Too Many Projects!

The overwhelm week. Next week will probably be worse, and you will know because I will be very quiet. I have far too many life tabs open. (This is something I learned about cellphones...you have to close the tabs when you check the weather.) Since cellphones are apparently what passes for life these days, it's all one.

Props are coming along but they need to get out of the livingroom so I can bring in the sewing machine. I really have big house envy today. If I only had another room...maybe I should fill up my car with things I don't want and park it somewhere with the doors open. I did start to scavenge parts of old props instead of keeping them enshrined for no reason. It is still fun to have something creative to do every minute.

The t-shirts....ergh. I'm really not motivated to make shirts anymore. I'll do what I have to do but will probably drop them from my retail now that I will probably have to bring 160 pounds of dead weight when I use my pop-up. Yes, the fire marshal is wanting to enforce a new-ish technical tent advisory for weights. It is sensible, of course, as those things do catch wind if you are not a consummate craft professional like most of us are. Most of us tie the booths down to the stuff or to each other or in some way  make sure they are stable, and I would say out of 250 vendors at the Market each week, probably 240 of them take care of this just fine. Lots of people already bring weights, but I don't know anyone who could bring 80 pounds per leg like the advisory advises.

Fortunately our managers are working on it, have been for months, and will find some ways we can work within it to make sure everyone is safe and no one gets speared by airborne aluminum. I hope we can get some reasonable accommodations for our old bodies and our tiny lifestyles. You may know that I bring my stuff to Market on a large bike cart, capacity 500 pounds. I have no problem (well, few problems...) loading it with a quarter-ton of goods and fixtures but no way can I add 320 or even 80 pounds. I will have to eliminate stock, or only come on days when I don't need a cover so don't need to weight it. I do know that I will find a way. I have to. Still, it's hard to deal with this type of stuff. Obviously the people who thought it was a good idea to legislate this had not considered the reality of what we do and how we have to do it.

So while I cannot ignore this messy realityJell-O Art!
, it is getting in the way of my priority, which is
I started making it again, without much of an idea in mind, but again, I have to get these props out of the way if I'm going to start building sculptures. I need a good tacky food idea, too, something that uses a lot of orange-flavored Jell-O. Maybe a nice carrot and celery salad made into bite-sized chunks. I might even eat a piece or two of that if the vegetables outweighed the Jell-O. Except for the image of the stuff hardening in my guts...okay, back to sculpture ideas.

I will probably reference my personal odyssey and the idea of being community partners with Maude's. It's timely and meaningful though lacks humor...except for the personal odyssey part. I have had a pretty humorous life when I think about it. Dreams aren't helping. Last night I was making things appear that I knew could not, like the cat who is buried in the yard, Jake. I do miss him. He was nice and whole and pettable in the dream, but I made him appear from a fuzzy blur. That was some neat personal power...so maybe it is a clue to what to make. An orange cat...if I go ahead and make it now it could grow some nice fur in three weeks. I might if I didn't have intense familiarity with the smell of rotten gelatin. One of those you don't forget.

Okay, I'll just finish with the news that the show is really coming together and will be quite amusing and somewhat professionally staged. We will have mics so I didn't have to pitch my audience-participation idea which was not going to fly with this group of divas. They actually told me that my presentation as Athena, or actually the Queen of Jell-O Art playing Athena, was too humble and should be more ostentatious. (Of course they didn't use that word.) I said that it wouldn't be necessary, as everyone in the room would absolutely know that I am the Queen of Jell-O Art, and I have no doubt about that.

Partly because I will be wearing my crown and maybe my old costume for part of the non-performance hours of the show, but mostly because it will be entirely obvious, and since I have played her in the last three shows, she is legendary. I'm pretty sure mostly the same people come every year, because we are the Jell-O Art community, the partners. We'll see. I still stand by the idea that if you want to heckle, you should. All ten or so of you who read my last post still have my permission. If you want to sing along, do so. I am all about letting you in. It's a lot more fun that way.

But the show is still a secret. I'm not sending out any scripts to you all. It will be more fun that way. Trust me, I'm royalty.

Art Life is Alive

An apology to all those who picked up my business card in the last few weeks and came here to read a lively blog about Jell-O Art. I have been overwhelmed with work and had no time to write anything since just after the Jell-O Show. Doing a little video promo for the Oregon Country Fair Radio station reminded me that I am passionate about Jell-O Art, and do think of it as my true art form. A few years back I wrote an essay about that, kinda, where I proposed that my transition from clothing decorator to something less arduous would be led by my Jell-O, but that turned out to be somewhat of a fantasy, at least so far.

