Phase 2 redux - observe the laws of equivalent exchange

Current state of  Hope and Unhope
Unhope doesn't quite fit, but I'm going ahead with it (maybe someday, it will be installed on a bigger wall? ;))

new this week - feet!

 As soon as I saw the weather report, I knew I'd be spending a few days within a 2-3 foot radius of the central heat vent, so I decided to carve the blocks, print, cut out and start to assemble these - mini hopes.  The idea is that the image radiates like a fractal (it self-repeats on a smaller scale). By carving blocks I can repeat elements while also changing factors like the color or pattern of the paper (repetition with variation). The print on toned paper acts like the mid-tones, and then I added white and black by hand so that each piece is related, but unique. For the body, I'm thinking I'll do something similar to my avatar puppet, and the hands will be holding a variety of things from playing cards (flowers, feathers, swords, axes). In a sense, these do relate to exchange, because I'm trading some of the individuality for multiplicity - I took the energy that would have gone into manually producing a single large piece and dispersed it among the 4.

In terms of phase 2 and exchange, I feel like this week was more about accepting things for which there is no exchange. Just before the storm hit - I got a box. In the box, were more specialized carving tools, linoleum, and books (Medieval Woodcut Illustrations extracted from the Nuremberg Chronicles and the Complete Etchings, Engravings, and Drypoints of Albrecht Durer). As much as I've been thinking about these mini hopes for a little while, I don't think it would have been possible to make them without the new materials, and I had so much fun during the storm looking at the books (waves the "I'm a big nerd" flag :)).

fragments of hope in a plastic baggie

 

 I also spent some time working on storage.  I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about how best to store some of the parts from Eros et Thanatos, and finally, I think I may have come up with a good solution (at least as a starting point). I velcroed the pieces to a sheet of cardboard. (It's not acid free, but the drawings are mounted to acid free foam core and then there's the layer of velcro between the foamcore and the cardboard, so the drawings are not in contact with the board). Then I stapled a layer of mesh fabric around the board so keep everything flat and protected, but still visible. I put grommets in the cardboard so that the whole thing can be suspended from my storage shelving unit - voila!

Where did the sidewalk and the road go?
(That dot is a side mirror (!?!))

Since I was inside, I did a little home
 improvement - I put a shelf over the door
to keep my terrariums and faux-taxidermy
out of  paw's reach. I couldn't resist adding
a little decoration.

My clever feline assistants both decided that the best
place to wait out the storm was on my pillow.

Mini wonders: "Ummm, Mom,is this normal?"