Notes on the Experience of Making Art, 2006

Jan 4 2006

The day the idea well ran dry

As a general rule, "lack of ideas" is not a problem for me. The opposite is true: it takes every ounce of discipline I've developed over these many years simply to hold a thought in mind long enough to bring it to reality, rather than flying off onto this and that and this other thing and then some additional version of this that's a little bit different. One office mate told me she'd been exhausted just listening to me when we first met, but that she came to see I didn't really do half of what I talked about. But I do complete the other half!

So I rather surprised myself last week when I found my brain plumb out of ideas for an hour or so. I was harvesting the last of the tree that became Curved Carved Chair, before the owner called in the firewood crew. I looked at limbs and branches and burls all day and thought, "What could I use that for" and "Am I going to need something that size and shape, and how?" and "Am I going to be sorry I didn't take that part home?"

Around 4:30 pm, four hours of cutting, it just stopped. I couldn't think of a thing to do with the rest of the wood. Nothing. No parts, no stash, no ideas. I was just wore out thinking. So I packed up and hauled home (which is no small feat, given how much wood I was able to rescue) and contemplated the experience. I wasn't too worried--suspected strongly that the well would fill up again in time; it always does. But it was almost pleasant to feel quiet between my ears, instead of the normally raucous "this, then that, and if you hurry, you can start some of this other thing going..."

I was right. Next morning, the ideas were back in force. "Hey, if you went back and got that other piece, you could use it to make a ...." Perhaps fortunately, I was already scheduled to go to the beach for the weekend and didn't have time to make "just one more" run at the tree. There will be other trees, and I need to use my saw time making furniture from this one, not hauling more wood home. But for a moment, the well was most definitely dry.

Jan 25, 2006

I had a reasonably formal dinner party last weekend, at least in as much the plates and utensils weren't disposable, and we used cloth napkins and table cloths. Fancy for my little piece of these parts. Point: Neither David Tutera nor Martha Stewart ever has to worry about what to do with the chainsaws on the dining room table (*See 4/19/2006 entry below) when he or she is having 12 to dinner.

BTW, the idea machine is cranking out full-time again; with a new website, a book, polymer clay inspiration, a knitted shawl and rasta hat (not yet matching), and even a bit of carving when the weather permits.

March 1, 2006

Interesting new-to-me understanding of my life as I start to use the MasterList Professional software from www.SafariSoftware.com. I think I've loaded my current "projects" into the database--24 so far--and most of the tasks I can think of. Both counts keep rising, as tasks spin up to projects once there are more than a few sub-steps required. No wonder I so often feel overwhelmed. And no wonder I simply don't get to some activities I think I ought to be doing, like learning to sing, or training the dogs. My life is much more full than I realized, once I see it all in one place. Can't find any project to push off the list. The software supports the time management practices taught by David Allen in Getting Things Done, which is also a useful new approach to managing a life's activities. I'm finding it much more comfortable than any of the "A, B, and C' prioritization schemes that have been on the time management landscape for a while, and a touch more pragmatic than Anne McGee-Cooper's Time Management for Unmanageable People, which to date was the only resource that came close to acknowledging the reality of my to-do list.

On the more creative side, I'm learning CSS and coding new websites. www.ubitheclown.com was a Christmas gift to a friend and is serving as an early-stage CSS laboratory. When I'm a little more comfortable with XHTML tagging and CSS generation, I'm going to move this site to a CSS format. Had thought to do that when I moved everything from PbPg.com to kt.com, but the move and the site reorganization were overwhelming and I couldn't manage to add new technology at the same time.

A new Curved Carved Chair is taking shape on the porch. Selling both pieces at the By Women's Hands art show in Chapel Hill was encouraging; I'll definitely have more bowls for the Sanford Pottery Festival in May. We put lights on the porch--my finishing station--last month and the even illumination has made working there a much more pleasant experience. It will be interesting to see how my approach to finishing changes now that I have a better work environment.

March 25, 2006

I've been staring at a little scrap of dyed rice paper every day for four months, ever since I colored the paper in one of the classes at Jerry's Art-a-Rama Art Expo back in November. It marks my place in a daily reading book. I want "more" of that scrap in my life--more color, more blending, more art, mostly more color, and I don't know how to do it. (Purple hair is a step.) Concurrently, I've been growing increasingly unhappy with the state of my website, which doesn't quite seem to represent all that I want to share about my art, but my web design skills haven't been up to doing anything about it, and my budget isn't up to hiring someone else to solve the problem.

