last year, elijah was a penguin.  this year, he was ‘Super Dave Osborne’.  i made the outfit using paul’s old white T-shirt.

elijah doesn’t care for hats.  so he gave his friend, mr penguin the SD cap. i also made the super dave helmet, but he wouldn’t let me put it on.

kiss…

proud to be Super Dave! (maybe).

elijah loves drawing.  he says ‘pensu~ (pencil), doroin (drawing)’ and climbs up on a chair by my drawing table. he says ’sit!’ as he sits.  now he is ready to do some drawing.

after drawing some snakes, wires, spaghetti and hair, he usually grabs my hand asking me to draw.

but today, he is going to draw on his own.  what are you drawing, elijah?

his friend, panda-san!

(photos from september, before i gave him an awful haircut)

thanks to everyone who came out to the opening reception for the group exhibition, “flatlanders” at mendel art gallery last friday night.  i really enjoyed talking to you all and meeting some of my blog readers.

many people said very nice things about my drawings.  i was very happy to hear that.

the gallery was totally packed with a flood of people.  there were so many people that we wanted to talk to.  elijah didn’t cry, he was very quiet and wanted to be held all night.  he seemed overwhemed by the number of excited people.  originally we’d planned to stay for just an hour or two, but elijah fell asleep in my arms so we were able to stay until the end.

elijah has been to the mendel art gallery before, 16 months ago — 3 days after he was born.  we were discharged from the hospital on the last day of the show i was in, ‘political :: personal’.  we grabbed all our new baby gear and drove to the gallery.  elijah was pretty good at first, sleeping quietly, but then he woke up and started to cry wildly.

at the reception for ‘flatlanders’, a few people told me that they liked the ‘political :: personal‘ exhibit more than this show.  they missed seeing animals in my new drawings for the current show.

the drawings i showed in ‘political :: personal’ were my favorite picks from the last two years.  for the ‘flatlanders’ show, i only had a couple of months to prepare, and during that time i had the fringe festival, so i did all the drawings in the course of about five weeks.  the curator told me they wanted all new work, and i’d already promised most of my recent work to other galleries, so i had to start from scratch.  i wanted to do a series of drawings in a common style.  even though i did some other, different work during this time, i edited down to 7 drawings that are similar to each other.  i finished the last drawing on a saturday, did the framing sunday, and delivered them to the mendel on monday for installation.

the 7 drawings all have the same style: girls’ heads with no body and the hair made of wood (you can see the wood grain).   different things happen to the heads in different drawings.  one drawing is bigger and more complicated, with three heads joined together.

‘tricolore’ (click image to enlarge)

it’s a different style than i’ve drawn before. my interest changes all the time and so my style changes with it.  i can’t make myself draw the same thing twice.  if you look back at my drawings over the last 4 years, you can see the changes.  i guess some people want me to keep drawing schoolgirls with fish or elephants, again and again.  it’s hard to enjoy the unpredictability.  but i can’t repeat myself, even if i wanted to, so please bear with me. :)

now i think about it, i ended up drawing only heads during the five weeks because i was wondering if my head was going to explode.   i was staying up late every night drawing and waking up to take elijah to the park during the day.  eventually my head did explode and you can see the bits and pieces of my heads on the wall at the mendel art gallery.  better for my exploded head to end up in a gallery than in the hospital.

the next day was a panel discussion with most of the 18 saskatchewan artists exchanging their opinions on:

• the impact(s) of isolation and community on your work / how the changing Saskatchewan economy may be impacting your work / the role of Saskatchewan geography/history/culture in your work, etc. / the social role of artist in our province
• Spirit and Matter: i.e. is the art world like a “religion” unto itself? / how spirituality may or may not factor into your work / the importance of craftsmanship / responsibilities of an artist
• Technology and Ecology: i.e. ecological sustainability in art / impact of digital technology and communications on your work

many topics to cover in just over an hour.  it was interesting to hear other artists talking about their work.  i don’t spend much time hanging around with artists lately.  it reminded me of the ‘pause talk’ session i took part in this january at cafe pause in tokyo, without the cigarettes and the wine and the darkness.

i only spoke up a couple of times in the group discussion.  the conversation was mostly people explaining why they do what they do and analyzing the meaning of it.  i don’t spend much time thinking about what i do, i just do it.

