June 30, 1994

Some baling wire and wire cutters for class. I got the wire from Dillinger's Feed Store up the street from my apartment and studio, a few bucks for a spool like the one shown. After having seen some wire projects from another class, I decided to incorporate into my own summer sections.

June 29, 1994

My studio chair. When I took over my studio in the Glove Factory from David Kirkland, he gave me some of the leftover furniture from the studio he moved into, Eddie's temporarily vacated space. That included two wooden chairs in various states of disrepair. One was in pieces, the other wobbly but intact, except that the wood seat was unattached. In fact, the seat seemed too small for the chair, just barely spanning the rim of the seat. To make it safer, I cut a piece of scrap lauan to exactly fit the rim, and then just placed the seat piece on top of that. It became the chair I used at my desk while drawing and cutting small blocks. Around the time I did this print, some time after Eddie returned to America, he saw the chair in my studio, and claimed it was his. He didn't want it back- he wanted it to go to Shona. However, Shona didn't want it, and eventually transferred to a different school. Eddie never reclaimed it for himself, so it remained my studio chair for the rest of my time in Carbondale.

June 28, 1994

That summer the U.S. hosted the World Cup, which meant that all the games were played during convenient daytime hours for those of us in this part of the world. Unfortunately, most of these games were on cable, so I could not watch at home. However, we worked around that. Fellow grad Brian (from Scotland) and I got together pretty much every day to watch the early and late games. The early game was usually at the Island, a Chinese restaurant/bar near campus. We'd order the daily special (which was usually not that special) and a few beers and watch the game. Sometimes Armen joined us. The alternate location, especially for the late afternoon games, was the Cellar, where the food options were fewer, but the beer was fine. (sometimes soft drinks if we decided we needed a short break from alcohol) My notes for this day say that the U.S. team advanced to the next round, for the first time in many decades. Records show that we didn't play this day, so maybe it was the result of another team in our group losing that got us our elimination round spot.

June 27, 1994

I wandered into the studio space of Tamara, one of the undergrad sculpture students, right across from Laura's space. She was working on a project that involved attaching (with wire) small square pieces of copper and other metal, along with other random rusty hardware, to a piece of peg board. She was doing a series of these pieces. My notes refer to it as a landscape, but I don't remember if that was my association or her description.

June 26, 1994

Looking out a window of the Glove Factory into the parking lot. This time of year it was a lot less crowded. The only car in view is the old used one recently purchased by Brian.

June 25, 1994

Print paper often comes in large sheets, and sometimes we need the paper smaller. Rather than cut the paper with scissors or a knife, we usually tear it. This is done with some kind of straight edge- ideally a tear bar with a sharp edge, but my 42 inch metal ruler did the job on this day.

June 24, 1994

John Lindt's MFA exhibition reception. The food, including these large marinated mushroom caps, was much better than average for these receptions.

June 23, 1994

Using my electric sander. I prepared woodblocks by putting on a very thin layer of wood filler, then sanding them smooth. These days I do it by hand with some fine grit sandpaper, but back then I used my small orbital sander.

June 22, 1994

Making iced tea. I'm not a huge fan of the bottled iced teas, and the instant powders are even worse, so I usually brew it myself. That's what I was doing here, filling a half gallon jug with boiling water, and adding tea bags. It does take a while to cool afterwards, but the final product is much better than the alternatives.

June 21, 1994

I came home to my apartment and noticed a harvestman (what I grew up calling a daddy long legs) on my screen door. What made it stand out for me was that it had 7 legs, so I guess it had lost one somewhere along the way.

June 20, 1994

A dream- hell's mailbox. From the outside, it appeared to be an ordinary shallow box stood up on its side, but when viewed from the inside, the box was much deeper and had no back. It was a portal to hell, but one used just for the purpose of sending mail back and forth between there and our plane of existence.

June 19, 1994

Grad painter Kendra had taken a part time job in an outdoors equipment store near the campus, and sometimes I would stop there to talk to her. I saw this odd metal object on display and investigated. It was called an "expresso" pot. I don't know if that was the common mistaken spelling/pronunciation often seen in those days before our nation became coffee obsessed, or some kind of trademark. Either way, I guess the idea was to not let being in the wilderness keep you from having really strong coffee.

June 18, 1994

Two kinds of trains passed through Carbondale every day- a few Amtrak passenger trains (including the famous City of New Orleans), and 20 or more Illinois Central freight trains. Normally the same trains could be grouped another way- trains that stopped (Amtrak) and trains that didn't (the freight). On this day, one of those freight trains stopped. I don't know if there was a malfunction, or if it was waiting for something further up the line. The problem is that when a 200 car train stopped in Carbondale, there was no way to get across the tracks except the one shown here- a guy walked over to the train and climbed over the coupling between cars.

June 17, 1994

Filling up. I kept a large plastic drinking cup (the kind that's often refillable or a "souvenir") in my studio, and regularly went downstairs to the drinking fountain to fill it up. Especially in the hot weather, when not even my multiple fans kept me from sweating as I worked.

June 16, 1994

One of my spring students was looking for her artwork from the GEC class, but said she couldn't find it. By this point all the unclaimed portfolios had been moved to a dumpster outside the Blue Barracks, so I told her where it would likely be and she went digging for it until she found it.