Thursday night, after some time noodling around on the csszengarden web site, the idea of running a strip of my own art in a column to the left of the main text came to mind, and there was that scrap right in front of me. A quick scan and a test of a two-column CSS layout was all it took. A little while later, I thought of mainpulating the photo to make it tile smoothly, and the rest was simply a matter of time.

What amazes me right now is the length of the incubation period. That scrap wanted a place in my life since I made it, but I couldn't identify where it belonged. Unfortunately, the problem never presented as "this is a beautiful thing; what can I do with it;" instead, I thought, "I can make great-looking useless stuff that will never have any public voice" (or something similar, less clearly-phrased.

Incubation. It's all about incubation, and waiting, and patience. Not my longest suits. But I'm not dead yet, so I guess I have the opportunity to do some more work.

BTW, that scrap is the art on the home page. The collages on the TOC_level pages were made during Bob Burridge's workshop in August.

April 23, 2006

* from January 25 entry above: I still can't find the 12" dime tip bar that had been hanging out on the kitchen table over Christmas and was "put away" somewhere just before the party. It will turn up, one day. I miss it. I have a 16" quarter tip and an 8" dime, but they're not the same. 8" is too short for a lot of carving that the 16" is too long for.

May 14, 2006

We had planned to renovate the bathroom this weekend, and we're halfway done and wiped out on Sunday morning. Took out the old floor and laid deep blue vinyl tile over the layer under that and removed and replaced the toilet and learned an awful lot about 430 Clear Pro adhesive for vinyl tile. We will probably reschedule the rest of the renovation to give the tile more time to set up; don't want to be pulling the sink out only to discover the floor's moving. Needless to say, the first step took longer than expected... Nothing like replacing a toilet at 11:30 pm when it's a one-bathroom house.

Which leaves today free for more art. Three commissions in need of attention; plenty to do. Thinking while I wait for church to let out about my latest art understanding--Edison's 1/99 rule. "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." I have ideas. They come at me faster than fire ants; I can't walk through a crafts fair or flip through a magazine without seeing more inspiration than I could follow up with in a lifetime. I keep notebooks of ideas; maintaining the notebooks is a time sink all its own.

In the unexpected free time this morning, I observed an idea in mid-growth and thought how the 1:99 rule applied--a hose dragon. Some years ago, I saw a picture of a basket made from cable ties and garden hose by Emily Dvorin; her baskets are sculptural and highly textured and start with new hose and fluorescent ties and are beautiful. (There's the 1% right there.) I made one. I've described the next steps in my Garden Art page. (Making one doesn't quite take me to 99%, but it takes a lot more time and money to create a real tangible basket than it does to think, "I can do that...")

I went on to make a collection of baskets, and some hose sculpture from dead garden hoses, and it was fun, and the work didn't sell, and I moved on to other art. There's a lot more on the 99% side. I still have a large pile of donated dead hose and access to much more hose, and an idea to make a large garden dragon out of the hose. A dragon needs more framing than can be provided by tomato cages tied together. Although I'm surrounded by welders, I didn't want to ask someone to build the frame for me, so the pile of hoses sits in my yard and the idea waits.

Just last week, I saw a notice about a one-day "welding for women" class offered at the Arts Incubator in Siler City. Bingo! Sign up, clear a vacation day, shop for supplies (I have everything except welding glasses already.) Then this morning, perhaps as a result of the lesson taken in laying a new bathroom floor: Perhaps I should think this through a bit more. Just HOW am I going to build a dragon and what will it look like? What exactly will this framework look like? It might not hurt to have a good idea of what I want so that I'll have better questions in class. I'll hit my design notebooks in a bit and start problem-solving.

