50/50 Day 43

50/50 day 43 and I am still going. Did not add movement to my pieces (except the inevitable pinwheel!) but did add depth or some 3D elements and used some quilting techniques to add 3D-ness. But something else happened that I did not expect, I began telling stories! I created a piece with a key, then another - the key, the key someone was hunting for it. But what does the key do? Well it opens doors between worlds, hummm, so someone wants to enter worlds not their own... well others do not want that to happen so more pieces, and the story Shelf Life was born. In between postcards a story in images is being told and that is not all, there is another story, a space opera with ray guns, flying saucers, and even war poster propaganda! Wow and the end is in sight, I can't wait to see what happens, will the war end or the planet end up rubble?! And let us all hope that the red minions do not find the key! But with the last piece, they (the red minions- the guys hunting the key) are here in this world but very badly disguised in some kind of costume; is that a bear suit?

Each 50/50 piece was created by me, Leigh Radtke. All are collages; the cut and paste kind. The medium used was paper grocery bags. I cut, re-arrange, and use pieces of bag images, and bags to create new images. Each 50/50 piece was conceptualized; cut, arranged, (not always in that order) glued, and then mounted to a board.

50/50 show- progress and update

Today is day 32 (June 18) and I actually have 32 pieces done! So far all were made using paper grocery bags/images as my medium. It is interesting because I am limited or inspired (POV) by the images on the paper bags. I play with bags until something comes to me or I stare at an image until I see something else. I come up with an idea, cut something out, then discover that the left over cut out reminds me of something and off I go creating something else. Or I will have this little piece of scrap, like the way it looks, then at some point remember that it looked like the hand of a robot and use it. At 20 I did not know how I was going to come up with more bag art, now at 32 I am exploring the possibility of adding movement and quilting to my pieces. I already added depth to my images using foam core; it is really interesting where this is all going. I think that I will stay with paper bags as my medium. I have not as yet added cardboard or spray paint to my peices but there are still 18 left to go!!!!

StoryTelling at Farley's on June 16th - update!!

Farley's last Tuesday- June 16, I was not able to attend but Susan sent me this update:
The Potrereo View (monthly newspaper) listed our evening of Storytelling, so we had an interesting woman Marissa come and two young (19 or 20 year olds) very cute. Their mom told them about it. All three loved it and will be back. We had a nice audience of locals they stayed for the whole evening. We had two readings of 10 minute plays that went well, a monologue, two storytellers; one was a beautiful warm story of a mean dog who she'd run into each day in her small town. She really made the town so alive. My nephew, Paul, was visiting from LA and he did a story. I read a poem called 'The Queen' about my grandmother, I created a story before and after the poem that made it interesting. I had not planned on it, but it worked very nicely and gave me some ideas for blending work.
We did sing 'Happy Trails' and people loved it....of course we really needed you for this, but voices were strong and delightful on the words people remembered.
Next Farley's is in July, 3rd week, July 21st. There are always lots of talented people reciting plays, stories, poems... and remember there is a sing-a-long !!! I will definately be there in July!

STORY TELLING at Farley's - JUNE 16

Story Telling
At
Farley’s

with
storytelling, poetry, spoken word and music

on the 3rd Tuesday of every month!
the next is: Tuesday, June 16th
7:00-9:00

featuring
Bill Alvarado, Keith Cooley, Margaret Cooley, Marvin Ramos, Obo Help, Kate Frankel, John Harrison, Phyllis Holiday, Leah Hunter, Lee Jenkins, Geoffrey Lake, Leigh Radtke, Alice Rogoff, Tinker, Ron Jones and Susan Ford

Open Mic to follow
5 minute poetry, 8 minute stories

Info: Susan Ford
415.474.5580 suford@earthlink.net

Farley’s
1315 18th Street
San Francisco 94107
415.648.1545
www.farleyscoffee.com

It is June, Story Telling in May, 50/50 Show at Sanchez

• June is here and alot has happened. Roger and I went to AZ - early monsoons, thunder, lighting and incredible skies in the high desert. It was just beautiful out there.


• May's Story Telling at Farely's went well. I told the story that I will post below, fun story that has violence, dogs, and a happy ending all in one. I also read a couple of poems from my Angry Girl Series- it was a good night.


• Visual Art wise I am participating in the 50/50 show at the Sanchez Art Center. The goal is to create 50 peices in 50 days. Today is day 16- so I am supposed to have 16 peices of art, paper bag collages naturally! Well I am on peice 15 so I am only one day behind- yippppeee ( I had visions of day 25 coming around and me with 4 peices so I feel great). I call the 50 peices Postcards From The Edge, the fun part is that being postcards I can float text so I can literally have words written in the clouds. I am having fun with that. At around postcard 11 or 12 I got a little crazy with wild imagery and mixed messages… but what is really fascinating is that I feel (already egads) that my imagination and creativity are being stretched- which I guess is the whole point! Anyway I think I am going to mix in some other elements with the paper bags. I am thinking a lot about tacs- creating an image with tacs!! Ann Weber does these amazing scultpures with card board, hummm, I just may have to add a little cardboard of my own to the postcards. Check out Ann Weber's work, just amazing, incredible, and inpiring!!! Ann Weber's website http://www.annwebersculpture.com/
• We shall see where Postcards From The Edge takes me. More postcard news soon. Any way here is the May Farelys story:::
  

Making a Wish.

