Patrick Wentzel picked leaves off the red maple in his yard in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and gave them to his wife Brenda on Friday, October 2. Fifty-six years earlier, to the day, the two of them went on their first date.

He wrote the story on the paper right next to the leaves:

Brenda, fifty-six years ago today, our first date, was the beginning of our journey together. Fall with its cool weather, wonderful smell, and the beautiful colors of the leaves always reminds me of you and our first days together. These leaves from our red maple tree will be my forever reminder.

That’s the first Pressed Leaf Stories entry that didn’t come out of my house. Here’s his page.

Pat told me, “We look forward to that date as much or even more than our wedding anniversary.” He also passed along a line from a carousel guy he knows: “If you don’t have a first date, you will never reach 53 years of marriage.”

About the carousels. Pat carves miniature carousels and makes carving kits so other people can carve them too. He’s been a National Carousel Association member since 1983 and served as its president.

Look at the tagline at the bottom of his email:

Preserving the Past – Maintaining the Present – Ensuring the Future

That’s the National Carousel Association’s line. It also describes what happens when you write the date on an envelope.

He’s ridden the Brookfield Zoo carousel twice, and he told me something I didn’t know: it was built in Mansfield, Ohio.

If you ever want to build a miniature carousel or carve a miniature animal, he’s your guy.

He also recommended a book, “Sundial of the Seasons” by Hal Borland, which runs daily outdoor entries straight through all four seasons. A woodcarver tipped him off to it. I just requested it via interlibrary loan (from where else, but the Morton Arboretum library!) (Also available via Amazon—affiliate link)

Leaves are still coming down. You need an envelope, a pen, and a book you can spare. Who would you write the caption to?

The post A carousel carver in West Virginia sent in the best leaf story yet appeared first on Spudart.

The current exhibit features a cake masterpiece inspired by Van Gogh or maybe Winslow Homer.

Case in point: “Wheatfield under Thunderclouds” — Vincent van Gogh, 1890

Actually more like, Dora Maar “Untitled” Circa 1960

The post Grocery Store Cake Gallery appeared first on Spudart.

Family

Thinking about winter and making tiny snowmen. This year, I want to put a heart inside each one, so when the snowman melts, a little heart is left behind.
» Bluesky

Art

Made a page for Lightbulb Memories. Every time you put in a new lightbulb, write the date and one line about your life on its base. Years later the bulb burns out and hands it back to you. I’ve been doing this since 2012. Now it’s a Try this page with a one-page printable PDF to keep in your box of spare bulbs. I laid out the printable in InDesign, and I’ve drafted seven short posts. Each one gets published when a bulb in our house burns out.
» Lightbulb Memories webpage

Pricing out a mini freezer in the basement just for snowballs. Fill it the first winter. Then every winter after that, take one snowball out and put a new one in. After ten years, I’d have a snowball from every winter.
» Blog post coming

Continuing my Letters on Foil project. My latest letter, Reflection of Autumn Decor, was done in a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
» Artwork page

Playing with the idea of punching holes in fallen leaves with a butterfly-shaped paper punch.
» Bluesky

Getting ready for National Origami Day on November 11 with Fast Food Origami. Make a crane out of a fast-food bag.
» Artwork page

Baseball

My 1990 Topps Mitch Williams lasted less than a block on the sidewalk. A car whistled at me while I was checking the bottom of my shoe. (I was wearing jorts, a Cubs shirt, and Cheez-It socks.) Then the card popped in half. I stuck one half to my 2016 Cubs championship shirt for the rest of the walk. Back home, more purple duct tape put his head back on his body. Sorry, Mitch.
» Artwork page

Online stuff

Made a page of 150 of my quotes, going back to 1997. Quote #150 is “Creating your own quotations page is possibly the most self-centered act possible.”
» Quotes page

From that archive, I’ve started to write scripts for a webcomic with my characters Etym and the Worm. Etym explains where words come from, like “landline,” a word nobody needed until cell phones.
» Webcomics coming

Recently wrote about no longer being able to be seen in the background of Chicago’s free classical concerts.
» Spudart blog post

Tinkering

Built an eBay search URL builder, mostly for finding baseball cards.
» Sorry, no link. It’s a private tool.

Pondering

What makes an ordinary object into art? Does the act of paying attention change it? What about when the documentation becomes as important as the object?

Should each of my art projects get its own Instagram account? I like how consistent @streetworncards looks. That could mean 20 accounts, though.
» Instagram

Reading and studying

Wrote a post for christiannotebook.com about Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go.” The Hebrew for “in the way” literally says “upon the mouth of his way.”
» This will be published on Sunday.

Art and inspiration

Looking at the work of George Curtis Levi in the Glen Ellyn Public Library’s Trickster Cultural Center exhibit.
» I should blog about this.

Hillary Irene Johnson’s new project, Paper for the Unsaid, uses handmade paper and the mail as a place for grief and words that haven’t been spoken.
» Facebook

If our library’s MakerSpace ever gets a handheld 3D scanner, I’d happily take it downtown to scan sculptures at the Art Institute.
» Bluesky

Photography

Considering a tiny Sony E-mount 30mm f/10 body-cap lens. I have a Nikon D610, so I’m figuring out whether adapting it makes sense. [Hint it doesn’t]
» Amazon affiliate link

The post Now page (for October 2026) appeared first on Spudart.

