object that is a mix of fantasy and representation. A still life. I have a year to think about it.
But today, I have to ramp up my speed and get more things on my list accomplished! I have enough nice pieces to make dozens of flowers but that would be kind of crazy, and anyway I gave away 60 of them last year for the 30th. That was then! I also made and gave away participation awards but that can't happen in this time frame either.
So this year it is up to you. You still have time! Make some Jell-O. I heard it was on sale this week so go ahead and make some Jigglers or find something to use for a mold and make something silly with it. Use my instructions (about 3 oz gelatin per cup of water, mix in cold water, let bloom for 10 min, melt in the microwave for 1 minute at a time, don't let it boil, be careful not to get it on you) and make something out of dried gelatin. Just glue the pieces together with the molten gelatin. Then hold them or clamp them for about 90 seconds and let them dry for a couple of hours.
Just make a start at it, make a beginning. That is what jenesis is all about, jenerating some joy.
You're on your own! I'm busy! See you Saturday at the Jell-O Art Show!
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
We have T-Shirts!
Being lazy, I only wanted to make two screens and print two colors, but it just wasn't enough, so I've ended up taking my Sharpies and coloring in her earrings. I do like it better that way.
I also spent a few hours dusting off a lot of Jell-O pieces for the workshop and show. I like taking out the Jell-O Art Museum for a spin once a year, even though it isn't really the whole thing. I have an attic full of odd pieces that I don't think I'll bring out this year. For one thing, one carload is plenty. I don't want to make too many trips across town, risking things falling apart and getting damaged. Plus dusting and repairing them takes a lot of time I'd rather spend gardening on these beautiful spring days we are having right now.
But shirts had to be made, so here they are. I held back from filling up the open space with more information or drawings. Let it be inferred that music began with St. Aretha. No reason to stick too closely with the theme, anyway.
Original print, without the hand-coloring:
 |
| Improved version |
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Better News
Yay! There is now a script and some new energy, so I guess life and Jell-O Art will go on. I'm trying to focus on the t-shirts, and then the Workshop, figuring out my outfits and props I'll need to demonstrate techniques.
I had to take myself in hand and realize I was losing perspective by trying to do too many big things at once. It was kind of paralyzing. I even went to bed one night at 9:00. That seemed to help.
Plus a kind soul (or three) offered some collaboration and things rapidly got back on track.
The hard part was I discovered a huge number of Saturday Market records that were still hiding in their storage area but are now here tempting me. I've kept the boxes closed as hard as I can. That is going to be a much longer, more complicated project than I had been admitting.
So Jell-O Art Show moved to the top of the agenda, and here we go!
I had to take myself in hand and realize I was losing perspective by trying to do too many big things at once. It was kind of paralyzing. I even went to bed one night at 9:00. That seemed to help.
Plus a kind soul (or three) offered some collaboration and things rapidly got back on track.
The hard part was I discovered a huge number of Saturday Market records that were still hiding in their storage area but are now here tempting me. I've kept the boxes closed as hard as I can. That is going to be a much longer, more complicated project than I had been admitting.
So Jell-O Art Show moved to the top of the agenda, and here we go!
 |
| My first appearance as a performer 2013 |
 |
| Tacky Food, 20th show, so 2008 |
 |
| One of the best shirts |
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Dang it all
One year we did this song "You Don't Want to Know" which was of course about what Jell-O is really all about: offal. It is made from cow hides and hooves, and etcetera, so we like to just pretend that is not true. It was a really fun song, a Led Zepplin parody, and here is a photo of me singing it:
That was 2015.
Then last summer I forced my family to watch our last show video out of a deep need to be patted on the head by them, and as I looked at it from an outsider's view, they commented that it looked like a lot more fun for us than it was for anyone watching. Which stung, but was essentially true. The reason it is fun for our audience and the public is just because they decide it is, and enjoy catching our enthusiasm and delight and willingness to just get up in public and be silly. None of us really want to know why it is fun, we just want it to be fun.
It's serious business to do that, of course, and takes a lot of effort and preparation, but ultimately it is a lot of fun in general and sometimes fun in specifics. Today it isn't.
We have very little time left until the show, and I've got nothing. No Jell-O, no plans to make any, and no script. I did write one, giving up a precious Saturday last week in the snowy isolation to write it, but it died of its own weight last night. It was just too complex and nobody really cared about the Hero's Journey and our political and environmental future and the need to advance a positive one. That is work for another day, not March 30th, if the Angels group is correct. I'm not really upset about losing that script, as it wasn't really workable at all, just a piece of writing I did out of the desperate need for a framework. Editing it wasn't going to work as I had hoped.