I did spend at least one season of Saturday Market showing and selling Jell-O Art as headpieces and flowers with no purpose other than their beauty and wondrousness, but soon realized they were a distraction from the items I really needed to sell for a living. The Jell-O went back into the project room and was only brought out on special occasions such as the annual April Fools Jell-O Art Show, the coronation of the Slug Queen, and my son's wedding, where we all wore it on our heads. I brought a few of my favorite pieces to wear at the OCF, since everyone enjoys outrageous costumes there and I don't have the energy to put much together while trying so hard to be an actually profiting artisan. The headbands are easy to wear and of course quite spectacular to view.

But the actual making of the art went on the back burner and is mostly relegated to the off-season months of January to March, culminating in the show. I made one big piece, the Blue Heron, and a few smaller ones, but that was it, even the tools were put away.

I'm really into tote bags, and recently bought 250 of some I had sewn by T&J Designs in Springfield. They are made of a high-quality USA made canvas and have webbing handles also domestically sourced. The people at T&J are real, they sit at real sewing machines and sew up the bags, pressing them for a beautiful finish and making an elegant product that looks wonderful on my display. I printed up four of my designs so far and they are selling, even though they cost more than the imported ones on the other side. I'm proud of them and happy to have found one way to make my products more ethical and more satisfying.

I still don't sew my own bags, just screenprint on them, but this is a big improvement, and I plan to gradually replace all of my imported bags. I also branched out and added some new types of hats, though they are still imported and mass-produced, but these fit more people and add some new colors, so my customers are happier. That makes me happier.

Apparently a lot of my operation as a craft artisan is people-pleasing, and I do get off balance sometimes in the heavy work seasons. I made too many logo bags for the OCF, but I learned a lot by putting them on the path. There really are collectors of logo items, who truly love the Fair and what it represents, but they are a discriminating group of people and some of them did not have happy looks when they left my booth. They wanted something special, and my special new design didn't really go all the way to the meaningful level I had envisioned. It was nice, and charming, but not really a winner. I sold about 50 of them nevertheless, but I'll have to try harder next year.

It interests me that it has taken me so long to really understand the translation of love for the event into a craft item. I can't really even articulate it, but I know it when I see it. Tons of people came to tell me how much they loved their OCF bags, but they meant the ones made by a sadly now-deceased artist whose name I don't even know. I met her daughter at the Fair. She had it down, made really fine products and had a beautiful design each year. She would probably say she had a few failures too, but she did it successfully for a long, long time. So it's a bit unrealistic that I should achieve great success the first year, or even in the first five.

It's a funny thing when you have the hot Fair item. I had one once, a shirt that I hadn't even planned to sell, but just brought for fun gifts. You might remember it: had an image of George Bush on it. You still see them around sometimes. It got such a radical appreciation from the moment it came out of the box that I ended up spending most of the Fair running home to print any available shirt to rush back to my booth. It was my second hot Fair item (the first one just sold out its edition of about 30, and really my partner got the credit for it, but I felt the rush) and it was quite life-changing to be filling the desire of hundreds of people.

So I got a little carried away this year with my bags. I was having conversations in my head where people came to get the cool bags I brought and they were sold out, so my people-pleaser kicked in and I just bought and printed more and more bags.I had purple ones and blue ones and blue/purple/blue ones and green ones and peach colored ones and three colors of dyed purple ones and on and on. Too many.

I did hedge my bets and printed most of them without the year, but people want the year on them. I will have to figure out a way to make the ones left over special for next year, maybe a little back print with 2015 on it, not really a lie. I don't know. A year can be a long time. I may be so far into the locally produced bags that I will want to scrap all of the imported ones by then. Maybe I can make a deal with the concessions and commemoratives to sell them. I'll have to think of something.

My biggest thought about it is that I sold about a fourth of what I made. That means I worked four times harder than I needed to, or even to sensibly have enough, I worked twice as hard as I needed to. That's not ideal. I paid for them, so no real loss over time, as they will eventually sell at some price or other, but I could have taken that canoe float day off, if I had had more sensible conversations in my head. Oh, sorry, sold out of that one. I'll have more next year.

