New York Mills, the last day

It’s 3:41 AM and I am still poking around at the studio. It took me 12 hours to pack and clean but at this point, I am just staying at the studio. It is natural to feel some kind of attachment. Now the place is clean and empty. And this place is so quiet. I never heard the fire engine sounds eventhough the fire station is half block away which is a good thing but it amazed me. (They have yellow engines by the way.)
The local people get annoyed with the sound of trains, but I enjoyed. It brings me some kind of nostalgic feeling. The street lights of this town are quite bright. And they put all Christmas lights, so the place is even brighter.




I am leaving this town in a morning. I will visit my friend in St. Paul. This would be another interesting episode as my dear friend is very energetic. He is my Dean, as in a character of “On the Road.” Associating him bring me positive energy.
I have a few things I would like to do once I go back to NYC. All of them are something to do with food. I want to go to All you can eat sea food place in Korean town, I want to cook something special, using all fancy ingredients that I did not have for a month. I really like to make the first episode of my cooking show. I will buy a camcorder finally after my return.



Staying here gave me some new ideas, and I also have several unfinished works. I would like to keep my momentum going. I need to do some major reorganizing, remodeling of a room.
I had a productive month. I met interesting people. The next phase just started.

New York Mills (7 days left)

scratch board, 4" x 6", no title yet,

Ask myself
Time passes me or I passe the time
It's latter so I am cool.
(Today's free style haiku.)

New York Mills (Countdown starts, 9 days left)

Tonight was a play night at the center. I must say this place provide a lot of stimulation to the local communities. Yesterday night had a dance class for little people,and a beaded jewelry class.

Tonight"s show was by Mixed Blood Theater from Minneapolis called "Theory of Mind" by Ken LaZebnik.

At the Q and A session (Skyler Nowinski, Taj Rule, and Raul Ramos)

It was a story of high school kids' night out. The boy had asperger and he thought he was having a date with a girlfriend, though she didn't think that way as story reveled.) It was quite entertaining and it was a cute story that I could totally relate to. I had handful of expediencies with his situation. Funniest one will be the night I went out with 6 cute girls in college and I thought myself that I was so hot, and then they turned out to be gay, so I was totally off from their love interests. Let get back to the story; the show certainly constructed around the fact the boy has asperger, and the main theme was the friendship, and the message was to remove the stigma of having asperger , and to celebrate individuality and to embrace the special gift. He was strange but charming. I was watching them from my special viewing area, my studio.

I am working on scratch board piece today.

New York Mills: Day 22

Bonjour tout le monde! Comment êtes-vous, aujourd'hui? Je me sens très fine
This early morning, I was listing "French in Action". I finished Lesson 14.


As I said before, my schedule is shifting one hour every day. I went to the bed 6:30 Am. My head was hurting around 4:30 but I really wanted to finish the piece I was working on. Here it is.
acrylic on gold leafed panel. 16" x 20". I am very please with this piece.


I was listing "French in Action", partially because, for the next episode of the "The Adventure of Lt. Ishida." The next plot is that Lt. Ishida was forced crash land (again)because his air plane collided with the UFO. And on the desert, Lt. Ishida encountered the alien who was in baby clothing and spokes only French. So, Lt. Ishida had to communicate with this alien with his limited knowledge of French. So, I was trying to brushing up my French which is very limited as Lt. Ishdia's.

Jeanne-Claude past away today. My heart goes out to Chisto.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/arts/design/20jeanne-claude.html

My food situation is bit sad. I made another Tarako Pasta today, with a chicken on a side. Here is another crazy Tarako commercial.


Yes, I am doing all right. Peace out!

New York Mills: Day 20

I don’t have many days left.
My progress here is all right, but I feel that I am 3 to 5 days behind.Most likely I can nail down another piece in next 48 hours, so I am all right. And I came up with a couple of fine ideas for next projects. So, I am content in general, however another part of me saying “You, poky monkey!.” I have to say that choosing my avatar as a possum for a few days was not brilliant. I was poky. Now I am a black panther.By the way, I seriously recommend you to imagine yourself as wild animal. I am aware that you might think I am wacky, which I don’t deny, but this animal thing can bring you positive attitude and make you happy.

