Where's the Jell-O?

Serving up a huge slug

Sorry I have been so lax about writing here while I give out card after card sending people here to read things...I have another blog, a more personal one, where I write much more frequently. If you are interested in other aspects of my life, go there. You never know what the subject will be: often Saturday Market or local politics, Oregon Country Fair, or some drama or other. I like to process emotions by writing and often work out what I really think or feel in the course of writing the post. Here I thought I would mostly focus on Jell-O Art, and work.

Jell-O Art is so highly concentrated in the months of January through April that sometimes I really lose my taste for it the rest of the year. I took some to OCF but as it was rainy every day I didn't even open the tubs to wear any. This week, though, I will be taking it out and putting some selected pieces to work for the annual Slug Queen Coronation at which I appear as that other Queen, the Queen of Jell-O Art.

The event is this Friday evening, August 12, and the dedicated crowd will show up ready to be delighted. Apparently we will have a canine contestant for the first time, so we are all curious to see how that plays out. He may be fairly talented, but that question with the complicated answer might not work for him. We shall see. There will also be the full range of talented and wacky-ish human contestants. This year you can even try for a chance to be a "Celebrity" Judge by putting your name in a hat. I've been one, and found it highly entertaining in a different way. I would actually prefer not to vote...I like everyone to win. But obviously we need a single Queen...except maybe we don't. A set of identical twins would be a cool wrinkle on it...they wouldn't even have to be conjoined, just confident and sufficiently confusing.

This event is one of the most pure fun ones we have here, so no wonder it has survived the Eugene Celebration, the parade, the Mayor's Art Show, the Festival of Eugene, and most of the other related Eugene celebratory notions. The Queens serve for life as Old Queens, and just won't go away. They often make new outfits for each show, get to perform if they want on their 10th and 20th year anniversaries, and show up at randomly chosen events throughout the year. They serve an important local purpose and so do I, so I will show up and do my usual service. I like to go early and help the First Lady-in-Waiting, Kim, put up the decorations and get the place ready and reserve myself some seats for me and my entourage, such as it is. I don't require a lot of minions but it's nice to have a few at the ready.

At the Jell-O Art Show, 2016

Our Radar Angel Queen #2, Markalo Parkalo (Your Queen and Mine) will end his year of glory and sing a song. I'm sad to not be in his back-up band but I have a meeting the night of the rehearsal and am too far out of the loop to get back in there. The Radars are now a fairly large group at Fair and as I have zero time there to play with them, I have to restrict my Angel stuff to the Jell-O Art Show in April, for the most part. But this Friday I get to put on some lipstick (I have to) and something smart and flouncy. And of course I will wear Jell-O on my head, because I can.

So look for me there, and we will have some fun for a few hours. I bug out early to get to bed for Market the next day, but if you want to touch my Jell-O you can. Probably you don't want to sit behind me unless you don't mind looking through layers of dried gelatin. I'm not tall but I like to keep my hat on. Those in the know come early and bring a chair, as the red ones fill up quickly. Will I make new Jell-O? I just might. None of mine really looks that spectacular to me anymore. I have just enough time if the sun comes out.

Beginning of Winter

These are our Mod outfits for the Lennon show

What's been happening in Jell-O Art Land? I missed the Salon show. The intake was on Saturday and the weather was iffy so I gave up the notion of hauling it down from Market to the gallery and abandoned the idea of putting it in the show. I had a couple of pieces to sell, but gave one to a friend and now I'm thinking to give a couple to the silent auction portion of the Queen's Ball instead. To get that moving I made new Jell-O but without the heat on some of it got moldy and I lost my momentum.

I'm a fucking wedding cake, okay?