some people were talking about how they like to work ’slow’, avoiding technology like digital cameras and using old-fashioned techniques.  i said we should imagine the world a hundred years from now, where today’s digital cameras will seem very old-fashioned and slow.  not that i care, by then i’ll be dead — everyone laughed when i said that.  someone else pointed out that even a pencil is a kind of technology.  i agree, that’s why i like to use the latest in superslow modern technology, my colour pencils.

paul took care of elijah during the panel discussion.  they got a seat near the front so elijah could see me.  but maybe it wasn’t a good idea — he’s been very mama-obsessed recently so he couldn’t leave me alone.  right from the beginning, elijah started calling out to me saying, ‘oppai~, oppai~’ in his most adorable gentle voice.  it’s good no one understood what the hell oppai means (”breast” in japanese).  so paul had to take him out and walk around the rest of the gallery, trying to distract him.  every time i spoke into the microphone, i could hear elijah in the distance, calling ‘mama~, mama~’.

i wish i could split my body into two to cuddle him.

after the panel discussion, elijah and i sat together on the gallery stairs and he asked me “so, you’re an artist?!’

i said, ‘am i?’…

elijah’s first word was ‘manma’, which is the japanese baby word for ‘food’. i since learned that some english-speaking babies say ‘num-num’ meaning the same thing. he uses ‘manma’ for any kind of food but especially snack foods that come in boxes or little bags, like crackers. this started after we drove home from ontario and he had all kinds of dry snack food to eat in the car seat.

the next thing elijah started to say was ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ randomly to both of us. one morning, he woke up at 5am and started chanting ‘mama! papa!’ over and over in a loud voice, banging on the bed frame. he was so proud of himself! at 13 months old, he had ‘papa/mama’ confusion. he could say ‘papa’ very clearly, but not ‘mama’. i was so jealous! he called me ‘papa’ for awhile. it melted my heart anyway.

nowadays he can clearly say ‘papa’ to paul and ‘mama’ to me. when he wakes up in the middle of night (still…) and shouts ‘mama~ mama~! oppa~i (breasts)!’ i feel like i can do anything for him.

i’ve been saying ‘daisuki (i love you very much)’ to him for a long time. around 14 months, he started to imitate me hugging him. we’d say ‘daisuki’ and he’d open his arms wide and give us a hug. he’s recently started trying to say ‘daisuki’, but he can’t say the entire word. so he says ‘dai~, dai~’ and open his arms and for a hug. he does it to my friends and their babies as well. it’s pretty adorable.

‘dai’ in ‘daisuki’ means ‘big’. ‘dai’ plus ’suki (like)’ becomes ‘i love you very much’. but in english, ‘dai’ sounds like ‘die’, so it sounds like he’s chanting ‘die! die! die!’ and wanting a hug. it probably sounds horrible to some people, but to me it’s the sweetest thing.

elijah’s vocabulary is increasing every day. i keep track of the words he learns in my ‘elijah word diary’ (it’s just a small agenda book). he picks up new sounds very quickly and seems to be able to associate the sound with its object. he learns so quickly that i can’t keep up with what he knows. most of the words he says are not really words, just the first syllable or sound from a longer word — but we can understand him, it’s our secret code. we are ‘oya-baka‘, so we’re convinced these are all certainly words.

here’s my elijah dictionary at 15 months:

A:

• ai~ (from ‘ari’, meaning ‘ant’ in japanese) — he uses it for ants on the ground or flies buzzing around the window
• appu~l (apple) — he says this clearly enough for most people to understand. he can recognize a real apple and a drawing of an apple. at the supermarket he chants ‘apple!’ and points firmly at the apples. if you show him an orange he’ll also say ‘apple’
• awaa~ (’flower’) — he says this pointing at a real flower or a picture of a flower or a field full of flowers. one of his favorite things is dandelions — he brings them to us to blow the seeds
• ashi (meaning ‘leg’ in japanese) — he says ‘ashi’ if we point at his leg or one of ours, and if we say ‘ashi’ he points at his leg

B:

