One of the assignments for my conservation class this past quarter was a curatorial case study presentation on an object. I selected an Alfred Shaheen dress from my collection of 1940s-1950s Hawaiian garments. Getting to work on a project using subject matter so near and dear to my heart was a pretty fantastic experience (and I got an A+ on my presentation!). But even more fantastical was getting to work with Alfred Shaheen’s daughter, Camille, who kindly answered my inquiry for background information on the fabric design. The original name of the fabric has been lost over the years, but she dubbed the print Melia, which means “plumeria lei” in Hawaiian. She gave me access to a treasure trove of unpublished archival photos, and introduced me via email to Linda Arthur, a textile curator and author of The Art of the Aloha Shirt. I also got the inside scoop on a very exciting, not-yet-announced project on which they’re collaborating.

Learning more about the craftsmanship and the sheer labor of love that went into designing these fabrics and garments really reaffirmed my appreciation for the handful of Shaheens in my own collection—these dresses are truly works of art. Turns out Mr. Shaheen didn’t just revolutionize the Hawaiian garment industry—he was also a stickler for cultural authenticity, and wanted Shaheen garments to be a celebration of Hawaii’s diversity. For more on Alfred Shaheen, visit the official web site or this photo tribute from TIME magazine.

Slide from my Shaheen dress presentation. Photo courtesy of Camille Shaheen-Tunberg.

To celebrate the first day of my nine-week sabbatical, we decided to brave the 110-degree Central California heat and make a spontaneous trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. Although Disneyland is a for-profit commercial enterprise, and not a museum, I wish it were operated more like a national historic site and less like the constantly-evolving entertainment center that Walt had envisioned when Disneyland opened in 1955.

I was devastated to learn that Mary Blair’s it’s a small world (originally created for the 1964 New York World’s Fair in partnership with UNICEF) was recently renovated. Disney Imagineering saw fit to add 30 new Disney characters, including Donald Duck, Lilo and Stitch, Aladdin, and more, to appeal to contemporary tourists’ short attention spans. And, evidently, to sell more crap—the it’s a small world gift shop is now packed with merchandise related to the newly-inserted Disney characters instead of small world-specific souvenirs.

WDI also (evidently, without irony) removed the ride’s iconic rainforest to make room for a new “Spirit of America” scene. Besides being incongruous with Blair’s original vision of promoting international unity to an American audience at the World’s Fair, the new scene is just plain cheap-looking and poorly executed, and sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of Blair’s masterpiece of design and color.

Sadly, it’s a small world is now a worst-case scenario of what happens when corporations are given stewardship of America’s cultural treasures.  Learn more about why the renovation was simply not the right thing to do, or read an angry letter from Mary Blair’s family.

it's a small world: a scene from Mary Blair's 1964 masterpiece

small world atrocity aside, Disneyland was awesome. I went on 15 different rides, I had ice cream, I made friends with a cow and a goat, I rode Space Mountain until I thought I was going to puke, I took a picture of a squirrel gargoyle, and I ate at the Blue Bayou restaurant, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Two thumbs up.

“The Art of Amuseument” at Playland-not-at-the-Beach opens this Friday! Both of my pieces included in this show explore our relationship with nature and the ways in which we attempt to exert control over our environment.

The Ballad of Treebear, Part One addresses the moral implications of our use of animals for entertainment, from American circuses to violent spectacles in modern-day Asia which hearken back to the Middle Ages. What does such treatment of other sentient beings say about us as a species and (as the ones with the technology, the recorded history to learn from the past, and the language to collaborate in planning the future) as the stewards of our planet and its inhabitants? How often do we choose to consider the lives which animals—whether used for entertainment, research or food—lead in captivity? At home in the forest, Treebear rides his bicycle for the sheer joy of it (and maybe a little bit to show off to his friends, too).

Day of the Lepus was created after I spent days watching the TV helplessly as New Orleans, a city I love, struggled to survive the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina served as an unwelcome reminder of our precarious truce with Mother Nature, and of my own hubris one year earlier as I spent Hurricane Ivan on a rooftop above the deserted streets of the French Quarter, laughing in delight at the quickening warm breeze and orange sky and blissfully unaware of exactly what those levees did, anyway. This diorama, which stars a pair of salt and pepper shakers from the 1950s, was inspired by Night of the Lepus, the classic 1972 B-movie parable about the consequences of using technology to tamper with nature.

We’re on a weeklong furlough at my company, and as signs of the recession seem to drop from the sky like anvils all around me, I’ve tried to spend my time off productively. It’s hard to believe the week is already coming to a close.