Create more desire, have fewer of higher quality, make the interactions more satisfying on both sides. My customers are smart and know what they are looking for. I'll get smarter too. I'll start working on that lovely peach earlier and get it done on time.

And Jell-O Art, my true art form, has not left my palette. I'll be making more. I'm still passionate and dedicated to it, and the Slug Queen's Coronation is coming up quickly. I'm still and always will be the Queen of Jell-O Art. I get to make that what I want it to be. It doesn't depend on money, not even on people-pleasing. It's just art. Deepening and shining into our souls. Yes.

Life After Jell-O

A rat ate my Jell-O. I watched it snack boldly in my back yard, and quickly relocated the compost pile, but I did find this deliciously ironic. The Jell-O that was destined for the Tacky Food table instead gave a Norway rat a few more days of survival. I'm guessing all the sugar and chemicals didn't agree with him that well.

I owe my fellow Jell-O Artists a celebratory post with photos of their work, but I'm still trying to catch up on all the projects that were shoved aside while Jell-O-ing. I don't feel motivated. I really am sick of Jell-O.

I have no idea what to do with my heron sculpture, though I may enter it in the Mayor's Art Show in August. I'd like to take it to Country Fair, as it would look good parading around, and is light enough that it would be easy to carry, but getting it out there is rather difficult. It takes up a lot of room and I already take far too many things out there. I may just put it out of sight in my project room and call it a day.

Art is supposed to feed us, and if we aren't feeling satisfied we ought to explore other aspects of it. I really do think I will take a break. I think I will go back to researching and writing my book, and to making and selling my tote bags and hats. I already decided to phase out my clothing lines, and I feel good about that. Of course the popular items are already almost gone, so there will be an uncomfortable period of lowering prices and letting go, and the disappointed customers who will not find me agreeable to ordering a few more garments and making those particular items again. I may relent. It's hard to not produce things you know will sell.

I am concentrating on the hats, which are a successful product, and the tote bags, which are a bit more problematic. The market for tote bags is pretty saturated. Everyone knows they need them, and everyone has accumulated some surplus, especially of the woven plastic kind that are inexpensive and can be printed with all-over designs of highly detailed artworks. The type I make, old-fashioned canvas with one- or two-color screenprints, are not in high demand. I'm proud of them, and they look good, but not only are they being sold by every screenprinter as a side item, customers are just not all that interested.

I do have a little niche selling them to people who want to shop, either at Farmers' Market or ours, and forgot their bag, but that is minimal. It works pretty well at Tuesday Market, but if only one other person brings bags to sell, that could put a hole in my niche. This is a common dilemma in retail, when an item becomes popular or needed. It doesn't take long to flood the market.

We'll see how it goes. I may find myself investing in a bad idea. The bags are heavy, and perhaps not the best item for my quest to make things easier on my body, so maybe if their usefulness fades I can let go of them too. This might be a transition year to something else. I did sew a couple into shorter bags that will work better for produce. You can nicely nest six berry hallocks in the bottom and rest a bag of spinach leaves on top. Unfortunately since they take sewing time I had to raise the price a little. If they look popular I'll make some more.

I let go of the printed and handpainted silk OCF flags and scarves I've been making for years. They have never been a great-selling product, even at my underpriced level, and I'm tired of making them, too. They're gorgeous, and I will miss them, but change has to happen somehow. I'll be able to sell them for one more Fair, and then goodbye.

So some small shifts in my artistic life, shifts that seem healthy. I'll keep you posted.

Behind the Scenes

This will be my second year working on the show behind the Jell-O Art Show, and it has me excited. It jiggles parts of my creativity that aren't always in play. I love to write, and have a sharp sense of humor for double-entendre, puns, and satire, not that my jokes don't fall flat a good part of the time. Writing the script is a hoot. We do it in a group, with a few of us recording the ideas and putting them in sort of an order, which is refined every time we meet. At this point in the process we meet at least weekly, probably twice, and we do email exchanges as well. It's terrifically entertaining.

Brainstorms with creative people are so surprising. It's not easy to be a person whose divergent ideas hop all over the intellectual map, but when you get a lot of us in a room together, what is "normal" changes and the atmosphere opens up. There's such a fine line connecting creativity with wackiness, and being able to bring your wackiness to the table makes it all so much fun. I'm having a blast.

