For All Twenty of You

I have about twenty readers on this blog most times, sometimes more, usually less. I expect this with my personal, not-very-mainstream subject matter and style. The good side of that is I can post my secrets here and few people will notice, much less be shocked by them. So today for my loyal readers I will reveal what I have been slaving over for weeks...props for the Jell-O Art Show!

I won't post all of them. You already saw one side of the tall prop that will change with the scenes. I made them detailed purely for my own enjoyment, as most of the details will not be seen from the audience at all and since the show duration is at most three hours and at the least a few minutes, this is obviously a fool's errand. I continue to love being that fool. This is the third year I have made this ridiculously detailed props and have endured the comments of "obsessive" and all the things you mutter under your breath when you come in my house and see them still enshrined for lack of better places to go. They're made of cheap materials and fall apart and are so very ephemeral. To me that is part of their appeal.

Just like Jell-O Art! Nobody knows how long my dried pieces will last and there is no intrinsic value or extrinsic for that matter. They don't appear on the fine-art scale. I don't pay a lot of attention to the many critical pieces of art evaluation that might go into a piece for sale or permanent display, I just have fun with them. I get to interpret the show and my life as an artist and be just as self-indulgent as can be.

And although the show is secret and more fun that way, I think my twenty people deserve a taste of what will be on stage. The photos today show the Jell-O Art Studio, which will appear briefly in the show and will actually be on display throughout the show, on the stage. Go ahead and go up there and look at them if you want. (Don't trip over anything as it might be slightly hazardous with cords, etc.) Maybe I'll put them closer to the front than they will be in the play. You will get too many clues about what will happen but maybe that will help you if you get stuck in the back and can't see the props behind all the kooky cladded *women*.

The Eugene Weekly gave us a great write-up with a photo of one of my pieces in a jar. I think this is the one I gave to Indi for her birthday last year. I've made several jars now and did so to keep the pieces from getting dusty on the shelves of their collectors. I will eventually do more, but if you have any cool jars you don't want, I'll take them. It makes for a good photo, so thank you Weekly! I wrote a joke letter to them about the slip that left out the Men of the Radar Angels, which contained rather violent images I am sorry for now, but it was all in fun. I'm glad I left out the part where I called them Fascist Republicans since there are so many people these days who don't get jokes.

Have to clean up all the scraps of these projects now and get out the sewing machine. Here's your preview!

Sick of Jell-O

What? You're tired of hearing about Jell-O Art and all of its many charms? Yeah, me too. But really I'm just nervous. I think I finished up my piece yesterday, though I have to try to take it outside to photograph today and could break it. Better to break it today than on Saturday when I won't have the time to fix it.

I'm tired of rehearsing, too, as we meet almost every evening to go through the show and the songs again and again. I need the practice, of course, and need the slight pressure of the timing of my lines and songs, to get comfortable with the speed of it all and most of all, to be able to relax and enjoy it.

That's been one of the big challenges of stepping up into more involvement. It's supposed to be fun. Last year I was so nervous it was more pressure than fun, until it was over, and then the emotional roller-coaster effect was still there, but this year I am trying hard to *get over myself.* Of course I'm nervous. Even seasoned performers have the jitters about things that they can't control. Gazillions of performers get up there and do it anyway, to our great delight and wonder. Them showing their nervousness does not make our experience better. 

So I will focus on smiling, laughing, and having a bunch of fun. That is supposed to be the point, over all of the other minor points like promoting the arts and the Maude Kerns Art Center and the Radar Angels and the Eugene arts scene and all of the other things that come with this. It is going to be fun.

One of the parts I like best is making the funky set pieces and signs and props we need to make our literary points in the short show. I get to make them any way I want to, so I haul out my rusty graphics skills and do some lettering on some cheap posterboard. I spend way too much money and time on things that will have a very brief life. My house is full of them, though I am getting a little more life out of a few this year by recycling them into new pieces. 

