Golden Gardens Park

Sunday evening, I looked at my Seattle map to find another place along the coast. 85th St N goes straight out and ends at something called Golden Gardens Park - which it turns out - happens to be a place I was shown last spring by a friend here and have been wanting to visit ever since. The place has a good feeling. As I drove up and recognized it, something relaxed.

Beach fire pits at Golden Gardens.

The moods of Friday's sky

Went to Carkeek park on Friday eveing and made many photos of the sky over Puget Sound.






The sky has always held an attraction to me and the skies here can be quite wonderful.

Heavy, heavy heavyweight

After rehearsal with the Tuning the Air team - and meeting with the radio producer who is planning a feature on the project, my friend David came by to check out the Behemoth. The print from black and white image he brought by to try out on the printer was a dissapointment to us both. more research and testing to be done. We did learn how important it is to set the paper weight properly - too bad HP didn't provide guidelines for what consitutes 'heavyweight' and 'very heavyweight'.

Friends

Missed posting this weekend largely because I had an out of town visitor here. Sandra was in Seattle to spend a day doing Alexander Technique work with the Tuning the Air team. Sandra and Jaxie and I have been Skyping weekly for about a year, so it was a special treat to have us all together for the weekend.

In addition to show preparations yesterday, and the Weekly (Guiter) Workshop hosted this time by Travis, I also dropped by a property as part of my search for a new venue for Tuning the Air. Much too pricey ($1800) for what it is and the work that would be reqired to make it inhabitable for the project.

The saga of the behemoth continues

A day devoted to navigating HP online support. Over the course of three lengthy phone calls, I learn that I MUST connect the printer via an ethernet connection. So an unscheduled visit to BestBuy became a necessity. At one point during my conversation with HP support, the HP Printer Monitor on my Mac began repeatedly alerting me to a change in the profiles. "The custom paper type list or ICC Profiles have been updated in the printer." At first this happened every 10 minutes or so, but then it would just insistently keep alerting me each time I would finish resolving the alert the last alert. (Effectively several times a minute.) When I reported this to the support person, she said that problem would need to be assigned a new case number. Then she said I could just turn the Printer Monitor off. (That amounts to the same thing the Car Talk guys say about pesky engine indicator lights - just put a piece of black tape over the light!)

By the end of the day, I was able to attach the printer via a crossover cable (mimicing a network) and create a new ICC profile for the Epson Fine Art paper I bought to perform tests.

In the evening, I went to Igor and Travis's to say 'hi' and drop off compostables into the compost bin. Travis and Igor were working with Chris Gibson, teaching him the melody parts to 'Onyx'. This is a piece Igor wrote that the team is learning for possible inclusion in the 'Tuning the Air' setlist.




At 8:30, we walked over to Jaxie's for the team rehearsal. At one point, they broke into two groups; Igor teaching Bob and Jaxie a new part, and Travis taking everyone else into another room to learn a different part. By the time Igor needed to leave, the team was very, very close to having this piece in its hands.


At the break, I snuck into the kitchen and with Jaxie's help lit the candles on the angel food cake I made for Curt's birthday. It turns out, angel food cake was Curt's traditional birthday cake as a youngster.

First Print

I drove Sandra (my friend visiting from Virgina) to SeaTac early this morning and returned to focus on show preparations.

First order of business was to find out if I can make a decent print on this HP behemoth. Discovered a few quirks in the HP utilities. For example, after calibrating the sample paper that came with the printer, the print utility insisted on assessing that paper profile as 'out of date', though it displayed April 24, 2007 as the date of the last calibration. I decided to ignore this and proceed with a print:


And here's the finished print (with a 4x6 card included for scale):


This particular paper is incredibly fragile to scratches and bend marks. I carried it by its edges over to the table by the window to make this image - a distance of less than 20 feet , and it already shows creases. I will try a heavier paper later.

Inside the belly of the beast

Guess where I was today. More on this visit when I have more time to post.

Amid preparations for dinner, Jaxie and Sandra and I managed to find time to take a walk at Carkeek park.

Clouds over Puget Sound

A relaxing dinner with Jaxie, Sandra, Bob, Curt, Ingrid and Frank. Bob & Jaxie's daughters joined us as well. Tomorrow is a long day, so off to bed I go.

The light in Jaxie's front yard

From Jaxie's front yard

Sandra BC, my friend from Charlottesville VA arrived this morning. I managed to get to Seatac inspite of the detour to visit the local photo supply place, Glazer's, to pick up paper. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to get back on 99, so I was forced to take I-5 the rest of the way to SeaTac.

Visiting with Sandra for a while and then dropped her off at Jaxie's where she could settle in and rest from her flight. In the evening, Jax and I joined her for an Alexander Technique presentation for parents and teachers. It was a well-received talk and Sandra may find herself quite busy this weekend.

