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Here’s a quote on glamour that caught my eye. It’s from an article about superhero movies called “Superhero Worship” in the October issue of Atlantic Monthly.

“Glamour isn’t beauty or luxury: those are only specific manifestations for specific audiences. Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific, emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration and aspiration.”

Isn’t this what art’s all about? The manufacture of glamour?

Andy and I arrived at the IFP Market on Sunday, the 17th, just in time for orientation. (Many thanks to my cousin Carol and her husband John for dropping us at the front door.) Registration and orientation took place in the Puck Building, an elegant, historic structure with an ethereal ballroom on Lafayette St.

The first thing we encountered was a phalanx of filmmakers handing out postcards on the glass steps in front of the Puck. This was a great intro. to the Market as a big part of the experience is the handing out and receiving of postcards. More on postcards later…

First registration. Pretty straightforward with one notable exception and that’s that the energy in the room was intense! Not a bad kind of intense, just surprising. I expected something more easy going (it being a Sunday and all). But this was Manhattan. And not just anywhere Manhattan, but Orientation Day at the IFP Market, a gathering of ambitious film-types from all around the world here for the sole purpose of promoting the heck out of their films. Yikes! The energy was contagious. After about a half an hour of standing around slack-jawed I felt ready to dive in.

I work in two media – film and painting. As I continue to process the info. I got at the IFP Market while promoting SISTER BEE and preparing for Open Studios I’m asking myself “why the heck do I work this way? Why film AND painting? Why not either/or?” This is a question that I feel like I’m always in the process of answering.

Here’s the answer that seems right today.

The impulse or curiosity that drives me to create a film is the same impulse or curiosity that drives the creation of a painting. Right now my questions revolve around the differences (or connections) between humans and animals. What’s a human quality and what’s an animal quality? What’s wild and what’s domestic? (I know this seems straightforward but once you start spending time with social animals like bees it gets harder and harder to answer.)

Working in two media feels like I’m asking the same question of two listeners each with a unique response. A film responds with language, others’ voices, movement and rhythm. Because it’s a medium whose perception requires the passage of time it inevitably tells a story. A painting responds differently. It has physical presence. It provides a more physical, less intellectual response than a film does. I deliberately refrain from using words in my paintings so people won’t have to use the language-processing parts of their brains to take them in. Paintings and the process of painting seem closer to the animal side of human experience. Films are more uniquely human.

P.S. More details on the IFP Market coming soon…

So what is the IFP Market anyway? Great question. According to the Filmmaker’s Guide published by IFP it’s “an event for individual artists themselves to present their work to the industry… Supplemented by numerous panels, workshops and social events, the IFP Market is more than just a venue to screen your film and pitch your script. It is a five-day networking opportunity…”

This is a great description. Even so, I didn’t truly get the Market until I went. It’s a big experience – “a mad dash of a market” as my friend Abby describes it – consisting of screenings, scheduled meetings, a conference and a promising string of social events. I went to promote SISTER BEE. My husband (and SISTER BEE’s Co-Producer) Andy joined me. We had a blast. I’ll outline the details in my next few posts.

Holy cow! New York is an amazing place. Andy and I arrived in Manhattan for the IFP Market on Sunday (the 17th) and it felt like we helicoptered into the pages of a “Where’s Waldo” book. It’s like the city is an interactive collage made up of layers upon layers of architecture, advertising, graffiti, dirt, people, clothing, pigeons, air conditioner drippings, spat-out-gum, cobblestones, vermin, voices, strange breezes and trash. The scene changes each day which is fascinating. After spending so much time looking at and thinking about the wax cities the bees make I can’t help but think of New York as hive-like macro-organism inhabited by its creators who are always in the process of fine tuning, perfecting and changing their magnificent home.

WHERE WE STAYED
We stayed at the Incentra Village House on 8th Ave. in Greenwich Village. It’s a sweet little guest house. Our room, the Lahore, was beyond charming. Furnished with antiques. Shelves filled with books (which made me feel right at home). A kitchenette outfitted with a mini-fridge, a microwave and vintage china. A clean and (by New York standards) spacious bathroom. The softest sheets ever. The place was almost hobbit-like with its cheerful, painted walls and winding stairs. Our third floor room was plenty quiet and provided an engaging view of the goings-on in the street below. We spent very little time in our room at the Incentra, but the time we were there felt restorative and enchanting. I’m already plotting my return.

