Because I am a terrible person...

Hello all!

Yes.  It has been awhile.  As per the title - I am a terrible person.  I've also cheated on this blog somewhat (gasp!) by submitting posts to other blogs.

First and foremost - I'm currently in the process of setting up a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to undertake a project in London, England.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Agar Queen has returned and she now has her sights set on the obliteration (read: gentle and controlled cleaning) of soot and smoke and other fire damage related guckies on objects involved in a tragic museum fire in Southwark.

As soon as Indiegogo, Paypal and I are done squabbling over how the money should flow from your pocket to mine, the campaign will be up and running!  And, if I become a better human being in the next few months - more blog updates on the progress of the campaign and the progress of the project itself can be expected.

In matter of fact - I'm already in the process of writing a blog entry on the ins and outs of crowdfunding for conservation projects.  If the campaign is successful, the blog will be called "Everything you never knew about a successful fundraising campaign" (or something equally pithy).  Should the campaign be a miserable failure, the title will likely change to "What not to do when fundraising online" (though it may contain more tears...).

In terms of a little catch up - what has happened in my life since Haiti?  Based on my last post, it may have seemed like I fell off the planet after that little trip.  Thankfully, I have not--though not for lack of trying :)

Following Haiti, I spent a year in New Mexico, a summer in Crete, a year in Detroit and now I find myself back in the Great White North of Canada, working as both a private conservator (CLS Conservation Services at your ::cough:: service...) and in politics (I know! I know!) as a constituency assistant.

Rather than throw the entirety of the last three years at you poor souls at once - I aim/hope/would really like to/intend to (seriously guys!) plan to write up a series based on each of the locations I worked in.

In the meanwhile - here's the link to my blog entry at the Detroit Institute of Arts to tide you all over until then!

http://blog.dia.org/index.php/2013/05/cleaning-the-lost-pleiad-an-introduction/

Cheers!!

Left and Leaving: PAP and Haiti

So about four days after my return from Haiti, I finally sit down to finish this post.  Much like the previous one, I've sat down countless times to write this and either the internet would go down or I would lose my words.  There's so much to say still and I struggle with finding a way to say them.

Flying over Haiti on return to MIA

I will start by saying that Haiti has been one of the hardest and most heartbreaking places for me to leave.  Usually, as I finish an excavation or internship project, I find myself a little sad to leave, but always glad to be coming home -- especially when I'm returning to Canada.

Not so this time around.

This is not to say that I'm not super excited to see my family and friends, especially the people I haven't seen since I left for Los Angeles two years ago.  The simple fact is, I wasn't done.

I've said this in a previous post, the Haitian people are a remarkable people, if not for their tenacity, than certainly for their endurance.  And despite everything, they remain gracious, and they continue to live their lives with a smile.  I often find these qualities to be lacking in our own society, where we expect to be lauded for surmounting every single hardship from successfully filing our taxes to running our first marathon.  How does this compare to surviving an earthquake, a hurricane and a cholera epidemic, all while living in a 'house' of blue tarps and corrugated metal sheeting?

Tent city directly across the street from our hotel.

One room of many stuffed to the gills with objects

I have also further confirmed to myself my own near pathological need to be needed.  In the US and Canada, I am one of 30 or so objects' conservators spat out into a saturated market every June.  In Haiti, I serve a purpose - I am useful.

My last week in Haiti I was working in the Lehmann Gallery, which as I've mentioned previously, is the largest repository of deconsecrated Vodou objects.  It is also a town house positively packed with thousands upon thousands of objects of profound cultural significance, all in need of conservation work.  The current work taking place in the Lehmann house consists solely of superficial cleaning (read: vacuuming), cataloguing and re-storing on better shelving units.  Given the number of objects in the house, there is conservation work for an entire lifetime in this collection alone - not mentioning the objects from the collapsed Centre D'Art, the Musee Nationale, and so on.

The friendships that I've formed with the Haitian staff at the Cultural Recovery Centre only serve to further reinforce my desire to return.