The Radar Angels use costuming a lot to express the wackiness, which is what makes the act so perfect for Oregon Country Fair, another venue where the Jell-O songs go when they are not being used for Jell-O Shows. I've never performed with them there, since I have a booth and last year had a wedding and a booth, but here is a clip of what it can look like: http://vimeo.com/86730890 . I'm actually thinking of taking quick breaks from my booth to appear with the Radars this year, just dropping in for a song or two within my retail madness. We'll see about that. I used up a lot of my booth capital last year during the wedding activities, so I need to be more focused this year. That's not until July, though.

Such a huge group! We don't have quite as many for Jell-O, and that's good, because the stage is not that large. Many of the songs, however, serve for both events. We will also be performing at a benefit for LILA on March 21, at Cozmic. That's a week before the Jell-O Show, so some of it will be a sneak preview.
I myself, as a performing newbie, am pretty intimidated by the bigger public stage, but planning to work up to it. Quickly.

I am practicing my songs at home and having a blast thinking about my character(s) and how they might perform. I can tell you that the theme is Jell-O Jeopardy, so will of course include elements of the game show, which I watch every day so will easily be able to write in the little details that matter. I can also tell you that since this is Jell-O Jeopardy, the similarities will quickly diverge.

Our crowds don't hold us to anything, though, in fact, I think the Jell-O Show more than anything else celebrates divergence. It is all about revolutionary social change, from within, starting with the most mundane life activities, such as eating. I have been a Jell-O Artist from the first show in 1988. I admit I was not there when the idea generated, but knowing the generators, I always assumed it came from radical feminist politics. I don't think that was just me. We had to step out of our kitchens and kick down the last artistic barriers for women and bring all of our sisters and mothers and daughters along with us. Okay, men and boys can come, and probably need it even more than we did, but I grew up in the 1950's, when liberation of women was just gaining a little traction after millenia of trying. I saw how deadened we were supposed to be, how good. (Does it matter that I was also raised Catholic? Yes, very much so. But that is a big subject we can't get to here. You will notice it on the Tacky Food Buffet, and the pagan scheduling of April Fools/Easter/Spring.)

So there has always been an educational piece, a liberation, and a mentorship and empowerment for others. It has never just been putting on costumes and flouncing around in public. That is just one of the benefits. The shows are actually carefully written and constructed to apply a wacky finish to real social issues and real, cosmic change. There has always been an element of bringing out the angel and princess and queen in each other, and anyone who happens into our circles. We want you all to get your wings and fly higher than you dreamed.

Life is participatory, although it is difficult to engage people from these selfish, protected environments most of us construct for our personal comfort and safety. Jell-O Art as a vehicle for liberation has some essential qualities that just make it natural. It's so gorgeous and mystical as a substance, so jewel-like and perfect. The transparency and jiggle are qualities that just beg to be used. It matters some that it is both a simple and an uncooperative art material to work with. It can be a real artistic challenge to make a statement with Jell-O, but of course, in our world it matters not if you make a statement. You don't have to. You can just play with it.

Elevating it on a pedestal and calling it art is also quite revolutionary. Even after 26 years it is seldom taken seriously, or at least a tongue is planted in a cheek when the art is viewed. I personally have always fought against evaluation of the art, erecting a critical structure like other types of art, because I feel so strongly that making that level of good or bad Jell-O Art will just drive people away and miss the point completely.



I do plenty of internal evaluation of my Jell-O, and take it very seriously in terms of challenging myself with technique and execution and meaning, but I don't want any of that coming from the outside world. I don't want there to be any rejection in the world of Jell-O Art. It creeps in, of course, and some comes with my ego attached, but I really try hard to stomp on those impulses and prideful thoughts that separate artists and cause them to compete. Life is hard enough. Art should be easy to enter, easy to explore, easy to grasp from whatever place you are in, and ought to stick with you and make you think and expand your own life.

Other arts can be otherwise, but Jell-O Art is in its own category. This is an outsider category and the rules are continually discarded if possible. There are no rules. Express!

So if you do get a chance to participate in the show, I want you to know that there is a deep history and political perspective behind your fun. This is important to me, as I look at my life and see my Jell-O Art as my premier life expression. It is the place I have been able to take my inner artist and really give her the full stretch of her wings. Sure, I can make any t-shirt or tote bag or hat that I want, and I am free in so many ways in my life and my work, but Jell-O is my essence.

