Tablet drawing

I recently got a tablet (the mobile kind.) It has a pretty fun drawing program, and a built- in stylus. I've been using it a lot in my travels, sketching ideas for FLOWERCLOUDS. It is much neater and easier than carrying around watercolor paint boxes (though I'll probably still do that, too.)

Maker Faire Kansas City

FLOWERCLOUDS in Kansas City June 29-30, 2013 (definitely!)

Women on Money

The top two are new drawings-- ballpoint pen on dollars.

Corpus Callosum

I made a poster for the show tomorrow at 186 Carpenter Street in Providence. Corpus Callosum is on tour all the way from San Francisco, and Speaker For The Dead is joining them for some New England dates. Corpus Callosum has an amazing glass harmonium of tuned wine glasses (okay, not a true harmonium but SUPER INSPIRING nonetheless) , accordion, mandolin, guitars, percussion, voices, bells, and found objects. It should start by 8:30 and be over by 10:00, and I guarantee it will be a lovely time!

Corpus Callosum - Lullaby #2 from Dax Tran-Caffee on Vimeo.

Laser- cut diner placemat doodles as prototypes for AS220's 
soon- to- arrive Shopbot!

2 doodles

I just returned from a month in California visiting family, friends, 
digital fabrication spaces, and exhibiting at the Maker Faire. 
Sketchbooks are convenient to work with when traveling. The 
stationary store in the Kinokuniya Mall always yields new drawing 
tools and I like using ballpoint pens in soft, brushy ways. That red 
text above actually says, "Good people disobey bad laws."

Back in Providence, I'm playing around in the shared studio 
downtown. New friend Paul Brazio gave us each storyboarding 
moleskines. I made this image with pencil shavings and tape.

Olivia Horvath and Katrina Clark  invited folks to draw on the walls during last week's Coffee Club as part of their installation in the gallery at 186 Carpenter Street (here in Providence.)

I drew with some super new markers from Texas. That sign was already there.

Hey, Jess.

More Women on Money

Ballpoint pen, I've been at it again.

Also, these are from a little while ago.

You can

Ballpoint pen face studies. I have spent thousands of hours of my life drawing. You could, too. Maybe you already have.

Everyone can make things.

If you can talk, you can sing. If you can write, you can draw. Actually, you don't even need to be able to write to draw, and some people can sing but not talk! Making is certainly not about "talent"--

I don't believe in it.

If you can consistently do something well and with skill, it will be because you've practiced. It is possible to have a natural aptitude for something, but I think claiming talent is to rest on one's laurels and one who complements "talent" often indirectly implies, "I couldn't do that."

I believe that to be untrue.

Women on Money, pt.II

I want to see women on money. This is ballpoint pen on dollar bills. I only seem to do this when I'm sitting at the door of shows at a particular warehouse in Olneyville. It's probably because they have a bright lamp by the door, and it's not my money.

I drew some more that I'll post later, and did you see these?

(Click on the image to magnify.)

Middle- aughts sketchbook scans

I like re-purposing printed books as sketch books.

Writing down what you eat & what you spend is a simple and simultaneously detailed way to record everyday life, especially when traveling! Where did I get venison jerky in November of 2005? I can remember what it tastes like, but not where it came from! (Do you know where I got it?)

Opaque watercolors are nice for little detailed illustrations. This is a color xerox of something I painted because I gave the original to my friend Jake, who one year made a stuffed animal every day and ended up in Reader's Digest.

I drew this with a brush pen on a plane ride to Japan. The top spread says, "This morning I watched the sun rise pink above snowing clouds." The bottom says "five/ eleven hours into thirteen to Tokyo!"

I love cut & paste collaging. I especially enjoy carefully cutting shapes out with scissors. Takashimaya gave away glorious posters advertising New Year's food in 2005- 2006.

Sometimes I like a whole magazine page enough to not cut it up.

I don't really read much Japanese, but I love practicing writing it.

Old sketchbook scans

These come from Vol. III of The Products, begun in 1997.

I like sewing through paper and there's a little of that here.

My beautiful friend, Paula Oliva Mcbeth, and I would sometimes take crazy road trips for breakfast after staying up all night, back when we used to work in Baltimore as security guards. I got some dirty looks in Amish country because my hair was pink.