Working with Haitian Conservation Assistants in the Lehmann Gallery

Marianne Lehmann, the collection's owner works with us to catalogue the objects.

Collections Manager for the Lehmann Gallery - Marie-Lucie Vendryes.

Some of my conservation colleagues have asked for me to talk some more about the actual treatments that I've conducted.  I've resisted going into detail before now for a few reasons.  The first one being that, though this is about my 'adventures in conservation' so to speak, the blog is meant for family and friends, first, and for the conservation world, second.  So I'm trying to strike a balance that provides some details without becoming boring for non-conservators (because, let's face it guys, it takes a special kind of person to find cleaning a 10 square foot piece of plaster with a Q-tip fulfilling :p).

Said large plaster object cleaned with a cotton swab, water and mild detergent (read: Q-tips, soap and water).

The second reason is that, by large and far, the conservation treatments that I'm undertaking are not particularly 'mindblowing', as it were (which is not at all to say that I find the work any less fulfilling, but simply, that there's not much to write about).  In essence, as it is to be expected from this type of project, much of the conservation works involves dry cleaning, followed by some sort of wet cleaning (usually water and a mild surfactant/detergent, occasionally ethanol), and in a very rare instance, a partial reconstruction.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was finishing the cleaning of the Haitian 'Acte d'Independance', a 7'x7' slab of plaster backed by concrete with the 'Acte' written in brass lettering.  In general, the plaque was heavily soiled from exposure to the elements, with some very minor damage to the bottom that occured during its transport to the CRC.

One of the more involved treatments involved a partial reconstruction of the extant head pieces of a plaster bust.  In this instance, the fills were confined to areas that were strictly necessary for the stability of the join.
(Pictures to come at some future date - they're on another drive and I'm writing this post on a train - c'est la vie!)

In addition to my work at the CRC, last weekend was a weekend of some minor adventures as we were able to go out and visit a little around Port-au-Prince (adequate precautions taken of course!).

We went to visit the Olofson Hotel, not too far from our own hotel in downtown PAP.  Constructed into a hill side in the style of the famous 'gingerbread' houses, it is one of the few still standing and sound after the earthquake.

Salome and Saori sitting on the steps outside the Olofson Hotel

Exploring the murals inside

Enjoying a cold drink to escape the heat.

Our last night in Haiti, we returned to the Olofson Hotel to watch the performance of the rara style band, RAM playing. 

Musicians and dancers from RAM performing at the Olofson Hotel.

Ultimately, despite my sense of sadness of leaving, my experience working in Haiti was an overwhelmingly positive one.  I found myself inspired and excited for work every day - not just for the work I was doing, but because I loved the people I was working with.  Already - barely a few days back in Canada and I miss them all more than I thought I would and I hope that they know that I think of them often.

A last sunset over Port-au-Prince.

Tales from a Shipping Container (aka. The Hot and the Humid)

So I've probably sat down at least 6 times in the last 4 days to finally finish writing this post - it seems that my ambition to post more often has been firmly quashed by reality (and the need to finish my thesis for submission by Friday), and a truly capricious internet connection -- especially at the lab.  Oh, and some truly momentous thunderstorms of electrical proportions that not only had me unplugging my computer and all other electronic devices, but moving furniture away from said outlets -- you know, just in case.

Nonetheless, here it is - at long last - and truly representing tales from a shipping container as I have now spent five consecutive in said shipping container - and let me tell you - it's freaking hot in there!!  Though admittedly, as the days progress, people have progressively felt more and more sorry for me, and I have since gained
a) a fan
b) a portable air conditioning unit

Neither of these things does much more than drop the temperature by more than a few degrees - but at a certain point, the difference between 38C and 34C is greatly appreciated.  If I'm lucky, maybe someone'll bring me a bucket of ice water to soak my feet in tomorrow =)  .

