Jackie America -- photo memories

Jackie photos rev3 from Rebecca Thornburgh on Vimeo.

I am Super Stishus, Protector of the Young and Terrified

There's a wonderful children's magazine that hosts an annual two and a half day bash for its illustrators. It is ENORMOUSLY fun and it's incredibly generous of the magazine folks to entertain about 300 people in a delightful and often very silly way. The party always has a theme. The theme is reflected in all of the decorations and signage and even the food, sometimes, but most prominently in what one is supposed to create for the Big Costume Party. And -- given that this event is entirely devoted to and attended by very, very talented artistic types -- there is ABSOLUTELY NO PRESSURE WHATSOEVER to be dazzlingly creative, either in interpretation or implementation of the theme.

Said no one who ever goes to this party.

I was reasonably successful (and actually felt a little pretty -- this was back when I had long blond hair) the first year I went, when the theme was "Days of the Year." I wore Blair's custom-made Renaissance costume (thoughtfully constructed with grommets and lacing at each side of the bodice, so that even middle-aged mothers can fit in to their pencil-thin daughter's toppie thing) and a crown of fake flowers, carried a little straw basket of same, and I was...May Day!

The second year I went the theme was "It's Silly!" Exclamation point necessary. I decided to repurpose my "Mad Libs" dress -- a nice purple shift with all kinds of crazy words heat-pressed all friggin' over it (some favorites are "termagant" and "lawnmower" and "Jerry Jeff Walker") from our Mad Libs-themed Endasummer Party. And then I carried some Mad Libs blank sheets -- which I made myself and thought were absolutely hysterical, so people could fill them in. Of course nobody seems to have agreed with me about the hilarity aspect, because nobody wanted to fill them in. But I did give away samples of laminated words (also recycled from the party), and people seemed to be pleased to be gifted with "alligator" or "digression" or "nocturnal." So that was okay.

The THIRD year I went the theme was "Hidden Pictures." Hidden Pictures, as all of us who grew up reading it at the dentist's office well know, is a beloved staple of the magazine. I have never done a Hidden Pictures illustration for the magazine, though I did do an ENTIRE BOOK of  "Seek and Find" pictures for another publisher, called "Cars, Trucks and Things That Go" -- this was a truly bizarre assignment for someone who sucks at drawing vehicle-type things. Draw a recognizable garbage truck? A helicopter? A CRANE? Please. I will admit within the context of this blog, since nobody actually reads it, that I was perfidious enough to trace some photographs, grabbed from the interwebs, of some of the trickier vehicles. It was that or just break into wracking sobs. And miss the deadline. Plus, everybody does it, more or less, It's called "reference." So, anyway, I had no personal experience with the magazine's own hidden pictures (tm) hidden pictures, but as we've just acknowledged, I have some facility with, um, gently stealing pictures from the internet. So that's what I did. I had to use the snipping tool to copy their online HP's because they are protected, but -- hah! -- that never stops ME. And then I printed out a ton of the pix and made myself another heat-pressed shift dress, this time covered with lots of the pages and then scatterings of the little pictures, hidden, along with them. (Oh, and by the way, while wearing the dress, I was given permission by the magazine to wear it again! In the real world! And yes, I've done that.) Anyway, this was a very weak costume compared with what those other wildly creative people did, but again, sufficient to avoid sheer embarrassment.

This year is a challenge, though. The theme is "Super Hero." Tough enough to conceive and (one imagines) construct, but then the nice and funny folks at the magazine thought it would be cool to have everyone fill in a "Super Hero Worksheet." Which IS a fun idea, totally. The plan is to put everybody's contributions together in a bound book and (I suppose) give each illustrator a copy. It'll be great to see what everybody does, but again, NO PRESSURE WHATSOEVER to be enormously witty and draw exceptionally fabulous pictures on this worksheet. Again, said no one. Or actually maybe some of the uber-talented artists did just rub their gifted hands together, charge up the extraordinary brain cells, and dig in, easily whipping out a worksheet of the height of artistic cleverlry (rhymes with revelry...)