They also live-stream the performances online with video. The camera angles are were set up so you could see a good portion of the audience. If you sat in the right seat, you could be seen in the background. Like the front of your face (not just the back of your head)

I’ve always wanted to go to one of these performances with my handmade Mr. T Cabbage Patch doll and sit quietly in the background, appearing on the live stream (blog post from 2023).

Well, I haven’t watched those live performances in a while. Yesterday I tuned in. You couldn’t see the audience. They changed the camera angle! Now the camera angle is from higher up, maybe from the balcony?

The crowd is no longer in view!

I dug back through the WFMT YouTube archives to see when the camera angle changed. They archive all the live performances for anyone to view anytime! Which would have been all the more reason for me to sit in the background and be recorded with Mr. T for all of history.

The very last performance with the crowd in view was July 17, 2024. Isabella Bignasca, viola & Nadia Azzi, piano.

In the following Wednesday performance on July 24, 2024, they employed a new camera angle from above. At least you can see a sliver of the front-row audience at the very bottom.

For the next performance on July 31, 2024, the camera shifted slightly, and the crowd is completely cropped out.

Sigh. There goes another wonderful unique thing.

I rather miss seeing the performances with the audience in the background. At least we have the archive to dig through.

Here’s the first performance YouTube offers from their start at the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist on Wacker on March 4, 2022. That means we have three years of performance archives with the audience in the background.

Previously, the performances were in the Chicago Cultural Center. The YouTube archive goes back only to the end of 2020, so it has no recordings of the pre-pandemic audience at the Cultural Center.

One of the joys of going to a concert is seeing the other people around you. Watching these concerts now with just the musicians feels detached. It doesn’t feel like I’m there. Maybe I should have been there.

The post No longer be seen in the background of Chicago’s free classical concerts appeared first on Spudart.

Most of the envelopes record an ordinary walk. This one records a morning when three of my art projects ran into each other.

After dropping off my daughter at second grade, I walked by Main Street Park and placed my first treasure chest in Glen Ellyn. I had placed over 900 treasure chests when I lived in the city, but then zero for NINE years while living in suburban Glen Ellyn. I put it on a rock in the park that I’m naming Graystone Gallery.

A few years ago I declared this rock would become my gallery. I have a phrase I’ve said in the past:

Continuing a new art series after nine years of absence, declaring a new gallery. The air was thick with feelings of new beginnings and artfulness.

On the rest of my walk home, I noticed a leaf on the ground with a large circular hole in the center. Odd timing, considering I had just purchased a set of three hole punchers that make the shape of a butterfly (affiliate link). I am planning to punch butterflies out of leaves and leave the leaves with the holes, so someone wonders how that shaped hole got into the leaf.

(Disclaimer: The Amazon links in this blog post are affiliate links, so I can make a few extra coins to help pay for a fraction of the cost to host this website. #CommissionsEarned)

And here, I encounter a leaf with a large pre-made hole!

The rest of the tree had green leaves, so this leaf was clearly attacked by bugs. I considered leaving the leaf there, because it might be covered in microscopic hungry bugs!

But I couldn’t pass up the timing of this leaf. Finding it immediately after continuing one of my long-time art series. And it is pointing to a future art series. It seemed too much like fate to leave it behind. So I picked it up and carried it home.

Here’s the envelope where the leaf will be pressed.

The leaf was considerably wet, so when I got home, put it inside a paper towel for a few days for it to dry off before pressing it.

The leaf is so large it barely fits in the envelope. I had to cut off the stem to make it fit. I considered using a larger envelope. But I rather like how this series stays consistent with 5×7 envelopes.

Now, the question is: is this some sort of magical leaf that can predict the future? Maybe if I hold it up to something, the future will appear in the center.

If you press a leaf with a story this fall, let me know. The whole setup is right here.

The post Leaf with hole predicts future art project appeared first on Spudart.

McDonald’s just started its 39th year of the Monopoly promotion. Yup, it started in 1987. I have fun memories as a kid collecting Monopoly pieces and sticking them to the cheap paper game board, and slowly filling up the board. There’s something fun about the thought of getting close to winning one of the prizes. Of course, we never won anything big. A few instant prizes here and there.

Monopoly’s arrival this year coincides with me resurrecting my Fast Food Origami art project. Clearly, I was being called to go to Monopoly today.

I haven’t really played the McDonald’s Monopoly game in many years. How much has it changed?

First off, there’s no game board anymore. Instead, you scan your game piece with the McDonald’s app. Gahhh! Apps have taken away our beloved game board! Darn, you digital age!

Then the app took something else away. When you agree to the terms, you have to enter your legal first name. That means, I can’t use the name Megatron anymore for my orders!

Secondly, you can’t simply order a cheap hamburger to get a Monopoly piece. The cheapest burger with a Monopoly piece is the Quarter Pounder with Cheese for $5.69. No thanks.

I scrolled and scrolled through their menu looking for the cheapest option.

