With my work, I have always tended towards obsessive perfectionism. This would mean I could only make a handful of works a year, which is impractical since I am going to make a living from my works. It is also cerebrally frustrating to have hundreds more good ideas than executed projects.

When a project is conceived as very large, it is often put off until one has “more time” to devote to the details. Usually “more time” never comes, and a project dies in conception. Then one ends up spending life dreaming greatly and doing little. To do something with less than ideal materials and conditions is still doing something, and there is value in the practice of doing actions beyond the armchair. Baldessari’s quote is declaring that imperfect action is more valuable than no action.

What value is that? For one, I’m going to find out if there is truth to the idea that “the more you do, the more you do”. All my less than ideal art projects might just be physical practice, making me more efficient, and also putting me in the habit of moving my hands every day without worrying about doing it wrong. Secondly, when I am at the end of my life and looking back, rather than sketchbooks of wonderful ideas that were never made, I’d like those sketchbooks to be accompanied by all the physical products that were attempted, made, and made well enough to serve their purpose. If I make hundreds of things, 10% of those are bound to be awesome. If I make a few dozen things, maybe only a couple handfuls will go down in the annals of history. Life will also be more fun when I’m wearing the things I made that are “good enough” rather than quietly pondering the amazing things I could have made instead, if I only I dedicated more time to it. But I socialize, I bake, I read; if I hope to have a real life and be an artist at the same time, I have to make more things without being paralyzed with overthinking. The masterpieces will come, guaranteed, and will flow out with less mental frustration, if my making is an automatic process unrestricted by something as banal as the availability of ideal materials.

So to initiate myself into the “good enough club”, I made this poodle skirt which only had to be serviceable for one party. This should not keep me from someday making a perfect poodle skirt for myself, but this is a good placeholder.

The black fabric is felt, which was chosen so that I would not have to finish any edges. The pattern is a half circle skirt, requiring only one seam. I believe authentic poodle skirts are a full circle, but a half circle was more economic and eliminated a seam. The waist needed a single stitch line along the edge to keep the waist from stretching during wear and to eliminate the need for a waistband. I used a centered zipper rather than my favored invisible zipper because it saved a lot of time. The poodle image was found by doing an image search on the internet for poodle skirts. When I found a poodle image I liked, I literally traced the outline on paper directly on the computer screen. I enlarged the outline with a hand drawn grid – old school. I feel more comfortable with my hands than a computer. 2 pieces of t-shirt fabric was fused together at crossgrains to make something thick enough to cut without curling.The poodle image as traced onto the fabric and cut and held down onto the skirt with glue. Glue. I almost never use glue, especially for fabric projects. I would much rather sew, for aesthetics and alterability, but time was not a luxury. The leash is cheap acrylic yarn. Glue would not hold it down, so now there’s visible glue marks on the skirt. No matter. The yarn is couched down with a machine zig-zag stitch. That’s it. Totally good enough for one party. And still cute enough to wear out after.

I have two ways of rubberbanding tights: slow rubberbanding means wrapping the bands around the tights, and quick rubberbanding is essentially wrapping the tights around the bands. I used thin rubberbands. Slow rubberbanding obviously takes longer, but results in finer lines and details. Quick rubberbanding still looks really cool, resulting in large splotches of contrast color. These tights have been quick rubberbanded. “Quick” is a relative term. Rubberbanding all these tights took days and days and gave me sore hands. I don’t want to think how long slow rubberbanding would have taken; tights tied that way will have to sell for more. After pre-soaking the tights overnight, they went into a black acid dye bath. It took two batches to dye them all. I chose black because I figure it will sell well. For myself, I will dye crazier colors. After dyeing, I put all the tights (still rubberbanded) through three wash cycles. I’m not sure that 10 cycles would thoroughly rinse them. I’m sure there is still some excess dye left on them; they will need to be washed in cold water by hand by their new owners. The next step was to cut off all the rubber bands to reveal the new patterns. That’s the best part. They were still damp, so I hung them to dry instead of heaping them in a pile so the excess dye wouldn’t stain where it wasn’t supposed to. A couple of rubber bands had broken off in the washing machine. The loose fabric had gotten stained by the excess dye. It created some great new colors, so next time I will intentionally cut off the rubberbands before putting the tights through the wash cycle.