I wore some to Market for Halloween, despite the rain, but it was a wimpy costume and I knew it. I had a bad attitude all week about a costume. It used to be so fun to drag out boxes of fabric and old clothes and put together something meaningful but somewhere along the way I lost the energy for that. Mostly the problem is that a rainy day with a bike cart is about as hard a Market day as anyone wants to do, so adding in some nice and ruinable costume is too much. Maybe it is also because performing with the Radar Angels uses up a lot of costume energy. We sang with the Slug Queen for the Lennon Birthday show and although it was a quick 12 minutes that went by in a blur, fun was had. I put together a kind of a Twiggy outfit, a short a-line dress in a black and white fabric that looked vaguely Mod. I sewed a minimally finished thing and had simple accessories and a cool turquoise Jell-O. The show was a Saturday night and we were supposed to be there about the time I usually get finished unloading so I hurried up and Indi gave me a ride and we made it in time. Not in time for a sound check, and the show started an hour earlier than expected, but it all went well and dancing was a blast. Dancing to the Beatles was an effortless way to return to some of the good feelings of my twenties and that was an unexpected joy. I suppose the beer helped. Anyway, success and the singing was great. I'm gradually learning that if I push myself to show up it is always worth the effort.

So next is the Queen's Third Ball, when Markalo Parkalo tries to raise some money for LILA, the nonprofit he heads. Radar Angels are on the bill and we will sing with him for quite a few songs. We'll do Across the Universe and Can't Buy Me Love from the Lennon Show, plus some Radar classics like Stayin' Alive and Come Go With Me and a few new ones. I'll dress as the Queen of Jell-O Art because I can and it is a ball, and I have another new Jell-O that I haven't even worn yet.This show is on a Friday night, even worse for me as it is the last outdoor Saturday Market the next day and that will take a lot of energy I won't have if I don't get home and to bed by ten the night of the Ball. It will be hard to leave but I will have to.

I've told a few people to come here to look for Jell-O Art information but that is well-buried now in all of the posts from earlier in the year. Look for the ones in March for technical help on your Jell-O. Someone asked me about gummy worms made from Jell-O for Hallowe'en and I probably gave her bad information about the stiffness as she wanted more jiggle, but like any media you do have to work with it awhile to get the magical results in a dependable timeline. It's magic but you have to give it time.

The singing is fun but I don't think my performing angel activities are going to be that extensive. I don't think I can do the ten minutes of the Wowathon as it is on one of the mid-December weekends when Holiday Market is all I can keep up with. I know I would enjoy hearing the stories of 40 years ago but really I will enjoy more having some peace and quiet at home. Setting up and taking down that show every weekend takes some hard hours (at least six) and the 16 hours of selling is like a full week to me. I suppose we adjust to the demands of whatever we are doing but I know that if I push myself during that time some seam is ripped in some part of the fabric and some payment is exacted. Christmas already has a lot of potential to cause distress as most people know. There can be too much caring sometimes. I'm kind of getting used to being in the spotlight on a stage but it still brings a lot of unexpected stress.

I'm feeling that today. I really don't care about the Jell-O in my living room calling for my day's attention. I'll have to make myself sit down to it. I know it is fun when I get into the flow of creation and make it go from pieces to art, but that doesn't translate to always excited to begin. However, Sunday is the day off in which these activities are supposed to fit, so it will have to happen, at least some step of it. Maybe I'll just throw the molding pieces on the compost and call it good. I already spent that extra hour we got today and now it is going to get dark long before I want it to. Winter is not my favorite season. I guess that is one reason I have Jell-O Art though...it cheers up the darker days.

Jell-O Season Never Ends

I thought Jell-O Art Season was over in April but this year it just has no end. I ended up loving the Fourth of July event and am so happy I didn't miss it in my short-sightedness. Here's another photo of me and one of three of the many Angels who were in attendance that night (with Joanie and Angela).

I was going to edit out the guy in the undershirt but then noticed the one behind him...one of many people who took the opportunity to wear the colors. He was too cute. The thing I am holding is my hanky, which was my ironic comment on my own patriotism. I had planned to blow my nose on it onstage in the style of Frank Zappa or someone, but of course forgot and it remained a silly aspect of my costume. I borrowed most of that stuff from Ron Pike who has a suitcase of ironic patriotism. 

The Slug Queen Coronation came and went rather quickly, and I had new Jell-O to wear and another costume variation. I wrote about it in my other blog, Divine Tension, here. The Jell-O I had on my head came from a group of headpieces I made from the wedding Jell-O I took to Australia and back. Some of that was thrown away by the caterers, but I took way more than I needed so made groupings of it. I've decided to put them in the upcoming New Zone Show, the Salon du Peuple, otherwise always known as the Refusee show as it originally was a show for those refused entry into the Mayor's Art Show. The Mayor's Show continues but I haven't tried to put Jell-O Art in it for awhile. I might someday. The best piece I think I ever made is the book from 2012, but although that may have been a peak it may not have been my masterpiece. That remains to be seen.