2026 McDonald’s menu items that come with Monopoly pieces

Burgers & Chicken Sandwiches

• Big Mac ($5.69)
• Quarter Pounder with Cheese ($5.69)
• Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese ($6.49)
• Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe ($5.89)
• 4 Piece McCrispy Strips ($6.39)
• 10 pc. Chicken McNuggets ($6.49)

Sides & Drinks

• Large French Fries ($4.19) I don’t want to submit my body to a large McDonalds fries.
• Large Strawberry Watermelon Refresher ($4.49)
• Large Sprite Berry Blast ($3.99)
• Large Mango Pineapple Refresher ($4.49)
• Large Dirty Dr Pepper ($3.99)
• Large Orange Dream with HI-C ($3.99)
• Large Blackberry Passion Fruit Refresher ($4.49)
• Large Coke ($1.89) Not too bad. But I don’t really drink soda anymore.
• Large Diet Coke ($1.89)
• Large Lemonade ($2.79)
• Large Sweet Iced Tea ($2.39)
• Large Unsweet Iced Tea ($2.39)

McCafé & Hot/Cold Beverages

• Large Premium Roast Coffee ($2.19)
• Large Iced French Vanilla Coffee ($2.99)
• Large Iced Caramel Coffee ($2.99)
• Large Iced Coffee ($2.99)
• Large Iced Sugar Free Vanilla Coffee ($2.99)
• Large Caramel Macchiato ($3.69)
• Large Mocha ($3.69)
• Large French Vanilla Latte ($3.89)
• Large Cappuccino ($3.69)
• Large Americano ($2.39)
• Large Decaf Coffee ($2.19) Good price, but I gave up coffee.
• Large Hot Tea ($1.39)

At the very bottom of the menu, ah, large hot tea $1.39. I’ll go for that! I wonder how McDonald’s does their tea.

I chose a nice table by the window that would work well for photographing the Fast-Food origami crane. In this location there aren’t many nice tables by the window, so I was happy to get one by the natural light.

I waited for my order for 10 minutes. No joke. I can tell by the timestamps of my photos. Maybe it took them longer to get my tea together because it’s such a rare order? Other people in line were getting their orders before me. Whatthe!

The worker finally brought my order with a kind smile, so that diffused my frustration. My order arrived with a hot cup and the burger in a bag. I emptied the bag out, setting up my meal. I was arranging all the pieces, getting ready to make an origami creation.

The hot tea was certainly hot. It had a black lid. I removed the cap expecting the delightful aroma of tea to waft through the air. Instead, when I looked at the drink, it was completely clear! There was no tea.

What? This is a joke. I looked through the bag again for a tea bag. Nope. My ten-minute order didn’t even get the tea right. Do they want me to just drink hot water? LOL. Do they even know what tea is?

I didn’t want to lose my table, but I gathered all my stuff and brought it up to the counter. The first worker was the one who delivered it to my table. She was very nice. But also confused. She asked someone for help. The second worker saw my plain water. I felt a little bad, and I said, “I never ordered tea here before, so I don’t know how it comes.” The second worker gave me a tea bag. Ahhh, so they just give you a tea bag. They don’t brew it themselves. Ok.

When I turned to go back to my table, two ladies were sitting at my table. Ah well. I did feel a little guilty taking up a larger table by myself. I took this opportunity to go outside and eat. After all, I didn’t even have a tray. They gave me my order in a bag and a cup.

This would end up being MUCH better being outside. I was the only one out there on such a nice day. Music was playing—INXS, no less! I was really jamming out there. I was singing along to… what was the INXS song? I don’t rememer. But I like to think it was “Taste It“. Get it? Because I’m at a McDonald’s? LOL.

I took one bite out of my McDouble, then I proceeded to fold the burger wrapper into an origami. I found these wrappers are the best. The paper is light. The have a nice design because they are laid out to have design elements in the corners (in an origami crane, the corners are what shows up in the final result).

This wrapper had some melted cheese and onion bits. LOL. Ok, this will be my first time folding an origami with food remnants on it. Let’s see how that goes!

Lately I’ve full embraced being an outsider in the burbs. Just let myself go. Here I am at this McDonald’s by myself sitting outside doing some chair dancing to INXS, folding an origami, all the while drive-thru cars being caught inside their metal death traps.

Then I pull out my monster tank camera, Nikon D610. I often wonder what people around me think when I pull out a professional-grade camera at a McDonalds. Like, what is this guy doing? Is he taking photos for McDonalds corporate? No, I’m just a dude doing weird cool stuff. Thanks!

Indeed the design of the wrapper turned out nice on the crane. You can read “McDouble” on one wing, “Double Cheese” on the other wing tip. The top part of the wing has a McDonald’s logo.

I set this guy up to take a bite out of my burger. I really love this new habit I have when folding fast food origami—taking just one bite of my food. Setting the food down. Focusing on folding the origami. It allows me to eat slower and enjoy my food. And then the final photo is so much fun, because it looks like the origami is eating the food.

Then I notice that it’s a bit windy out. That might make for a cool video!

Sure enough, the origami moved around a bit in the wind. THE CRANE LOOKED LIKE IT WAS ALIVE! It was certainly worth eating outside.

Given the wonder of the moment, I peeled the sticker off my hot tea, expecting a big prize. Well, not really. I got Park Place. Which is half of the grand prize. But you need Boardwalk to win. But still, I guess that’s cool I got Park Place.

Don’t bother entering that code into your app. I already used it.