WHERE WE ATE
The food in New York was fabuluous – not a single morsel passed my lips that didn’t make me swoon. Although I’d have been delighted to eat out at fancy restaurants three times a day our budget didn’t allow for that so we made do by patching together a diet of goodies purchased at the nearby convenience store, street food and a few nice meals out on the town.

Here’s a list of things I loved, that I came home craving, and look forward to returning to for more…

• The best pizza I’ve ever had (chased by chocolate cannoli) came from the San Genarro Festival in Little Italy. I played it safe and stuck to cheese slices from the vendor on the corner of Spring and Mulberry (which were heaven to me) but if we’d stayed another day I’d have ventured out and tried the vodka pizza, which looked good with its swirls of mozzarella cheese embedded in a spicy, vodka sauce.

• Rocky Road Rice Pudding from Rice to Riches. Rice to Riches is one of those only-in-New-York kinds of places that sells just one thing… rice pudding. But they sell it in so many variations, with so many toppings that you can’t help but come back for more. Kind of like your favorite ice cream place. But with rice pudding.

• Chocolate from The Chocolate Bar, a sweet little chocolate shop specializing in retro chocolate bars, multiple varieties of hot chocolate, chocolate tea, candies and truffles. Habit forming.

• Good Restaurant. An inviting place on Greenwich Avenue near the Incentra. Light, flavorful salads, phenomenal bruschetta followed up by banana chocolate bread pudding. Friendly, upbeat atmosphere. Great service. Reasonably priced. I wish we had a Good here in Boulder. I could eat there every day.

WHERE WE SHOPPED
Well… we were so busy with events related to the IFP Market that I didn’t get much shopping in. Although I poked around SoHo enough to know I want to go back.

We checked out the honey display at Dean and DeLuca. Respectable but not comprehensive. Still – a beautiful grocery experience. (An aside… most of the corner grocery markets we ran into were nothing more then glorified convenience stores with wilty produce. Is this where people really do their grocery shopping? Horrors!)

Stumbled across a too-cute-to-be-true home appliance store called Pylones that sells cheery, whimsical items for the home (ladybug egg timers, prince and princess dust pans and brooms, giant calculators). I bet Pee Wee Herman shops for the playhouse here.

And oh, let’s not forget the shoe place in SoHo with cashmere ballet flats.

The amazing thing about New York is that we stumbled into all these places without trying. They were just there. On the way to and from lunch, to and from the hotel. Imagine what we could have found if we were actually looking…

Open Studios is coming up soon.

I spent last Sunday finishing up WEDDING GARDEN before dropping it off at the Boulder Public Library for the Open Studios show. It’s a lush and stormy piece. Blushing layers of magenta encaustic painted over a white ground on a birch panel. Bold marks gouged into the encaustic representing a thistle field and a mountain-like presence. A vault of gold leaf. It’s a strange painting. I like it very much. I hope it gets a good spot in the show.

Labor Day was Honey Day! It’s our busiest day of the year – the day we extract all our honey from the comb. We spent the warm days leading up to Honey Day pulling honey supers (white boxes full of comb) from the hives. On Sunday we set-up our extracting equipment up in the kitchen we rented near our home. On Monday we plugged in the hot-plane (a contraption we use to peel cappings wax from the honeycomb), turned on the extractor (a spinning machine that pulls honey from the comb using centrifugal force) and set about extracting honey.

Honey Day is a fun day but it’s a lot of work. My dad and his wife flew out from Maine to give us a hand. We invited a bunch of friends to help out too. People arrived in shifts and set to work, scraping frames, putting them in the extractor, filling and labeling honey jars. My favorite part of the day is how warm and friendly it feels. Everyone working together to collect and organize the beautiful products made by the bees – beeswax, honey and propolis. Honey Day is also the day I get my year’s supply of beeswax for encaustic painting. It’s the pristine, new cappings wax that we peel from the comb that makes the most transparent, versatile encaustic paint.