They are gone!

On Saturday morning I was checking my mailbox to find out that my five bottles which I proposed to exhibit at the MCBA  (Minneapolis Center for Book Arts) in their upcoming “Fluxjob” exhibition were indeed accepted. Yay! Happy dance. And then the headache started: The bottles have to be in Minneapolis in less than two weeks. No way they can go through standard mail. This tight schedule is of course not a surprise. I had been planning to send the bottles to friends in the US after Christmas, so that they could either bring or send them to the MCBA via USPS – should they get accepted, or put them into a local river if not. But then a lot of things came up both for us and for said friends. So I didn’t want to bother them with my request.

So I had to activate plan B: sending them with a courier service. I had been planning to find out how courier services work for a long time anyway (for offering an expedited service to paying customers).  And since courier services deliver items from England to the US in three days and less, I now had ample of time to find out how it works. So that would be a rather relaxed thing. So I though.

It turned out it took me three consecutive days to settle on a courier service, to find out which forms to fill out and to have them ready for pickup; and I am still insecure whether I filled them all out correctly, to be honest.
I felt like the cliché artist, unable to fill out online forms, and totally freaking about them. Anthough my package should have been rather easy: insurance value 25$, send as a gift, not as a sold product.
On Sunday evening, my analytical thinking husband took pity, and went through the online forms with me – with great patience and just as helpless as I was. He assured me it wasn’t me, it was the website, so no wonder I couldn’t get this done. He just told me not to think about it any longer, and call customer service on Monday morning.
That night, I dreamed about sending parcels. (Really! They contained eggs and it was a real mess in the end.) Calling customer service was the right thing to do. Everything became clear and easy. A couple of hours ago the driver came, picked up the bottles and took them with him. Now I keep my fingers crossed that they will reach Minneapolis unharmed and as quickly as I expect them to.

So, the fluxjob exhibition. It will be on from Febuary 7th until July 6th, so you have five months to get a peep at the bottles, as well as other art inspired by fluxus. And if you have not been to Minneapolis yet, let me tell you it is a great city to visit. – I wish I could go and see them there. I’d love to visit Minneapolis once more and look at the company they have at the MCBA. I am not sure whether I will be able to make it, but I sure think about going a lot.

To conclude this post, here are some more shots at my current work in progress.

Above you see the latest “ruled world” or rather part of a part of it: a page of an altered book with the original title “Practical Geometry for Art Students” that is going to accompany another of these stick surface sculptures with silhouettes of people walking over it. The page is not finished yet.

Below you see some of my work and progress on one of the pages for “soulsong”.

And I decided not to show you more images of “chasing infinity through the vanishing point. meditiations with straightedge and ruler”, because that is going to be the book I will be swapping in Febuary. I’ll show and tell you more when the recipient hast it. A nice evening and rest of the week!