As I polish off that burger, I’m set to go home. My tea wasn’t finished at all. I didn’t want to toss it! I did think about riding my bike over to nearby Ross’s and buying a water bottle/thermos. I’ve been meaning to get a new one anyways.

But I didn’t really want to park and lock my bike again. There’s no place close to Ross’s to lock up.

Logic would say to just dump the tea. But no. I will not follow logic. Instead, I will ride home with the tea in my hand. Yes. I will bike home with a hot tea in one hand and the other on the handrail.

It actually worked out pretty well. I used my right hand to drive. My left hand held the tea.

I’m a big advocate of turn signals. I always use turn signals when driving. I especially use turn signals when biking. Which means doing the hand signals by sticking your left arm out.

When I would turn left, I would extend my arm out, with tea in hand. It would be VERY apparent to drivers that I was riding my bike with a cup of coffee or tea. And where I’m biking, there are like, ZERO bikers. In fact, at one point while I was going down the service road behind the McDonalds, I decided to go on the sidewalk, since i was going to be riding slower. There was a car coming out who totally did not look for me. I had to give a few yelps for them to hear/see me. EXCUSE ME! BIKER WITH TEA COMING THROUGH!

I made it home, and I am now enjoying my tea. In the future, I’ll make sure to bring a water bottle with me. But if I don’t, I’ll know that biking with a tea in your hands is just as much fun.

The post Hot tea, origami, and a bicycle ride appeared first on Spudart.

On Sunday, July 10, 2011, I took a 2-mile photo walk on Division Street in Chicago from Halsted St to Western Ave. I captured 415 photos and narrowed them down to 29 diptychs.

Remember me at Cabrini Green

When I took these photos, I went to church in Cabrini Green. Or at least what used to be Cabrini Green. The city of Chicago recently tore down the last high-rise. This would be a most fitting subject for the “Remember me” magnet series.

This is the start of my two-mile walk down Division Street from Halsted Street to Western Avenue. It’ll be a walk through a low-income housing project, an industrial area, crossing two bridges, walking under one train overpass, an expressway, a trendy neighborhood, a hospital, and a high school.

At the end of every post, I will mark the time that the photos were taken, so you can get a sense of this walk.

12:59pm

Remember me at Cabrini Green by the broken fence

The fence surrounding the field of the last Cabrini Green high-rise project is a perfect spot to place the “Remember me” magnets.
1) It’s metal, so there’s a place for the magnet.
2) You can see through the fence to the empty field.
3) The fence itself is an interesting subject in and of itself. Here the fence is bent.

1:00pm

Remember me at Cabrini Green with flowers

Despite the life from this Cabrini Green field torn away with the high-rise teardown. There is new life growing on the fence around the field. Flowers are curling around the fence. It’s really quite amazing how determined these flowers are. They hold onto the fence and face straight up into the sky. The flowers also serve as a fitting memorial to those who once lived here.

1:02pm

Remember me at Cabrini Green with budding plants

These budding plants take over the fence, climbing to the top.

1:06pm

Remember me at Cabrini Green strongly, vacantly

In the middle of the field of a former high-rise stands an old green electric generator box thing. It stands there stern and strong, saying, “You can’t move me. I’m here.” The scale of this rooted box demanded not just two photos, but a triptych. The big bold greenness and army-esque identification lettering makes this a stubborn box. It looks like it might transform into an Autobot… or Decepticon!

But for now it remains a reminder of what used to be here.

1:10pm

Remember me at Division and Halsted

Across the street from the Cabrini Green hi-rises is a factory with a locked fence. The lock keeping it closed is old and rusted. The lock is symbolic of old memories locked away. But are the memories locked away from being remembered? Or are the memories locked in a special area?

1:18pm

Remember me at graffiti and rust

From this photo, it looks like hints of old graffiti that are rusting away. Goodbye old graffiti. You were here long enough to rust away.

1:20pm

Remember me at the middle of the Division Street Bridge

I have something for the center point of bridges. The seam where the bridge splits into two. The point where both arms reach together to connect and allow people to cross.

Years earlier, I made an art project called “Art Authentication” that connects the two halves of the bridge with a stripe of tape. The tape declares the bridge as a work of art. When the bridge opens, the tape rips, and the authentication tears, negating the bridge as art.

When walking to the center of this bridge, I had to leave a magnet here. It looks like both sides of the bridge are actually bolted together. This bridge is forever married together, never to be separated.

1:22pm

Remember me at the gears of the Division Street Bridge

Another single photo in this series of diptychs. This one has an interesting composition as the “remember me” magnet is in the far bottom left. I wanted to capture the gears and the river below. I kinda wish the gears was more in focus, but they are a good distance away. But it does make the magnet more distinct.

1:26pm

Remember me at the life preserver on the Division Street Bridge

I already photographed a life preserver the day before on the Lawrence Avenue bridge over the Chicago River. But I put a magnet on this one too, because it might make a neat series to photograph magnets with all the life preservers. Especially since the life preserver is a fitting subject for a “Remember me” magnet.

For this particular photo, I laid it out as a vertical image. Whereas the Lawrence Avenue image uses horizontals. The verticals are nice, because in the close-up shot, you get to see more of the life preserver.