The view from my shipping container - watching the rain fall in the afternoon as I work on the 'Acte d'Independance'

View towards the back of the container where I worked with Haitian conservation assistant Junior Norelus on a bronze/brass bust of one of the founding fathers of Haiti.

But enough about my hot and humid working conditions -- especially since the staff have been working so hard to make it the least miserable possible for me - in addition to checking on me every hour or so to be sure I haven't expired in a heat induced stupor - onto the the actual projects!

Aside from the materials in the shipping container (which I will talk about more in detail below) - I have a number projects that I have been or will be working on during my month long stay here.  These include:

-a number of sheet metal sculptures (cold hammered and cut steel from steel drums) from the 'Centre d'Art'; treatment includes removal of corrosion products, local corrosion inhibition treatment and consolidation of flaking metallic paint.

Detail of flaky metallic paint after consolidation

Overall view of one of the 'fer decoupee' objects

-a rehousing/cleaning project at the Lehman Gallery.  This townhouse is owned by a Swedish woman (81 years old) who has been collecting Vodoo objects for decades.

A small part of the Lehman Collection showing years of accumulated dust

Another small piece of the Lehman Collection.

-a number of objects for ISPAN (l'Institut de Sauvegarde de Patrimoine National/The Institute for the Safekeeping of the National Patrimony) - these are the objects being housed in the the shipping container and have been my project for the last week.  They include a badly damaged plaster bust, a bronze/brass bust, the Acte d'Independance (Declaration of Independence) and a number of stone reliefs on marble.  By large and far, treatment includes cleaning and consolidation, with some reassembly on the plaster bust.

Back view of the copper alloy bust during cleaning (the white of the bottom most part is particulate matter from the collapse of the building it was housed in during the earthquake

Now -- all of my pre-program training was conducted in a field lab, either in Crete, or on the mainland in Greece, with the former being far cushier than the latter, but neither coming anywhere close to the working conditions of a museum laboratory.  The reason I say this here is to point out that working in difficult/less than ideal conditions is not new to me - not even a little bit.  I'm quite accustomed to working with hydrochloric acid without the benefit of truly acid-proof gloves or a respirator ("just sit upwind, you'll be fine!! And when those gloves get gummy, here's the box, just change 'em before it breaks through!") - or needing to use a cellulose nitrate adhesive (which ages terribly) rather than the preferred Paraloid B-72 (which tends to lose its cohesion above 40C).  But in all those instances, I've worked with a very limited array of objects - namely, ceramics and occasionally stone or metal.

Here, I run the range from iron to bronze, from plaster to papier mache, and even large scale marble.  There's no such thing as acid-free blue board out here - and Volara is worth more than gold.  Paraloid is useless on the ISPAN objects as they will be stored indefinitely in the shipping container (without the benefit of my air conditioning unit), and a single microscope is being shared by all conservators in all labs and can occasionally have a longer wait list than a kidney transplant.

Have I mentioned that I am also nearly completely unsupervised?  The head of conservation needed to return home yesterday and won't be back until after I've left (bless her, we will be in near constant contact via email and have discussed every project in detail prior to her departure).

So what have I learned since my arrival?

I've learned that there's a difference between what you think you know and what you actually know.  I've learned that if you've been taught how to think, and where to look, it doesn't matter what they throw at you.  I've learned that everything I need to know about conservation, that I really need to know -- I have been taught - by my professors (Ellen, David, Ioanna and VANESSA!!), by my pre-program and internship supervisors (Robert and Stephie) and by the people around me - who might not be conservators, but who know how to use their heads to think through a problem.

I might not know the ideal surfactant for the cleaning of outdoor plaster - but I do know how to do spot tests and cleaning tests until I find something that does work.  I might not know the best consolidant to use once my precious B-72 has been eliminated - but I know where to look to narrow down my list of alternatives.

In short - I definitely don't know every nuance of every object - but the point is, you don't need to.  Everything I needed to learn in order to figure it out as I go along, I have learned.  I know that there are people I can ask and resources I can turn to - and when those fail or are absent - I know that I can experiment until I find a suitable solution.

