Jerry Fenter

It’s getting very close to our week long workshop in Mexico.  I am so excited I can hardly sit still.  Melaque is so beautiful, I have a wonderful collage of people in my class, and everything points to one of the best weeks I’ve ever had.  I’m madly re-reading all of my Magical Realism literature and spent time on E-Bay getting some DVD’s to take to La Paloma and share with the class.  This year I’m bringing Love in the Time of Cholera, starring the handsome Javier Bardem and based on the wonderful book of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Everything is Illuminated, starring Elijah Wood and based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, and last but not least Pan’s Labyrinth, a movie that will shock us and make us more fully understand magical and grotesque realism.  I also always bring Y Tu Mama Tambien starring Maribel Verdu, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna…”Wildly erotic,” commented Rolling Stone Magazine on this movie.  The actors in this movie actually stayed at La Paloma while filming in the area so it’s fun for Nancy Lennie and I to share stories with the class. (Those guys are as hot as the Mexican sun!)  So I’m ready.  Anyone interested in holding a place in next year’s class please contact me by e-mail at fenter@gorge.net and I’ll put you on the exclusive list! 

Speaking of movies, the awards season now has passed.  The Hurt Locker took best picture at the Academy Awards.  My friend Bill was devastated by the loss of James Cameron’s Avatar.  Both he and I loved the message in the movie and of course the special effects.  So I started thinking.  We live so far up in the woods I don’t get to see all of the Academy Award films until they come out on Net Flix so….get ready for it…here are a few winners I’ve chosen from movies I’ve seen on Net Flix during the last year.  Announcing THE JERRY AWARDS.

Best Film: Riding in Cars With Boys.  Made in 2001 and Based on the autobiography by Beverly Donofrio, directed by Penny Marshall, (Laverne) and starring Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn and James wood, this is my favorite movie that I saw on my big flat screen (47″) this year.  Every time I watch this movie I cry for at least an hour afterwards.  It’s about a hesitant teen aged mom, who is very smart, but not smart enough to not get caught up in the moment and get pregnant.  She has plans.  Her plans change.  The story is sweet, sad and true.  Drew Barrymore is excellent in this role, as good as she was in Fifty First Dates.  Steve Zahn (who I’ve never noticed in any other movie or TV show) plays the teen aged husband, who attempts to do what’s right but just can’t seem to make things work.  His heroin addiction might have played a part in this.  His performance is award level!  What a ride.

Another of my “best” awards goes to The Invention of Lying starring my favorite comic of all time, Ricky Gervais.  He was the person responsible for The Office,  British style.  I won’t be a spoiler and tell you the plot but it is a funny movie. 

I also have some favorite TV shows that I try to catch each week.  Here are some of the winners. Breaking Bad will start it’s new season soon.  I miss Mad Men like crazy.  I will watch any of the three Law and Orders at any time during the day or night.  I especially like Law and Order Criminal Intent.  By the end of the day Ron and I are pretty tired of thinking so we also really enjoy The New Adventures of Old Christine, Medium and Two and a Half Men. I think Charlie Sheen is wonderful and I love his retro shirts. Pure eye candy.  I’ve just started watching American Pickers and Pawn Stars.  Great shows that involve finding and selling old junk and antiques.  Collecting is in my genes.  It’s so much fun to see some of the odd things that people value and carefully collect.  I can totally understand where they are coming from. 

Oh, we finally got a “new” car!  Ray Schultens Motors in the Dalles pulled through for us and found us our perfect car.  It’s a 2005 Ford Explorer, white, Eddie Bauer Edition, with four wheel drive and a moon-roof!  Austin Woolsey was our salesperson.  He was very good to us.  He used to be the chef at the Baldwin Saloon in The Dalles.  I would recommend him to anyone in this area looking for cars.  After selling us the car he’s off to Disneyland with his five kids for a vacation.  I think we wore him out. Photos of our new car (possibly named Eddie) will come soon.

I’m going to talk about the new “Mad Men” Barbie dolls in my next post.  I only wish they had the cigarettes and booze as accessories!  Unfortunately the designers of the dolls thought that these additions would be inappropriate.  But I remember the 60′s in suburbia…barbecues, parties, booze and cigarettes kept my parents busy while the kids played and got radical ideas about “free love” and “the war in Vietnam”.

