ERA Graphics - Summer 2004 Newsletter

What a great Fourth. A block party (well a road party as we live way out in the sticks), good food and good friends. The Hun’s contribution were glazed chocolate brownies (recipe to follow, he tells me) which were vacuumed up.

Since I want to be just like all the other big corporations I have decided to out source my production to foreign shores. I had offers to my RFP (request for proposal) from the Cardacians, Romulans, De Vors and Partogos. I felt like the couple on the Lending Tree commercial, with vendors fighting over me.

I was surprised that the Cardacians bid after that dust up with Christina of SkyBluePink but they may not know we are friends. They are out of the running as they have no quality control and insist that I must take everything they produce. The Romulans will take the contract but insist I have to put up their production team in my home for the duration. You have no idea how much a Romulan can eat and I am not thrilled by their personal hygiene either.

The De Vors are out of the running as their religion prohibits them from touching, or even thinking about rubber. That leaves the Partagos, who, while 1690 parsecs away in quadrant D will certainly up my freight costs, do great detail work and assure me that they will wash the dies of all saliva after chewing out the image. Let me know how you like the new dies.

Maori Style Mask - sm
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kudos and brickbats

Just one show this quarter – the Rubber Art Stamp-ede in Glendale, AZ.

Another so-so show, and this will be the last pure rubber show I do for next year or so. The shows are just not producing as they used to. I do not know whether it is the economy, the over saturation of shows, or a combination of both – but it is crazy to do a show, with all the prep and expense, and then just break even – at best. No brick bats for the producers as they are trying their best, advertising like crazy, but it is time to rethink the strategy.

For the time being I will only do shows where I can teach at least two classes, for this covers my expenses, with the product sales producing the profit.

up coming shows and classes ta ta!

I will be teaching two classes at Artunraveled in late August in Phoenix. This was a terrific venue last year and Linda Young promises this year will be even better as she learned so much from her first workshop convention. This year boasts a new and even better hotel site, great teachers and an expanded shopping venue.

Check out my classes and others on the web site . I still have a few places left in my amulet Bag Lady and Beaded Book classes.

The amulet bag class is a slight variant on the one I taught at Artiscape in Coschoctin, Ohio, that was in such demand. This one has hands and feet and is a blast.

The Beaded Book class is a new class for me that I developed just for Artunraveled. It is so cool your kids will not know you when you get back home. It pushes the envelope of beading but is perfect for a beginner as well. This is a project you will show off for years to come.

Pima No. 3
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goodbye kerchunk

Not so fast Kowaski (an old joke The Hun loves and has retold seven BIZILLION times! MEGO – My Eyes Glaze Over when I hear him starting in on this one again.) Last newsletter I posted a So Long! notice - Kerchunk. After many years the preeminent rubber stamp and craft web resource is drying up like an old stamp pad and going away. Started by Christina and evil twin Liz in 1995…

Well, someone has offered to step up to the stamp pad and take over Kerchunk. Paula Amari of Old Town Crafts, in St. Mary’s, Georgia. Christina is working with them to get the site established in new digs and we will let you know the skinny next time.

saddle up!

Given all the new stampers entering our domain, the scrapbookers crossing over, and the just plain folks who insist on doing things the old fashion way – they who must have mounted stamps can now again get them from ERA Graphics.

I will now (again) offer retail mounted stamps for those of you who want them this way. Just tell me which way you want your stamps when you order.

Texture Border 1
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bet you didn't know pewter could fly?

My new line of pewter charms and faces has exploded onto the craft scene and they are flying out of here. I cannot keep up with the orders, quite literally, especially the faces.

It turns out that the Rubber Art Stamp-ede is in Glendale, AZ, the same town where my foundry is located. My gosh, two birds with one stone, said The Hun, this doesn't happen too often. We took advantage of the opportunity and saw the actual process involved in casting the charms and faces, met the foreman of the plant and Shirly, the owner.

Actually seeing the process makes a big difference in how I will design and specify my charms. The Hun had a major confab with Mat (the foreman) about how to accomplish a very difficult design feature and they will be trying to see if they can do it. A never done before process.

This foundry uses the highest grade silver pewter alloy, with the highest tin content possible. Much more expensive but worth every penny when you see the result.

They will sandblast some of the faces to achieve a matte finish and ship the balance to our electroplater for the copper and gold finishing. Eight great charms in oxidized pewter and six faces (small, medium and large) in five different finishes. See them all on the web site here.

