Huffing on Tuesdays.

My head aches from all the paint thinner. What a wonderful welcomed ache. I don't care that this is yet another post about my class, I really don't, I am just plum excited. Today Billie Holiday set the pace of the studio for this girl. First Billie to start off the evening and then Sujan Stevens and Ratatat to close the night with a dance jam. Tying my "We should do this more often" printing apron around my waist into a loopy bow felt good and right, and pulling my first print through the press felt really good. Really, really good. I can't describe how it feels really. If you print, then you know. First there is resistance as the pressure builds, then there is the real build up as the press nears closer and begins to emboss, the blankets seize under the weight, and then there is a pop that surprised me every time it came. And I printed about six things and still my shoulder jerked back in glee every single time. My first few monoprints were simple in composition: black and white, clean lined, busy, unruly, streamlined. Sort of an extension of myself, I guess. My character traits embossed on japanese rice paper. Every thing was inspected at an arms length, at an angle, tilted towards the light with timidity. "Too little ink", "too much ink", "uneven distribution, Madge", "try again", "better now, go again, slower", a little laughter with everyone feeding off everyone else, "brilliant", "go ahead, go again. It's fun, no?". Yes, it is the most fun I have ever had.

I am hemming and hawing about what to say. Articulation is impossible at this time because my veins are coursing with coffee with a whisper of cream and sugar, my stomach digesting Tante Daryl's mental tamales, and my head is hazy from all the turpentine. I was put on scraper and roller cleaning duty and was happily holed up in a room with a giant turpentine bath for about ten minutes. Being elbow deep in a sea of poison for that long will go to anyone's head. Again, what a welcomed ache. I cannot stop grinning. I couldn't then and I cannot now. All this is just too long overdue.

Turning the wheel on the press was exactly how I imagined turning the helm of a sailing ship to be. Today I was Rose of the printing press and it was invariably satisfying, I must say. The striking white haired, white toothed Inga from Iceland started off the class with a monoprint demonstration on our existing linocuts from last class using a simple soft roller technique. I liked her style. If you are ever wondering what to do with your outdated phonebooks, call Inga. That lady knows how to ink up a phonebook. In between slashing pages upon pages with excess ink, she showed us how to set the pressure of the press down to a finger's width in broken English and how to set up and tear down our areas. She showed us how to soak paper and roll it out with someone's abandoned rolling pin on a table heaping with muslin, and how to shade and layer to create an illusion of depth on our prints. The last colored monoprint I did came out a wild, garbled mess of mustard yellow and fushia ink. I liked it but preferred the plain black to the color. Practice, practice, practice, I guess. The perfectionist within just wants to be good right off the hop. Patience, patience, patience, I guess.

Candles and vinyl and an email to JJ and a letter to Loco call. My drawing pad beckons, tea steeps in the yellow kitchen. How on earth does one go about putting a damper on the effects of caffeine? Dear me. Looking down at my lap, my ex boyfriend's jeans have taken their first hit of ink. One tiny streak of mustard yellow is one titanic reminder that I am better off alone. Jack eventually fell off the floating door and died. Rose stayed on the floating door and ended up alone. Alive, but alone. I am alive and alone. She got over it, forgot about him, side saddled a horse on a beach somewhere and moved on. So will I. One ink stain at a time, I am moving along; grinning.

The people in my class call me Madge. Even the sixteen year old anarchist kid who claims he "hates art", he calls me Madge too. I really like the way it sounds coming out of his mouth, "Madge".