Oh, Jell-ell-ell-O!

 The Jell-O Art season begins as soon as the year turns after the holiday season, and builds momentum up to the Jell-O Art Show, which we consider the first event of Spring around here. (It's going to be March 23rd, 2024.) It is generally a huge focus of my life, and can push every other thing out of the way. It can be pure fun, or a bigger challenge, but the main goal is to amuse the Jell-O artists and performers, and of course, the community, who are a loyal, local group who like to feel like they are in on a secret. And we like to keep it kind of a secret, the performance at least. The Show is a fundraiser for MKAC and definitely not a secret. Plan to attend! 5-8 pm, so you can still go somewhere to eat or dance. Or home to bed, whatever.

Mostly we keep secrets because the performance is somewhat improvisational up until almost the very end. We don't even wear our costumes to the dress rehearsal unless there are props to manage or we need to see if we can even move in whatever wacky thing we decided to wear. And it's extra fun to surprise the others. Last year Queen Elizabeth just wowed me, with Indi's sense of design and the perfection of her whole shtick. She's kind of my Lucille Ball, or maybe Carol Burnett. She makes me rise to the occasion and really let loose as much as I can for a decrepit old hermit with stage fright.

I rarely actually have stage fright anymore, because the trick of having a persona and a character to play greatly eases any anxiety about undue attention, and really, it's just the Jell-O Art Show, not some serious theatre drama that will make or break my career. It's not my career, and you can't break it, and I know how to make it, Jell-O that is. 

I do take the making of the Jell-O completely seriously. For me it is the essence of myself as an artist, because it's not for making money, it's impossible to control as a medium, and it has taught me what artists know about self-expression. I've written about that a lot over the years, but in a nutshell, you dive in and swim, sometimes half-drowning and other times riding the waves. I love the opportunity for self-expression that is ephemeral and only as important as you make it. 

So how I get started with my Jell-O, once the writing of the script and songs and meeting with the performers has begun, is that I wait for inspiration from my busy little brain and heart. I see what comes up, subject-wise, as we figure out the theme and set the tone. Sometimes I go to the thrift shop and find some irresistible prop to build my idea around or in.

The theme we came up with is The Good, The Bad, The Jell-O. 

Originally we  thought we might go Western because it is fun, but then we took out the "and" so the theme would seem more open to interpretation, as our gift to the artists. I mean, if someone can't go off from good and bad, they can pick one. Plenty of either to choose from. I'm not fond of duality, so I"m thinking of this as the ultimate in universality...it's neither, but all of everything at the same time. Expressed in Jell-O. So many cultural subjects to refer to...I just thought of that film that won all the Oscars last year. I didn't really like it that much, but I'm not big on either action or surrealism, or whatever they were trying to do in that film. But everyone seemed to think it was hot at the time.

I tried to watch the western with a similar name, but I got to about the middle when Clint was getting his skin back, and quit watching. Just not enough to work with for me, though it was tempting. I hope we have someone who can whistle well so we can use their recurring theme whistle at some point in the show. We always get seduced by whatever is in the current zeitgeist, and of course that is tons of fun. Sometimes it is even cathartic and surprising when it seems like the zeitgeist is listening to us. Like last year, when I put googly eyes on the creepy spy balloon, unaware that googly eyes were a theme in that award-winning film about Everything. 

Anyway, enough about the performance, because it is barely in its infant stages and will go in many directions from where we think we are now. And I've been told more than once that it is more fun for us than our audience, but of course, that was not nice, fair, or true. If it hadn't been my brother saying it I might have really been hurt, but I know there are lots of people who just don't see the value of the Jell-O Art Show and never will. There are lots who do!

Or anyway, a few people. One fun thing is that we force the Slug Queen to give a Benediction, so we get to know them a little and they get to try to figure it all out too. The raining Queen, Queen Jubilee Hedonisto, admitted on Facey that she is already experimenting, so that is fun.

Last year we had some people down from the Portland Peculiarium who included an actual expert gelatin artist who made an exquisite gelatina with frogs and frog eggs and all kinds of cool flavors, which was eaten from the Tacky Food table, which reappeared for the first time post-pandemic. They even tried a Jellofest of their own in Ptown, which my son dutifully attended, but we have been doing ours for a much longer time so ours is better, no offense. It's our 35th! But it brought us a lot of attention from the Oregonian and an interview and all kinds of extra nonsense, which will likely not occur this year. It was thrilling, and more random things could occur!