Time to fish or cut bait on a problem that has long stewed in the back of my mind: Just how do mythological creatures with six appendages manage to hang them all on a vertebral column?!? (Sidebar: I have an appointment at Cary Orthopedic on Tuesday. Maybe I'll ask the MD for an opinion... he will know a lot about bone structure...) Pegasus--legs and wings. Dragons, ditto. Do they have two sets of scapulae? I could take an easy out and build him with one pair of legs and one set of wings, but most dragons have front legs too, or else they're pterodactyls. One author takes a stab at this anatomical structure by saying that forelegs are specialized wings and showing that both appendages connect to the same joint, but in the real world, that wouldn't work. The pectoral mass necessary for flight would interefere with foreleg motion, and there isn't room for (nor any biological example of) a double-ball / single socket joint. What about Centaurs? If normal humans have trouble with the spinal curve at our hips, how on earth do Centaurs make the curve from spine to hips to the scapula that support a horse's front legs, and what does the heart look like--a human heart in the human's thoracic cavity can't possibly provide enough flow to power a horse... Satyrs, in comparison, are fairly straightforward, if you don't question diet and intestines too much. Yes. I really do spend time thinking about this, and asking people who might know enough to have an opinion, like my dogs' vet. For the record, I had the hardest time figuring out how penguins and seals worked, because most of the penguin picture books did not show the birds' skeletal structure. Flippers are hard to work out without a picture of the bones, too, but we found several flipper bone assemblies on the peri-Antarctic islands so I could see what was inside.

I should say at this point, that my boyfriend is not sympathetic to this question. He think that the fact that dragons are "mythological" creatures excuses them from the basic laws of physics and physiology.

So I will think on the dragon problem and study my notes and learn to weld and probably make a few structures before I get the framework right. Then there will be color choices and texture and wrapping patterns and I have no idea at all of what I'll make the wings out of (chicken wire?) and maybe one day there will be a hose dragon in my yard. And people will walk by and think and a few will say, "where on earth do you get your ideas?" and only a very very small number will understand that it wasn't so much an inspiration at all, as it was an enormous amount of implementation.

May 16, 2006 On the "Mythology" escape clause

A conversation continues about whether being "mythological" is a valid anatomical structure. A bit of web research reveals that many flying creatures (Pegasus, Smaug) are drawn with wings "just stuck" on the creature's back, with no particular attention to joinery or musculature. That's ok, I guess, but it doesn't solve my problem. If you are going to build the rest of the dragon and make real-world decisions about how various parts look and therefore work, how can you simply take a deus ex machina approach to any other part? I mean, I AM making anatomical decisions when I construct a foreleg--I am imagining bones and joints and muscles (Q: What do you call the structure that makes an insect leg move? Is it a muscle when it's in an insect too, or are there different names for that?). Ditto for heads and ears and tails and nostrils. I can't simply "stick" a pair of wings on a back and make no provision for flight muscle attachments. Or even load balance. Form follows function.

The really interesting moments in sculpture, certainly in furniture construction, come at that point when you say, "Well, how are you going to hold those two parts together?" Curved Carved Chair, and its related chairs, are prime examples. Ripping the boards was the easy part; even finding legs wasn't too hard. Attaching seat TO legs, so that the entire structure would support the forces of sitting human AND respond to dimensional changes in wood with temperature and humidity shifts, took that work of art's 99%.

May 20, 2006

In a bit of a rush with two penguin commissions coming due, so I'm up late grinding and sanding and shaping wings and thinking through all the steps that require drying time and curing time and planning how best to fit everything in and maximize the gaps--paint first, go to the movies while it dries. Etc. A lot of penguins have flown this coop and while these three birds (one pair, one singleton) have some new features, I'm familiar with the basics and can do the final stages reasonably automatically.

So maybe being on automatic pilot allowed me to consider the question, "Does my art reflect anything about my life?" At this stage, there isn't a whole lot of activity on the penguin front, to be sure. Let my membership in the Old Antarctic Explorers' Association lapse, for lack of attendable meetings. Wouldn't hurt to have a bird or two on hand as inventory; a friend was concerned that the people who commissioned these birds might change their mind. No problem--they'll sell. I don't ask for a deposit if I know the art will sell.

At this very moment, there's a lot of transition happening in my view of the world. Had one of those doctor's appointments last week that leave a body feeling, if not actually "old," at least "older." The MRI next week will tell the rest of the story: is knee surgery in my immediate future or not? Regardless of what shows up on those pictures, the xrays prove I'm not what I used to be. Happened to read Kathy Reichs' Cross Bones last night, and the section about dating a skeleton by the xrays of teeth (age at death, not time since death) struck me--my teeth tell the same story my knees do, even if I continue to hide my gray hair with blue. ("Redefining 'blue hair,'" I call it.)