The Behemoth arrives

Today was the big day. My new printer arrived.

Not exactly a small printer, as you can see.

Jaxie was all over it within minutes, determined to get it set up.


Thanks to Curt, Jaxie and Ingrid, the printer was excavated from it's shipping carton...
and set upright.

Now to install the ink cartridges and attach it to my iMac. David!!!!!!!!! Help!!!!!!!!

Seeing a lot of the inside of hardware stores these days. Needed fittings for my water filter, racks to extend the storage in the pantry and other such odds and ends.

Today I ordered ColorVision's Spyder2 Suite to finally (and hopefully) address some of the color management issues I have been having. Checked in on the printer delivery and it is still making its way to Seattle.

Evelyn Glennie: How to listen to music with your whole body

Just found this wonderful video of the percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/103

Checking on the whereabouts of my new printer from Caffé Ladro. It left Memphis on Friday and passed through Sacramento this morning.

Sunday!!!

Z and her Dad came to visit today (giving Mom a bit of R&R.) Dad continued to hammer home the importance of calibration of my studio equipment. I may be forced to give in.

Before that, I visited the Fremont and Ballard street markets . It is still too early in the season for the local growing area, so the market was thin on farmers and produce.



Dropped by Igor & Travis' place very briefly to set up the compost bin out back by the shed.


And even earlier in the day I installed window film on several windows so I can have privacy and light from my store front windows.

Saturday in Seattle

After rehearsal this morning, several of the team went downtown to hear Dr. Jacob Needleman give a reading from his recent book 'Why Can't We Be Good?' Then we took a detour back to Ballard by way of Capital Hill to look at a property I saw on Craig's List (pictured above in a photo from the ad). It seems a little too good to be true, but we have yet to see the inside. I called and left a message with the property managment company.

Weekly Workshop & Visions from the Well

Last night was my second Weekly Workshop. Igor A leads these sessions and last night it was nearly a private lesson as Hank H. and I were the only ones in attendance. Almost an hour devoted to circulating and learning to listen to/for melodies. Then counting Trapiche. Counting is not my favorite thing and it was pretty difficult for me last night because the tempo we worked at was faster than I can play this piece.

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Working on an upcoming presentation at the Mac store in SF. Here's the blurb Gail wrote for the event. I wish we'd been consulted before she turned this in (especially since she spelled my name wrong in the original.) But I trust that I and my co-presenter will find a way to have fun with this.

Visions from The WELL
May 31, 2007 from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM
The Apple Store in San Francisco
Free event

Visions from The WELL -- Members of the legendary online community show their work and talk about digital collaboration and support between photographers.

Bouncing between science and art, Scott Ashkenaz studied Imaging Science at RIT, but kept up with photography. He now does travel photography, often shooting with infrared or constructing 360-degree panoramas.

Christina Florkowski creates her photographs by traditional film, printing and handpainting methods, and is equally adept at creating imagery through digital capture. She is also quite interested in the role artists play in our communities, and the many challenges facing artists in contemporary society .

Ashkenaz and Florkowski host the ongoing photo conference at The WELL, the legendary online community at www.well.com. Come see their work and learn how digital communities can support digital artists.

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The sun never quite came out today, but for a time in the morning it was a least bright.

I was in Ballard for errands today and saw this white azalea.

A Tuning the Air producers meeting this morning to which I was invited. Several different areas need attention, and care must be taken not to let the urgency of one distract from the others. The project is at a crossroads. The current venue is too small (and unsuitable) for the audiences they are capable of drawing, yet it is difficult to invest in a larger venue until the audiences (and reliable income) are a sure thing.

Enjoying a little down time at Caffé Ladro.

Purchasing an HP designJet was one of the first orders of business on arrival here. I was surprised to learn that the local pro camera store, Glazer's, doesn't carry any HP printers. The salesman I spoke with told me to 'go to one of the big box stores' to make my purchase. Imagine that. So I took my business back to Palo Alto and placed an order with Keeble and Shuchat on Saturday. Strangely, it has taken several days to answer some questions I had about the extended warranty. Today, these were finally addressed and the order officially placed.

Tuning the Air

The project that brought me to Seattle is something called Tuning the Air. An amazing endeavor that I will no doubt be documenting as this adventure continues. Here's Curt practising before showtime.

Surrender

OK, I surrender. I never thought I'd take up a Web Log, but here goes. There are simply too many people I wish to share this adventure with and this strikes me as a useful framework for doing so. So here goes...

Igor, the Brave, flew down to visit friends and then make the drive behind the wheel of a 17' U-Haul back up to Seattle. (Of course, there was the load-in of the vehicle, with amazing help from Douglas and Wolfe. Thanks to Igor, it was a safe and efficient trip that ended with a crew of friends helping unload.

Now the adventure begins.