Anyway I love these new ones so much. Flowers are so perfect for the medium that I hope I will always have an array. I hate to let go of them but think I will let some be sold in the New Zone show. I only get 65% (if they sell) but it will spur me to make more. I recently sent a piece, the last floating piece from my son's wedding, to my sister as mourning Jell-O. She lost her husband and the somber colors of this piece lend themselves to the occasion (and I checked it out with her, so it isn't just an enormously inappropriate gesture...). Guess I don't have a photo of it, sadly, but here is the wedding Jell-O from this spring. The sizes vary and they are all on headbands, but I'm not ready to sell any of this stuff yet.I have some other pieces and since I have another month I might make a few more.

It isn't my usual gaudy colors as I tried to stick to her colors of champagne, dark blue, moss green and a touch of burgundy. I couldn't really restrict myself to that.

The stuff in the jar shown here is a piece I recently did for my friend Pamela's birthday. I was going to make her a crown but it seemed that the half hour she would have worn it at Sweet Life would not have been that satisfying (for me, anyway) so I put it in this jar I had. It did use some of the Australian flowers, with a commercially made hummingbird crown I liked.

Putting it in jars makes it doubly hard to photograph but it won't need dusting so that should make it more valuable to the owners. Of course I know that someday they will no doubt throw it away but it does please me to think of it sitting on their shelves for however long it does that. Wonder when it will start appearing at garage sales or Goodwill? My opinion is that they should save it for the Jell-O Art Museum and feel free to donate it whenever they tire of it. Let my son be the one to throw it away or better still, when I am dying we will have a ritual of throwing it all on the water where it will slowly melt and sink as the remains of a beautiful art life. Yes! I will make that happen. Someone can film it and it will be Chihuly-like. Okay, you read it here first. Remind me when the time comes, or do it after I go. Make some special stuff with my ashes in it.

Enough morbidity. I made a piece for our Slug Queen, Markalo Parkalo, in his signature color of purple. It is, to be honest, recycled pieces I had sitting around from the son's wedding and the year I made a lot of slugs, but it worked for him and he was thrilled. He is going to have a lot of costumes like all great Queens and it should look great on his head. Here it is.

He says he will light it up with el-wire which should be very cool. I always like to photograph it in sunlight so the reflections show around it as extra ruffles and dimensions, as one of the most delightful aspects of it is the transparency. His isn't all that transparent so the light should help people see the nuances.

More to say, but this is pretty long and my weekly call with Mom is about to happen. The Jell-O Art year is full already and we still have months to go! Let's see if we can keep up.

Filling the Dance Cards

The proper formalities have been exchanged and the raining Slug Queen will give the benediction at our Jell-O Art Show. We do this all by Facebook now instead of sending our well-dressed pages and squires and jesters, in those carriages we had to give up for lack of sufficient horsefeed. This was our recent epistolary fast-fiction (it does not seem that epistolary is commonly used as a noun, though it should be):

Esteemed Colleague,
Please consider this your official invitation to appear at the ever-loveable Jell-O Art Show on March 29, 2014. If, at around 7:00 pm, you could favor the gathered crowds and the art with your benediction, we would so appreciate it.
Thanking you in advance for the great honor of your company, I remain,
Queen McWho
Queen of Jell-O Art

 

Your radiance.
I will be there in all my finery.
The Right Royal Gastropod,
Siren of Science,
Truly Mad Genius,
Queen Professor Doctor Mildred Slugwak Dresselhaus

I do like being recognized as radiant. The Truly Mad Genius Queen Professor Doctor Mildred Slugwak Dresselhaus will be very busy this month (she always seems to be concocting something spicy) as she is holding her Gala on March 15. Find it here on Facebook. There will be a pie contest! They will be auctioned off, so some might presumably be eaten. http://oco.uoregon.edu/spice/pi-pie-contest. Of course this is a benefit and not just a ploy for her to buy more lime green accessories, so be generous with your support. By the way, you can always bring pie to the Tacky Food Buffet, and it is not required to include Jell-O as an ingredient (in fact, feel free to use actual food in your pie.)