I also know that every time another bizarre/foreign/unknown object shows up on my desk, or I find out that I can't use either B-72 as an adhesive or acetone as a solvent, I'm still gonna freak out a little - some of it on the inside, some of it on the outside - but once the panic subsides and I'm no longer breathing rapidly in and out of a paper bag - I'll figure it out, one way or another.

If not for the challenges, what would be the fun?

Haiti - Sometimes we're pleasantly surprised, other times, we're just surprised....

So I've been in Haiti for about five days now - just finished my first week and have gone into 'enforced' exile at my hotel for the weekend.  So far, I have to say, it's been NOTHING of what I've expected (much of it for the better, to be honest)

But we'll start at the beginning - because it's a lot to take in....it always is.

Saori (the other student working/living with me) and I arrived in Port-au-Prince on Monday, sometime around noon.  The airport is small, and yet, somehow manages to contain an unheard of amount of chaos and confusion.  I'm fairly certain that even frequent flyers are baffled by the process (particularly as pertains to which carousel your luggage comes off of).

In passing - ever wonder why/how your luggage can get completely destroyed just going through airports on conveyor belts?  Well I can tell you, I witnessed several bags getting EATEN by the conveyor belt - so I'm going to go with that for cause of luggage death.

Customs and immigration is a bizarre affair whereby you fill out several ridiculously complicated forms (while standing up in line with a thousand disorganised things in your hands and a very impatient immigration staring you down with 'hurry up dammit' eyes) - which, once you stumble through it, finally, is not even looked at before being rubber stamped and sent on your way.  At which point you meet 'the gauntlet'.

Immediately after exiting customs you go through a gate at which THOUSANDS of taxi drivers are waiting for you to whisk you away - as you desperately seek a man among the faces holding a sign with your name on it.  We found our driver eventually, and he was lovely and led us a very nice and very new pickup truck.  This surprised me.  You always hear about the level of poverty and the widespread destruction here in Port-au-Prince, especially after the earthquake - but I have to say, those who live well, live VERY well.

After climbing into the truck, luggage stowed, we experienced our first taste of Haitian driving.  It's hard to describe but it makes every other place you've ever driven look like the cars are floating on clouds and tied to the road into their proper lanes.  I've been told that there ARE driving rules here - I have yet to see them.  But somehow, our drivers defy death and all odds, and somehow, without even so much as heaving a sigh of discontent successfully avoided piles of rubble, thousands of pedestrians, hundreds of taxis, mopeds, chickens, goats, pot hole literally large enough to eat your car whole, and frequent forays into oncoming traffic to get around some of these obstacles.  What should be a truly terrifying an harrowing experience becomes awe inspiring through the sheer skill and calm with which they routinely weave through it all unscathed.  Amazing.

A very colourful taxi among the general chaos of a typical PAP street. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

Several street-side 'markets' and shops along the main roads of PAP. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

Piles of rubble still cover many of the sidewalks and in the middle of many of the streets. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

One of the most fascinating things I've found about being here (besides the fact that the Haitian people are some of the strongest, most resilient and NICEST people you will ever meet), is that our perception of them is wrong in so many ways.  When we look at pictures of PAP after the earthquake, all we can see is the destruction, the lack of progress.  We see a people who are suffering and living in tent villages because they've lost their homes.

The ruins of the Palais Nationale - former seat of the Haitian government. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

One of the many tent villages which, a year and a half later, are still home for most of the population of PAP. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi) 

It's true.  The destruction is widespread and progress is slow.  The point is, there IS progress.  Everywhere you look,  people work every single day to take back their city.  University students volunteer their time to clean rubble from the streets.  Children help the elderly to carry the heavy water jugs so that their families can drink uncontaminated water.  Scafolding hugs hundreds of buildings and rubble walls.  Everywhere you look, it isn't about the destruction and loss - it's about living and rebuilding.  I look at it now and I see how far they've come - how much progress they made in very difficult circumstances with few resources - I don't look at how much they have left to do.  That's not what it's really about.