Here are a couple of the signs we'll be using for the performance. It's a game show, loosely based on Jeopardy, and it moves quickly so we need visual aids to keep the audience with us. Let's hope they are effective. My memory of past shows is that the uneducated viewer (as I was for years, being all wrapped up in my own Jell-O world) gets only part of the show as it goes by. The songs do persist if they are catchy. We have some really catchy ones this year, so we're all going around singing funny lyrics about Jell-O to ourselves. You might spot me around the neighborhood, or downtown, deep in thought as I try to not revert to the original songs we have hijacked for our silly purposes.

And while I am vitally interested in the deep meanings and connections of it all to the big cosmic pictures, hardly anyone else goes there. Most people embrace the silliness and laugh at my great capacity to take it all seriously. Some people get that, generally other Jell-O artists. Some work full-time at this like I do for this period of the winter and spring. We don't get paid. Our satisfaction is our reward, if we value fun like we should.

I'm still learning to value the fun over the seriousness, so I get some odd looks and have to remember to moderate my intensity. My Jell-O creations are really quite important to me and I am emotionally involved with every single one, even the hair ornaments and headbands. I remember them and love them and they are exalted in my memory and photographs, and there are still so few about the world that it is a pleasant shock to see them. Most of the recipients gamely found a place of value for them, though some have ended up as compost. It wouldn't be the first time someone's artistic creations were undervalued.

It's good for me to feel that sense that even some of my most important friends don't really understand or value this art experience the way I do. Most of my Market people make things every day and making things, however elaborate or impractical, just doesn't always impress them. People who work in precious metals or marble or wood have a bit of a hard time accepting gelatin up in their league, not to mention completely un-credentialed artists who put on gelatinous airs and show in real galleries.

Alas, they have also lost sight of the fun. Let's all try as hard as we can to believe in it, to put the value in fun that it deserves. This year's Jell-O slogan, if we are to believe an ad in Parade magazine, is *Fun things up this Easter* or substitute holiday I suppose, to seem like a new slogan every month or so. (*Fun things up this Memorial Day*?) Let us take our cue from Jell-O itself.

Be transparent, be colorful, be jiggly and be sweet. Melt easily at room temperature. Resist all attempts to tame you and make you ordinary. Be inventive (what makes Berry Blue, that unreal mouthwash color?) and be consistent (over 100 years of amazing desserts, not to even list the many salads and casseroles) but ever new. Re-invent yourself at least every spring, if not more often, and always, always, fun things up if you can.

Suspend the other rules for awhile. Make verbs out of concepts (just funning you here) and concepts into sculpture. Laugh at yourself when you get too far into it. Laugh at each other when you get the chance. Be encouraging to those who aren't where you are yet, and humble about how hard you have worked at this for these 26 years. Take care of each other and let others take care of you. Stay forever young.

No wait, that isn't one of our songs; I'm digressing again. Gotta make some Tacky Food today, and finish the props and my costumes for Dress Rehearsal tonight and Tech Rehearsal tomorrow. Gotta get up early tomorrow and watch Michael from MKAC rock the morning show on KEZI. So glad it is him and not me. Gotta walk my foot around and coddle my voice and eat well and sleep well and make this thing into history so I can get on to the other things in my life.

And put my Jell-O away for a year. I really plan to do this, to put it all up in the attic and not be a Jell-O artist for a bit. It will leak out of course, but I am going to try hard. And that reminds me, did you see the OPB special called Cold Case: JFK last night? It was good, but the best part was the ballistic gelatin. They fired bullets through the gelatin, which behaves like human tissue (sorry if this upsets you) and it was really outstandingly beautiful. I'm not sure why they always make it in that unappealing yellow, but the patterns in slow motion are graceful and fractal, and what's more, it closes back up after the bullet passes through, a completely unexpected effect that makes me think. 

Oh, forget it, I know I won't put it all up in the attic. I'm already thinking about my next piece. It's my true art form. I'm just lucky that I get to fun it up.