One never knows. But anyway I told Queen Ju (not sure she has a nickname or what it would be...) that I would talk about techniques a little for beginning artists, so I'll just give a little bit so you don't have to scroll down for all of my informational posts amid the self-obsessed chatty ones. 

Basically, if you are doing wet Jell-O and like to retain the jiggle, you want to decrease the water in the recipe, and the easiest technique is a mold, which can be anything that you can get the sculpture out of. Those wasteful blister packs are good, and those modern silicone molds are super, since they are a bit flexible. The old style molds are tricky, as you don't want to immerse them in water hot enough to melt the whole surface off your piece, but you do have to unmold. If you eschew the jiggle and make it harder, say, using 1/4 or less of the water, you can usually pry it out without breaking it up. If you do, remember that gelatin is also glue, so you can glue it back together with some hot Jell-O. Not too hot.

A lot of the fun for me is trying out a different technique every year, so I get spontaneity and surprise, so I do usually start way early to work that out, despite the joy of having a deadline to meet. You can remelt and reuse gelatin, so when it doesn't work just put it in the microwave. 

I personally use just plain gelatin, which I buy in 25 pound lots, because I wouldn't want to run out. I dye things in my business so I have a lot of dye, and I should mention that We Don't Generally Eat Jell-O!  I mean, you can, if you like. Apparently it is good for you to have that bone-strengthening animal matter, and you can get Vegan gelatin too, but to me it is just gross as a food and all those chemicals have to be poisonous. It's glorious to look at and the chemicals taste good, since they're made to do that, but I don't know why they give it to you when you're sick. I guess because it is delightful in so many ways, and you need that in the hospital. But anyway, you can get the Knox brand, which is rather expensive, or you can petition Glorybee to stock it in bulk which I have tried. It's still not too cheap, even though they have little else to do with all those beef hooves and whatnot. Last time I think it was about $10 per pound in bulk. It's also heavy so I go for the free freight deals.

If you do use the Knox, I figured out that it is a quarter ounce per envelope of gelatin (last time I looked.) The formula I use for my dried stuff is 3 oz per cup of water. And mix it up in cold water, stirring, let it "bloom" for maybe 10 minutes, and then melt it in the microwave for a short time, maybe 30 seconds at a time, until it is clear. It may have some foam to skim off. I use canning jars, as hot gelatin is quite the thing to burn you and splatter all over your floor, immediately hardening into a hard job to clean up. And burning you. Sticks like glue.

Jell-O brand has its own rules, and used to have a "jigglers" recipe, which you can use. While it is possible to carve, slice, and use other knife techniques, molding it into the approximate shape you want is easier. For your piece, there aren't any rules, and you can use all the Ken and Allan dolls you want, rubber slugs, exotic coloring like black and white (candy supplies work well), or even metal powders like I did for the gold. Do whatever you want to have fun playing, and make your statement or your mess. You do not have to follow the theme or even have a theme or an intention or artist statement or any of that. Do whatever you want.

It is supposed to be FUN!!!!

When it stops being fun, put it in the fridge or feed it to the possums or whatever you want to do. I have mine all in the attic and my room full of costumes. I like the dried because I can keep it for the Jell-O Art Museum (in my attic) and also recycle it into next year's piece, or even give it away to future Queens. I can post more about the many tricks I have learned for making it work, but you can also try things and maybe they will be new to me.

That's enough for now. You can email me at dmcwho@efn.org if you have something specific you need to know, or join in the Facebook discussions, and if you look around instagram and facey, or google, you will find out that there is an international community of jelly artists and some of them are incredible. 

Subjects for another post...the sun is out. Best of luck, Artists of Gelatinaceae, the Realm of Jell-O Art. You rule!

 

A Video!

 The Oregonian online, or I guess Instagram to be exact, has a video now, from the interview at my house and a ton of footage at the show itself. Really excellent work by Samantha Swindler and Elizabeth Castillo-Salazar. Samantha wasn't able to come to the show but I saved her a shirt, so let me know if you come to Eugene, Samantha. This coverage was wonderful and really enhanced our experience. Very grateful.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqbWnYev6db/?fbclid=IwAR2FYKFPs8cNbGxIkcs6tVGcLSrdgW2jGsR8fXD7Imjqf0DMpMZJtbsg7nQ 

Indi came by Saturday Market yesterday and got a new apron, so next year we might all be in silver! I'll be waiting for the perfect one to appear in Anna Lawrence's booth, Anna's Haute Tops, which you can find on the internet but is so much better in person at Satuday Market, right across the aisle from me.