A sign announcing last year's 150th celebration of the National Archives of Haiti, celebrating their continued service to their country on August 20th (my b-day, in passing :p) (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

Work to rehouse the archives at the Archives Nationale - enormous progress has been made and soon the archives will be in better form than they were BEFORE the earthquake. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

People working and studying at the Bibliotheque Nationale, which survived the earthquake entirely undamaged. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

One of many examples of the rebuilding process. (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi)

Essentially I've learned that the Haitian people neither want nor deserve our pity - they do, on the other hand deserve our respect.  I've seen these people work harder than anyone I've ever seen and be proud of it and their culture while they do.  It is truly inspiring.

I will likely post again in the next couple of days regarding my conservation work (since this blog entry has long since gone out of control!).  Have I mentioned that our hotel is kinda amazing (another VERY pleasant surprise!).  The food is good, there's excellent internet (Wi-fi!) and air conditioning in our room, AND there's a pool!  Also - there's a beautiful green leafy courtyard with a huge leafy tree that's all lit up in all kinds of colours at night - it's my favourite place to sit in the evening as I eat my dinner.  I will likely write my next post from there.

Saori and I eating dinner at the hotel restaurant on our second night.  It was delish! (photo courtesy of Saori Kawasumi...and our waiter, Extra...seriously, that's what his nametag said).

Next time: Tales from a Shipping Container (aka. The Hot and the Humid).

Cultural Recovery and Rescue - My Upcoming Trip to Haiti

This is my last month or so of Conservation School. In just a little over a month's time, I will pack my bags and leave Los Angeles, all the while wondering how the hell the last two years went by so fast! What this means of course is that it's internship time!

This summer, I've been offered an unusual opportunity, one which I am very much looking forward to, though I know that it's likely to be one of the most difficult projects I have and will ever work on. Under the auspices of the Smithsonian, AIC and ICCROM, I will be joining a team of conservators in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti; for the month of July, I will working to rescue a number of objects including stone sculpture, iron sheet metal sculpture and other ethnographic materials under the supervision of Chief Conservator, Stephanie Hornbeck.

The Cultural Recovery Centre, Route de Bourdon, Port-Au-Prince. Image from http://haiti.si.edu

The importance of this project, with respect to the preservation of endangered artefacts, cannot be understated. Between the damage caused by the January 2010 earthquake and the torrential rains and hurricanes of the island's wet season, thousands of irreplaceable Haitian paintings, sculptures, archives and other items of cultural history are in danger of being lost forever.

The collapsed 'Centre d'Art', Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (image from http://haiti.si.edu)

When I first told my mother that I was applying for this internship, she was, unsurprisingly, apprehensive. As a country, Haiti's infrastructure is fragile at best, and as a city, Port-Au-Prince has hardly even begun to heal. The loss of life, both past and present, is staggering. Malaria, Dengue Fever, and more recently, cholera, plague a country's people who struggle just to live from one day to the next.

Despite all of this, as well as her own worries for my health and my safety, nobody has been more supportive of my desire to see this project through than my mother. Surprising me again has been the words of support and congratulations from my friends, both new and old, most of whom do not work in my field. For the most part, I'm pretty sure that they can still barely wrap their heads around what it is that I've chosen to do with the rest of my life. In spite of this, they understand why I want to do this, and more importantly, they understand why it's important.

The Nader Museum collapsed. Paintings and other art are visible in the rubble. Images from http://haiti.si.edu

Which is why I was so shocked by the negative reception I've received from certain colleagues in my field. Needless to say, having a fellow conservator say to me, "It's not like you're really making a difference. People are dying -- who cares about a bunch of art?" shocked me -- it really did.

Since then, I've found myself struggling with the idea - does it really make a difference? In the greater scheme of things, will the Haitian people look at my pathetic efforts to save a bunch of rusty metal sheets and think, "the least she could have done was bring some more aspirin"?