• beee (’B') — he has some magnetic alphabet letters. he calls them all ‘B’, except sometimes he says ‘aysh’ (’H') at random
• bana~ (’banana’) — i think he just like to say this word. he doesn’t eat much banana. he’s more of a melon guy.
• be~bi! (’baby’) — he says ‘baby’ for babies in real life and in photos and also uses the word for kids much older. i’m not sure if he knows that he’s also a baby.
• bai-bai (’bye bye’) — he waves goodbye to papa leaving for work, sometimes too soon when paul is still putting his pants on. he also waves bye bye when we put him in the car seat and close the door, even though we’re getting in the front seat right away.
• ba~cku~l (’buckle’) — he loves to spend time playing with the buckles on his high chair, trying to open and close them
• baffi~ (’buffy’, the name of our neighbour’s dog) — even though we’ve lived here for more than a year, buffy is always surprised to see us and barks at us when we’re out in our back yard. so i taught elijah to say ‘hello buffy’ every time we go out in the yard. she still barks at us.
• a!ba!ba!ba! (’bus’) — buses are very exciting.
• bu~bu~! (the japanese baby word for ‘car’) — he likes watching the cars drive by from our window. he also uses this word for his toy car.
• bey~ah (’bear’) — he has three polar bear cuddly toys. he’ll hold them tight and lay down on the carpet.
• bah~~ (’ball’) — he likes to run around after the soft soccer ball inside and his green plastic ball outside
• buk! (’book’) — he is always asking us to read books to him. we go through his entire book collection almost everyday. his favorite book is dr suess’ “hop on pop”. he asks for it by name: ‘op op’
• burrrrr~ (’bird’)– this was one of the first words that he learned. he notices birds all the time, even when they’re far away in the sky

C:

• chapu-chap (sound effect for water splashing in japanese) — i taught him that ‘chapu-chap’ means bath. he loves the bath and he’ll point at the bathroom door and chant ‘chapu-chap!’
• chea~ (’chair’) — he learned this word from a picture book. he was so happy to learn this word that he walked around to touch all the chairs that day.

D:

• dami~! (’dame’, meaning “don’t do that” in japanese) — he likes things that are ‘dame!’
• dau~ (’down’) — he says this when he’s climbing down from something, or going down the stairs (backwards, on his stomach). he doesn’t use it when he’s being held and wants to be put down, he says ‘up’ instead.
• dahhh (’dog’) — i guess i was supposed to teach him to say ‘puppy’. he likes dogs.
• do~h (’door’) — we never taught him this word, but he was listening every time we yell at each other;”is the door shut?”
• do~jyo (’dozo’, meaning ‘here you go’ in japanese, when offering something to someone) — he mostly says this to mean ‘gimme’. you’ve got it backwards, elijah!

E:

• eapu~ (’airplane’) — he looks up to the sky every time he hears an airplane overhead. he does a gesture we taught him with his hand “flying” around like an airplane
• e~lijah!  – he says his name very loudly and repeatedly.  he looks happy when he says this.

G:

• gya~f! (’giraffe’) — we have some giraffe stickers on the wall of his bedroom.

H:

• hama~ (’hammer’) — he likes to hammer things, especially when he gets to use a real hammer. we just bought him a toy hammer that makes funny sounds. so far he’d rather use his other toys (like his wooden cars) or some other things from the house (like papa’s shaving cream) to hammer on the floor very very loud.

M:

• mama (’mama’, me) — when he hugs me as he whispers this word he melts my heart.
• manma (the japanese baby word for ‘food’) — when he gets really hungry he screams ‘MANMA~!!!’ again and again. not very subtle, elijah.
• meyo~ (’melon’) — he loves eating melon and asks for it all the time — either cantaloupe or watermelon. sometimes he stuffs his mouth so full that he chokes and vomits everything back up
• mimi (japanese for ‘ear’) — another body part.  he’ll point at his ear when he hears music.
• myu~ (’music’) — he can turn on the big stereo and start pushing buttons. sometimes he inserts a CD or MD (mini-disc) by himself. he likes to turn on a CD/MD player, insert a CD or MD and hit play. he loves dancing to music.
• me (not [mi], but [me], ‘eye’ in japanese) — occasionally he pokes my eye with his precious tiny finger saying ‘me’!

