Emeralda Works

For me - Emeralda works for me.

Janet started a blog for Emeralda. http://makingemeralda.blogspot.com/

When she invited me to make a companion to her original diary, Making Emeralda, I began with the name. "Emeralda" blends Seattle's market name, Emerald City, also the city in Oz and the name I submitted to a contest in 1993 on "Name the Region."

Putting the "a" to "emerald" (green berylite) was like fantasia, or Georgia, or America. I lost the contest ("Cascadia" was the winner) but I won the name, Emeralda. That old '93 contest was about an economic block for Washington State, Oregon, and British Columbia for mutual benefits. The economic strategy needed a name, and so did I.

I had been looking for a name for my imaginary place, my dream haven for teaching, research, practice and services I built around my native art form - printmaking. Printmaking is ancestor to all the hi-tech media arts and multimedia blends, hybrids, cousins, mixtures, etc.

As for economic strategy, my interest in economics goes back to my college days when I was an art professor. My first office was in the UW School of Business, and that's when I first learned about micro-economics. An artist's haven, my imaginary place, has a kind of micro-economy dating back to my years as a printmaking teacher - the year 1966.