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Please keep up to date on Jean happenings over at heartjean.blogspot.com

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See you on the Cyberside,

Jean Fitz

I used to have this great fear of the wood shop in college. I also hated walking into lumber yards. They still have that “good ole boys” feel to them that makes me and my gender feel small. However much it has been in my head, I’ve had to learn how to overcome it because, frankly, I needed to use the tools to build my painting surfaces. I realized I still had some power tool anxiety when this fellow artist dude at my last art exhibit commented on the construction of my frames. (I build the backings to all my paintings.)He said that the miter saw would give me more accurate cuts. I chatted with him how I make them with my little jigsaw and make the best of it. He then says: “But, um, I guess your wood cuts have a certain charm.”

Translation: You saw like a girl.

I grinned and nodded and then vowed that no good ole boy was going to be able to say that to me again. Take back the power in your power tools, my friends!

Enter Jean’s very own miter saw. I am playing with my new great tool: the mighty miter saw. Forty-five degree angles are so sweet. I don’t know why it took so long for me to get myself this machine. It’s a new day for me and the miter saw. Stay tuned for some out of this world wood construction!

This past summer I made a homemade press using a car bottlejack, assembling some pieces of wood and metal–not without spending hours walking in circles in the black hole that can be Home Depot–and expending a little sawing sweat. I’m very proud of this DIY project (care of an article in the intermittantly useful magazine Readymade.) I’ve done a couple basic linoleum prints just trying it out but I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and really start squishing things. I’ve contemplated all things around my home that could be pressed…a soda can, apples into cider!, grapes into wine!…well, that’s a stretch), handbound books pressed together,…or the mother of all printing adventures…old school letterpress.

I took a mini 2-day workshop in the Letterpress studio at Columbia College recently. Their presses are probably from the 1920’s and were manufactured by a company named Vandercook. I learned such cute terms as quoin and quoin keys and composing sticks and arranging furniture around your type. I knew I was in the right place when someone went to the trouble of making a rubbing of Vandercook’s grave in a nearyby cemetery and then displaying it on the studio wall. Letterpress and Gravestones: my passions collide!

This relatively new process (to me) was invented (at least in the West) by good ole Gutenburg in the 1500s using a wine press similar to the one I have. Long live the freedom of the press! Sweet sweet mass produced prints for the masses. So if you see some antique letterpress equipment in a local store or you’re trying to get it off your hands, let me help you! Calling all letterpress equipment!

I am slowly acquiring my own letterpress equipment in my own space and I’ll keep you updated on this crazy project!

The dictionary says to doodle is “to draw absentmindedly.” What does it mean to be absentminded? Does this mean I forgot how to draw momentarily? What does it mean to know HOW to draw? This week’s doodling:

Yes, those calendars are going like hotcakes. Thank you to all who came out to the Artwalk Ravenwood this past weekend! At one point, I was graced with the presence of 3 of the 5 clowns (featured in June of the calendar) at the same time! (L-R Erin, Alan, Dave.) Some calendars are still available on-line at my etsy store: jeanfitz.etsy.com. Remember this is a Limited Edition (!!!) so snatch ‘em while you can. And, of course, we’re going into a rough patch for this here country of ours and you’ll need to look at nice, uplifting pictures…but who can afford such a thing as fine art in a “crisis moooohment?” You betchya, I understand. That’s why I have a neat-o little set of $8 greeting cards (with envelopes that still taste like basil when you lick them like last year!) and then I’m selling fine art prints of some of my paintings…yep, all for sale at my etsy store.

 Yippee! Affordable art! If you’d still like to see some real, live art, head on over to the Main St. Metra Station in Evanston. The Evanston Arts Depot has re-purposed the old train station into a theatre/cafe and arts space. My paintings are now hanging there during October for commuters and theatre-goers to enjoy.

On my way home from hanging paintings in Evanston, I just happened to pass by another great Chicagoland cemetery. It’s not featured in my calendar, but it’s certainly worth a browse… Calvary Cemetery, beautifully located along Sheridan Road facing Lake Michigan and bordering between Evanston and Rogers Park. It is the eternal home of many of Chicago’s Irish, and many of whom, unsurprisingly, are of relation to me.

More pictures from this particular trip to the cemetery are at my flickr site.

My first project as a full-time artist: sewing little pockets onto my homemade mousepad. I got tired of everything I taped on the wall crashing down or little pieces of paper getting lost under my table. A while back I sewed a couple layers of corduroy together to make a good surface to cruise my mouse around. It has served me well. I was able to make it better by sewing pockets onto the sides so that they hang off the corner of my desk! Ya-hoo. May the world never know what I was REALLY supposed to be doing while I was sewing little pockets and then blogging about it. (hehe.)The pockets were made in my true renegade intuitive fashion: No measuring, just eyeballing and adjusting as I go along.