Of course I feel that things are far too critical to not address our future, but it is more our job to give people a break from that for 20 minutes in a 3-hour event, than it is to give them any tools to craft it. We just have the same damn tools, music, art, and silliness. We end up doing the same show every year, some version of Jell-O Art is the only thing that matters. Sometimes it saves the world, sometimes it just occupies a gallery.
So I have no real reason to be upset today, except that so many of the Angels have found reasons to drop out of this non-show, including some of our best singers, and now we have no script and people don't even really love the songs we chose, which have no lyrics, most of them. And it's my job to put something together, as soon as possible, and this time it has to be right because there is just no time left. And of course I am totally depleted and discouraged.
So I write. Since this is supposed to be a promotional blog for Jell-O Art, I figure if I expose my deep anxiety and despair, it will just come off as drama and add to the mystique and eventual delight when my personal hero's journey completes itself with some denoument onstage. As if! I want to quit too!
What if there were no performance, or I just went back to not being in it? This will only be my 7th year of being in it. Other people used to write the scripts and do the slogging. Are they not doing it because I came along? Is all of this my fault as well as my responsibility? It is not easy being Queen.
I'm eating lunch as I write this because stuffing my face is about my only joy. I have been getting zero exercise this winter and making zero income (okay, I made $97.50 in the first two months, not counting my pitiful amount of social security) as I am immersed in this big archiving project for Saturday Market. I am passionate about doing it and am making progress (I'm in the 90s now) but I just sit and read every day and night and I am severely out of shape. I don't even have time to get outside except to hang my laundry out in the rare sunlight when we get it, or walk to a meeting. I still have meetings and minutes to type for them. I hate my life in a lot of ways right now. Mostly because it is not healthy to eat mostly bread and canned soup and get no exercise. That is a proven way to make yourself sad and have aching joints and a fuzzy head. But regarding Market, now I know too much and I have assigned myself the impossible task of interpreting the history in a useful and positive way. I should find myself a network of historical writers who have faced these issues of how to describe the warts without damaging the host. It seems a tricky task and at this moment I am definitely procrastinating.
I also watch meetings on livestream, OCF Board meetings and City Council meetings. OCF just imploded and pretty much burned to the managerial ground, in case you didn't know. I'll try not to say much about it although I'd like to do a full-on rant. If no one affords either the managers or the Board members any respect, there is no center to hold there. The members can sure mess it up, but the people who are doing the actual jobs of governing and managing need to be granted some damn authority and trust! It is a two-way street, trust. Right now I'd like to walk away from that, too.
But I won't. There's an important lesson in there for me to learn about how to be a longterm member of a membership group as your role shifts as it must. There's too much invested to walk away, there's no certainty whatsoever that you will play a future role, and although you have the perspective of seeing the cycles and pitfalls as they dependably repeat, you can't really prevent them from doing that or add much to the solutions when they do. What worked then is probably not going to work this time (though it might!) and you yourself might be a bigger part of the problem than the solution, which is why the young ones always want the old heads to go away. Just retire and let us make some new mistakes! Well, if I could I might. There really isn't a retirement choice built into my life. About my only power is keeping my mouth shut and obviously that is not a skill I possess.
I do have some work to do, that might be fun, making the t-shirts for the Jell-O Art Show. I'm planning to use an image of St. Aretha of Franklin, whose photos online are very jellogenic. You could do almost any of them with a Jell-O mold hairdo or outfit. I don't know what I'll do to her image, yet, but it got me a little excited to go look at her photos and listen to a few of her songs. We're going to do Chain of Fools in the show, just so you can share the anticipation. It's about as political as we will get I suppose. The first photo would be easy but she would look like it was just her head on top of a plate. The second one is pretty Jell-O-rific
but I wouldn't be able to use the arms anyway, although I might try. It's a fun distraction.
So, as you can now see, I am well on the way to putting aside my despair and disappointment and moving into a more adaptive phase. It's what all the true Jell-O Artists do. I am still not going to make any Jell-O though, at least not today.
Have I told you I will be doing a workshop? It will be on March 23rd, at MKAC, just a little session of Ask the Queen. Not the Queen of Soul, the Queen of Jell-O Art. I plan to wing it mostly, as I have no real time to plan anything except a costume. I'm committed to that, so whatever happens with this current drama, that's on the table. See you there!
Then last summer I forced my family to watch our last show video out of a deep need to be patted on the head by them, and as I looked at it from an outsider's view, they commented that it looked like a lot more fun for us than it was for anyone watching. Which stung, but was essentially true. The reason it is fun for our audience and the public is just because they decide it is, and enjoy catching our enthusiasm and delight and willingness to just get up in public and be silly. None of us really want to know why it is fun, we just want it to be fun.
It's serious business to do that, of course, and takes a lot of effort and preparation, but ultimately it is a lot of fun in general and sometimes fun in specifics. Today it isn't.