Old drawings

I contributed this page to a zine that Merrydef Stern put together in 2004/5 called "The Dragomen."

This is the back cover of a zine I made about 10 years ago, "I Love Everybody #2."

Some ballpoint pen sketch

a weird comic and some doodles I made in the late nineties

Pastels on Concrete

The Providence Community Library sponsored a square in the Rotary Club's Annual Street Painting Festival in downtown Providence. I was asked to help find an artist who might do a mural for PCL. I decided it would be easier to do it myself than to talk someone else into doing it, plus I love PCL. The murals would be judged in a contest with cash prizes. My intention was to make something simple, just to accomplish it, and then get back to my own work.

When I arrived in the morning, I had no clear idea of what I wanted make. I've never done a sidewalk painting before. I decided on sunset clouds and the Atlantic Mills towers, (those icons of Olneyville!) I had no visual reference materials, so I worked from my imagination and I made it up as I went along. My beginning was a little tentative, but the longer I worked, the more I wanted to do this street painting to the best of my abilities.

I was there from 11 AM until 6 PM (but not working the entire time.) Parts of my fingerprints are now gone, abraded from rubbing the concrete while blending colors. I stayed until the very end because I thought I might possibly win something, but was disappointed when I didn't win anything (especially because so many prizes were given out.) My expectations had been elevated both by peoples' positive responses, and by how I perceived my work in relation to the other entries that I witnessed. I guess it just didn't feel fair to do a whole day's work and get nothing material from it-- except the rest of the box of used pastels-- particularly because sometimes I feel like I don't get monetarily compensated for most of the work that I do. I don't have to make a lot of money, but I do have to treat myself fairly. I'm glad that the Rotary Club is raising money for good causes, but they still could have done that without me. Right now I can't afford to be doing work for free, but I became engrossed in the street painting, and I allowed myself to because I thought I could be a contender. I don't even know if I would have had to give all the money to PCL because they paid the $25 entry fee for the square, but I'd have been proud to have to figure that out. Later I learned that there was only one judge for the adult category!

Hire me! Really creative problem solving and valuable advice-- only select jobs that are appropriate to my specific range of abilities and fit in my schedule, one dollar per minute or fifty dollars per hour. That's hella cheap because I can do a lot of different types of skilled work!

Find contact info and partial CV at Jenine.net. Or buy something from Jenine.etsy.com.

Thank you for caring.

Women on Money

Hanging out at the door at a show

Sketchbooks!

I used to use found books as sketchbooks. The cover of the book on the left is still perfectly legible, but the red book on the right was found in the trash, unused, and filled with graph paper instead of lined paper! The small book on top of it was a comic digest printed in Korean, specifically, "Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl!"


The larger book was the manual for lunchroom management. I took advantage of the few blank pages that introduced chapters while on an airplane ride to Japan. The red drawing is with a brush pen, the kind that has a nylon bristle brush instead of a felt tip and the handle is a squeezable inkwell. The text at the top reads, "This morning I watched the sun rise pink above snowing clouds."
The smaller journal is painted with Pelikan watercolors, and some parts of the original comic are revealed through the paint.


These are some books I made of copy paper and duct tape. I cut the paper into round pages by tracing a paint can with a utility knife. This size book fits well in the hand or pocket.
The funniest piece of text above reads, "The train announcements sound like robot brothers, over-enthusiastic to complete each other's sentences."


This is a book I bound by hand in 1996 or 1997. This one also has a duct tape cover. The physical gesture of sewing the signatures (those are the sections of pages) was so grand that: the week that I made it, I thought I was still sewing it while I was sleeping.
I've been meaning to work in it for a long time, but I suppose I never got around to it because I was intimidated by the size of it. Most of the things I make tend to be very small and detailed. The idea of covering every inch of 52 20x30" pages with my detailed drawings made it easy to neglect (at the time.) Now I intend to screenprint a copy of everything I make in there- wallpaper and fabric prints, posters, etc.
I also plan to make bigger drawings, especially portraits. I'm glad I made that book when the paper was a lot cheaper.


These are ballpoint pen drawings from some of my round books.


I lost the pen that I used to draw the above pictures a while ago, but I think I just found the very kind for sale online. I hope it turns out to be the same type of pen-- I'd love to finish these drawing and do a lot more!