So what does this look like in art? I don't see it with penguins, frankly. Practice is never a bad thing, and sold art has benefits all its own, including freeing space in inventory to make yet more. The best artists make the most art, in general.

No clear answer today. I had a very clear flash about not wasting any more time; that no matter how far away, the end is nearer than I want to think (gene pool runs to longevity so I'm not too worried). Simply that there just isn't enough time to spend any of it recklessly, doing things that don't ?? pay off? I don't mean financially there. doing things that ? bore me?

May 29, 2006

I had more thinking on that question above, and a day job that demands attention too, so I've lost a bit of that train and while it was gone, a few others pulled into the station.

MRI.
Siglinda's Garden.

MRI

I'm now post-MRI, pre-followup visit with the orthopedic doctor. Of COURSE I studied the pictures (5 sheets of 20 pictures per knee). I am a sculptor; I can figure out the anatomy, basically. What I don't know is what "normal" looks like. I suspect I would be able to see more meniscus in a younger person's knee, but the real question is, "what does another 47-yo's knee look like?" I wonder if it would be possible to send the data stream to a 3D printer and build a working model of an individual joint: certain, actually, that it IS possible; less sure about the cost and value thereof. (HowStuffWorks.com says a 3D model is already possible. I did not get one.) These things one ponders while face-to-face with a multi-million dollar, very noisy machine that is pulsing all sorts of strange energy one's way.

A full scan of two knees is an 80-minute experience, which leaves a lot of time for thinking. The noise, despite earplugs, makes sleep difficult. I neglected to read up on what exactly it was than an MRI does before the scan, but today's check confirms that many of my component atoms where being jerked around magnetically. (Four years of Duke chemistry is not lost...) At times, I could feel waves of something pouring along my legs. The most superficial answer is that I was simply tired of being confined to a hard table with inadequate padding for a person of my size and my legs were restless. However, I can also believe it is possible to feel the effects of the atoms falling back into their preferred rotation, but in the absence of both a) appropriate sensors and b) experience interpreting any sensations I might have, I was on my own.

Not surprisingly, the technicians present during the scan were not interested in aswering questions. They run a tight schedule in that unit and want to keep the machine as full as possible. Somebody has to cover the cost.

People who gain their sight after years of blindness have to learn to see. People who receive cochlear implants have to learn how to hear. That is, they need to tell their brains what the different patterns of incoming data MEAN. Babies do this while they're busy being babies. It's possible that with enough exposure and some feedback, a person could learn to interpret the various sensations that accompany an MRI. I am not volunteering. I found the process slightly interesting and a tad unpleasant. In the long run, I suspect multiple MRIs is not a long term health plus, just as we've come to understand multiple xrays are not a good thing.

(I am not entertaining a discussion of the benefits of diagnostic xray vs long-term cost to the health of the patient here; simply expressing my belief that we eventually come to discover most interventions have a higher cost than originally understood.)

Siglinda's Garden

John and I went to the Open House at the Goathouse Gallery yesterday, too late to see the dancers, unfortunately. I can't recall being there in late spring before. Other visits have been during the Studio Tour in December, before I became a stop on said Tour, and during an early spring Kiln Opening, before the gardens were in full green.

I am envious. Garden envy, art envy, acreage envy.

I came home and mowed my grass, all of it. The garden looks a little better for it.

We passed home after home after rural home along the way with huge empty front yards; grass from curb to gutter, houses all doily-ed up with a row of evergreen shrubs, and maybe a few flowering annuals around the mailbox. It's the American way: give away your front yard and do all your living in a tiny spot of private back yard. Bad enough in suburbia, where the tracts are often clear-cut before the builders arrive, but strange to see in "the country," too. I have to acknowledge, compared to the standard, my front yard approaches New Zealand-grade gardening. (Have never been to Italy so I can't speak to the source of Siglinda's garden design inspiration.) Now, however, I'm itching to fence-up the backyard and add a few more paths and a pond and some chickens and some goats...