Yesterday, I left the studio at 4am after done with the green piece at 3, left studio at 4am. I spend about 15 minutes to look up the sky to see Leonid Meteor Shower. I did not see the metro shower, I saw metro drip. I went to bed at 5am. It seems like I am shifting one hour every day, go to bed one hour late, and wake up one hour late than day before. I wonder what my true nature of sleeping pattern is. In Brooklyn, I go to bed 12, because I turn in to pumpkin at the midnight.

Finished 3:32AM 11/17/09.

And another piece I finished other day. This is #3 of my elements series. This one called "Air and Water."
Scale: 8"w x 24" h
Media: Acrylic on canvas

close up

close up

Other day I did my laundry.
$1.50 the total amount of my laundry, here in New York Mills, MN. Yes, that's included dryer! By the way, I tell you one of many my secrets. I wear leather pants, so that I have less laundry to do. (Well, very fortunately, my East Asian body does not creates odor in general.)
They have a lot of machines at this place. But I wonder who would use this facility. I have not seen the people using this place yet. (Not like I am monitoring them. However in my neighborhood, there were always people at anytime of the day or week.)
The following is the profile of people who would use this place: hunters whose partners refuse to let them use the home machine for their dirty soiled hunting gears, sexually active teen ager who need to hind the evidence from the parents, cheating spouse who need to hind the evidence, a serial killer with a spouse at home who need to hind the evidence, Us, the artist in residents at the center.
It is located right next to the center, so it was super convenient for me. Also, you can get a number for friendly Guinea pigs to purchase.

Today's Food

My own Tarako pasta.

This salmon pate in tube from Sweden contains salmon, cod roe, saithe roe. (Those of you, who do not know what Tarako is, watch this video.) (All though you may be still puzzled more after watching the video.)
The center sells some food items from Finland because this town is proud of its Finish heritage. But I guess the center also sales other Scandinavian stuff. You can get his tube at Ikea, if you are curious.

New York Mills: Day 13

New Configuration of my studio: I can just move stuff around. I like "adding new table method."

Today's food

Today's drawing

Yesterday's sky

I taught kids today. I conducted a little painting session. I asked them to make colors from primary colors, and asked them to make different valued mixing with water, and asked them to paint what they really like. Some kid painted an i-pod, some kid painted a basketball. I think they enjoyed.

New York Mills: Day 12

Today was very sunny outside. Gee, it's been 13 days I came here, and today was 12th active day.

My progress has been slow until today. 17 more active days left. I have clear objectives now.


Things I learned today about country life.

#1 You do not use white toilet paper when you are on a field during hunting season.

#2 You do go around woods wearing white.


Don't worry about me my dear friend, I don't go beyond two points, my house and studio. As I said before, first thing I do in a morning is to cook my meal for lunch and dinner.

This is what I made today for food.

And this is what I made for this afternoon.

New York Mills: Day 8

My own private prairie home companion show:

The NY Mills Regional Cultural Center is the active place.

They have some kind of activity in every other day.

Monday night is the knitting night, Tuesday and Thursday have dance classes, and they have a concert on Saturday.

So, the last nigh there was concert with a folk group duo named “Still on a Hill”, Kelly Mulhollan and Donna Stjerna from Arkansas.

Website: http://www.stillonthehill.com
My space: http://www.myspace.com/stillonthehill

I was at upstairs during the concert but it was as if I was at the balcony area in a theater, so I could listen all music while I was busy working on my piece.

The duo was very engaging on the stage. There were audience participation and seemed to have a lot of visual aids. (I was listening but was not looking.) They have a lot of stories to tell.

Here is some song they played that I found on youtube. They meet up with local characters and they write song about them. This was a song about a man in Houston.

What most intrigued me was the story about an old man, Mr. Ed Stilley, who decided to make installments and give them to kids after having the vision in near death, being a giants tortoise with kids on his back and the god told him that the god will let him go the other side of the ashore if old man promise to do good for others. The duo met him, and they made a song. They played with this old man’s installments that he made. Here is the image of this old man from the duo’s webpage. (This page did not show in Mozilla, so use explore.)

http://www.stillonthehill.com/pictures/edstilley/intro.html

I came down after the show and chat with the duo a little bit. They projected their warmness. I told them some unknown reason, my 2/3 musician friends are blue grass, neo-county people. They mention their friends’ name who sounded like have music joint in Dumbo.

While I was hearing audiences’ laughter, I was thinking that “wow, this is like my personal prairie home companion show.”

I am enjoying my stay.

Here is the image of #2, a study piece for my #3.

Mixed media on paper

I enjoy the silence surrounds me in town.