So far, the highlights include:

• cataloging and creating condition reports for WWII uniforms at the Hayward Area Historical Society, including a Marine Reserves uniform owned by a Vivian Rose Gillsdorp. (It’s amazing how much of a story these garments hold just by themselves. For example, at one point Miss Gillsdorp fell down and ripped a big hole in the knee of her uniform slacks, which she carefully patched and repaired. And evidently she rarely wore her cute matching a-line skirt…it was in immaculate condition compared to her slacks and jacket.)
• seeing the ever-lovely Tippy Canoe perform at Speisekammer.
• getting a preview of my summer internship at the Walt Disney Family Museum, and helping to ensure that artifacts bound for the galleries were in their proper locations. I got to handle Walt Disney’s Congressional Medal of Honor plaque, and see an amazing Mary Blair (one of my all time favorite artists) mural up close and personal.
• attending my collections preservation class and beginning the research for my case study presentation, which will cover the historical significance and conservation issues associated with a vintage Alfred Shaheen dress!
• going on a picnic and bike ride amidst the giant California redwoods at the breathtaking Samuel P. Taylor State Park.
• stitching, stitching, stitching frantically to complete my new embroidery piece, “The Ballad of Treebear Part One,” for Playland’s Art of Amuseument show.

And today, I’m off to (finally!) see new California Academy of Sciences, hopefully avoiding the massive weekend crowds. I can’t wait…it was always my favorite childhood field trip destination. I’m hoping the hall of dioramas is still recognizable.

Hooray for museums, and state parks!

Although my day-to-day immersion in the digital world has made me a bit jaded, three things in the past week have gotten me re-inspired about the potential of the web:

1) On Friday I attended two free sessions at Web 2.0 in San Francisco. The first was an overview of the work being done by Sunlight Labs and the Sunlight Foundation to improve government transparency and accountability by digitizing reams and reams of data to make it accessible to citizens. Their goal is to improve the conduct of Congress and the public’s faith in government. They presented some interesting data from a study that demonstrated that legislators who are more digitally transparent to their constituents (Twitter accounts, RSS feeds, etc.) are far less likely to have sponsored large earmarks. Although it’s unlikely that the average citizen will be accessing the data that Sunlight is parsing, watchdog groups and the media will certainly be surfacing some of this information to the public in a form they can readily understand. It’s not hard to see how this transparency could improve accountability and ethics in Washington. The other session featured Blue State Digital, the web design, development, and strategy firm behind the Obama campaign site. They gave a very inspiring presentation about using the Internets to engage and organize people and drive action. The sheer numbers are staggering (2 billion emails sent! 200,000 offline events organized by online participants! 6 million online donations of $100 or less! 14 million viewing hours of YouTube video!) and really show the potential of using the web to make things happen in the real world.

2) My company just launched a brand new Corporate Social Responsibility site, for which I was the producer. A lot of people worked very hard on this project, and I’m quite proud of it. I think it does a nice job of showcasing some of the really cool stuff that Adobe does for the community that no one really knows about, like the Adobe Youth Voices program, and the work they’re doing to make the products and the company itself more environmentally sustainable. The idea is that companies should identify the societal problems that they’re best equipped to solve, and then use their resources and expertise to make a difference. This site was a refreshing change from the product launches I usually work on, and it was a fun project to be involved with.

3) After spending the entire past weekend tinkering with this site, I rediscovered the fact that I really enjoy writing code. I spend all day making web pages happen, so it’s usually the last thing I want to do in my free time (as evidenced by the fact that the last site I built for myself was most recently updated in 2001). This is the first time I’ve built a WordPress site, and I don’t know a thing about PHP, so I had to rely on a premade WordPress theme to get the site up and running. I like to make things look pretty, so templates usually make me very sad. Most of the hundreds of WordPress themes I looked through made me even more sad—at best, they were dreadfully boring and didn’t suit my needs. Somehow, I found Scribble Scratch, who makes themes that are actually quite lovely. I took her Winter Delight theme and tinkered with it a bit, and voila! Thank you Scribble Scratch!

Yay Internets!

I’ll be participating in “The Art of Amusement,” a circus- and sideshow-themed group show at Playland-not-at-the-Beach in El Cerrito, California. Not only is this my first art show in about a decade and a half, but I also worked on some of the dioramas at Playland (building tiny trees and such) so I’m very excited about this show. This is a great opportunity to support a local nonprofit (and one of the newest museums in the Bay Area). Plus Playland is home to dozens of vintage pinball machines (all free with admission) so it should be a fun evening.

The show opens on Friday, April 24. Please see the Playland-not-at-the-Beach web site for more information. Hope to see you there!