Woodworking

I wanted to share some photos of a project that my husband John and I just finished. We needed a larger bookcase and decided to build one. This was really fun–John art form is music, and mine is visual arts, so we don’t often get to work on creative projects together. And even though a bookcase isn’t necessarily a work of art, it was really fun for us both to learn a bit about woodworking and craftmanship. We were lucky enough to get some direction from John’s dad, who’s built several pieces of furniture for us, and also got some tips from our friend Morgan Ward, who’s got some great building experience.

We also used milk paint for the first time. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s probably the oldest paint formula, found in ancient cave paintings, and used notably by the Shakers among others here in the U.S. It’s made of completely non-toxic ingredients, in fact, you could eat it if you chose to…We selected a grey/blue for the outside and a burnt orange on the inside. This is a combination that John’s dad told us he had seen in colonial Williamsburg. You can order it online here http://milkpaint.com/prod.html

I approach almost everything from a perspective of “I think I could make that,” which can be a bit frustrating because I am a beginner at a lot of things, and an expert at only a few. Thus my unfinished knitting projects, clothes that are half taken apart for alterations I don’t really understand, and questionable kombucha. Somehow I proceed undeterred,  so hopefully this will be the beginning of a lifetime of woodworking. John and I have been working to fix up his grandmother’s 100 year old farmhouse in Georgia, so we’ll need those skills for sure!

As a sidenote, I’ve also included a picture of a lovely sculptural piece I read about online–made from the remaining wood from a burnt down house in detroit. http://www.cathlynnewell.com/#Salvaged-Landscape

Interesting encounters

I recently attended a performance/lecture by Christine Fentz, an artist and performer from Denmark. She came to the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center to share her “In the Field” performance. I’ll start by saying I’m often skeptical of performance art, and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was so pleasantly surprised by the whole experience, and what Christine offered were some very thoughtful ideas about time and place, and how those can be interpreted very differently by people from different cultures, and a very “real” interaction with a group of strangers. What I mean by this is that she made an effort to make us feel as though we were guests in her home, serving us tea throughout the performance, asking us to share parts of our experiences of time and special places, like home.

I’ve recently been somewhat stressed about my upcoming move–back to Georgia–and have been thinking a lot about my attachments to my home in DC. That may be why this exercise was so personally meaningful. Christine discussed how nomadic people in Siberia who she has spent some time with think of home. She talked about how they have a very particular order to how they pack up their things when the move to a new place, and a very particular way of unpacking. Then she asked us all to close our eyes and think of the things in our home that really matter. Then we imagine how we will pack for our journey, whether we will carry our things on our back, whether we will use a cart. It didn’t necessarily relieve my stress, but it did make me think about my journey with less trepidation.

Finally, after several other interesting exercises, we all lay on the floor on our backs and sort of meditated to sounds of birds, insects and things, and when we were instructed to open our eyes again we found a bowl of soup next to us, and passed around a basket of bread. I find these sort of moments quite lovely, and a bit disarming. I’ve shared a few photos from her website here to give you an idea of what it was like.

http://www.secrethotel.dk/produktioner/in-the-field?lang=en

knit/crochet sculpture

Several friends have shared photos of Japanese artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam’s knit and crochet sculpture, and I find it quite inspirational. I also happened upon Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto today while reading through a designboom newsletter–both artists create large scale, interactive sculptures using industrial yarn/rope that’s been hand knitted into a lovely web. The vimeo video of Neto’s installation is quite amazing–he had quite a large team installing his hanging labyrinth and I couldn’t help but wonder how such a project is funded. For more info about Toshiko Horiuchi-MacAdam check out this blog

http://www.crochetconcupiscence.com/2012/01/playground-crochet-artist-toshiko-horiuchi-macadam/

Cast Paper and Lithography

I recently took my first lithography class with Gretchen Schermerhorn at Pyramid Atlantic, working with aluminum plates. I have wanted to give litho a try for a long time because it’s the only printmaking technique that can seamlessly transfer the line quality of a drawing to print. It was a great intro class, and my friend Lindsay McCulloch and I have been setting up printing dates ever since so that we can practice (we have to have a glass of wine to lighten up while we work because the process is so intense!). We’ve done two prints so far, have been learning a lot, and if there was ever a time to have  a studio partner this is it!

Luckily, these prints I’ve been working on fit nicely into the theme of a show I’ve been invited to participate in called Art @ Work.  The theme is unemployment, and how it can lead to depression, isolation, and breaking families apart. Conversely,  art can play a powerful role in our communities and Albus Cavus , the arts organization that partnered with The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery to put on the show, uses public art to uplift and strengthen communities.

The prints are inspired by a stereogram I found at my husband’s granny’s house a few years ago–the photo was of soldiers baking bread in a field kitchen, during WWI I think. The image was very stricking because of the huge stacks of bread they were amassing. This led me to many other bread images, including photos of bread lines from WWII. Bread is a powerful image representing hunger and nourishment, and even though we don’t see the large piles of bread in them today, bread lines are still a necessity for many people who struggle to make enough to feed their families.

I’m very interested in finding alternative ways to display works on paper, and eventually settled on the idea of creating cast paper loaves of bread, and mounting the prints inside. The idea came to me while browsing Elisabeth Omdahl’s blog, which I discovered in a random google search a while back, and go to often for inspiration. How strange to find a kindred spirit in another part of the world–for example, she posted recently about her cat “little prince” dying. My childhood cat was named little prince!! And we have a very similar aesthetic. Anyhow, check out this lovely paper egg she made http://omdahlart.blogspot.com/2011/07/installation-tests.html . My camera started acting up recently, so I haven’t been able to get a great picture of the finished piece. These will have to do for now.