N:

• nyo~z (’nose’) — another body part he likes to name. he really likes grabbing papa’s big nose.
• no, no, no, no, no~! – he waves his hands around and tells me that’s a no no! he started saying it to himself when he knows he’s not supposed to do something.

O:

• ahf (’off’) — he always wants to flip the light switch by himself. our house becomes a disco.
• oh,oh! — he’s supposed to say this when he drops something accidentally. but he says this BEFORE dropping things — meaning he’s dropping them on purpose. the worst part is when he’s sitting in his high chair with his plate of food and he says ‘oh-oh!’ — BIG MESS.
• auchi~ (’ouch!’) — he gets so much attention when he bumps his head that he’s started bumping it (very gently) on purpose, or even pretending he bumped it (we can see he didn’t). he holds his head with his hands and comes running to me saying ‘auchi! so i kiss him and look sad. he doesn’t do it to paul, because papa just laughs when he sees the obvious fake injury.
• opa~i (’oppai’, meaning “breast” in japanese) — at night sometimes he screams and screams and screams and then suddenly says ‘oppai?’ in a quiet polite voice.

P:

• papa — papa is elijah’s favorite. anytime he hears a noise from around the entrance, he points and asks “papa?”
• pada~ (’panda’) — his playmate is ‘panda-san’, a stuffed animal panda from IKEA. i put a diaper, baby clothing and a bib on panda-san so he can be elijah’s role model. elijah feeds him food and holds on to him in the crib as he falls asleep.
• pee pee! (’penis’) — he grabs his pee-pee with no mercy. i didn’t realize that thing could stretch so far.

T:

• tachi! , do tachi! (’don’t touch!’) — many things are ‘don’t touch’ in the house… sorry, elijah. he says ‘tachi’ or ‘do tachi’ when he’s near them, but then he touches them anyway and looks very happy.
• te (japanese for ‘hand’) –another body part. he’s learning how to do “high-five”.

U:

• up! – he can say ‘up’ very clearly now, whenever he wants to get picked up but also he wants to get put down. so he says ‘up’ even when he’s already up! how high do you wanna go, elijah? he’s a climber. he climbed all the way up a ladder to the roof of the garage one time. where is your fear, my friend?

one sunny morning, there are three sleepy turtles sitting on my head…

there is elijah digging into my books saying, “buuuuuuuuk!”

run away!

when elijah feels pain, i do too.

you can take a look at the process here:

art recipe 1
art recipe 2
art recipe 3
art recipe 4

this is elijah.

it’s hard to see, but his finger is turning into a caterpillar.  and of course, he’s eating it.

i bought a new drawing desk recently.  it’s set up in the living room facing the front yard.

i usually stay up and draw after elijah goes to bed.  i do some housework first before i get down to it.  i usually draw from 10 to 2 am-ish.

night is very quiet.  i try not to look out the window because i might see a ghost or a someone standing right at the window.  i can’t make an eye contact with them.

i used to draw non-stop without sleep otherwise i would lose interest in the drawing.  but i can’t do that anymore now that i have a baby.  elijah wakes up at 6 am most days, sometimes 5 am.  he’s instantly superawake and ready to go wild.  so i need to be ready for fun in the morning.

after one year of training, i am now capable of drawing one area per day, finishing step by step over several days without losing interest in my own work.

i sometimes go to the basement to draw.  i turn on a ‘curb your enthusiasm’ dvd and draw on the low coffee table, sitting on the floor.  i find myself laughing so hard even though i’ve already watched all the episodes a million times. i love larry david.  ‘can’t go on, must go on…’

until this point, i was doing my best to follow the patterns of real butterflies.  eventually i got bored, so i made up my own butterfly patterns as i finished the drawing.

here it is: “new wings”.

june 8th, 2008.  a minute after he was born…

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

10 months

11 months

12 months

i’ve been having an awesome time playing with elijah.  we play all day from dawn til nightfall.  he’s running around all the time.  and he’s started saying a few words that i can understand.

elijah loves spending time outside.  he’s always running up to the screen door and trying to push it open.  i have to keep it locked so he doesn’t get out on his own.   if i ask him ‘out?’, he bangs on the door and say ‘ahhtoh~, ahhtoh~’.  if i say ’shoes’ he goes to the entranceway and grabs his sandals, even if i don’t gesture or point.  once we get ready to go, he is so proud to step out of the doorway on his own.