Spring has definitely sprung! 

And there is more: the performance video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDF1Lvsk0a0

Wrap it up in Jell-O

 Writing a post after all the excitement is over can be easily forgotten, as I move on to the first Saturday Market and whatever else I've been setting aside. Had to print quite a few bags and hats this week and have more to do next week. The Jell-O afterglow lasted a day.

We had a good show, though. Indi as Queen Elizabeth cracked me up and her costume goes down as one of the most perfectly detailed ever. She really went all out and her accent and delivery were impeccable. It is very fun to trade lines with her and the rest of our comedic troupe. What seemed like a smaller group trimmed down the process a bit and though we still filled the stage, we remained flexible and were able to add lines and business at the last minute that all worked. Saying yes at all stages is a challenge but I try to remember that a lot of it is improv and the audience likes whatever we do. The corgis were a favorite prop and are now my pets.

I did feel that we resorted to a lot of low humor, that is, too many fart jokes, but I always get outvoted when it comes to that, even though I point out that there are no 8-year old boys in our audience. Not sure when our focus moved from the kitchen to the bathroom but it was probably well before the Golden Commode year. I like the more subtle literary or obscure musical references like our little Paul Simon exchange (calling Queen E my role model and her saying "You can call me Betty," which initially was more connected to our narrative but ended up being a bit of an artifact.) I know only a few people will get most of our jokes but I believe that those few people are in our audience, chuckling. But we write the script and act in a collaborative way so what gets in is not up to me. The Golden Commode was my idea as I recall and so maybe it is all my fault. 

We were not the only performers. This is I think the fifth time a friend has done up her hair, most spectacularly this time. She bonded with one of the many Old Queens who attended and to whom I promised custom fascinators, so I will have some gelatin projects ongoing.

I missed having a more elaborate set but I did like the props and I had no extra time in which I would have made more set pieces, so it worked out. We had planned to destroy the balloon in the collision but I still have it and am not sure what to do with it now. I have an attic full of aging set pieces that need to be thrown out along with a lot of other things up there. I'll get to it at some point I suppose.

 

There were not many entries in the show...I spread my things out over a lot of pedestals but we did get at least three first-time artists, including a team of brothers. I wanted to take a photo of them with their art but I never saw them. I missed a lot of people...I had a mask on during parts and maybe didn't recognize others in masks. It was hard, as always, to get everything done and still have time to get some makeup on and change into my stage outfit. I tried out purple lipstick and as always felt like a clown and wished I had asked someone to make me up more skillfully. There's never time on the day of the show.

A real Jell-O professional came down from Portland, Cassie. She is active on Instagram where all the action really is anyway. Her piece was edible and jiggly and extremely detailed. I would have loved to take it apart. There was even a companion piece that was drier, a lily pad sandwich kind of, on the right. She was delightful and her traveling companion (I think maybe they were sisters) runs a place in Portland called the Peculiarium which is a destination now. They even have a Jelleau Fest in May which will be very cool I expect.

 On insta she is @yesyoucaneatthat so go look her up. She has lots of Jell-O Art followers too, so I will try to spend more time there looking at what is happening in the rest of the Jell-O art world. More than you would think!

David's upcycled piece was spectacular and he held court and talked about technique and I suppose told stories...it's always fun to watch. He gave away most of the arrangement. 

Two of our troupe also always make Jell-O and their pieces deserved more of my time, but I do have photos. I admire anyone who works in jiggly since you can't start it more than a few days before the show, and it so easily can slide itself to pieces on the way. That happened to one new artist who has come to many shows but not submitted a piece before. Hers had some lovely detail that was a bit hidden. It jiggled well. There was a delightful videographer from the Oregonian who took SO much video and she jiggled every piece.

And lastly, I did end up getting three crowns finished and was able to wear each of them for a time. They were bigger than was practical and not that different from my fascinators, but at least I had something new besides my bitter piece about the fiery death of idealism. 

It went by fast, in retrospect. I treasured it more now that we had three years of less-than. It was terrific to be back on stage. We all felt fantastic about supporting two younger members taking bigger roles, a third generation of Radar Angels in fact, as their parents and grandparents have performed as well. They were a wonderful addition and a renewal of commitment. Nurturing ourselves and others to be who we want to be is a big part of Radar Angel ethos...an essential part. It is worth the effort even when people leave for bigger stages or retirement or other, less wonderful reasons.

