Linseed Oil Update

I used some of the linseed oil today.  I'm not sure I can handle it: the taste is alright but the smell makes me feel like I'm eating paint.  People aren't supposed to eat paint.

In Which I Contemplate Consuming a Major Component of Oil Paint

I picked up some flax seed oil at the "Nature" grocery the other day.  It is supposed to help people with cold hands/feet to not be quite so cold.

Apparently flax seed oil is supposed to have a nice nutty flavor.  Curious, I opened the bottle and smelled it when I got home from the grocery store.

It smelled like my last two years of college: like oil paint.

And then I realized something I should have realized a long time before.  Flax seed oil is linseed oil, the binder component of oil paint.  Linseed oil is a drying oil, meaning that as the oil film ages it cross links and becomes insoluble, making it good as a paint binder.  Other drying oils include walnut oil and safflower oil.  Olive oil, on the other hand, is a non-drying oil.  You can wait as long as you want to, but a oil paint made with olive oil is never going to dry.

Flax is historically a really important plant.  Not only can you make linseed (or flax seed) oil from it, but the fibery part of the stem is what is spun and woven into linen.

No Country for Women with Criminal Records

In a glorious and undoubtedly prophetic start to the New Year, I spent the majority of January 1st driving, returning to the Great White North of Canada.

My interning in Canada requires that I hold a Work Permit: though I am working for no money.   The type of permit I have is good only for one institution: the one I currently have is only for the National Gallery.  Therefore I needed to get a new one (for the Canadian Conservation Institute) where I will begin interning in early February.  

The Canadian Immigration Office I have dealt with is situated at the border north of Interstate 81.  It has worked out well: when I moved here the permit took me 15 minutes to get, done as I crossed the border.  This, for reasons unbeknownst to me, was ten thousand times easier for me to do than for probably everyone else in the entire world.  Talking with Hye-Sung about what she needed to get her permit, I must have just bumbled into Canadian Immigration on a Good Day.

I stopped back at Immigration to get my new CCI work permit, so that I can legally work there for no money.  While waiting for the immigration officer to complete my paperwork, I witnessed the most fascinating thing one can witness at an immigration office.

"Sorry Ma'am, but you have been denied entrance to Canada."

I was thrilled to overhear this conversation!  How often do you hear about people getting turned away from Canada?  I did overhear most of the conversation, but not because I was nosy.  They were just talking really loudly right next to me.

A couple had come to Canada.  The man was either Canadian or had no impediment to moving in and out of Canada.  The woman was American and intending to move to Canada as a permanent resident.  The man was waiting for her at the immigration desk while I was waiting in a nearby chair.  The woman exited some back room, walked up to him, and said, "I've been denied entrance."

She was pretty angry about this.  I'd be too, if I, unsuspecting of my unfitness, had driven to the middle of nowhere New York to get turned away at the border.

Man: Did you have drugs on you or something?

Woman: No.

She stepped outside for a smoke and the man decided to try and convince the Canadians to let her in.  She was a little rough-looking.  Judging a book by its cover, and her watery eyes by their red-rims, I wouldn't have been surprised if she did have drugs on her.

The Canadians wouldn't tell the man why the woman wasn't allowed in: she had to put out her cigarette, come back into the office, and tell the Canadians that they could tell the man.  This is the entirety of what she said, "You can tell him," and then she and her cigarette left to sulk outside in their car.

Canada: She has been denied entrance to Canada because she has a criminal record.

Man: But she's only been convicted of misdemeanors.

Canada: Under American law her crimes are misdemeanors.  When coming into Canada, we take the actual crime and translate it into Canadian law.  Under Canadian law her crimes are more severe.

Man: (He appears incredulous: I was too... who had ever heard of getting turned away from Canada?  The nation that we Americans say we'll move to whenever 'the Man' starts in on us.  Looks like Canada doesn't want our deadbeats after all.)

Canada: She is prohibited from entering Canada for one year.  If, after a year, she would like to come into Canada, she needs a letter from the United States giving her permission to leave and to come into Canada.

Man: This never would have been an issue if I hadn't told the truth, that she was coming to Canada and wanted to stay as a permanent resident.  I should have told you that she was coming here on vacation.

Canada: That would be lying, and that would mean that I could have both of you arrested and deported from Canada.  However, I will not do that.  I will make a note that if she attempts to enter Canada again within the next year she will be arrested.

At this point my paperwork was finished and I could leave.  I really wanted to stay and eavesdrop some more, either that or have the Canadians forcibly remove the woman from Canada.  Which, granted, wouldn't have been much, as they could have just thrown her 1000 feet to the south and she'd be back in the US.  

Any thoughts on what the Canada-prohibiting crimes were?  Based upon the man's initial query, my guess is possession of some sort of drug: quantity level low enough to qualify the crime as a misdemeanor instead of a felony but high enough to fall under the harsher category in Canada.

