I spent a good part of the day replenishing my depleting stock of paper and other materials. I was hoping to post some photos of the great stuff I bought, but my camera is misbehaving at the moment. I’ll try uploading the photos tomorrow, hopefully with better luck…
Well I’m happy to announce that I will soon be joining the working masses again – I just got a job! I’m quite happy with it; it’s in my field of work (special events management), my boss and co-workers seem awesome, and the pay is more than I could have ever hoped for! I really feel I hit the jackpot – I’m really looking forward to starting work on April 10th, although there is a part of me dreading the return to a 9-to-5 schedule.
Which now means that I only have a dozen or so days to go on a huge bookbinding blitz, as I suspect my new work schedule will be hectic in the next few months. So I’m planning to produce several dozen books for sale, in addition to presenting a workshop or two, before the start at the new office. Hopefully this deadline will help me keep my focus to just produce, produce, produce.
Seeing as I can’t post any photos at the moment, I thought I’d share a bit of inspiration with you. Over the past weekend, B and I rented the movie Modigliani starring Andy Garcia as the artist himself. It’s not the best-made film I’ve ever seen, but it was certainly fascinating to witness Amadeo Modigliani’s love/hate relationship with Picasso (who really wasn’t a likeable person at all, it seems) and his interaction with a number of other artists at that moment in time. I would have loved to have been a part of la vie bohème in Paris a century ago. After watching the movie, I did an online search on Modigliani, as I didn’t know much about him. He tragically died at the young age of 35, from the effects of life-long meningitis that was exacerbated by his lifestyle of excess. His partner, Jeanne Hébuterne, was so devastated that two days after his death she threw herself out of a 5th-floor window, killing both herself and their unborn child. Okay, so maybe la vie bohème wasn’t so much fun after all…
This reminds me of a few years ago, when I had decided that instead of making new year’s resolutions that I couldn’t keep, I would choose a different artist each month and study as much as I could about them. I researched Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, and several others, and it was interesting to discover their upbringing and influences, the evolution of their style, and ultimately become closer to understanding the artists and their work. I’m now thinking this is a project I should resurrect; learning more about Modigliani has made me realize how much I had loved this whole process of discovery. Something to add to my to-do list…
Papermusings 