1:30pm

Remember me at the Division Street Bridge, triptych

The complexity of this shot deserved three photos.
— Contextual shot showing that this is shot from the walkway on the bridge.
— Close-up shot of the magnet with detail texture of the underlying rust.
— Contextual shot of the bridge railing detail. Given the bridge’s rust-and-decay, it’s nice to see some ornamental detail.

This bridge wants to be remembered. It may be nearly falling apart, but it does have some interest.

1:32pm

Remember me while the paint drips on the Division Street Bridge

Huh. I guess I did a buncha triptychs. All three photos show nice detail.
— The dripping in the top.
— The close-up of the visceralness of the paint
— The rusting of the end cap. And how the paint serves to cover up graffiti.

It’s funny that the paint is meant to cover up graffiti, because with the dripping it made me think of how graffiti artists purposely use drips in their work. It also had feelings of color field painters from the 1960s. Good things to remember. Art history and personal expression of urban artists.

1:33pm

Remember me under an Asphalt vibratory roller/compactor

Just after the bridge sat an asphalt roller. I love those things! My nickname on the croquet field is the mauler. I’ve always wanted to make a logo with this thing. I also would like to collect asphalt roller toys. They are so much fun to make them roll over and squash things.

The “Remember me” magnet was placed on the front. Fitting because it would be the last thing someone would see before getting rolled over. Wow. That’s dark. Uh. Well. I thought it was funny at the time. It was strange standing in front of the thing taking photos.

Ohmigosh. I just realized the big acronym on the front says ARRR. OH THAT’S SO FUNNY. ARRRR! I’M A BIG ASPHALT ROLLER! ARRRRR!

(wait, do pirates drive these things?)

1:35pm

Remember me on a bicycle

This poor forgotten bicycle is pleading, “Remember me.” Sorry dude. I’ll take a photo of you and remember. Too bad you can’t be ridden anymore.

1:39pm

Remember me at a weird lonely house on Division Street

In the industrial district of Goose Island, there’s this lonely house sitting on Division Street. I’m not sure if anyone lives there. At first I wasn’t going to put a “Remember me” magnet on it, because I wouldn’t want someone taking photos of my house. But then I remembered that people do take photos of the house I grew up in. So yeah. There.

I ran across the street and placed a magnet on the metal grates over the garden windows.

1:42pm

Remember me at the mailbox

Oh huh. Just as I typed that title, it’s kinda fitting. How do you remember someone? Via postal mail! The old-school way of keeping in touch, and one of the most intimate ways of telling someone you remember them. Heh cool.

But the real intention behind my placing this “Remember me” magnet is that it goes over the graffiti. I’ll touch more on that meaning in another photo. For now, we’ll celebrate the mailbox in this photo. And the idea of using postal mail to remember someone.

1:46pm

Remember me at the foot of the west Division Street bridge

This second bridge marks the west boundary of Goose Island. I like the green and yellow in this photo. In the last photo I said I was going to talk about the meaning of graffiti in this series. But this photo isn’t the best example. Let me continue that tease and say I’ll talk about it in another photo.

Thanks.

1:49pm

Remember me at the life preserver on the West Divsion Street Bridge

The third life preserver in the “Remember me” magnet series. This one features a reflection of me. So yeah, uh, remember me.

1:50pm

Remember me behind bars

The bars on this door are kinda like bars in a jail. Having someone you know in jail is hard. Not that I know, but I would imagine it would be hard, and would require lots of remembering in order to endure the time.

I placed the magnet behind the bars to symbolize the person in jail.

1:52pm

Remember me looking out at the Chicago River

While I was setting up for this photo, there was this great reflection in the water down below. It was so pretty that I wanted to make a two-minute video of just the reflection swaying in the water.

Then a couple of kayakers came paddling down the river. Normally when I’m shooting these two-minute videos, I don’t move the camera. I like the scene to stay the same. But the kayakers were over in the middle of the river. But you know what? They came paddling over just under me! It was such a cool video. You’ll have to check it out when I post it online.

After shooting that super cool video, I took this photo. That’s why the kayakers aren’t in the photo. They are under the bridge as I was shooting this.

1:56pm

Remember me at the middle of the other Division Street Bridge

This west bridge on Division Street had very little graffiti compared to the east bridge. Everything was painted over in pink or magenta. Oh wait. Just as I say that, a big tag appears in the upper right of the photo. Ha! Aaaaaaaanyways.

I continue my interest in the middle of bridges by placing this magnet right in the middle. Again, it’s placed on a metal slab that holds the bridge together. Just like in the east bridge photo.

1:57pm

Remember me where the pink paint ends

The pink coverup paint was continual and long. The pink paint ends here. I love edges. Normally, edges aren’t always very sharp and clear. Just like when it rains, the area that gets wet versus the area that’s dry under shelter. It always isn’t a distinct line. There’s a slight gradation between the two areas.

Same with this paint-over on the I-beam, so I placed a magnet over the end of the pink paint.

1:59pm

Remember me at the gears of the bridge

This east bridge has an interesting design as the outer structure shows the dedendums of the root circle. Yeah, I looked up gear terms so I could sound smart. It’s like the entire outer structure of this part of the bridge is a big gear.

The magnet is placed on the addendum circle surface.

There’s something symbolic about gears and remembering, but my brain got so lost in terminology that I’ll leave the metaphorizing up to you. Go ahead. What do gears and memory have in common?