I, on the other hand, was panic-stricken. I was also mired in a huge illo job requiring me to do finished art on something like 96 pictures in two and a half weeks. So, armed with a creative block and no time, I proceeded to procrastinate for several weeks. The deadline to send the worksheet in, by snail or email, was Friday the 7th. I finished picture #96 on Thursday, the 6th. So of course it wasn't until Saturday EVENING that I started working on my worksheet.

And here's what I have to say about creativity. It is fueled by fear and deadlines. I mean, sure, the muse can be persuaded to appear and make nice with you for other reasons, but I maintain that the survival instinct for not screwing up is truly a handy motivator for the actual creative process. On Saturday I did some scribbling on a rough copy of the worksheet. And then I let it alone, to simmer. On Sunday, I pulled up my Big Girl Panties and addressed the drawing table. There lay the rough scribbles and incoherent scrawls. But -- after a few minutes of musing -- hey, thought I to myself, hey, this stuff is Not Bad. It's, like, workable. So (as all good creators who offer advice to those who wish to create do advise) I applied butt to chair and got to work. A mere six hours later, I was done. I had a name and a personality for my superhero, and I had finished the worksheet in time (sorta) to email it in on time (sorta). So here's the worksheet, for your viewing pleasure. Or even just your viewing curiosity. (Caveat: it's not fabulous, just -- we hope -- not feeble. It will most certainly be WAY outshined by the other artists' contributions, but at least it's a record that I lassoed my fear and rode around the ranch on that ol' nag we call creativity.)

Meanwhile, I still have to come up with an actual costume...

Posting for Posterity: The Graduate Speaks

Blair's moment in the sun (literally) as she delivers her speech at the UChicago College convocation. Her speech begins at minute 3:28.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cfUyaW_y6H0#!

The day was hot (but so beautiful) and the ceremony long (but actually, watching 1100 robed young persons grasp their diplomas and then shake two important hands was pretty cool.) It was a truly wonderful experience, and we wouldn't have missed a second of it, nor any of the other moments that weekend of great fun and good friends gathering.

Blair's family is SO proud of her. We celebrate her and her achievements at UChicago (and of course those of her 1100-odd friends from the Class of 2012.)

Go, Blair -- onward!

Chocomet Cooookies

Nothing like skipping church to do a little baking. (The only thing I can do competently in the kitchen, so of which I am justifiably proud.) Hoping the recipient (hint, hint) will be zippy enough to collect the package o' chocolate deliciousness when it arrives ON her birthday.

I will now (eek) share the secret (hah) of the fabulousness of my chocolate chip cookies:

1. Yes, I use the recipe on the Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chips bag. Oven temp is supposed to be 325 degrees, and baking time (if your oven is on an even keel, which ours ain't) is supposed to be 9 to 11 minutes.

2. Use Crisco (or lard, if you have it) instead of butter.

3. Mix dough by hand, not with an electric mixer. Good for your upper arms, better for the cookie dough.

4. I use a Silpat baking mat, but that has not always been part of my cookie baking tradition, so I think not essential. However, those double-thickness cookie sheets seem to make a difference (see what Martha Stewart has to say about them here.)

5. Underbake slightly (not a problem in our perpetually anemic oven.)

6. Results: Chunkier, yet softer, chewier cookies (as in, not flat, crispy and hard). My favorite!

And of course the deliciousness was assured by the sampling of a few test items. 

Dogs further enjoyed bowl and spoon licking -- no complaints.

Requiem

My friend Duane died on Sunday. It was just a couple of hours before we would have sung a concert together with Mendelssohn Club Chorus. The music was beautiful. First a commissioned piece drawn from Tibetan folk music, written by Andrea Clearfield, and then, after intermission, the transcendent Faure Requiem. A lot of people said that we didn't know it, but we were singing Duane's requiem. I'm grateful that we didn't know that. I don't think we could have gotten through the performance.

