Detail of an illustration from a forthcoming book, mentioned earlier. I often like the details more than the complete illustrations. And it usually isn’t until I play around with the photos of the final illustrations on the computer that I see the potential, tight cropped compositions. But alas, there needs to be room for type. And illustrations as full double page spreads, more often than not, end up having to be weirdly composed around an odd void… That and my brain sabotages my urge to simplify. Stupid brain.

I feel like I’ve just surfaced after a long, 2+ year dive in the Depths of Work – a dark and sometimes frightening place that looks an awful lot like the inside of my studio. I’ve still got a few more things to finish up before I head off on some new and exciting directions, but for now I’ve got time to catch up on a Bit of Life – a bright but sometimes frightening place that looks doesn’t look an awful lot like the inside of my studio. I’m making time over the next couple of days to visit with family and friends who have been horribly neglected. To start if all off, I had lunch with a long lost high school friend today, which was lovely.

As much as my schedule has been hectic to the point that the mere thought of the tasks ahead were enough to make me want to curl up under my desk and not come out, relaxing is almost more terrifying. I just don’t know what to do with myself. If I’m home, I try to work. If I’m out wandering around outside I feel like I should be home, working. I’ve forgone almost two straight years of weekends, worked through holidays (Christmases included) and told my family that I’ll visit next month when I have time – with next month turning into the month after that and the month after that until half the year has flown by. And yet now, for the 3 days I’ve given myself off, I’m going to have to do everything in my power not to climb out of my skin.

I can’t do this cold turkey. I’m taking my laptop with me.

….

Slightly out of focus chickens hanging in a shop window, Chinatown, San Francisco

I went to White Spot recently with my boyfriend, his parents and his visiting aunt and uncle. I usually order the same thing every time I go, but decided that day to try something new. Salad. I chose one with a tomato icon beside it – indicating that it was vegetarian. The waitress took my order and asked if I’d like to add chicken to that.

“No. No chicken”. And then I worried I’d sounded excessively forceful.

The salad showed up a while later, nestled in a huge, folded tortilla bowl, and thoroughly laced with chicken. I explained that I hadn’t ordered it with chicken and the waitress apologized, saying she’d get me a new, and whisked it away into the kitchen.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never been fond of chicken meat. There’s a certain smell that reminds me of those days on the farm all those years ago when, as a child, I helped my family pluck chickens in the garage. The smell of damp, hot feathers and chicken skin hung in the air, limiting my enjoyment of chicken from that day on to a very few dishes. The final feather came 11 years ago; in the high heat of summer, a transport truck heading for a Vancouver chicken processing plant and loaded with filthy, disheveled birds, pulled up beside the bus I was riding in and enveloped it in a reeking cloud. The smell was nauseating. Deciding then and there that I no longer needed to be party to the process, I stopped eating chicken completely.

The waitress arrived, with the ‘new’ salad.

“This is a fresh salad. No chicken.” she said, putting it down in front of me and rushing over to the other side of the table to deliver drinks to my boyfriend’s parents.

I looked at the salad. The enormous tortilla boat curved upwards from the plate like a thin-lipped mouth, gagged with tousled salad. The edge of the mouth was missing a curved chunk, coincidentally much the same size and shape as its predecessor. The bottom edge of the tortilla angled up a bit, partially concealing a piece of chicken that had escaped the removal efforts of the kitchen staff and lay, like a section of accusing finger, beneath it on the plate.

….

Sadie in the Studio, North Vancouver, June 21, 2005

This is Sadie, my grandma’s dog. She’s all about the possibility that a bit of cookie will find its way down to her level. Sadie eats everything.

A list of the things Sadie has eaten but shouldn’t have (that we know about) to date:

• her leash
• pinecones (various sizes) but she prefers the slim, smooth ones soaked in puddle water.
• rocks
• sand
• a rubber
• paper (various sizes/shapes and types)
• 1/2 of a maggoty crow, one wing still attached
• the head of a plastic spatula which wouldn’t show up in an x-ray so the vet didn’t believe she ate it until it ‘appeared’ 5 months later.
• wood chunks of various sizes and types (the wood-mass does show up in an x-ray).
• sea shells
• bull kelp – the bulb end – swallowed whole

Most of these things she eats on a semi regular basis such as the paper products, pinecones, wood and rocks. Except for her leash, which was eaten at home on the first day she was adopted, the rest was consumed at the park where she is taken for daily walks. And most of that was consumed at a ‘galumph’ speed while dashing down the path out of reach.