Up until now, I've said to myself and to my naysayers - I am neither a doctor, nor am I rich; these are the skills that I do have and this is what I can do to help.

Sometimes these words silence the arguments and bolster my feelings that what I'm doing is the right thing. Sometimes, they just sound hollow.

Until three days ago.

Three days ago, I began receiving more emails with more details so as to plan my trip. In those emails, there was a deployment manual put together by AIC for conservators working on the Cultural Recovery Project. On the very first page, they quote AIC Member Rosa Lowinger, a conservator who worked on the murals of the Cathédrale Sainte Trinité:

"As we crawled around the site, measuring and testing, I could not help but wonder if it is right to be spending money and energy on murals in light of other pressing demands. Every drive I took through Port-Au-Prince was a study in human need and the urgency of action: collapsed houses, tent cities, open trench latrines, roads blocked by piles of debris, hospitals and schools that list precariously, shored by makeshift scaffolding. This, along with infinite unseen calamities (like the exorbitant prices of everything, from rice to fuel) made our job of rescuing artwork seem like a luxury. It was an issue that nagged at me during my entire stay in the country.

"So one afternoon, in the rubble-strewn courtyard of Ste. Trinité, I asked architect Magdalena Carmelita Douby, the project's registrar, about local attitudes towards our somewhat unusual rescue effort. Her answer came without hesitation: 'We have lost everything except our culture,' she said calmly, 'we have to protect what is left.'"

Cement holding together the brick and rock wall is unstable, endangering the murals attached to them. Image from http://haiti.si.edu

After reading this, I realised that it really didn't matter what my colleagues in the field believed. If the people of Port-Au-Prince were grateful for our contribution to the preservation and rescue of their cultural heritage, then I had done what I set out to do.

I would be making a difference.

Though I know that the internet will, at best, be dicey -- it is my hope to continue blogging throughout my time there.

The 5 Stages of Conservation Grief

Sometimes in conservation, particularly during a reconstruction - you reach a point when you have to decide whether you're causing more harm than you're preventing.
I have reached that point.

For my Winter Quarter independent project, I chose to reconstruct a contemporary Laguna ceramic, by Laguna potter Gladys Paquin. The ceramic had been purchased by a private collector, broken by their housekeeper, and then donated to our study collection for a student to work with one day. Being the nutty ceramics-lover that I am, I couldn't turn down the chance to put this thing back together again - it was literally calling my name.

Over the past 8 weeks, I have learned a number of things, amongst which, that not all ceramics are created equal. In fact, the Minoan and Mycenaean ceramics that I had worked with up until now had been downright easy to work it in comparison to the struggle that I faced with this piece.

It was finally during week 7, in consultation with my supervisor on this project, that we came to the unavoidable conclusion that the ceramic could not be put back together again - at least not by me in the time left in the quarter. It was at this point that I realised that this project had followed pretty accurately the five typical stages of grief:

1. Denial: "Yes, I can absolutely reconstruct this piece! It looks pretty straightforward. It'll be done within two weeks!"

Ceramic piece laid out for photography and after dry assembly

2. Anger/Frustration: "Why the hell won't these joins align?? This is ridiculous! How am I supposed to reconstruct something if I can't use tape, clamps or even touch the surface?!"

Ceramic after disassembly # 2

3. Bargaining/Desperation: "Please line up! Maybe if I just heat this join, it'll line up. I'll give up all my other projects and focus only on this one if I can find a way to get these joins to line up."

Application of indirect pressure using 3M Coban tape to align the fragments. A layer of 3mm Mylar was used in between the Coban and the ceramic to prevent loss of the powdery brown pigment.

4: Depression: "My god. What have I done. This is a disaster. I am the worst. conservator. ever. What's the point? I'm not good enough to do this. I'm a horrible person."


5: Acceptance: "The piece will be just as stable in fragments as it will be assembled. What I've learned from this project will be helpful to a future student who may wish to undertake the reconstruction."