It's been a hard week. I am sad without knowing how to be. Duane wasn't someone I knew well, but now that he's gone, I realize that he was someone I loved. He was sweet, gentle, friendly, funny. I felt as if he always made a point of saying something nice or funny to me at every rehearsal. I loved that we had this special little friendship.

And we did. We talked about my silly hair, we talked about his teaching schedule (he was a French professor at Haverford), we talked about Blair and her thesis -- as a medieval scholar himself, he knew all about the works Blair was studying. We talked about nothing in particular.

He was a tenor. He sang with Mendelssohn Club for over thirty years. He had two cats. He lived in South Philadelphia. I think he lived alone (other than the cats.)

He was so kind. I wanted him to meet Blair so they could talk about French and the medieval stuff, and he waited around after the MC holiday concert so they could chat. I don't think it was a long conversation, but it meant a lot to me that he would take the time just to be all French-medieval with my French-medieval-obsessed kid.

So during this week of being sad and not knowing how to be, I've been working on making a book of remembrances about Duane, on behalf of Mendelssohn Club. It's going to be something we give to his brother, Brian, who lives in Texas. The work has been cathartic, giving me a reason to think about Duane and a way to grieve. And what I've found out -- in collecting, copying and pasting into my layout all the comments from the Mendelssohn Club folks -- is that everybody who knew him thought that they had this special little friendship with him.

Everybody thought that he was sweet, gentle, friendly and funny. And everybody is very very sad.

What we all know is that we were lucky to know this kind and decent man. And we will all miss him dearly.

There's a memorial Meeting for Worship for him at Haverford College on Saturday. And we will sing the Requiem again, this time truly for our Duane.

Update: Relief

FOUND the Ari fairy picture! AND ordered the frame, plus one for a painting done by the young Alice. Will be offering both (pending the approval of the young painter) as part of Philomusica's art exhibit to be paired with the chorus's upcoming concert.

And in any case, woot for moving forward on the framing! Ari just may get that painting before her 23rd birthday, a mere ten years after her bat mitzvah.

Distress/Progress

Well, the bad news is that I seem to have misplaced the original painting of the fairy I did for Ari's bat mitzvah present. AGAIN. The plan today was to order the frame for it. Opened up the flat file drawer WHERE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. And nothing. I am quite distressed. But I do know that it has to be somewhere. I wouldn't have thrown it away. Never. Ever. So now I just have to search for  it all over again. Or find it, serendipitously, as I did last summer. Argh.

 

And I am so proud of this painting. It drives me crazy that it's so frigging elusive.

 

So in an effort to counteract my rather dismal state of mind, I decided to do a few TINY things to continue to restore my studio to a fully (but not overly full) state of decor and organization. 

I did two things, well, three. First is I put away some junk lingering around from the the Mendelssohn Medley. A dull but necessary thing to do. Then I did two fun things. I hung up my dragon, so now I have at least one thing of delight suspended from the ceiling (or rather the light strip -- not a particularly safe to do, but there you are.) It was a nice thing to give a tug on his little belly cord and see his wings float gently up and down.

 

And then I tacked up the GIANT thank you note from Jenny Culbert's kindergarten class at Springside when I did a presentation there in early January. These notes are, I think, a tradition going back to the Stern kindergarten at GFS -- I think I saw them when Alice was a very young scholar in that class -- and Jenny has continued the practice. I love them. I've had at least four from her classes over the years, and they do much to cheer up the studio. So here it is, in its new position on the front of my closet door.

And finally in the progress department, and also in the interest of making myself feel better, I am celebrating the fact that I have just two more pages to draw for my Bug Book (which really means the first iteration of actual size sketches, moving on from the crappy little tiny thumbnails I did -- oh, let's just say some years back. And now to work on said final two pages. Tra la.

A rainy Saturday on the last day of March. Does seem guaranteed to have its ups and downs.