(oh wait, hint, time?)

2:02pm

Remember me at the Metra train overpass

The black warning is so thick on this I-beam, it totally evoked Mark Rothko. Remember him.

2:05pm

Remember Alicia Frantz 6/3/1973 – 6/3/2005

The most poignant of all the “Remember me” magnets so far came with this white bicycle for Alicia Frantz. Locked up under the Metra overpass, this bicycle is a memorial for the woman who “heard everyday sounds as music.” The bike is decorated with shiny Irish beads and white pearls, all turned smoky from the constant stream of passing cars entering and leaving the I-90/94 Kennedy Expressway.

The walkway is elevated up a few feet, making it eye level with all the cars that pass by. As I was photographing this bicycle, I thought of all the cars that have passed by this bicycle every day over the past five years as part of their morning commute. I wonder how forgotten this bicycle has become for those used to seeing it.

As a fellow bicyclist, it makes me pause and consider the life of someone who died on their bike, probably by a car zooming onto or off the expressway.

May Alicia Frantz be remembered.

2:08pm

Remember me at a garbage can in Noble Square

We throw things away so casually. Things forgotten. Discarded.

Remember me.

2:20pm

Remember me in Wicker Park

Once I hit Wicker Park, I ran out of inspiration to place the Remember Me magnets. All of a sudden, there were people walking. The industrial emptiness called for magnets. But the lively area of Wicker Park wasn’t calling.

Yes, people in Wicker Park do want to be remembered. But I wasn’t feeling the vibe to place magnets along this stretch of Division. Except when I came across this empty lot on the west side of Wicker Park.

Four steel girders stuck up from the ground to prevent people from making this field into a parking lot. One each of the poles was scrawled graffiti. And here we get our explanation of why I like placing “Remember me” magnets over tagging.

At first I avoided placing magnets on graffiti, because I don’t like to especially celebrate tagging. (I’m not a fan of destroying property).

However, tagging is a fitting subject for this series because it stems from a strong desire for an individual to be remembered. Someone tags walls and objects in public in an effort to make their mark. To be remembered.

3:02pm

Remember me at Resurrection Health Care Hospital

I have personal memories of this hospital. Too personal to share here. But let it be said that I definitely have meaning in placing a “Remember me” magnet here.

3:04pm

Remember me at Roberto Clemente High School

The end of my walk down Division. I had completed my two-mile journey from Halsted to Western. Even though two miles is not long. It was a two-hour photo walk. I was happy to wait for the bus. While waiting, I wanted to place a magnet to mark the end of the trip (and to kill time while waiting for the bus).

The metal bench by the high school sign is a fitting place because it allowed me to get the school’s name in the photo. A big part of high school is memories. Being remembered. Establishing your legacy. Having a yearbook. Kids want to be remembered.

3:13pm

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I run my alma mater’s Facebook group for art and design alumni (Illinois Wesleyan University). I’ve run the group since I graduated in 1997. At the end of my senior year, I asked the director if we could have a listserv set up to connect alumni together. He said it would be a tech request, so it would take at least a year to implement because of budget schedules… blah blah. I didn’t want to wait a full year for a chance of something happening. I was going to graduate that year, so I wanted it now.

Therefore I started my own email group. Every week, I took people’s emails and compiled them manually into an email digest. I would email the digest out. I would also fax it (fax!) to the art building for them to post on a bulletin board. And there was also a website for the discussion with alumni profiles. The archive is still up!

Anyhow, I’ve run this for years. But we’ve never had an alumni art show. I remember as a student there was an alumni show for some folks from, like, the class of 1974. I thought that was so old! And now here we are, my graduation year 29 years behind me.

The current director of the IWU gallery emailed me saying she was going to put together a show of artwork by alumni. She wanted to keep it simple and easy for people to participate, so it would be artwork on postcards. She said, “The idea is to be as inclusive and welcoming to alums as possible, and to give as many as we can the opportunity to participate in a show here, in at least a small way.”

I know some alumni would jump right on board with this. And others… It’s been quite a number of years since some people have made any art. Crazy, right‽ But people move on to other jobs, and the ol’ art stuff gets put aside with life. But this is a really great way to get people involved. Including those who haven’t been active in artmaking. A postcard is a perfect size. Not intimidating. Familiar. Low-pressure.

She mailed out 650 postcards to IWU art alumni. She got around 65 back for the show. IMHO, a 10% return is not too bad.

I definitely needed to submit a card. Anyone who submits a postcard could have it archived in the school’s permanent collection. That’s totally rad! As Amy said, “it’s a way for future scholars to research the history of our school + a line on the resume for folks who want such a thing.”

So many of us graduated, and the school has no memory of us. There’s nothing left behind to connect us back. Here’s a chance to be part of the school. What sort of artwork would people make to identify who they were, and who they are now?

At the time, I was revisiting my “Remember Me” art series. A blog post is coming in five days. The project page is up online with 10 artworks.

“Remember me” checkboxes are ubiquitous online. You know when you log in to a website, there’s that checkbox on the login page that says something like “Remember me.” I took a screenshot of that checkbox and turned it into 2-inch-wide magnets. I placed the magnets in various places.

This notion of remembering works well with alumni. Alumni look back at old memories. Alumni would like to be remembered.