When I was crowned in 2012, in the surprise "Queen for a Day" skit the Angels had planned for a year, my eyes were opened to a whole new realm of the show I had sort of ignored. This reveals how fear works in the art world...I had always thought of myself as someone with stage fright, who could never perform in a public setting. I don't quite know where that came from...a lack of imagination perhaps, because I don't remember a traumatic incident or anything. I just had that sense that even though I could sing and dance well enough, I would clutch on stage and croak voicelessly to my humiliation. I was aware of the fear and kind of wanted to shed it. One time I won a prize at a Babes with Axes show and confessed that I had always wanted to be on stage with the Babes, so yay, but I never pushed to get there.

You know how those inner messages persist. Fortunately for me, Indi and the other Angels also persist, and when they got me up on stage in 2012, and I sang along with them, and babbled an acceptance speech, and cried in front of strangers and felt that pure joy, I got over myself a little. In 2013 I joined the writers and performers and they propped me up enough that I sang a song, into a mic, and I guess it sounded okay. I didn't get to see a video, and maybe I sounded awful and no one will tell me, but I'm guessing my fears are speaking there again and I was just fine. At any rate, it was such a rush! I was over the top with excitement, which was of course disturbing in its own way, but I certainly survived, didn't croak (conveniently I was in a frog costume, so it wouldn't have mattered), and had a blast.

At the same time I was singing a bit on Saturdays with the also persistent and empowering Rich, (the two of us visible at the very end of this eclectic clip advertising the uncontrollable and amazing,  SM You-Tube,) so over the last two years I have relaxed and gained a little confidence about participating in music, just as I did over the last 26 about participating in art. That is the way the arts are supposed to work, at their best.

I'm almost sixty-four years old, and despite never taking a real art class except for a month-long calligraphy class in the seventies in NYC, I have based my entire life on artistic expression. This is powerfully profound to me. I didn't sign up to get the credentials, the student debt, the critical permissions: I have always been an outsider. That was the hippie way and it worked for me. The qualification for all that is that there will not necessarily be money attached, but one of the tenets of the hippie way was that we don't put money at the top of our personal hierarchies. That particular type of power comes with so many complicated compromises.

Of course poverty is limiting in a profound way, so compromises have been made, but out of those came Saturday Market, LCFM, and OCF, and they were fruitful and important compromises to make. They have benefited millions of people. And although the Radar Angels don't make a lot of money when they perform, they do get paid and are therefore professional. I admit I have made money from Jell-O Art, not much, but I sell the shirts every year and at least break even most years. Part of the reason money is attached to parts of our expression is just for survival. Those glittery costumes are not always free (though I will always look in a free box just in case...I have a sewing machine.)

So to get to a point, I invite you to try a level of participation in the Jell-O Art Show, for whatever reason appeals to you. I discovered the "flow state" of deep artistic immersion when working on Jell-O, discovered my creative process, and declared myself as an Artist, but for you it just might be a little bit of fun in the kitchen outside your usual activities. It's a personal walk through the art world, so do it at your own pace.

I urge you to do it, though. Within the Jell-O frame or not, if there is something holding you back from true expression of your desires, your delights, your passions for change, even your political stands, I urge you to kick out the jams and add some jiggle. Try it. This is your perfect opportunity, and your Queen demands wishes for you only the best, the richest artistic life you can live. You have nothing to lose but your clean kitchen.

Jell-O can eventually be scraped off your floor and dug out of your carpet. You can throw it in the compost and walk away if you feel the tinge of failure, or take it to the show, put it on a pedestal, give it a title and see what happens. One angel's garbage is another angel's lift. We all want to sit on a cloud. Let me lend you a little puff of hot air.

  

Jell-O Art Still Fascinates

I continue to give out my photo cards featuring the dried gelatin mask I made in 2011, which looks gorgeous on the black background, and send people to this link, so I had better post now and then. I am currently not making any Jell-O Art, concentrating on my retail work with the upcoming Holiday Market in mind. That starts in November, after many weeks yet on the Park Blocks wishing for summer to come back. We will be outdoors through November 16, them moving to the Fairgrounds, indoors the weekend before Thanksgiving. 

I doubt I'll be retailing Jell-O Art again, though it was fun, as it was mainly a distraction from those types of work that actually sell well, like hats and tote bags. Even though I am happiest manipulating gelatin, and able to express my true soul through that open-ended medium, I'm not retired yet and still need to make money with my time. Traditionally I spend the months of the offseason after Christmas concentrating on the Jell-O Art world culminating in the annual Jell-O Art Show around April Fools Day. I hope that will be the case this year too. It will be the 26th Annual show.