And because I can, I will also plug the Babes With Axes Reunion concert which will be at the WOW Hall next weekend, March 8, and it will be another one of those once-in-a-lifetime chances as so many events are these days. Not many choices there, go or miss it. I made the t-shirts, so buy one while you are at it.

Save a few bucks for the Jell-O Show shirt, too, which will only be available at the Jell-O Show. It will be a cute one. I will give you an important insider hint about the show we are writing: this will be Jell-O Celebrity Jeopardy. Don't try to guess. You may know we have included portrayals of such important figures as Paula Deen and Sarah Palin in the past, so we could include anyone by the time we are finished.

5:44pm Feb 25

i-Jell-o

Your Jell-O Art Queen is thrilled to report that we have a theme!  i-Jell-o

 
We even have a slogan: From the Me Generation to the iGeneration.

Think about it, everyone is tuning out from violence and global climate change and wiring into themselves with their iDevices.... Instead of more human connection, which is one of the only known ways to successfully transcend hatred and violence, we have an entire generation tuned into iThings.

Perhaps they are even hooked into the chemical slush that passes for food these days: extruded chemical blends that have a pleasing enough mouth feel to go down easy and the right secret sauce. DON'T YOU KNOW THAT STUFF IS KILLING YOU?

Okay, no one wants to hear another rant on the way those late icons Twinkies and Ding Dongs used to be real cake and how good they used to taste. Jell-O, in contrast, has always been made from calf hooves and other offal (mostly hides, apparently.)  It has never been food in a classic sense of something grown and gathered. It is made from a process. So we will be exploring process.

And in the process something is lost. Imagine if someone, say a Radar Angel, came back after say, twenty-five years, imagine how shocked and appalled they might be at the temperature change, the near end of the world, the death of the iconic Hostess Cakes, and the way the modern young person seems to be wired up to a silent transmitter while hooked up to a silent killer that passes for food. 

It's Too Darn Hot! People are slurping down melted Jell-O, with vodka, no less, and because it is easy, they don't even notice they have stopped eating food. The Radar Angels and Jell-O Art to the rescue!

Your Queen will stop here with the fantasy scenario of what backstory lies behind the theme, because like all good Jell-O Show themes, this one was chosen from a brilliant brainstorm of dozens of great ideas and connections, and it is open to your interpretation. You are the artist, remember that. I expect a grand range of interpretation that far surpasses even my ridiculous imagination.

The actual show and performance may diverge wildly from the said theme  by the time March 30 2013 rolls around. I'm not even one of the people who usually takes the theme from concept to comedy but this year I got to take notes at the brainstorm and it was really, really hot. People just stripped down to their wings and their Wonder Bread wrapper underwear and we didn't even have time to finish the wine and hummus.

Since there are people working on performance now, all you have to worry about is making your Jell-O, and of course bringing it to the show. You are free to interpret the theme in any fashion that appeals to you, or to totally ignore it and bring the Jell-O you had planned, or the result of your plans if they go a bit south.

I myself had something totally unrelated in mind, but the way my mind works is dependable, and I already found a little angle from the theme to my piece. That little dotted vowel is so pervasive in life that it has a plethora of facets worth mining and metaphors worth mixing.

So go out there and buy your gelatin (you can actually find non-Kraft gelatin out there to bolster up your iScore in the iCompetition toward iPurity of iNtention). 

This is going to get old quickly, isn't it? Keep it fresh for me, won't you?

In other Jell-O art news, I took a plastic box full of fascinators back East for party wear (my Mom looked utterly stunning in one) and on the way back my suitcase got hijacked for underplane storage when I had planned to carry it. 

I totally forgot my priceless Jell-O Art in its vulnerable top pocket, and sure enough, the plastic tote didn't hold up. At first it looked like every piece was smashed, but when I got over my hearbreak enough to fix them, I discovered that while nearly every piece had lost a petal or a leaf, they had broken at the joined parts. Within a few minutes, all were good as new! That stuff is strong. 