The other day I was walking in Golden Gate Park. A head of me was an older man probably in his late 60’s, walking an equally old beagle and a young guy, an early 20 something with two smiling golden retrievers. The kid was doing all the talking. He was telling the beagle owner the story of his dogs names, and this is what I heard, or over heard, well ease dropped. OK I listened shamefully and actually had to quicken my step to make sure I didn’t miss any of it. The kid had me hooked with the first couple of lines of his story
“My dogs names?.”
“Ok, it all started when my roommate cold-cocked me. As I fell to my knees I heard him scream,
‘No body uses my Tea Towels!’
And then he slammed out the door. I sat back on my heels, held my cheek in my hand, and thought of the first time I was punched in the face. My father and I were in the kitchen. His fist smashed into my cheek and snapped my head back into the refrigerator. I wanted to kick him but all I could do was be sarcastic,
‘Why don’t you move my head to the left and even out the dent, Dad? Good one, full contact on my cheek! What no body shots?’
My father was drunk. A neighbor of ours, a 22 year old alcoholic himself, heard the yelling, came in, brought me home, gave me a beer, and told me that I better spend the night with him.
I was 14. And here I was 5 years later holding my cheek after my roommate had just punched me in the face because I was sarcastic about the use of his tea towels. I just lost my job and it was very foggy. I needed to change my luck. It was August, August 12th, The Persieds meteor shower peaked on August 12th. Peak is the day you can see the most meteors, the day the earth moves through the densest part of a comet’s tail. In August the earth travels through the comet Swift-Tuttle’s tail and you see shooting stars or meteors or would see them if there wasn’t so much fog! So I went to the Planetarium. I scrunched myself down into a comfortable red chair and with the lights out and some astronomer droning on about the discovery of Perseids radii, I woke up hours later alone in the dark. Not muted soft light but lights turned off. I felt my way along the seat backs to the EXIT sign and tried the door, it was locked. Then I turned around and saw the oblong dark of the projector.
I bashed my knees a couple of times on backs of the chairs trying to get to the projector, they are all connected like a pew, until I finally ran into a half wall with a small door. Inching sideways I got in and found a panel with lots of knobs and some switches. I flipped switches and turned knobs so fast that constellations and streams of meteors, blinked in and out. The moon rose and set. Textbook visions of the solar system appeared, Jupiter, Levy-Jennings impact sites, Io, Europa and its water ice layer, Mar’s red desert, Saturn’s rings, Neptune’s blue, and the Uranus weather, all in blinks. Suddenly the lights boomed on and I heard,
‘What do you think you are doing?’
So I told him,
‘Making a wish.’
A cop and a security guard stood in the open doorway. The cop came and dragged me off.
‘Let’s go.’
I tried to explain but he badgered me with questions about how I had gotten in, cuffed me and put into the back of his police car. We drove through the park passed the Legion of Honor, then the Japanese monument, and finally headed toward the Presidio. The fog had lifted and the sky was clear. The dashboard clock said 2AM, and the Persieds peaked. As we approached the Lands End Sign, I saw a brilliant shooting star fall in between the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge! The cop saw me smiling in his rearview mirror and said,
‘Pretty, isn’t it?’
I made my wish. The cop ran down a dog. She wasn’t dead so the cop and I picked her up; he seemed to have forgotten that he’d arrested me and removed my handcuffs so I could help. We maneuvered the dog on to my lap in the back seat. The cop called over the radio and woke the vet up. He raced to the Animal Hospital and blared the sirens the whole way! The dog panted so fast that my body shook like I had just put a quarter into a Magic Fingers. The cop just kept saying over and over,
‘Oh My God, I didn’t see it, I just didn’t see it!’
In the waiting room we didn’t talk, but I could not stop tapping my foot. The stray’s blood was drying on the knees of my genes. The cop, Bill (I read the name on his badge) paced like an expectant father. When the vet finally came out we leapt to our feet and met him before he got all the way into the waiting room.
‘The dog was dead.’
The vet told us that he was able to save two of the puppies. The stray was pregnant but not to full term and there were a couple that just might be big enough to make it. He led us back to the examination room and there on the examination table were two tiny gold puppies with their eyes closed; no bigger than your fist. I turned and looked at the Vet and could see that he was sizing us up. The cop- Bill, and I received all sorts of instructions about the proper care necessary, what to feed them, how to use an eye dropper and bottle to administer medicine and food and walked back out to Bill’s police car with our arms full of towel rapped puppies. I was settled in the back seat surrounded by liquid food, eye droppers and puppies when Bill asked,
‘How did you end up in the Planetarium anyway?’
I laughed and asked if he minded people using his tea towels. He said no, as long as they washed them. I laughed again, told him my story, and asked him if he needed a roommate.
So for the past three years Bill and I have been taking care of these dogs, Swift and Tuttle. Bill works, I cook, clean, do the wash (especially tea towels), care for him and the dogs. I named them after the comet that sent me that shooting star and to the planetarium in the first place.”
Then the two dog owners sat down to let their dogs run in the meadow, and after a comfortable silence, I heard the old beagle owner say,
“Funny isn’t it, sometimes you get what you wish for.”

© 2009 Leigh Radtke All rights reserved.