We have very little time left until the show, and I've got nothing. No Jell-O, no plans to make any, and no script. I did write one, giving up a precious Saturday last week in the snowy isolation to write it, but it died of its own weight last night. It was just too complex and nobody really cared about the Hero's Journey and our political and environmental future and the need to advance a positive one. That is work for another day, not March 30th, if the Angels group is correct. I'm not really upset about losing that script, as it wasn't really workable at all, just a piece of writing I did out of the desperate need for a framework. Editing it wasn't going to work as I had hoped.
Of course I feel that things are far too critical to not address our future, but it is more our job to give people a break from that for 20 minutes in a 3-hour event, than it is to give them any tools to craft it. We just have the same damn tools, music, art, and silliness. We end up doing the same show every year, some version of Jell-O Art is the only thing that matters. Sometimes it saves the world, sometimes it just occupies a gallery.
So I have no real reason to be upset today, except that so many of the Angels have found reasons to drop out of this non-show, including some of our best singers, and now we have no script and people don't even really love the songs we chose, which have no lyrics, most of them. And it's my job to put something together, as soon as possible, and this time it has to be right because there is just no time left. And of course I am totally depleted and discouraged.
So I write. Since this is supposed to be a promotional blog for Jell-O Art, I figure if I expose my deep anxiety and despair, it will just come off as drama and add to the mystique and eventual delight when my personal hero's journey completes itself with some denoument onstage. As if! I want to quit too!
What if there were no performance, or I just went back to not being in it? This will only be my 7th year of being in it. Other people used to write the scripts and do the slogging. Are they not doing it because I came along? Is all of this my fault as well as my responsibility? It is not easy being Queen.
I'm eating lunch as I write this because stuffing my face is about my only joy. I have been getting zero exercise this winter and making zero income (okay, I made $97.50 in the first two months, not counting my pitiful amount of social security) as I am immersed in this big archiving project for Saturday Market. I am passionate about doing it and am making progress (I'm in the 90s now) but I just sit and read every day and night and I am severely out of shape. I don't even have time to get outside except to hang my laundry out in the rare sunlight when we get it, or walk to a meeting. I still have meetings and minutes to type for them. I hate my life in a lot of ways right now. Mostly because it is not healthy to eat mostly bread and canned soup and get no exercise. That is a proven way to make yourself sad and have aching joints and a fuzzy head. But regarding Market, now I know too much and I have assigned myself the impossible task of interpreting the history in a useful and positive way. I should find myself a network of historical writers who have faced these issues of how to describe the warts without damaging the host. It seems a tricky task and at this moment I am definitely procrastinating.
I also watch meetings on livestream, OCF Board meetings and City Council meetings. OCF just imploded and pretty much burned to the managerial ground, in case you didn't know. I'll try not to say much about it although I'd like to do a full-on rant. If no one affords either the managers or the Board members any respect, there is no center to hold there. The members can sure mess it up, but the people who are doing the actual jobs of governing and managing need to be granted some damn authority and trust! It is a two-way street, trust. Right now I'd like to walk away from that, too.
But I won't. There's an important lesson in there for me to learn about how to be a longterm member of a membership group as your role shifts as it must. There's too much invested to walk away, there's no certainty whatsoever that you will play a future role, and although you have the perspective of seeing the cycles and pitfalls as they dependably repeat, you can't really prevent them from doing that or add much to the solutions when they do. What worked then is probably not going to work this time (though it might!) and you yourself might be a bigger part of the problem than the solution, which is why the young ones always want the old heads to go away. Just retire and let us make some new mistakes! Well, if I could I might. There really isn't a retirement choice built into my life. About my only power is keeping my mouth shut and obviously that is not a skill I possess.
I do have some work to do, that might be fun, making the t-shirts for the Jell-O Art Show. I'm planning to use an image of St. Aretha of Franklin, whose photos online are very jellogenic. You could do almost any of them with a Jell-O mold hairdo or outfit. I don't know what I'll do to her image, yet, but it got me a little excited to go look at her photos and listen to a few of her songs. We're going to do Chain of Fools in the show, just so you can share the anticipation. It's about as political as we will get I suppose. The first photo would be easy but she would look like it was just her head on top of a plate. The second one is pretty Jell-O-rificbut I wouldn't be able to use the arms anyway, although I might try. It's a fun distraction.
So, as you can now see, I am well on the way to putting aside my despair and disappointment and moving into a more adaptive phase. It's what all the true Jell-O Artists do. I am still not going to make any Jell-O though, at least not today.
Have I told you I will be doing a workshop? It will be on March 23rd, at MKAC, just a little session of Ask the Queen. Not the Queen of Soul, the Queen of Jell-O Art. I plan to wing it mostly, as I have no real time to plan anything except a costume. I'm committed to that, so whatever happens with this current drama, that's on the table. See you there!
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