What a wild time we had at the Crayon Mono-type Workshop at the Dalles Art center.  What a wild and crazy class!  I think it was one of the best two days I’ve spent in a long time.  The assignment was to make mono types, using a hot copper plate (heated with an iron), with crayons and pastels, on some beautiful BFK  French printmaking paper.  Everyone did some beautiful work.  I have been thinking about doing a class like this for a long time but finally got brave enough last month.  The six people at the class were a riot!  They got so into the process that they didn’t even want to take time to eat lunch on Sunday so they ordered in pizza!  Nancy Rooper even came up with a new way of printing with the crayons and pastels on fabric to create some wonderful garden prayer flags to welcome in spring!  Here are some visuals of how we did this.

First, we heated a piece of flat copper mounted on a box frame with an iron.  The heat spreads out over the entire piece of copper (hot!)  Next a picture is drawn in crayon or pastel right on the copper sheet. 

After creating the drawing you mark it’s position with a pencil, get your paper or fabric piece and lay it flat over the hot crayon image.  Then you rub with a flat bottomed spoon (like you’d get from a Chinese restaurant) so that you’ve  rubbed over the entire piece.

(This is Carrie and Vonda working.  You can see Valerie and Nancy in the background) When this is done, carefully pull up your mono-type and enjoy!

Here’s Nancy with her excellent dog print!

Or you might try this with fabric like the creative Nancy Rooper!

Towards the end of the second day we all created flags for Nancy’s yard and did a collaboration of our work on a ” bug”  flag for her.  Now we’re all waiting to be invited over to enjoy the flags and her fire pit with marshmallows and smores! 

Carrie did some wonderful images of coffee cups.

Vonda did lots of beautiful fish prints.

Valerie did some beautiful work, but I didn’t get a good picture. I get so busy I forget to take pictures sometimes.  She also helped Lily create this beautiful piece.

I did a few prints too.  Two for friends of mine and one of my poor Suzuki that Ron crashed and totaled right before the class. You can see my print at the top of this post.  If you can’t see what’s written on it, it’s a Hail Suzuki full of grace memorial.  It concludes by talking about it’s uncomfortable seats and how Cody loved the taste of it’s back seat when he chewed it up trying to get at a toy he’d dropped.  It’s a  prayer of thanks because Ron got away with just bad bone bruises.  He’s very sore but he’s ok.

It’s not spring here yet, but we had a wild double feature Dallas and Inglorius Basterds party here at the cabin last weekend.  Place cards, JR and Sue Ellen wine labels, costumes and even fake theatre EXIT signs were enjoyed by all of us.  Cody tried to eat every one’s food as usual and as usual I made excuses for his bad behavior.  He’s an exceptional dog you know!  He would NEVER beg. (I tend to stretch the truth here a little)

Spring is coming and so is my Mexico class.  I won’t be doing any classes at The Dalles Art Center until after Mexico because many of my students and myself are going to see the musical “Cats” during March and then leaving for Mexico in April.  I was going to have a class April 3rd and 4th but that falls on Easter weekend.  So more classes towards the end of April or May. 

I’m still excited about my story, “The Giveaway”.  I’m also back working in the studio.

After what seems like weeks of sad events, car crashes, colds, slushy snow and cold temperatures I thought that nothing could cheer me up.  Then I got a Google Alert from National Public Radio that changed everything!  When I realized I had been published on their site I did a little NPR dance (kinda like the Snoopy dance from the old Peanuts cartoons) and called my kids with the news! I’ll share here, what they shared with me.  I AM TOTALLY proud of myself!

Google News Alert for: jerry fenter

This is what I found and it deserved a wild celebratory NPR dance.  My friend and fellow artist and writer also commented about The Giveaway on her website at  www.nancycoffelt.com  Thanks, Nancy. Don’t forget to look for her new book, Listen.   My beloved daughter, a talented writer herself,  even published my story on her facebook page.  Thanks, Amy.  

I’d love to hear your comments.  Artists and writers need to celebrate once in awhile.  Next post will feature my talented art students from The Dalles Art Center and our wild weekend workshop making monotypes with heat and crayons!  Lots of pictures and new innovations.