As I repaired it to put it away I realized that mounting it on some shingles from my booth roof was a perfect presentation, though it was just on a plate for the show. Artists have to process their emotions through art and sometimes it helps.

And although we didn't mention it, our show this year was dedicated to two incredible women we lost, named Rita, one former performer and one my Mom. I don't think Mom ever came to a show because if she did, I would have wanted her to sing with us, but I know she was proud of me and kind of understood what it is all about. Anyway she called me her "artist daughter" (one step up from "hippie daughter" over the years) and I would not be an artist without her support. There is a lot of support needed and provided and a big thanks to all the volunteers, and our lovely audience who came and threw their money into the jar. Next year bring Jell-O! 

Oh, we had the return of Tacky Food! This was quite delicious.The pickle-flavored peanuts were quite edible as well. I did not find anything else edible, personally, though maybe I would have if no one had been watching.

World Renown

 Oh, hey, I am famous in the Oregonian! Video to follow soon.

 

https://www.oregonlive.com/living/2023/03/eugenes-queen-of-jell-o-art-elevates-the-art-of-gelatin.html

Oh Golly Gosh

 

Just a week now to do a million things. I'll get most of them done. I printed the shirts yesterday, with my last screen, which I had to use no matter if it came out perfectly or not. Of course it did not. I had to think on my feel and accept imperfection, and if you are a Jell-O artist, you know all about that. 

If you think you will have control of Jell-O, you had better choose another medium. Everything is about not trying to make it do things it doesn't want to do. 

I had fun with the art, very old school in construction, with just the use of ancient pattern films I have a ton of, and a few changes in conception and design as we went. I did not use a pen, just an exacto knife. I did have to reduce it to 85% to fit the screen but that's okay. I lost some quality in the lettering that way but no one will care much about that. 

The shirts are green, which you can't tell in the photo. The contrast is okay. I had some shirts I had to use up, so I knew I was going to do a one-color with black ink, and that turned out to be great, as I was running out of time and energy. It looks great in person and I'm pretty happy with it overall.

Working on some very fun props and I realized this week that for the first time we won't really have much of a set. Mostly just us. It helps to simplify a bit. We might end up throwing some things on stage at the last minute; that's happened before. A big change from 2018 and previous years, when we had a lot of set. We used to have a lot more people in the troupe, too. We are down to a minimum. 

At least one person quit in fear of getting Covid, and another got the covid  before even coming to one rehearsal. So no one got it so far from meeting in person, but of course we still have the show, where I don't predict a lot of masking. We'll see. I got another booster just to help that out. It's a real risk. It will be interesting.

I'm not sure if I am finished making Jell-O or not. Not, I guess. I still have some crowns I can make and should, though I got an easier idea for a piece that will help me in this time crunch. 

Ack. Gotta go practice my lines. See you so soon!

Two weeks and Counting

Two weeks from today I will be putting everything away and getting ready for an intense week of getting ready for Saturday Market, which I've just been putting off since there's so much to do for Jell-O Show.

Spent a LOT of time getting things out and rearranging my house to do a video interview with Samantha from the Oregonian. Just remembered I'm supposed to be sending her photos. I went to find my photos and realized I've put some of them somewhere else, and I don't know where that is. I hope I put them in an album as archives, and that might be true. I can look through the dozen or so portfolios I have that look identical, as I am archiving so many things right now. All of the things, because I am of the age when something is worth saving right, or not worth saving. That is not going to be easy, for me, or for whomever gets stuck with sorting through the last of it. Which will likely be a lot.

The interview was a lot of fun though. She had done some research, and had great curiosity and questions  prepared. It didn't seem to bother her that there was low light, little pleasing empty space to use as background, and so much clutter there was like one place for her to put up her tripod. She was so very professional. 

She's had the job for 10 years, she told me, and has the best beat: the weird and quirky. I will have to go read up on her own portfolio. I know she did a piece on the Slug Queens last summer, and that is how she stumbled upon the Realm of Gelatinaceae, the Jell-O Art Queendom. She had it on her calendar since then. I feel so important.

Indi came and did it with me, both of us costumed. Indi is very good at speaking about history and anecdote...she has a great memory for it. I have a more rambling style that needs a good editor. I've written and spoken a lot about Jell-O Art, but it's eclectic history and so connected to the other things in my life that I can't really separate it. 

