New Deadline April 2

Just working on my fourth book this evening.
Finally committed to gluing on covers.
I think it came out pretty well. Photo tomorrow.
I just decided to make it be the trial version,
so psychologically I feel okay about messing it up and
can get some momentum on making the thing.
Finally sewed in apocket after thinking about it for two years.
God.
Also had good luck with final drawing last night.
A really good chance mark occurred.
Maybe a tiny bit of skill involved, but the color is
what really worked for me.
More tomorrow.

Deadline looms: Thesis is written and delivered

Here a photos of the drawings I've done so far.

Seven Days Till First Major Deadline

Well, I've been writing like a fiend. Not doing much drawing or sculpting, but I did find my angle for the Bloom book. In Ithaca Bloom mentions, well, it is mentioned that he knows of a number, 9 to the power of 9 to the power of 9 that would fill 50 volumes of multiple-page notebooks, A HUGE number. I decided to use this idea to create a background for the whole eight-page accordion fold book. I used a rubber stamp of numbers.

I also started a drawing of Bloom's cat which is posted here somewhere------>>>>

So--I am inching my way along.
My altered book is really coming along too.
Maybe I'll take a few photos and post again later tonight.

Counting down to March 15 - 26 daysto deadline

I am trying to make the (4) objects for my project, at right is a moly.
So far I have the plums, from Parable of the Plums completed, and this moly, which I completed on Sunday.
I have two more moly-ies, molies? not sure how the plural should be spelled.
Hermes/Mercury gave Odysseus moly to protect him from the spell of Circe.
Circe turned Odysseus's men into swine, but when she saw he was not effected, she mellowed and seduced him. He held out until she tuned his men back into humans. When she did they were younger and stronger.
ANYWAY, Leopold Bloom carries a shrivelled potato given to him by his mother. I decide to make the Hermes version of the moly, here I've combined the idea with the Bloom version in that it's like a sort of potato.
The original moly had black roots and white flowers. Supposedly the roots were so tenacious that no human could pull them from the ground. I used the roots of a plant I've been keeping for some reason, and artificial white flowers. I've never used artificial flowers before. I think it works pretty well.

Four days and counting

This is an attempt at the shattered chandelier in Circe.
I decided not to put the ashplant in. I took a photo of the Chandelier in the
stairway of the Joyce Center in Dublin, and this is the resulting drawing.
I need to really get going, Really really, on the books.
So far I'm very much limping along.Still. Had a talk with friend Gretchen last night which gave me some momentum. Very helpful.
"
I found the section in Cyclops where Bloom declares that "Love is what life is all about, and the Citizen (i think) retorts that "Love loves to love love. Nurse so-and-so loves- (someone), Mr' Vermuscle (?) with the ear trumpet loves Mrs Vermuscle with the turned-in eye. I really want to draw them. Esp. turned-in eye and Ear trumpet, etc...
This made me laugh out loud. Joyce can be so funny.

So my altered book will be based on the Citizen's mocking statement: "Love loves to love love." Why, yes it does, and thank goodness for that.

The relationship between Leopold and Molly, and my own playing around with the idea of relationship in a marriage.

I read an interesting article about Molly Bloom several nights ago,
"Molly Bloom: Acting Natural," found in Project Muse.
Freed me from the guilt of liking Molly a lot and not feeling that Joyce used the character as a ventriloquist's dummy to enforce the idea of Woman as Nature, incapable of following grammatical forms, etc, and therefore bad. A new area of feminist critical theory was identified in the article, Will try to post later, but in spite of feminist qualms, I love the Penelope chapter.
I find new stuff in that chapter everyday. It has 8 "hearts" in it. I was thinking somehow Joyce might have crafted a "heart" in each of the 8 sentences. But sentence 5, the short (hah) sentence has no heart.

Eight Days and Counting

Somehow having more time on weekends doesn't always mean more work gets done.

This weekend I did start and maybe finished a new drawing.
Bloom's hat and a potato. I think I want to draw another potato,
this will be a more stylized, more of a "moly" potato.
I will post all five drawings.
The covers for the Bloom book were a bust.
Literally. They won't lie flat, so it can't work,
so I tore apart one copy of Ulysses,
the one that arrived with a broken spine,
and I'm going to use those boards for the Bloom book.

I hope to do a few things tonight,
get to bed early and get going really early tomorrow.
I guess I should stop drinking tea right now.So I don't stay up until all hours and start off dog-tired tomorrow morning.

I want to see if I can "set" rhinestones into cardboard. Weird idea about Ulysses being full of gems. Also a bit tacky, hi=low-like the novel.

I push a lot of different parts of my project forward this week.
I'm in serious count down mode now. Feb 8 and I have 8 days get stuff
very pulled together.

I have to keep reminding myself that this is a fun project.
Every time I read the novel, I find something new and great or funny or that leads me off in a new direction. This weekend I searched the word heart, there are 200 uses, in some cases heart is part of a word, so it's not 200 of "heart" alone. "Heartfelt," for example, was included. Anyway, I found a reference to "The Tempest's" Prospero using a staff/or stick, like Stephen's ashplant, and drowning his book. I like the image of a drowned book.So maybe that's why an arm appeared under the ship drawing, the hand holding a plum.
I'll photograph and publish.

And this is from the book that I have to re-do entirely very shortly.
I think it's kind of funny. Drawers were a popular topic for Bloom
(note how close to Bloomers) and Molly.
Joyce apparently had a thing about drawers.
What a guy, WAG.