June 15, 1994

With the heat of summer building, I decided to go out and get a fan for my studio. The Glove Factory was actually a converted factory building with a brick exterior. On hot sunny days those bricks would heat up and bake those of us inside. The part of the building where the student studios were was not air conditioned- just an overhead fan in each space. Having this standing fan made a big difference.

June 14, 1994

Recording cassette tapes for people I know- one for fellow grad Kendra, one for my father. I don't remember what the tapes were of, but I'm pretty sure they weren't the same.

June 13, 1994

The foot and bike bridge over route 51. It connected the main campus to a bunch of dorms across the street. Also across the street was the Blue Barracks, where some of the art and design classes were held, but I thought it more efficient to cross at street level, putting me closer to the building's entrance, so that's what I typically did when I was going there from the campus. On this day I took the bridge more out of curiosity, since I had never been on it before.

June 12, 1994

At the Newman Center for Mass. It's a common custom for the congregation to join hands during the saying of the Lord's Prayer, and such was the tradition here.

June 11, 1994

Shaving, for something like the 340th time since I began this series of prints.

June 10, 1994

Grating some cheese. Since this is just a few days after returning from New Jersey, this is likely a wedge of Locatelli pecorino romano brought from the east. On a family trip to Italy we were introduced to freshly grated romano; after that, grated cheese from a cardboard container would never again suffice.

June 9, 1994

After a phone conversation with a friend, I was in a mood to re-read a favorite science fiction piece- Midsummer Century, a novella by James Blish. The quote and image relate to the book, as well as to the phone conversation.

June 8, 1994

A caffeine boost on the second day of driving. I believe this can of soda came from a rest stop on I-64 somewhere in Indiana. With a relatively short distance to drive (about 300 miles) and no unusual conditions to deal with, I reached Carbondale by early afternoon.

June 7, 1994

Relaxing on my king size bed in a motel in the Carrollton, Kentucky area. This is where I always stopped in my summer westbound trips. Having much more daylight (at the western edge of the eastern time zone, it was often light until almost 10 pm) than the winter trip, I drove an extra few hours on I-71, thus shortening my drive the second day.

June 6, 1994

Packing for my trip back to Illinois. I loaded most of it the night before, to save time in the morning, as I always tried to get on the road by around 6:30 am on these long trips.

June 5, 1994

On our way home from the Jarger Invitational in South Jersey, we were asked to divert to the Shore area to see my grandparents, and to help plant my grandfather's garden. He had always been into planting vegetables and fruits (his previous house not only had several hundred square feet of his huge yard planted, but he also planted more in a large corner of his neighbor's yard), and his yard at his new place had a large vegetable plot right in the center of the back lawn. He had starter plants delivered, and my brother and I spent a few hours digging holes, and planting tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, beans, etc, following his exact directions regarding location, hole depth, manure, backfill. He even had us plant some collard plants, which he was sure he didn't order, but he figured he'd find some use for them. Our time at his house insured that we would be caught in the heavy summer Sunday afternoon northbound Parkway traffic.

June 4, 1994

The Brillo Putter, a special object at the Jarger Invitational. When my brother took up golf in high school, he used old family clubs, and he had these with him at one of the invitationals. My cousin saw the Brillo and remembered it from his childhood, a conversation between his father and my grandfather, who had just acquired it, probably a premium through his supermarket job. My cousin did a whole routine describing the conversation- my grandfather's not knowing quite what to make of it. It seemed like a decent enough putter, but there was the Brillo logo stamped on it, but still it was a good putter, etc...

June 3, 1994

For several years my brother and I used to drive down to my cousin's house for the Jarger Invitational. Sort of a continuation of the summer vacations we took at the shore as kids, where we were often joined by my slightly older cousin, who lived nearby. After college, my cousin (the Jarger in question) took up residence in South Jersey on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The Invitational generally included a game of miniature golf, a short bowling tournament, an epic Monopoly match, 9 holes of regular golf (weather permitting), and large amounts of pasta. If time permitted, we would sometimes take the local rapid transit (the PATCO train, which we called the "speedyline") into Philadelphia to go to a favored brew pub, as we did on this night. The pasta and beer were demonstration sports only, not included in the overall competition.

June 2, 1994

I had plans to get together with Kathy in the afternoon, but she said we needed to stop by the Montclair State radio station first. She had promised she'd meet someone there for a quick game of chess. The game ended up being anything but quick. While that was going on, I took advantage of being in the station to check out some new releases, even taping a whole album. By the time she was done with the game, it was too late to do anything else, so we each went home, planning to meet one more time before I returned to Illinois. The image is from the end of the game, with her king in check.

June 1, 1994

I had lunch at the lengendary White Manna in Hackensack. In my opinion, the best hamburger joint in the world. The perfect combination of meat, cheese, onion, bun, and grease. My father first learned about it when he worked in Hackensack, brought me there for the first time in the late 70's. Later I would have a job in Hackensack myself, but at the other end of the city, way too far to get to and back on my 30 minute lunch break, so trips there remained rare. Occasionally I have brought out of town friends there, to show them one of New Jersey's food landmarks. My last visit was a few years ago when work took me up to Bergen County, but I'm sure if I went there today it would be exactly the same.