Sadie makes the inedible, edible.

Otherwise she’s a really sweet, albeit daft, dog.

….

Shoe store clerk: “Oh, we only sell shoes, not shoe accessories.”

When did laces become an accessory, an unnecessary decorative element? When and why were they banned from the shoe store? Is it more profitable to use the space to stock that spray-on protector stuff that saves leather footwear from everything: rain, fog, foot vapours and nasty sideways glances?

I feel slightly guilty when I lie to the clerk and tell them I’ve still got some of that stuff from the last time I bought shoes. I lied to that clerk too, and the one before them. I lie because I can’t tell the truth. I can’t tell the truth because I can’t handle the look. It’s the same look I get from my dentist when I tell him I’ve been too busy to floss.

15 years ago I did buy a bottle of spray protector, but it was for nubuck oxfords and I was too young to know better. The nubuck protector did not help. The achilles heel was the right sole; it split in half shortly after I broke in the shoes. I swore off shoe-store snake oil from then on. But if they ever develop a product that prevents me from stepping in something nasty, I’ll buy it.

….

I go through a lot of paper. Mountains sometimes. I feel a bit guilty every time I take the recycling basket out of my studio, a stand of trees at a time. Of course the drawing paper tossed in the recycle bin represents a fraction of what I use. A lot of my drawings stay housed in sketch books, shelved in the bookcase, the rest ends up as final artwork. I am an environmental nightmare.

In our house and studio we recycle everything we can. We also compost. But there are things that aren’t so easy to drop in the blue bin. I’ve been hanging onto my empty printer cartridges until I can find a place that will take them. I have an ancient scanner, a printer that won’t print black any more and a three tonne PowerPC and monitor from 1997 (still works great!) sitting in a relative’s basement until I get around to sending them to a recycling place. There is no way I can throw out that much plastic, metal gadgetry and glass. Thinking about it makes me a little ill. All this junk. And it’s not just that it takes up landfill space, its spent and tired remains represent all the processes and energy and chemicals that went into making it, marketing it and shipping it in the first place.

I go through episodes now and again where I wish I needed none of this stuff. I have faint, idealistic notions that my boyfriend and I will leave the city to live simply in the country, growing our own food and furnishing the house with the bare necessities produced locally with natural products. But I grew up on a farm. I know the truth of the hobby farm existence. I don’t think we can make that leap right now. Besides, a hobby farm upbringing is part of the reason I went off chicken – the smell of it brings back unpleasant plucking memories.

There was a point, due also in part to a crisis of occupational choice at the time, where the act of painting made me despair. Did the world really need another piece of canvas covered in paint? “No” I’d answer myself. But I didn’t now what else to do.

I’ve moved past that point. I know the world doesn’t need more painted canvas but I now just paint. I try to balance what I do with better choices in other things. We furnished our studio with tables and book cases constructed from salvaged wood from a local place that sells second-hand building supplies. They are cheaper and sturdier built this way, and are designed to fit the space. We’ve found a line of non-toxic household cleaning products and we take our canvas grocery bags with us when we shop. We are fortunate to live close to a shopping area and walk to pick up groceries, mail letters and rent movies. Recently I found a local business called frogfile that sources ‘green’ office supplies. We ordered a bunch before Christmas, including compostable plates for our New Year’s party.

A DVD we ordered came packaged in a 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper case and wrapped in a compostable corn starch based bioplastic wrapper (what did we really expect from An Inconvenient Truth?). It was a welcome break from the overzealous packaging of most products. Bioplastics have been around for a while, but they still aren’t very common unless it’s at the takeout counter at Capers Market. The DVD packaging was such a simple idea but it set us to thinking about how we could do the same sort of thing with our mailers and demo reels. We’ve been inspired to seek out more sustainable options in our day to day living and running of our studio. And we don’t do it because we feel we have to, we do it because we want to. Like making healthy food choices, it feels good.

I haven’t found a solution to my excessive paper consumption. I doubt I ever will. Though I have managed to reduce it somewhat with the help of a little technology. I don’t print out my reference material anymore – I shoot digital photos and leave them on my laptop, drawing from the screen. Not only is it often more convenient, the image quality is better. In a little while my laptop will be worth its weight in paper.

….