I had to work fast to get the pieces ready in time for the show, but I’m so glad to have had that push. And really glad to have had help from Gretchen and Ripley making paper, and a tip from my friend Morgan Ward about where to find a nice piece of weathered wood! It was really fun to experiement with these new techniques!

Make and Take

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We hosted one heck of a party at Pyramid Atlantic on Saturday (Dec. 3)–A holiday cocktail party and DIY holiday event that opened up our studios and gave folks a chance to print their own cards and wrapping paper, make paper ornaments and garland, and enjoy some delicious cocktails. We had a lot of folks come by, and hopefully we’ll see some of you all again! Here’s a few photos that a friend sent me of the view from outside (this is of my block printing on fabric for furoshiki wrapping station), and a photo of a test print of by rabbit block.

http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/

Elementals

Pretty birds. I am always attracted to bird imagery, and have even considered a bird tattoo for some time (although Portlandia has made me think twice)   so when my friends Inga and Andy Hamilton asked me to participate in an arts experiment and traveling exhibit called “Elementals Birds” there was no question. Elementals is an experimental show conceived by Inga, aka Rockpool Candy, and Andy, aka MyTarPit, to see if artists, printmakers and craftspeople can physically embody feelings of peace, harmony and goodwill in their artwork and tangibly affect the environment in which it’s shown. They’ve invited artists from all over the world to participate, and have arranged for the “flock” to migrate from the Richard F. Brush Gallery in Canton, NY to the R-Space Gallery in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, UK, to the Wharepuke Print Studio in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

My elemental, titled “Screech owl elemental” was pulled from an old drawing in a sketch book, along with lots of other photos, clippings and drawings of birds. I’m sure the task of embodying peace and tangibly effecting the environment was interpreted in many different ways by the many talented artists who took up the challenge. I sought to make something that could give something to it’s viewers–which brought me to the question, what would I want? With birds as our jumping off point, I immediately thought of animal totems, which are symbolic objects used by a person to get in touch with specific qualities found within an animal which the person needs, connects with, or feels a deep affinity toward. I am hungry for deeper connections in my life to God, to the land, it’s rhythms and creatures, and the many mysteries we encounter. The owl is a feminine symbol, representing magic, wisdom, intuition, and courageousness. She’s also quite a beautiful creature. That’s why I chose her.

I made this bird using woodcut and monotype printmaking. I began each carving session by burning a sage bundle that I keep in my studio, trying to focus on imparting these positive and powerful wishes on my work. I was reminded to loosen up, and tried to look at obstacles along the way (like registration problems!) as opportunities for growth. This little bird provided a playful challenge for me as my first 3-D print, and I’m excited to try more of them in the future. Even though she’ll be part of a large flock, I hope that folks will lock eyes with my screech owl as they pass through the exhibit, and that she will stir something deep down inside them.

You can read about the project here: http://www.ingahamilton.com/elementals.html

http://www.stlawu.edu/gallery/exhibitions/

http://www.mytarpit.com/

my true, wild self

On this lovely night I’m happy to take some time to update my blog and share some new artwork. I’m always looking for ways to shake up my process of art-making–ways to encourage spontaneity, experimentation, and fun.  Creating assignments, using prompts, timing drawing sessions, and using new tools all help me to loosen up and distract my inner critic for a bit, and allow me to surprise myself.  3 dimensional work and work with textiles has provided one way for me to do this lately, and this coil basket is an example of that. I saw a large basket that looked like this years ago at an anthropologie store (by the way, the artists who create the store displays there are so talented!) and have always thought it would be fun to make something similar. It looked to me like a thick rope wrapped in scraps of fabric. I  wasn’t quite sure how to build this, and initially collected a thick gauge wire to create an armature–but as i started working i realized that the rope was stiff enough to hold it’s shape on it’s own, and after wrapping the rope in fabric all i needed to do was stitch the levels together to build the structure.  I ended up using waxed linen thread and an upholstery needle to bind each level together, which worked nicely. I hope to make a mismatched collection of these.

I also recently built a small shadow box and made a miniature version of the felted nests that I worked on several months ago for a project at the Torpedo Project in Alexandria with a team from Pyramid Atlantic. I really enjoyed felting again, collecting fallen branches in my neighborhood, and doing some simple construction–looking back at the photos of the crochet coral reef I’m inspired to push this idea further to create clusters of vessels, similar to swallows nests–that’ll come next!

Finally, the screenprint I’ve included comes from an idea unborn for several years-capturing the wildness and passion of a pack of wolves running. Every time I tried to draw these in the past they came out looking all wrong, and I left the project frustrated many times. This time, I did reach a similar level of frustration, but was distracted by the background pattern, and a trip to georgia for the funeral of my husband’s granny. Her house is over a hundred years old, surrounded by 50 acres of fertile land that supports pomegranates, figs, persimmons, pecans, and once sustained animals and people alike. The stories that she would tell us about her growing up there and the deep connection that she had to that place made me think of myths and fairy tales, and I always found the plants there to be quite magical. I tried to capture some of this in the pattern that the wolves are running though–an organized way of showing how abundant that place is, and the true, wild self that the wolves have always represented for me.