Eleanor Glewwe's Blog, page 13

Dissertation Defended

You know how I sometimes mention I’m in grad school? Well, yesterday I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation! It’s been a long, sometimes quite difficult, but also very rewarding six years. Here’s me and my lovely committee at the post-defense celebration. Happy May Day!

[image error]

Borrego Palm Canyon and the Rest of Spring Break

On our second day in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, we hiked the Borrego Palm Canyon Trail. There were plenty of people, and the trail was awash in desert flowers. The clouds of blooms were mainly shades of yellow and purple (desert dandelion, Parrish’s poppies, phacelia), with greenery and smatterings of other colors thrown in. The trail was pretty easy for a long stretch. Mountainsides jutted up sharply on either side of us, but far away on one side. There were streams (or maybe just one s...

A Mission and the Anza-Borrego Badlands

My parents recently visited me for spring break, and we started off by heading down the coast. We ate burritos and caught the sunset in Laguna Beach. The next morning, we arrived at Mission San Juan Capistrano soon after opening. The mission is very pretty, and the well-tended gardens were gorgeous. We apparently missed St. Joseph’s Day and the Return of the Swallows by a few days, but I saw nary a swallow (it seems like the mission is going to great lengths to attract them back–there were ar...

Blackout Poetry and West LA Zinemaking

At the latest meeting of the artists and writers collective, our warm-up activity was blackout poetry. To create a blackout poem, you take a printed text and black out all but the words you want to incorporate into your poem. It’s a kind of constrained writing, and it’s rather tricky because you have to see something of your own in the midst of someone else’s text. We used pages ripped from the author’s note of this year’s UCLA Common Book, The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú. (I pick...

Carving and Printmaking

Our university’s international student center has a new artists and writers collective whose meetings Isabelle and I have been attending. At the last meeting, Isabelle taught everyone how to carve stamps out of plastic erasers with X-Acto knives. The erasers are nice and soft. For my first ever stamp design, I eventually decided on a bass clef, and the result wasn’t too bad. It’s like a rustic bass clef.

[image error]

Two days later, we went to a linocut workshop hosted by the Horn Press, UCLA’s book arts...

Mobile Museums and Rare Books

Earlier this month Isabelle and I went to the Mobile Museum Fair at the Los Angeles Central Library downtown. The fair brought together a couple dozen exhibits and libraries, from the International Printing Museum‘s printing shop on wheels (which we’d once seen in front of our building on campus) to the Feminist Library on Wheels to a native plants pop-up seed museum. The trucks were lined up outside the library on 5th Street while other exhibits were scattered throughout the library’s halls...

The Books I Read in 2018

In 2018, I read 74 books, 4 more than in 2017. That’s the first increase in number of books read since 2015, but I’m still way down compared to the early years of grad school. (I also mentioned last year that I was reading more short fiction online and tracking the short stories I read; I did so again in 2018, and I think I read many more short stories than in 2017.)

Here are the books I read in 2018, rereads bolded, with links to (sometimes just barely) related blog posts:

The Starlit Wood e...

2018 in Review

2018 has been quite a year. Do I say that every year? (I actually don’t, but I probably could.) Between the am-I-finishing-grad-school-this-year-or-not uncertainty (answer: no), the politics, the traveling, and the wonderful times with friends, it’s been a full year. Here are some highlights, not in chronological order:

I published my first short story, “Lómr,” in Cicada (which, sadly, is no more) I wrote more zines, which you can download here As one of those zines attests, I got my wisdom...

Comic Arts LA

The other weekend Isabelle and I went to Comic Arts LA, an annual festival featuring tons of graphic novelists, zinesters, and printmakers. It was held at an Armenian American community center in Glendale. We made the rounds of all the artists’ tables, flipping through zines and admiring artwork. In the middle, we took a break at the drawing wall.

[image error]

That cute fuschia cat is Isabelle’s doing. I’m drawing a cat’s paw.

I ended up getting two zines by Maia Kobabe. Then I circled back to Aminder Dha...

The Giant Robot Post-It Show

Giant Robot is a store and art gallery in Sawtelle, the traditionally Japanese-American neighborhood on the Westside where I’ve gone to Obon the last couple of years. I’ve been to exhibits at Giant Robot’s gallery before. Every December, they have a post-it show for which dozens of artists (many of whom have exhibited at the gallery or have works available in the store) create art on actual post-it notes. The post-its are then displayed in a wide band around the perimeter of the small gallery...