Ground beef/ Went to school with her.

Scollage. Printmaking lists from 2009, stencils from this week.

Hamburger Patty. An EPIC Ick Pick reply a la Michael Kroeker on a road trip to god-knows-where, Manitoba including my mother, my sister and my grandmother. My grandma Helen, came up with a word sleuth game that we would play on long drives to Betula Lake and beyond. I remember sitting in the back of the family car, trying in vain to come up with something utterly genius to stump the players with. Come on Megs, Ickity Pickity. Something, nope. Margot the mouse, picking my child brain in silence. I am still working on something that will stump my grandma. 

Cold hamburgers in my mouth, cheddar fromage, pinwheel pasta, butter, parsely. Balance? Hardly. More like Food Group Freak Show circus in my body. Shitty dinner, yet another. I walked a lot today, drank a bunch of water. Dropped a slim wrench from my balcony, a Chilean man climbed my fire escape to deliver it back to my greased hands. Bike tuning. I spent majority of Saturday outside on the back balcony moving between stations: sit and shoot, pace and sweep, repotting plants breathed life right into me. Repotted all of the house plants, organized the tuning station. Jess got a tune up last weekend, head to toe. Wheel truing by a real stand up wheel woman, hot man bike mechanic thank you for letting me stare at your incredibly handsome face as you explained why my headset is a mess. Mop of hair. New tape for Alba, and a rookie job at that resulting in a Saturday early morning retape job a la moi (obsessive compulsive disorder, no doubt about it). Bottom line, I know how to tape bars now, not as hard as I feared. She really rides like a horse now. Rocket slick. New headset in the works, clean the bearings grinding like sleeping teeth in the front hub. 

I bought a new little bike two weekends ago that Steph can ride while she visits. When she takes leave, this little thing will be open to all guests of Casa Clark. I like the project, the deep clean, the inspection, the dismantle, the steel wool attack. Ruby and Jessica Alba, shiny ladies look out. 

Avoiding all social events, I spend many hours at my work table, tethered at the ears with surprising melodies. Classical music drapes the romance room, my bedroom readied for __________ with floral and stripes. 

Canon and Gigne for three violins and continuo in D major: Canon in D. 

Started painting again. Last night as Chanel and Lola whirled around for a Super Party, my hands dipped brushes of different girth into little pots of ink, pulling red red red red stripes across smooth cardstock still coiled. Quill at the helm of it all. Result? New work, old work revisited, a journey back in time, a journey into the future. 

All of this art making thanks to Steph, my roommate. She has come to Montreal from Taiwan for an art placement internship. It is quite a genius way to learn art from a master, without the heavy art school price tag. Her current master is a doll maker from Montreal. She comes home and explains her day of work, and I  imagine hundreds of porcelain limbs lying around the studio. Broken doll fingers. Last night, she came home with a schedule in hand for the third A. P. O. Ateliers Portes Ouvertes edition. 

The open house welcomed any curious public to take a glance at the inside world of studio art in Mile End. Art neighborhood. I had no idea HOW many studio dot the town. There were so many mediums, rooms at random filled with the most incredible things. Fibers, video, sculpture, serigraph, photography, you name it. An older man named Alfredo warmed my heart. I wandered for hours, quiet in my joy, dying to shoot photos with the hundred pound beast cowering in my shoulder bag even though something kept telling me to just wait. I watched people, listened to french, straining for bits of understanding like prized pieces of meat in stew. Tender goodness, those words. My favorite studio I saw today was a serigraph studio with two walls of windows. Bigger than any of the other rooms, this was a space made for intense printmaking. operation, a hell of a run. I smelled it before I saw it, mind leaping a thousand paces ahead and behind simultaneous, something deep within salivating for the print life I lay to rest in Winnipeg. Solvent h An eavy wanting. In good time. 

That seemed to be the message of the day, soak it up and revel. Wait, good will come. I took the long way home, tossing all I had just consumed around in thought. I look forward to the future. The future is now. Mon dieu! My grandma has Facebook.

Wild times. Wild work. 

A slice of new work inspired by a Super Party that I did not attend; May 2011.

Parent stencil, ink; May 2011.

Building upon old work, water color and ink; May 2011.