The first Jell-O Art Show was in 1988, which seems impossible but is after the Radar Angels had been going for probably ten years...it was maybe 1978 or therabouts when the group got started doing teas and shows and wild abandoned activities around Eugene. And by 1988 I was solidly into Fibergraphics and my success as a t-shirt entrepreneur, and it was the early days of the t-shirt heyday. We did the Fish Tie spawning in 1986. In 1990 I had a son and turned 40 and then things really sped up, but Jell-O Art was even more important going forward, and kept growing. 

No one would have predicted us here and now. When we gave the awards at the 30th Show, Jell-O Goes Gold, I remember Angela telling Indi she had to do it for 30 more years. Okay...four down now. Our stage is one where old ladies are welcomed, though, and maybe we will still be up there decades from now. No predictions. 

An Angel was lost this week, though, Rita, to a heart attack. Here and then gone. I didn't know her well but I am still sad and a little despondent about it. As it gets closer and closer to my turn to transition to a less earthly form, I'm not anywhere near ready. And I don't like grieving all the time. I feel like it is still the shutdown of the pandemic...everything normal is suspended and we're all just supposed to keep getting on with things. Doesn't feel right. 

Make more Jell-O, my solution to every emotion I can't handle. Write and make art. I did spend time outside yesterday in the sun, moving sticks around and sweeping the sidewalks. As it is windy again, I will have to do it some more. But getting outside was wonderful, and I sat on the deck to go over the script. Had some fun ideas to embellish it a little. Got a pretty good idea of what to do for my piece.

It's not crowns now, although I may still make some. I'm probably going to go with the theme this year, Jell-O Bizness. Changed my whole shirt design idea too. That is what I should be working on right now...but we have practice today. I have to learn those lyrics.

See ya! Make life fun, make some Jell-O tonight! 

Jellescalation

The Jell-O-scape in my house took a turn toward the serious this week as I fielded a request from a reporter from the Oregonian who wants to do a feature. Initially I was horrified at the idea of letting a camera into my space but gradually I realized that it is the easiest of the many choices for getting a video of my techniques.

So I launched into a whirlwind of moving things around and decided that I can make it look okay in the kitchen and can make a couple of pieces, at least partially, as I did last year in my workshop. I started trying to pin down in hours the kind of prep I will need to do to get the several stages of gelatin demonstrated well enough to show the artistry of the medium.

I can flip it over at anywhere from 3 to 6 hours and get pretty good results at getting it out of the dishes and into the next phase of drying. At overnight, or 12 to 18 hours, it mostly comes out of the dishes and sometimes frees itself as it shrinks. That's about as close as I can get. I just remembered I used a little crockpot last year to keep the molten gelatin warm so I didn't have to constantly stop to microwave it as it jelled too much to work with it. Good detail to remember. I had to clean the stove anyway though, as it was a mess of neglect, and I should probably remove my toaster oven from the kitchen on general principles because that is something I rarely if ever clean beyond taking out the crumbs in the bottom tray. It looks unsafe. Lots of my life does when I try to picture it in the Oregonian.

I moved my office off my kitchen table and now it is just Jell-O, with many pieces in various stages of production. I have one crown made and two others kind of planned. Some will be wearable and some won't, and I'm not all the way sure what I will be wearing in the show or just displaying. I always think I should wear Jell-O throughout the whole show, performance and all, but it usually happens that something breaks or is too unwieldy to dance and sing in, so that's kind of a later-in-the-process

decision.

Jell-O Art does not photograph well, maybe partly because the viewer doesn't have context...nothing about it really resembles natural objects people are used to seeing. It's usually made to view from at least several perspectives, which you can't do that well without a light box and lots of preparation. But here are some bad photos for you.

The golden thing is an actual head-sized mold I covered with flowers for the 30th show, but I couldn't get the flowers to stay on so I finally resorted to tape. It looks amazing in person but is too fragile to wear. The green and peach crown is way more beautiful when worn...I'll probably wear it during part of the show at least, although since I have a new purple and blue apron I'm making a purple one. The crest thing is probably going on that. All of the other things are just pieces that have not experienced their magical transformation yet.
And on the subject of transformations, the last photos are of a cathartic Jell-O piece I made to work through a personal situation of disappointment. It was super effective and I loved the whole process but a loaf of bread fell down on it the next
day so I get to make it again. I have some ideas...