So I figured I’d go that route and do something related to “Remember Me.” I would replicate this digital look of the screenshot onto the postcard.

Only, I didn’t want the postcard to directly say, “Remember Me”. Imagine a gallery of postcards from alumni. Each postcard speaks to who this person was at IWU and who they are now. I didn’t want my postcard directly saying the phrase “Remember Me”. It sounds so desperate. PLEASE REMEMBER ME.

I made the phrase a bit larger, so it would get cut off the card. No longer sounding desperate. But also giving a bit of an elusive message. Remember M… What? What does this artist want you to remember? It’s a bit ironic to have the subject cut off. The very subject is not being completely remembered. Which can be so true for how we are remembered. Some of it is there, some of it is not.

Plus, given the size of the postcard, the phrase “Remember Me” wouldn’t really fill up the card. By allowing the phrase to be cropped off, I could make it a bit larger.

When I make the “Remember Me” magnets, I simply print them out, glue them to magnet sheets, and trim them. Pretty easy.

For this show I didn’t want to just print out my card. Especially since I’m not doing anything with special effort in making the digital image.

I thought I’d hand-draw the text, but with all the pixels. That would give some effort to the artwork. It was a bit more effort than I thought.

I drew a grid of 100 horizontal lines and 14 vertical lines. Then I hand-colored each pixel. It was a little grueling. But not so bad once I got going.

The super-tiny details allowed me to make use of my Japanese polygonal zigzag eraser. The fine edges were nice to get little details.

I had to raid my kids’ colored pencils to find various hues and shades of brown and blue.

Once I was done filling in all the squares, the card still felt… empty. The top and bottom of the card had nothing. It needed something else.

I know! I’ll scuff up the card so it looks aged. That fits nicely with the remembering theme.

This year I’ve brought back my art series where I duct-tape a baseball card to the bottom of my shoe and wear it outside. I call it, Street-Worn Cards.

The series speaks to the industry’s obsession with value being tied to mint condition. The value should be the card and how you used the card. How the card was carried in your pocket. Or pinned to a wall. I intentionally wear out these cards, and I absolutely love the visuals that result from this series. Since I wear them at specific places or events, they carry stories with them too.

Lately, almost all my cards are part of walking my daughter to and from school. It captures that part of my life that I’m honored to have now (because these walking-to-school days won’t always be here.)

Yeah! Let’s duct-tape the postcard to my shoe and wear it outside!

However, I waited until the postcard deadline. To do this, I need a dry sidewalk. But with all this constant rain, I never had a chance to walk around the block doing this until the day before they needed to be postmarked.

My 7-year-old daughter and I walked around the block and gave the card a nice worn patina.

I put that stripe of painter’s tape over the text because I didn’t want it to get worn out. Peeling off the painter’s tape resulted in something unexpected. Some of the colored pencil had transferred onto the tape! Talk about retaining memories!

The card was finished! All ready to send! Now I just need to spray-fix it to help preserve it from smudging. Gotta keep the card in the condition that it’s in!

I spray-fixed it, and left it on my back porch outside to dry. Well, silly me. I left the thing out there overnight, AND IT RAINED. I totally forgot about it.

This morning I was gathering the materials to send my postcard, and I thought, “Oh, where did I put that postcard?” It was outside, DRENCHED in the rain. Ugh. Like, completely soaked. It sat in a puddle on the back porch.

But the good news is that my postcard is meant to be worn down. Since I drew on it with colored pencil, so none of that got harmed (colored pencil wouldn’t run when wet). I just had to figure out a way to dry the postcard, because I had to mail it, literally THAT day. Like, within hours before the post office closed.

I took some paper towels and put the sopping wet postcard in the paper towels, and pressed it with a hot iron (with the steam setting off, of course; I don’t want more water! I want the heat to remove the water). That did the trick quite well. I pressed and pressed, and the card became crisp and dry. There was no way I wanted to send an even remotely wet card through the mail.

On the back of the card, I wrote a note about its worn condition. Just so nobody thinks something weird happened. Well, something weird did happen, but it’s all part of the process of the card.

I mailed it in an envelope stamped with the phrase “Kan Kun være malet af en gal Mand!” (Can only have been painted by a madman!) It’s a phrase that Edvard Munch sneaked into his famous scream painting. It was only recently discovered. I took that phrase and photoshopped it into famous paintings. I also made it into a stamp.

I loved being able to incorporate a couple of the art series I’ve been doing since I graduated. Combining everything together into this postcard yielded an interesting process.

I had started with a digital command to remember me. I turned it into a physical object, deliberately wore it down, accidentally soaked it, dried it out, and then sent it off to be preserved in the university’s collection.

And now it hangs on a gallery wall alongside all the other alumni’s artwork, symbolizing who they are.

The post Remember M… appeared first on Spudart.

Using an X-Acto blade, I peeled a baseball card into two parts. I folded the front of the card into an origami crane. The paper was still a bit thick, next time I might sand down the card to make it thinner.

Even though it’s small, I didn’t really want to store a three-dimensional crane, so I unfolded it.

The card looks kinda cool when unfolded.

It’s like a secret message for those who know origami crane patterns. An origami expert will see this and say, “That was an origami crane!” For the 99.99% of the public, they’ll just see a bunch of fold lines. Although the fold lines do make a cool pattern.