Structural, even. So that works into my idea, which may or may not involve walls, and my other idea is knitted Jell-O. Yo, Sadie! Let's see if it can be done.  The iWorld needs iSalvation. Or iSalivation. Or iSomething. You work on it. I have to start covering my kitchen with newspaper and filling all my furniture with piles of gelatin projects. It's Open Season on Jell-O!

Wait, we're trying not to use violent language. The non-competitive joyfest that is the Jell-O art peak season has opened for all!                         U-Jell-O too.

Slug Art Walk!

The Slug Queen's Slug Art Show opens today at 200 West Broadway. It will be on the Art Walk. Of course there will be Jell-O Art!

I named this piece The Queen Slug. It's about a foot long with the slime and roses. It will be dwarfed by the amazing lime green lit-up floor slug and other items I didn't get to see, but the show will be up for a couple of weeks I hope. This is another show from the Eugene Storefront Art Project which is a very happening group of folks with a fabulous idea that has really improved the downtown. They are actually running out of venues as the properties are improved, so let them know if you have ideas for expanding their programs. And support them! I will have little slugs for sale there, to benefit them, so take one home. You know you want some Jell-O Art of your very own. And kowtow to the Old Queens for me as I won't be able to be there. I'm crushed that I will have two pieces of my art in galleries on the premier gallery street in our town on what might be the best Art Walk of the season! Maybe my absence will just fuel the mystery.

I was working on this as a cake decoration but just couldn't resist gluing on a hairband. It looks amazing on top of my head and it might be one of those I just can't seem to part with.

I also made a couple of new roses which apparently I didn't photograph, so see them at Market on the 15th or at Tuesday Market on the 18th. Only three Tuesdays left in the season, and it looks like we will be back across the street co-selling with the farmers for the rest of the season. Get out and enjoy the great fall weather we are so lucky to have.

Giant Slug Eats Orchid

Worked outside on the Jell-O today and was happy to find that summer breezes and sunshine are really great for drying the pieces quickly. Even better than the top of the piano!

I took the mask downtown for Kim to take some photos, so I can enter it in the Mayor's Art Show. The photos are amazing, so we'll see if Jell-O Art is Art or not. I have to figure out some kind of wall bracket though, whether or not it gets in the show, so I can put it in the other show. It was interesting biking around with the mask in a plastic tub, on our very bumpy streets. I had to glue a couple parts of it back together afterward, but I hadn't done anything to it (except drop it once) since the Jell-O Show, and apparently Jell-O art may require a bit of maintenance now and then.

This is something I am making for the Slug Queen Coronation, for Kim, the First Lady in Waiting, and I think it will look quite fetching on her or whomever ends up trying it on. It has been super fun. A big 9x13 slab of yellow made the most wonderful, natural looking slug you could ever want, all frilly on the edges and everything. There is a little fuchsia slug on the back of it, too, extra sliminess all around. I am donating it to Kim to put in the Slug Queen Archives which is probably a cardboard box in someone's garage somewhere in the South Hills.

I am very pleased. I made the headpiece flat and it's very comfortable to wear, not too heavy, not too fragile. The art is evolving. I'm wearing the first tiara in the photo here from Market, nice to see how it looks. That one digs into my head just a little bit. Beth said she was talking to the cops about an incident she was having on the corner when I walked by and the sun caught the Jell-O, and she felt like her world was really just fine. Imagine a world where an old woman can look perfectly normal and safe wearing Jell-O Art on her head in broad daylight, and then recreate that world every Saturday.







On Saturday night, my next door neighbors are having Jell-O Wrestling at their birthday party, and I'm excited to get a look at it, though it is far too weird for me to want to participate. I think it's rather hilarious though. It won't be Jell-O they will be using, there is a special product made just for wrestling, just add water to the pit you dug in your yard. They're super serious about it, scheduling it like a tournament, and making all the kids go to bed.

I'm not telling them about the roomful of dried Jell-O I have over here. It will just be a delicious oversupply of Jell-O in the neighborhood for a night. Wonder what you do with a pit full of strange gelatinous stuff in the morning.