Oh yes, two of the top artists from the Northern California Gourd Society are inlaying both the charms and faces into their latest work to provide me with samples of different things you can do with the charms and faces. Now what I need is a couple of top Scrapbookers to do the same.

new designs

I have two new best friends, Carla and Lina, who are two of the best gourd decorators in the country. Both well-established in galleries and juried shows. You know me when a new art form presents itself – well, I joined the local gourd society, visited a major grower, cleaned a hundred or so gourds for a major class, and now I am working in the laboratory/studio to develop some of the coolest stamps that there ever were for use with gourds, polymer clay and textiles. I'll have them up on the web site very soon.

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sources

Now that Xina is back from Cardacia and the extraterrestrial incident has died down a touch, she has graciously offered to do a Sources column. She came across some great finds in Sector D where she spent a week recovering from Cardacian interment, on the spa world of Shooch. How cool was this, she said, the entire world is a hot mud bath.

Symbolism in Chinese Art

Chinese art is bursting with symbolism, much of it unfamiliar to the Western viewer. Even prosaic items found in a Western Chinatown market such as greeting cards, red lucky money envelopes, and food packages are alive with colorful images full of hidden meanings. To enhance our understanding of these common Chinese art motifs, and thereby improve our own Oriental-style artwork, I'd like to introduce a few of the more widespread Chinese symbols and their meanings.

Longevity

Of the five-fold happinesses (Luck, Prosperity, Longevity, Double Happiness, and Wealth), longevity is the most revered and has many symbols. The God of Longevity is a tall, thin, old man with a large bald head and a long white beard. He usually has a peach in one hand and a wooden walking stick in the other. Sometimes he is shown arising from inside a peach, which is the fruit of immortality.

Legend has it that the peach tree of the gods grew in the garden of the Royal Lady of the West, and took 3,000 years to blossom and yield the fruit of eternal life, which ripened for another 3,000 years. Pear trees are also long lived and therefore longevity symbols. The God of Longevity is usually accompanied by a deer, which is said to live over 1,000 years and is another emblem of long life.

Prosperity

Chinese has many words that sound very similar to each other, making for lots of puns and wordplay. Objects are often considered lucky because they have names that are puns with lucky words. Thus the word for "deer" sounds just like the word for "prosperity" and a deer will often be used in a rebus to stand for the God of Prosperity. As you can see, some symbols like deer have multiple meanings. The number six is lucky because it, too, sounds similar to "prosperity".

Luck

A strange association to our Western way of thinking is the one between bats and luck or good fortune. But this is yet another pun, as the phrase for "bat" contains the word "luck."

Another image considered lucky is a cloud, since "cloud" and "good luck" sound similar. This auspicious cloud has become a very popular motif in textile and other designs. A repeated cloud pattern signifies never-ending fortune.

Wealth

Goldfish are very common symbols on the red lucky money envelopes. "Fish" and "abundance" are sound-a-likes, so fish stand for wealth. And the characters for "goldfish" sound identical to those for "abundance of gold." For New Year's Eve dinner, a whole fish is served to give one wealth in the new year.

Another symbol that puzzled me for some time is one that looks like a wonton, often seen being carried by the figures on red envelopes. In researching this article I discovered that this is the shape of gold ingots in ancient China. It's variously reported to be shoe- or hat-shaped. Mystery solved.

I hope this short course on Chinese symbolism will enable you to read the meanings of Chinese images you encounter, and to put these symbols to use in your own art, as well.

-- Xina

bistro hun

With Summer upon us we all try and keep food on the lighter side to offset the heat. How then can we feed our chocolate addiction? Of course there is chocolate ice cream, and the classic summer picnic dessert, devil’s food cake, and… Well we never stop feeding the chocolate monster.

In celebration of this epiphany I offer you the following, a recipe from Mark Bittman of The New York Times. He says this is a family recipe and it is so good ERA has forbidden me from making it more often than every other month or so. I liked the "or so" part ‘cause it is so easy you can do it in your sleep. Hey that’s how I can explain a new batch – ‘must have sleep walked, honey!

BROWNIES

3 oz unsweetened chocolate (the best you can find - I like Scharfen Berger's)
8 tablespoon (one stick) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt chocolate and butter over low heat, stirring occasionally.

Butter an eight inch square pan.

Add sugar to chocolate mixture and stir until the sugar melts and the mixture is smooth.

Beat in eggs one at a time.

Add flour, vanilla and salt and stir just until no trace of flour remains.

Pour into pan and bake 22 to 28 minutes (depending on how fast your oven is and how soft you like the brownies). 25 minutes gives me a meltingly soft middle which make ERA swoon (this is about as good as it gets). Cool on a rack before cutting. Yields 9 to 12 brownies.

I glazed them with a ganache but ERA felt that that was truly gilding the lily. You can of course add things like toasted nuts but there is a virtue in purity. And of course, save one for me.

That's all for now!
Roberta