I’m not sure if it just worked out nicely for this particular card, but the lines feel really balanced with this photo.

• The center of the lines points right to the Cleveland logo on his jersey.
• His face comes out of the shapes of lines at the top.
• The outline of his body seems to fit with the shapes of the lines.
• Even the way his elbows are bent feels like origami angles. Maybe I’m crazy!

Here’s the back. Looks a bit like a napkin.

After photographing the card, I carried it back to my desk and noticed that the light reflects off the facets in an interesting way. A bit like a kaleidoscope. Or maybe a diamond.

Now this is how I’ll store it. Unfolded. The missing bottom and peeled-back reunited in a penny sleeve.

Maybe someday I might fold it into an origami crane again.

And I might try this with some other cards too.

The post Origami baseball card appeared first on Spudart.

Years later the leaf slides out around page 212. It still looks great. And you have no idea where it came from.

Back in January 2010 I photographed a pressed leaf that fell out of one of my books and posted it to Flickr with the title “I like finding pressed leaves in my books in the middle of January.” I still love finding them. That particular leaf is a complete mystery to me.

The leaf made it through the years just fine, but I forgot the reason why I saved it.

Let’s help remember the intention of our pressed leaves. Before the leaf goes into the book, slide it into a 5×7 envelope. Write the date on the front. Under the date, write a few sentences about how you came across it. Then press the envelope in the book with the leaf inside.

Now the leaf carries its own story. When it falls out fifty years from now, whoever opens that book gets the story.

I invite you to do this too

1. You spot a leaf worth picking up.
2. Photograph the leaf where you found it. Include the tree, the sidewalk, and whoever is standing there.
3. Carry the leaf home in your hand.
4. Write the date on an envelope. Do this before the leaf goes in, so your pen tip doesn’t dent it.
5. Write a few sentences under the date about how the leaf was found.
6. Photograph the leaf next to the finished envelope.
7. Slide the leaf inside.
8. Press the envelope in one designated book.
9. Rediscover it years later.

That’s the whole thing. Ten minutes at home, plus the walk. If you decide to post it online, use the hashtag #pressedleafstories, and let me know.

The 5×7 envelope is the one detail I’d insist on, because letter-sized envelopes are usually too short to hold a big leaf and too long to sit inside a book without poking out the top.

We have been doing this since November 2021. My leaf book has envelopes in it from kindergarten drop-offs, and from the last walk to school Evelyn took as a first grader.

What ends up on the envelope

Here’s one:

Here’s another:

And here’s one my daughter wrote:

The leaf turns into a specimen with a very unusual label

If I were writing about the project for an exhibition or art-history context, that’s probably the phrase I’d use:

Yeah, doesn’t that sound rad‽ Let’s break that down.

“Vernacular” because this act intentionally exists outside institutional art and scientific collection practices. You are just doing it on your own.

“Herbarium“: A real herbarium takes a living plant and converts it into an archival specimen. Press it, label it with species and date and location, and it becomes a piece of knowledge that somebody can study in a hundred years. Botanical institutions have run that system for centuries.

“Memory“: These envelopes borrow the whole herbarium structure and change what goes on the label. A scientific herbarium preserves information about a plant. This one preserves information about a person’s memory.

We are not just archiving leaves. We are archiving memories.

Following the rule

Look back at those nine steps. Every leaf gets the same treatment, every time, whether it’s a great leaf or an ordinary one.

It begs the question: wouldn’t you rather do something more creative with the leaf? Like, make prints from it? Doing something unique to a single leaf feels like art.

Instead of doing something wacky to the leaf, we instead follow a set of rules for what happens every time you meet a leaf. Following the same nine steps for five years can sound rote. But run a simple procedure for five years, and it becomes a series. A series can develop, accumulate, and start developing patterns.

No artistic skill is required at any step. The work here is noticing. (Most everything on spudart.org is about noticing)

The carrying

There’s a step that is a lot of fun. Between finding the leaf and archiving the leaf, you carry it. Sometimes that’s six blocks with the thing in your hand.

Whatever you have in your hands influences how you think (blog post from 2007). A pencil in your hand and you write something. A camera in your hand and you can’t help taking pictures. A leaf in your hand and you spend the rest of the walk looking at leaves. You feel the texture. You start drafting the caption before you reach the kitchen table.

The leaf works as a portable attention device. So the sequence isn’t as short as find it and file it. There’s a whole stretch of extended attention in the middle, and that’s where most of the actual experience lives.

What’s actually in the envelope

The November 17, 2021 one says I was walking home to get to work, and my two-year-old in the stroller was reaching up at a tree with colorful leaves, and I could have kept walking. But we stopped.

What’s preserved is the decision to stop. Years later, that envelope tells me I used to be the sort of person who stops and looks at things, which makes me want to stop and look at something this week. Past attention producing present attention. Archives can point backward and forward.

Stories that happen to have been pressed into leaves. I like that phrasing for it.

The archive begins when you decide to keep holding the leaf. You could have picked up the leaf, and looked at the nice color, and then dropped it. But instead, keep holding it.

Go find a leaf this week. You need an envelope, a pen, and a book you can spare. If you press any leaves with stories, please let me know.

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