tra la la

i'm super busy right now, getting ready for our small town film festival this coming weekend. so, i've not been writing much. but i did have time to hang out with friends bunny and frank in randolph, along with gabriel and david. bunny is an amazing cook who delights us with her culinary talents every time we visit. she also has a fabulous new studio to paint in. at the moment it's empty which makes taking minimalist abstract pictures fun and easy. there was a mod chair in the corner that david chose to be his throne for drinking. nate, bunny's assistant, was also up for the weekend. he chose the wall. bunny had some great socks on.

roger's sticky weekenders

easter

heading down to lincoln, mass for easter. dinner last night with bunny and frank, gabriel, david and bunny's assistant nick. hung out with roger and danny on thursday. finished painting yoga studio friday and saturday.

curds and pigment

milk paint

curds before straining

more milk paint went up today. gabriel helped me out taking care of the goldenrod while i painted red. i'm getting better at formulating the paint. here's what i've found.

for about a quart of paint do the following:

• heat one gallon of skim milk to room temperature or a little warmer, either on a stove or by leaving it out a while. make sure not to overheat it or you will get big sticky curds! heat to no warmer than body temperature, so if it feels hot when you stick your finger in it's probably too hot.
• once the milk reaches room temperature, add 1 cup of white vinegar, pouring it slowly into the milk while stirring. or: 1tbsp vinegar per cup skim milk.
• when the last bit of vinegar goes in, you will notice the milk suddenly change from opaque to clear with curds (see picture).
• let the curds stand for a few minutes stirring occasionally. i'm not sure this does anything, but i do it. the recipies i first tried from books said to let the curds stand overnight. i haven't found that letting them sit overnight produces any nicer curds. but, what do i know?
• prepare a collander with cheesecloth, muslin or paint strainer (what i use) and place in your sink.
• pour the milk/vinegar mix into the cheesecloth and allow the curds (white stuff) to separate from the whey (clear stuff). it's important to find cheesecloth that's fine enough not to let your curds go down the drain. the curds will not be very big, so something like stocking mesh works well. the first batch i did all my curds fell through the cheesecloth.
• let the curds drain until there's little liquid coming from them
• i place the curds now into a blender, with a bit of water to start and puree them. be careful not to overload your blender with curd! lubricate the curds by adding water when the mix stops spinning. the curd can turn very rubbery around the spindle and stop the blender altogether if you don't keep enough water in the mix--not good for the mixer. after adding all the curds and water, puree for a few minutes. this will entrain a fair amount of air into the mix, but the bubbles work themselves out while painting.
• you should have about a quart of milk paint base when you're finished.
• next add pigment. i add between one and two tablespoons of pigment per cup, depending on how much transparency i want. one tablespoon gives a heavy stain look while two makes fairly opaque paint.

i really have little idea what i'm doing with all this. so, take the above with a grain of salt. the paint goes on very nicely, though, so i'm happy with the process. i can't make any claims about the paint's longevity.

satya

i've been experiencing the power of deep truth the past couple days. on sunday, i hung out with roger at the langdon street cafe in montpelier. i revealed things to him that i was deeply afraid to tell him, things that had built up, that i tried to suppress. i shook at times. but, roger responded postively, opening up himself, telling me things, sharing. we both felt high afterwards, flushed with energy. everything seemed vivid on the drive home. after such an opening, i thought that my therapy session with gabriel would be smooth. no such luck. it was difficult. i fumbled, found no clarity, had difficulty relating to gabriel or the therapist. i felt completely closed. the therapist said she felt i was hiding something. later, gabriel made me dinner. we talked, i centered myself, and tried to reach that same place i'd found with roger. slowly, the truth started to flow. it feels like energy to me, like a hot fluid coursing through my body. when i feel it, the fear of revealing myself diminishes, i believe what i say and find confidence in my own words. i find myself able to reach deep and say just what i needed to say, without fabrication, calculation, correction or even much thought.

i seem to have a strong fear of revealing myself. i don't know where it comes from, but perhaps it's a byproduct of all the practice i had as a teen hiding myself, especially those who loved me most, for fear that should they know my real self they wouldn't love me. the closer people came to me the more i hid. crazy. and a bad habit, no matter how understandable. it's no wonder i shake when the real stuff comes to the surface. i'm not used to it. but it teaches me how much being who you are is critical to being whole. i feel exultant after letting go. there is nothing more powerful than admitting who you are.

milk like plaster!

i've begun to paint my yoga studio, after a couple weeks of experimenting with different kinds of natural paints. i settled on the simplest, really: milk curds and pigment. it has a nice satin sheen when dry and goes on smoothly. you have to work fast, however, because it dries enough that you can't work it any more after just a minute. i like the way it's slightly translucent and how it adheres differently to different parts of the wall. from a distance it takes on the feeling of a plastered wall. it has luminence, a glowing quality, which is perfect for a yoga studio. i was hesitant to paint the wall such a dark color, but now seeing it on the wall, i'm very happy.

elightened sole

roger has had these sneakers for as long as i've known him. they're rock climbing shoes, actually, and will be the subject of a short film to premiere on this blog soon!

my favorite overpass

better paint

this evening i made a great new batch of milk-paint. at least, i think it's great. i'm not positive it's going to stick well. but, so far it looks great. first of all, i had to forget about the recipies i've been trying. none of them seemed to work as advertised. so, i've embarked on my own exploration. my laboratory (aka kitchen) results show that about two tablespoons of white vinegar per cup of skim milk produces good curd, the basis of milk-paint. temperature is critical. if the milk just came out of the refrigerator, very little happens even overnight. if it's room temperature, about eight hours produces good curd. if you heat the milk way up, but not boiling, the reaction takes place immediately, but you get very big globs of curd that you can't paint with. however, i've discovered that you can take these monster curds and puree them in a blender to produce a paint base that feels and goes on like "real" paint. tonight i tested out plain quark paint (with pigment), quark and linseed oil, and finally quark, linseed oil, whiting and pigment. they all seem to go on beautifully, cover extemely well and dry in less than five minutes. you have to work fast and be focused. this paint seemed too good to be true, so tomorrow morning i'll check to see if the pigment rubs off. if so, i'll have to make some adjustments.