Making Circles

-Going for a mountain bike ride with Tim this morning
-Talking on skype with mom and dad this afternoon. (and being able to see them on video!)
-Reading while sitting on the bench I built in the backyard.

Amy Palmiero-Winters is the first amputee to qualify to compete in a World Championship race. In May, she’ll represent the US in the 24-hour World Championships. Check out her interview. She is amazing!

And click here for the link to the article from USA Today.

This is one of my new favorite fruits… The skin is hard like a shell, bread-like on the inside, with strange tentacles. The edible part looks like fish or frog eggs, is slightly tangy and sweet- delicious!
I had to film this to show you how strange this thing is!

opening the Granadilla from Jessica Singerman on Vimeo.

Happy New Year- After getting to bed at 2am, I woke at 6 this morning to find a strange taught sensation on the left side of my upper lip. Looks like I fell victim to a mosquito again, this time the little jerk got me on the lip, and I look like I have Botox gone really wrong. Other than that, it is good to be at Rancho Margot. My good buddy Drea and I have been exploring since we’ve been here…
On our first afternoon here, we hiked to the Mirador, the lookout point over the valley.

This is the ranch seen from above.

Yesterday, we hiked to a small waterfall

and met some friends along the way
this scary-looking guy

and this little one sitting in the middle of the path

We saved his life and moved him off to the side.

Later while walking in the neighboring village, we saw some really cool looking plants and mushrooms. The ones that caught my eye were all the same crazy reddish-orange color…

and my favorite was this sprouting seed broken in half

There were some lovely cows

and we got a chance to go into the work area and chat with some local guys while they worked

Drea even got to help milk a cow

And we found this huge leaf with “fingers”

In the evening, there were plans to ride up to the Mirador for some fireworks. Drea and I rode in a tractor trailer up the hill, and before we got to the top, we saw that the SUVs following got stuck in the deep mud, so we had to turn around and head back to the ranch… She and I got to sit on the back of the tractor on the way down, and we sang at the top of our lungs in the pitch black all the way home. (the driver of the tractor had just a head lamp to see the way)

There was dancing and fireworks back at the ranch till late into the night… It was a great new year’s eve!

I just finished making this little movie…

floss from Jessica Singerman on Vimeo.

Saw this yesterday morning walking into town with my cousin Stephanie. love it

I’d forgotten that work on a painting gets tougher as you go. I just wrapped up my third day of work on the painting I started 2 weekends ago (I wish I could work on it more often, but work has ramped up lately). The more elements to work with, the more difficult it is to know what to do with them…

It’s my first time working with a grid, and I’m finding it challenging to figure out when to stick to the grid’s structure and when to let it go. The work I was thinking of when starting this piece was Agnes Martin’s.

This is one of her paintings, “The Peach.” It wasn’t this piece in particular that I was thinking of, but rather her work in general. It’s calm even in its structure. Her grids, because they are pale and a bit ethereal, don’t seem rigid.

I work much more slowly than I did in the past. I am spending more time looking at the painting and reading what it is it needs in terms of color and mark. Working with the grid gives an instant balance, but it stays static unless I keep throwing off the balance in small sections of the painting. It’s difficult to find what the painting needs to work as a whole. Right now, there are a lot of shapes in addition to the grid, so the painting is quite segmented. Do I leave the grid exposed? Will its structure be visible no matter how much I cover the lines that form it? How do I allow the structure of the painting to develop if I simultaneously break down the initial structure of the grid?

I went for a nice ride for a couple of hours today, and although I enjoyed it, I am still dealing with the effects of the accident. I cannot go full speed downhill because I’m afraid a car is going to pull out in front of me or into me. I still can’t even ride down the road without bracing myself for getting hit by passing cars. It’s pretty ridiculous, but even when I calm myself a little, as soon as a car flies by, I think, “Man, if that one hit me, it would probably kill me.” It’s pretty bad. I know that I have to be patient, and that I will get over this, but I really miss the days of being able to ride without thinking of my mortality pretty much the whole time.

I have just gotten home from what may have been one of my nicest post lunch walks ever. On my rest days when I don’t ride, I typically go out for a little walk along the Schuykill river to get a little sun and move my legs. Today is a perfect fall day: overcast, windy, nice crisp light, a little on the warm side, but can’t say I don’t enjoy that…

There is an older gentleman I often see rollerblading on Kelly Drive. That is not unusual in itself; what is, is that he happens to always where a black sleeveless unitard and a headband- 80s roller skating style all the way. I saw him again today. I love this city.

I also happily noticed that albeit the unseasonably warm weather, the leaves are falling. Every year, I am again surprised at how bright they are… I collected a few of various red shades- some colors that really make me miss painting…

So we just got back from the Iron Cross Lite race in Michaux State Park. Awesome course- I’ve realized at this point that this entire year is going to be all about lessons in life. Today I learned to swallow my ego. But before I get to that, I’ll start with a couple of images from our morning. Jim, my dad in law, came out with us to the race.

Here he is in the back of the car. Now that I think of it, I can’t believe I didn’t offer him my seat in the front. Tim and I have such a set routine for going to races that we are on autopilot on race mornings…

Jim and I spent the drive taking pictures of our bike shadows on the road-

I like how abstract the bike shapes look on the large space of road and grass… The light was really nice today-

Anyhow, the race was a lot of fun. I finished last out of 6 ladies, and something funny happened somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd lap: the 5th place woman started getting away from me, and surprisingly I didn’t care that I was last. I learned to have fun just riding my own race, kept going as hard as I could, trying to make a clean run of it. You know the old adage, keep the rubber side down. During the race, it didn’t even matter so much to me that my stomach was feeling pretty crappy from the exertion. I don’t remember having stomach issues racing in years past, but I’ve also never raced in this kind of shape… If this were mountain or road season, I would definitely not have jumped into racing coming right out of injury, with no training. But this being cross, the season is short and it is just too sweet to waste. Why just go for a regular ride, when I can go ride circles on someone else’s grass, carry my bike over man-made obstacles, ride in “unrideable” race conditions like snow and mud, and make myself sick doing it?

Our buddy Fitzy also loves cross- Here’s his pimped out car with two matching bikes:

I’m not generally a big fan of SUVs, but I’ve got to admit, this thing is pretty sweet. Mostly because it looks like a Tonka toy truck- and the bikes on the roof are the finishing touch :)