I photographed all the tights, and now I must package them. That’s the least glorious part for me. I’m having a hard time finding the type of packaging I want online: yellow pillowboxes with an acetate window. I’m finding other solutions for now. I will be up all night tonight getting ready for my booth tomorrow at the Swap ‘n Bop at Sig’s Lagoon (by The Continental Club). I’ll be running on very little sleep, but it should be fun!

I have made very successful gluten-free biscotti before; it’s impossible to tell that something is missing. My gluten-free cake tests were less successful. Still delicious, but lacking the fluffy texture of cakes made of wheat. I make excellent flourless cakes; those are dense, almost fudge-like. But that was not the goal here. I do not want to always fall back onto flourless cake when serving someone with a gluten sensitivity. A failed gluten-free cake is dense in an unintentional way; it has fallen.

I searched the internet for many versions of gluten-free cake recipes. With no time to test the recipes in the kitchen, I would have to judge the quality of the recipes just by reading them. I had some practical limitations; I could not use recipes that used too unusual flours. I didn’t have the time to shop for anything that would not be at the regular grocery store. I believe that the most stable and versatile recipes are the simplest ones, so I usually search for recipes that have the fewest ingredients and steps. It eases later modification. “Simple” does not equate to easy – baking is a practiced skill. Several people using the same recipe will end up with different results depending on their comfort with the techniques involved. I would end up making four items: vanilla cakes, chocolate cakes, and an icing for each.

The chocolate cakes required xantham gum. Xantham gum is found in most gluten-free baked goods to replace the binding properties of gluten. I had never used it before. My final verdict is that the recipe called for too much of it because the cakes turned out gummy. I may not bother to try to fix this recipe, however. While it can’t be compared to regular cakes, the texture did remind me of asian rice cakes. Coming at it with different expectations, the chocolate gummy cakes have potential to be very good. They will just need a different name. I will have to find out if boiling the balls of batter (rather than baking them) will add to the quality or have a deleterious effect. The icing used was basically a ganache made with one part chocolate and one part sour cream. Ganaches have the double advantage of being the easiest icings to make and also the most indulgent. Anyone can do it. Melt chocolate on low heat and add butter, cream, or sour cream. Exact amounts are unimportant as long as the chocolate content is a little higher than the dairy, usually. This dense icing can be piled high.

The vanilla cakes were the find of this year. This simple recipe required no xantham gum and only rice flour rather than a blend of several flours. This is lucky because I have a rice mill at home, bought especially for the purposes of gluten-free baking. This cake actually had a fluffy texture; winner! The only thing to watch for is to not overfill the baking pan; these cakes will climb up the wall of a pan, but will not rise beyond that. Any extra batter will spill over the sides and lay flat. The vanilla icing had a powdered sugar and milk base, making it thin. All of it was very delicious, with a delicate texture in both the cake and icing.

It has been decided; I will take the vanilla recipes and try to convert them into chocolate versions.

The shirt was designed by one of Patrick’s friends. I put the front and back designs onto one large screen, but when I was blasting out the screen, part of the back design blew out too much. Culprit: unknown.

We printed the fronts only that day. Once Anthony understood that his hands had to be held over the ends of the design and not the squeegee, he got the hang of how much pressure to put down. Some of the shirts had a few patchy areas that had to get fixed up with a brush, but that is better than a design that has too much ink blotched down, obscuring the edges. No real way to save that.

I photographed the tights I had recently dyed while the shirts were drying. Anthony’s studio has a large black backdrop for this. Photographing took longer than I thought. Thank goodness it was a Thursday, meaning a lot of people were hanging out with us.

I spent the next day packaging my dyed tights, so I was unavailable to help Anthony. He had to coat a screen with emulsion and expose an image all by himself. Then the scary part; the actual printing. Nervous though he was (he pulled a lot of test strips and even pulled one on a spare shirt), he had the knack by then. Any mistakes on the shirt backs would have been extra noticeable because it was all text, but every pull turned out clean. I’m proud of him. He’s empowered now; he won’t need me to hold his hand any time he wants to design a shirt.