I did successfully outfit the wedding party, and photos here show the Bride and Groom's Jell-O, and the decorated hat I wore. Lots of my family and friends wore the giant flowers on their heads or hats, and to me the Jell-O really made the wedding decorations, blending terrifically with the steampunky theme of the costumes. Kat and John did a wonderful job with all of the outfits, Kat sewing much of what people wore, including her fab dress. She's a keeper.

I abandoned the heron project outlined in my post from May. Lots of things changed between then and the wedding in July at the Oregon Country Fair. Perhaps I will make the heron for this year's show. I did make some lovely pieces of gray-blue feathery thin gelatin.

I discovered that one of my main practices, using glass plates and dishes to dry the gelatin, causes damage to the glass if you let the gelatin dry so long that it gets stuck and rigid. Little flakes and chunks of glass can break off. I bought new pie plates to use for edible things, and will no longer use the same dishes for eating and Jell-O Art. I hope my practices didn't cause problems for people. Be careful with glass, and with molten gelatin, which has burned me many times. You really don't want to spill liquid gelatin.

In other art news, the Eugene Saturday Market presents the Holiday Market Art Bag Project, which consists of 46 tote bags decorated by 46 artists (or more) to be given away on the first weekend of HM. The ones turned in so far are wonderfully individual in the styles of the artists and to us insiders they are recognizable and so desirable. I am having a lot of trouble deciding how to decorate mine. I've considered and rejected sewing some of my silk or cotton prints to the bag, even putting a hand-painted silk scarf on the bag, and I don't really want to hand-paint a tote bag. I am primarily a screenprinter, and I can do amazing things with a screenprinted bag, so I just have to draw something, make the screens, and get it done.

I have a list of ideas but settling on one is really tough. My neighbor has a gorgeous persimmon tree that is just beginning to turn the shades of oranges and yellows that are so glorious, but I have the peaches design which is quite similar, so I want to do something different. I like to draw plants from life, but the nature window is rapidly closing with all this rain and cold we are having. I need to choose something and get going. I'm leaning toward a vintage photo of the farmers' market, or something featuring giant fruits on a wagon, like the old postcards, but then again, it would be simpler to draw some blueberries or something. I will think of something soon!

So art is happening, just not much of it in the form of gelatin, though I still have a five-pound bag of it sitting in my kitchen waiting to be measured and melted. I am not tempted to fasten some of it to the tote bag, though. Sometimes it is just not possible to fully integrate everything into the same life. Unless...

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.

Gelatin Art My Way

I've been having fun in the last few months trying for a presence in the world of Jell-O Art. Today I googled Gelatinaceae images and it was all my photos! Actually way more, it included photos from my other blog and even stuff from the Saturday Market photo gallery. Not everything of course, because strange are the ways of Google.

I have to bring some of the posts and images from the other blog to here, and I will start with some photos from this year's Jell-O Art Show. For anyone new to the scene, the Radar Angels have been holding a Jell-O Art Show for some 23 years, and I have always been a part of it. There has been an evolution, and now I spend a lot of time during the winter months when I'm not retailing, working on Jell-O.

This is me at the show, trying to get the piece assembled, and the show has already started. The next photo is the moment I turned to see a crowd of curious and amazed people all focusing on me! I look quite startled and utterly delighted. It felt like a highly significant life moment, the true fame I didn't know I wanted.



I had made two sets of wings, an upper and lower, but they wouldn't stay on the way they had at home and I eventually gave up and wore the top set, the pink ones. The third photo is a shot of the wings, from when Rich Glauber invited me and Scarlett the Old Queen (who is wearing the other set of wings) up onstage on Opening Day of the Saturday Market, which is the same day as the Jell-O Show most years. It was quite the triumph for me and for Jell-O Art, though in the big world it went largely unnoticed.





The top photo is one of the mask, shot by Kim at the Market, which stands out on its own as a wonderful piece of art. the last shot is the piece set up at my house, in my project room, which is going to be my Jell-O Art Museum. My retirement plan is that I will charge a dollar admission and give tours of my archive of Jell-O Art and Radar Angels memorabilia and artifacts which will probably force me to be open every Tuesday between 1:00 and 1:15 pm. It's about as solid as all my other retirement plans.













But the good thing about being a Jell-O Artist is that there is no need to retire.