An acid/base reaction in Oak Woods Cemetery  in Hyde Park! Thanks to my brother, Dan, for his high tech equipment. Thanks to my friend, Adam, for his willingness to participate in this science/art experiment. Thanks to Enrico for being buried so conveniently on my commute to work. (If you’ve been following the blog of late…yes, this, too, is to be a part of the 2009 Calendar!) I, of course, save the best pictures for the calendar.

I thought it was also fitting during these Olympic times that we give Jesse Owens, buried across the way, a little “cyberspace” here.

What’s a Chicago Calendar without a few Gangsters? Well, here are a few hints of what’s to come for the month of February. (For those who know last year’s calendar…they were featured in front of the Green Mill for the month of February. Get it? Now they’re dead.)

Special thanks to Catherine and Ryan for helping bring these historical figures back into focus. The brothers Peter and Frankie “Tightlips” Gusenberg are buried in Irving Park Cemetery. They were 2 of the 7 North Side Mob gangsters killed by Al Capone’s gang at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. Despite being riddled with bullets, Frank stayed alive for a few more hours and was sent to the hospital where he refused to squeal to the detectives.

His alleged famous last words are: “I ain’t no copper.” His legacy lives on perhaps with the character on The Simpsons:

Johnny Tightlips.

The cemetery markers for these two souls also remain tightlipped. I went into the cemetery office and inquired about the location of Frank and Peter Gusenberg. A woman, who was “filling in” that day, asked me if I was a relative and if I was sure they were buried there. I told her I was not related. (I did not mention this but findagrave.com has their grave pictured and recorded.) She had me follow her down the corridor to a row of card catalog-like drawers. Sure enough, two note cards appeared with their names in one of the dusty drawers. I wasn’t allowed to take a picture of them so I quickly wrote down the lot numbers. Interestingly, the card stated that Frank was removed from Rosehill Cemetery on July 2, 1929 and Peter was removed June 12, 1929 and buried at Irving Park Cemetery. I wonder if there was fear of more vandalism at Rosehill. Catherine, Ryan, and I began dutifully combing through the section. After no luck, I went back into the office again and got a map. We searched further and came to the conclusion that they must have unmarked graves or there was some error. Those gangsters got away from us. The show must go on though and we set up our scene where, according to the map, they are said to be buried.

Rest in Peace, Frank and Peter.

As part of my calendar shots for 2009, I headed down with my friend, Mary, to Resurrection Cemetery on S. Archer Ave, a stretch of road that hosts Chicago’s most famous ghost: Resurrection Mary. This is the one shot that does not feature an exclusive grave as there is controversy over which grave claims the true Mary. Instead, we have featured this wandering spirit along the road where many a hitchhiker has spotted her. Here’s some hollywood-ized folklore about this ghost:

According to legend, Resurrection Mary has been sighted at Chet’s Melody Lounge, an old bar that boldly faces the cemetery from across the street. We went into the bar to freshen up from our drive down I-55. Mary walked in wearing her work clothes from the day, after a few minutes and a few sips of our drinks, Mary went to the restroom to get into costume. She returned to her bar stool wearing a long white wedding dress. Mike, (check out his myspace) he’s pictured here in his Ozzie sunglasses with Mary: was jamming it out on the keyboard in the back corner of the bar. He commented on her “nice dress” in mid-song. We looked for the Bloody Mary that is supposed to sit at the end of the bar for the famous ghost and we also looked for “The Ballad of Resurrection Mary” on the jukebox. (My Chicago Haunts book by Ursela Bielski promised these details.) Apparently only the bartender on Sunday has a Bloody Mary out for the ghost and the jukebox went digital and doesn’t have the song anymore. We got our fill of stories of ghost encounters from the locals in the bar. Gil, who bought two beers for us “two hippie chicks at the end of the bar,” told us of how he passed out outside the bar after claiming there was no such thing as ghosts. His cigarette went flying out of his hand. Rez Mary was not happy! Ray, Chet’s Melody Lounge webmaster, and an extra in the Resurrection Mary Movie made in 2004, recounted the time a beer “just flew off the bar– I swear, ask the bartender.” Ray says the movie’s horrible but he’s in the scene that they shoot at Chet’s Melody Lounge. Here is our rendition of Resurrection Mary at Chet’s with Ray seated in the background:

The real shots at the Cemetery gates will be fully revealed in the calendar but here’s a sneak preview:

The legendary steel bars where Mary is believed to have pulled the bars apart and imprinted her tiny lady-ghost hands have long since been replaced. (The cemetery claims that a truck backed into the gate. But believers insist that it mysteriously wouldn’t “take” to new coats of paint in that same spot.)

My friend asked me to lead a collage workshop with a teen girls’ group at a local Chicago Public High School yesterday. The open space we were to use was the school ROTC room, full of military posters, pictures of uniformed students on bulletin boards, and other things of that nature. We also had a little yoga session from an instructor in this space. At the end, she went up to the chalkboard to write out the word that is typically said at the end of yoga practice: Namaste.

How interesting to see that word scrawled in the middle of the ROTC room.