Enter screenprinting. It’s easy enough that I think it should be in every artist’s repetoire. I’ve always used emulsion to fill a screen, and that may not be a method that everyone wants to deal with. It involves a darkroom and exposure times, and I imagine that would be a headache for some people. I use emulsion because it’s the most accurate way to reproduce digital images and type. However, any artist can handle plain screen filler. You simply paint it onto a screen to create your image. Let it dry, and the screen is ready to print. (I want to later do some experiments using different mediums as screen filler; maybe I can find a cheaper alternative to specially made screen filler.)

I wanted all the Nerds at the salon to get a chance to pull a screen. The demo pulled together amazingly quickly; the idea was conceived three days before the salon. Christopher Glenn drew a useful image within 20 minutes of being contacted: a cloud of protruding art supplies with the words “HAN Salon” within. Anthony and I handled the hard part of burning the image onto a screen so that everyone else could jump to the fun part. People brought in t-shirts, a pillowcase, a sketchboard, even a towel to print on. I guided everyone on how to hold the squeegee and how much pressure to put on it. People had fun, and most of the prints came out well.

I’d like to do another demo in the future. Images should get submitted. Maybe I will even teach a full class to show all the processes of screenprinting, start to finish. Knowledge should be spread.

With little money and time, I didn’t pull out all the stops. Someday I’ll have the party where everything served is from a complex recipe with exotic ingredients, but right now I was just jonesing to cook for a group. I invited about 12 people.

As people walked in there was punch to drink (apple and pineapple juice and tea). I had no time for hors’ douvre, so I paid a premium for two bags of interestingly flavored Kettle Chips: sweet onion and honey dijon. I bought the dinner rolls from Hartz Chicken because they’re fluffy, and it was a huge time saver to not have to deal with a yeast dough. I unintentionally made Simon and Garfunkel butter; I put butter in a food processor with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The butter was beautiful – a light green with specks of herbs for visual texture. Eating the rolls were suddenly much more interesting. Flavored butter is great way to add a gourmet touch to a meal for very little time cost.

The entree was pasta alfredo. Pasta is always a money saver. Usually I make an embellished sauce with sundried tomatoes, garlic, and other additions. But this time, to save on cost and time and because one of my guests was allergic to tomato, I made a plain sauce from parmesan and romano. Unexpectedly, it was one of the best sauces I ever made. I will have to make simple alfredo more often now. There was shrimp and dark chicken meat available to add to the sauce as guests wished. The rotini spiral may be my favorite short pasta shape. It has a more intersting mouthfeel than macaroni or penne.

There were two vegetable sides. One was spiced roasted potatoes. The potatoes were diced and tossed in olive oil and herbs leftover from the butter. Then the potatoes were coated in wasabi powder and Korean red pepper powder and roasted until tender. The other side dish was green beans tossed in honey and black and white toasted sesame seeds. The seeds’ crunch gave the green beans a more interesting texture. Embellishing green beans is the only way to trick myself into enjoying them.

For dessert I made old-fashioned pound cake. The ingredients are so basic that it almost never requires a trip to the store: butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. To accompany it was homemade mixed berry jam.  Frozen fruit makes jam making a quick process. I wouldn’t use frozen fruit for jam I intended to preserve (What’s the fun in that? Frozen fruit is already preserved). But it’s a good shortcut when you know you’ll use it up fast and you want control over the flavor. I tend to use less sugar than jams found at stores; it makes the fruit flavor more concentrated.

There was a lot of great conversation. The festivities lasted longer than I did. Overall, I think I made a good compromise in where I cut costs and time, where I paid a little extra (shrimp), in order to turn out a party that satisfied people’s palates.

A lot of credit goes out to Paul and Skippy for their help in the kitchen.

The skirt is pieced of eight godets. Navy on white.  White because I left the rubberbanded fabric in the color remover too long. Color remover is much stronger than dye; it doesn’t need to soak as long dye does. I think I will overdye the skirt in pink.  And I think my next version will be more flared.

I love to dye pantyhose.  The red and blue color blocks go from toe to top, with skin peeking through in between.

The striped armband is cut from a sock. Clucky the chicken purse is the finishing cheeky accent.  I bought her during a wonderful trip in Portland, Oregon.