Let's be honest - I'm still coming to terms with Step 5 - but the piece IS coming down and WILL go back into storage in pieces whether I like it or not.

I can say, however, that this project taught me a lot, even if there isn't that tangible reconstructed ceramic to show for it. As I said - not all ceramics are created equal. Some of the challenges that I faced with this ceramic included:

-powdery pigment that came off easily through casual contact
-a very sensitive surface that could not have even low-tack tape applied
-a ceramic body that was extremely prone to flaking and spalling if pressure of any type was applied, therefore the use of clamps for realignment was impossible.
-a series of fine cracks (some of which were practically invisible) from the initial impact that tended to spring when pressure was applied
-other pigments that were soluble in water and some in ethanol.
-complex breaks that necessitated partial reconstructions - which led to misalignments that could not be realigned through heating or solvent application because of the sensitivity of the ceramic to pressure.

and finally -> even though I did manage to get the entire ceramic reconstructed - there were at least three areas that were so severely stepped that they were not stable. After nearly an hour of discussion with my supervisor to think of ways to reduce or mitigate these problems, we both came to the conclusion that taking the piece down in its entirety in a solvent chamber was the only ethical solution. The solvent chamber would allow for reversal while minimizing contact with the ceramic. As we used Paraloid B-72 for the reconstruction - reversibility should (hopefully) be relatively straight forward (and so we return to Stage 1!)).

In many respects, I considered not writing a blog post for this piece. One of those reasons, of course, is because this entire project could really be classified as a failure in nearly every respect.

My thoughts are, however, that somebody else can learn from the lessons and mistakes I made during this project. Too many conservators are afraid to publish about the things that went wrong - choosing only to talk about the things that went well. It's really hard to put yourself out there for criticism by showing the world your mistakes - and on some level, I might very well regret posting this one day when someone decides to judge my abilities as a conservator on this one project and how it didn't turn out.

I really hope that this doesn't end up being the case.

A very merry LA Christmas

So it's been ages since I've updated this thing. Suffice it to say that things have been a little crazy since my return to LA.

But - we can talk about those later - since I should probably stick with the actual title of this post...whoda thunk?!?

So I spent my first Christmas without snow since I was in Australia when I was 17. I guess LA deciced to try give me a white Christmas - sadly, while it could generate the precipitation (12 inches of rain's worth!), it could not quite combine it with the proper temperatures - so instead, we had to learn to swim.

My parents decided to come visit for Christmas, since it was too expensive for me to come home (and lets face it, I spent FAR too much time in the lab on projects that really should have been done by the end of quarter...you can guess how those went...).
Let's just say they won't be telling me to suck it up anymore when I complain about the weather - turns out we've all discovered that while it may, in fact, be colder and snowy-er back home - 8 days of rain in LA still sucks because it's not supposed to happen.

With all that said - my Christmas in LA was actually quite nice. We hit up every touristy spot one could think of: Venice Beach, Santa Monica pier and promenade, Hollywood, Griffith Observatory, Universal Studios AND we still fit in a trip up to San Fransisco.

Sadly, this post won't have any pictures - but I'll try and get some up in the next one. Unfortunately I'm writing this sad excuse for an update on the computer that doesn't remember anything, rather than the one that does but occasionally refuses to turn on - so all recent photos are just out of reach enough that my lazy ass won't get up to get them.

In addition to the wild Christmas festivities with the folks, school has kept me busy. Seems I set a precedent at Te Papa and will now work on all manner of dead animals in my future. This quarter I had the opportunity to conserve a Ptolemaic period votive coffing (read: small coffin) that had a mummified shrew in it. We know it was a shrew b/c we x-rayed that sucker - tres cool, in passing.

Also, still working on the Lac Dye project - aka. the project that is as difficult to get rid of as the shellac itself! Looking into enzymes - so if anyone out there knows anything at all about hydrolases, I would be deeply indebted to you!

I think that's enough for now! More to come (I'd say soon, but we all know that's a lie).