O Cormac McCarthy: I may not like your writing, but you're right about one thing.  There is no country for old men, and no Canada for women with criminal records.

Christmas at the Gallery

Birthday!

I had a nice day at the Gallery today: I chopped up a piece of old paper.  

Then I boiled the bits of old paper for about 4 hours, strained the paper out, and then boiled down the stuff until I had about 2 mL of concentrated paper extract collected in it.  Look at that boiling!  

I'm going to use it to tone something the appropriate color.  This still needs to loose about 8 mL of water, but you can see the color!

And Hye-Sung surprised me with little fruit tarts and gigantic candles!  We decided not to light them, as it would have been a little awkward if we'd set off an alarm or something.

Shouldn't You Be Offering Me a Jelly Doughnut?

Today, I met a very rude Canadian.  I was shocked!

One of the unwritten but universally understood rules of walking in a city is that the slower people will be passed by the faster people.  Walking today, cutting through the big Rideau shopping center, like I've been doing since the manifestation began (still manifesting, FYI) I was behind a slow-moving woman, late fifty-ish, in a long puffy olive-drab coat and a green scarf.  I walked past her, thinking of what I wanted to accomplish during the day, 'maybe take that print out of the press, put together one of those daguerreotypes, we're going for Indian for lunch today...'

Woman: Excuse me.

Me: Yes?  (thinking that maybe I've dropped something... why else do strangers talk to you as you are walking past them?)

Woman: You just cut in front of me.  Do you think that is appropriate?  You stopped me right in my tracks.

Me: And you think that this is an appropriate comment to say to a complete stranger?

Apparently she did not pick up on how appalled I was by how utterly rude she was being.  Did she not know the rules of the urban jungle?

She keeps talking.  And the whole time this is happening we are still walking.  I, being the faster, have moved fairly far from her, but she's still talking, calling me rude!  The temper is starting to rise: I have the incredible urge to turn around and say, "Your mother taught you that this was polite?  Grow up.  Next time I pass you I won't just 'stop you in your tracks', I'll be sure to trip you.  And then kick you while you're down.  You don't even know what you're dealing with, bitch."

However, since I am being the change, I decided to go for the immature and "I'm ending this route".

Me: (rolling the eyes and saying in a clearly insincere tone of voice) I'm sooo sorry.

Then she thanked me.  She thanked me for an amazingly and utterly facetious apology!  I just kept walking.  I also didn't look at her when we stood at the same street corner a few seconds later waiting for the light to change. 

And the rest of the walk to the Gallery, once I regained control of my temper, all I could think was, "Crazy Canadian.  I thought these people were supposed to be nice?  Where's my jelly doughnut?"

Coming to a Toronto Near You! In February 2009!

Some time ago, Hye-Sung and I spent part of an afternoon with Supervisor John looking at and discussing a group of objects at the NGC solely to be examined before moving on to the next venue of the touring exhibition.  It was really fun.

The inside of a light box backed photograph transparency.  The excitement with this particular piece is that is uses LEDs instead of fluorescent tubes.  Fluorescent light does everything bad and nothing good for art, and the tube need to be taken out and shipped separately when ever traveling an artwork that uses them.  Pain in the butt.

Supervisor John.  He's doing condition reports on each object.  Considering that these photographs are all brand-new, he didn't see much damage.  On that double-layered cart is a big binder with the condition documentation on each object with a page for each venue and areas for specific people to sign off on things.  It's like the file a doctor will pull when you go for a check up.  Except for an artwork.  Clearly.

And no, those are not large chunks of petrified wood.  They are photographs adhered to large chunks of aluminum, the edges cut to mimic slabs of marble.  They are really heavy.  It's like three or four inch thick aluminum, and large portions are even hollowed out to make them lighter.

This work was recently purchased by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP), an associate museum of the NGC.  Also photographs, not mirrors.  Often, for large works, installation pieces, and similar, the acquisitions committee will have the piece installed someplace, frequently in the regular galleries.  This was installed in a temporarily closed gallery (regular rotation).  It was really great.

Hye-Sung demonstrates the hanging mechanism.  Magnets!  By the same artist whose steel sheeting I helped yank of a photograph in October.  A more advanced permutation, however, as the metal is attached to the wall and the photograph backed with the same sort of flexible vinyl magnet used to make refrigerator magnets.

What may be in a 'temporarily closed for artwork rotation' gallery.  These crates are from the objects loaned to the NGC for the current, large and awesome exhibition on the sculpture of Bernini.

Hye-Sung is magnetic too.  It really sucks when your skeleton has adamantium plating.  She really has a tricky time of it whenever Magneto drops by for consultations.

Hiding from my responsibilities.  Like figuring out how I'll get health insurance post-22 December.