we go to a park a few blocks up the street from our house almost every day.  he runs around on the grass pulling out the dandelions, saying, ‘ahwuh~, ahwuh~’ (’flower’).  he likes to break open the seeds of the dandelions after they go white.  he points at dogs we meet, saying ‘dahh~, dahh~!!’ very loudly.  he’s always noticing birds flying in the sky or sitting on the grass in the park.  whenever he spots a bird, he points at it and says, ‘burrrrr! burrrr!’ and looks to make sure i notice it too.

at home,  he tries to dig around in everything possible.  he takes a bunch of stuff out of a dresser drawer, then puts it back in, he repeats the process many times, non-stop.  he goes into the food pantry and brings me a box of something (usually the box of brita water filters).  he climbs up on the low buffet table and presses all the buttons on the phone and answering machine.  he’s always erasing all the messages and recording his own chatty voice as the answering machine message.   he always wants to play with the non-baby items in the house: the phone (he likes the real phone more than his toy phone), the computer, the stereo, any remote control.  a couple of times he’s been playing with the stereo buttons when there’s music playing and suddenly turned the volume knob all the way to maximum. that made him cry with surprise.

he wants to feed himself all the time.  he pushes away the spoon if anyone tries to give him a bite.  he’s not that interested in most finger foods like cheerios anymore.  he wants to eat with a fork or spoon, even though he makes a big mess.  his favorite food right now is apple pieces.  he knows the word ‘apple’ and can say it clearly when he sees a photo of an apple, or a drawing of an apple, or a pile of apples in the grocery store.  after the meal he brushes his teeth.  of course, he wants to do it himself.

he is climbing up and down from things.  he knows the word ‘up’ and asks us to pick him up or take him somewhere.   he’ll ask other people to pick him up sometimes, like the cashier at the grocery store.  when he says ‘up’ he holds his arms straight up towards us and twists his hands back and forth as fast as he can.  now that he can get up on so many things (the low coffee table, the small armchair, the bench near the window, not to mention the stairs), we’ve been teaching him how to get down safely.  he knows to turn on his stomach and gradually go backwards so his feet touch the floor first.  he does this getting down from our bed (it’s a tall bed), even though he has to fall a bit before his feet hit the floor.  he says ‘dahh’ (’down’) when he’s doing this technique.

when he wants to hear a story, he takes all his books out of the cupboard and brings them to me one by one.  when i tap on my thigh, he crawls onto my lap and i read him stories. his favorite books right now are: ‘don’t let the pigeon drive the bus!‘, ‘don’t let the pigeon stay up late‘, ‘DOG‘, ‘bossy bear‘, ‘tamahiyo doubutsu‘, ‘tamahiyo misete‘, ‘dr. seuss’s abc‘ and mama’s japanese novels.  he likes it when we say lines from his favorite books at other times during the day, like when i’ll do the pigeon’s voice saying “first of all, i’m not even tired… in fact, i’m in the mood for a hot dog party!!”

i read ‘dr. seuss’s abc’ to him before he goes to bed.  his favorite character is ‘itchy itchy ichabod’.  sometimes i can only manage to read till the letter B before he starts saying  ‘oppa~, oppa~’ (’oppai’, the japanese word for breast/breast milk)’ and putting his arm inside my shirt to grab onto my oppai.  he does that in public sometimes, so i have to be careful i’m not on parade.

after breastfeeding, it’s time for bed.  he starts sleeping in his crib every night now.  he usually wakes up a couple of times before coming to bed with us early in the morning.   he likes to start the day early, like at 6:30 or even 5:15, so i have to get some sleep to get ready for the next big day.

13 months

i’m taking part in a group show called ‘environmental 911′ at gordon snelgrove gallery at university of saskatchewan.  it’s been a while since i got to show my drawings in saskatoon.  i’m very happy.

we’ll be at the closing reception probably from 7 to 8pm-ish.  please come and say hi if you’re around in saskatoon.

oh, this drawings is called “new wings”.  16 x 20″

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

3 Campus Dr.  Saskatoon