John is not supportive of this plan, even if I swap a llama or alpaca or a vicuna or two for the goats. Somehow, he suspects there will be more heavy lifting involved.

I could spend every free moment working in the garden. Elizabeth Lawrence did, on a plot somewhat smaller than my half-acre. If I did, I wouldn't make any other art. For today, I make do with as many plants as I can find that take care of themselves--daylilies and daffodils and a growing collectiong of gingers and crinums. I put an extra effort into fighting back two of the major annual weeds this spring, hoping to reduce next year's seed load. When I moved in, the plot was nearly bare edge to edge, and now sometimes people drive by and miss the fact that there's a house here. Maybe next year I'll clear a spot for a food garden... (I've said that for nine years now. One year, I actually planted one, but I'm not very good at the on-going care that vegetables need.)

I want more space, but if I had it, I'd just have to take care of more space.

And then I look at all the pottery and think, "it would be neat to be able to make my own tableware, exactly the way I wanted it, and not go from store to store to store looking at plates I don't quite like or don't want to pay that much for, one..." In the very middle of a bathroom renovation, going from tile store to tile store and invariably falling in love with the single most expensive option in the store, I also think, "it would be neat to make my own bathroom tile. I could get it to look exactly what I like... surely for less than $X..."

I am not a potter. I don't like the feel of clay on my hands, for starters, which makes it hard to make pots, or plates, or tile. I don't much care for the color of most of the more common glazes, or the very limits of what you can do with colored glaze, which makes it even harder to make the ceramics I would want to make. FWIW, I'm not very good with exact right angles, which is why my furniture has nothing to do with traditional cabinetry and much more to do with chainsaw carving. (I am looking for a place to learn to weld, which will broaden my options for sculpture.)

One artist on the Tour once complained privately about feeling a bit like a bug on a pin, with all sorts of people coming out to his house to see how he lived, as if his life were a museum exhibit. I said, "well, we're not driving around to look at their houses, now, are we?" and he laughed. I went to Tony Avent's garden (Plant Delights) once and came home and dug up half my front lawn to put in another bed. I don't know what yet will come of this latest inspiration. I'm not buying a kiln, for sure, and my neighbor has goats that I can borrow any time I want to see what they'll do to the daylilies. (I have access to a llama, too.) I keep thinking I want to play more with my polymer clay, despite the on-going lack of success. Learning curve.

Julia Cameron calls this kind of experience an "artist's date"--finding a way to replenish the well, get new ideas, restock the pond. I do a lot of this regularly through the library and periodicals and occasional museum visits and board meetings at other artists' homes. Guess I need a few more of them. Stay tuned.

June 7, 2006

Endless Possibilities Art Gallery, Manteo, NC

We spent a few days at the Outer Banks with my family. While we were in Manteo on a grey and blustery beach afternoon, I stopped at the Endless Possibilities gallery, which I'd read about in Niche magazine. From their own promo: "Endless Possibilities is an innovative recycling project that utilizes castoff fabric from the Hotline thrift stores to weave fabric that is then transformed into rugs, handbags, totes, and other useful, attractive items." Years of volunteering at local thrift shops have given me an eye for the rejected items--clothing too worn or dirty to sell; clothing that won't sell. I could see it all in the rugs in the gallery. The weavers cut strips of clothing and use them as the weft in their looms, selecting colors to coordinate. (Most of the rag rugs sold in big-box stores are made from similar raw materials--many thrift shops sell rejected clothing by the truckload to processing centers.)

One of the newest knitting books on the shelf has a pattern for making pillow covers from sliced t-shirts. I tried cutting up a sweatshirt from the dump, but the yarn was too bulky for the needles I had and I abandoned the effort. I am inspired to continue. I don't want to set up a loom, but weaving isn't the only way to make fabric. Both knit and crochet can be used to make fabric directly, and both can be used to incorporate thicker fabric strips as "filler." Endless Possibilities had rugs woven from ties and clients can commission a special weaving made from particular ties on the occasion of a retirement or other life-changing event that decommisions a tie wardrobe. The examples were wonderful. At .75 or $1.50 (poly or silk, respectively), I'm not going to be buying thrift shop ties to experiment with my own version of a tie rug, but I'll keep my eyes open for dump donations.

July 4, 2006

Back from a week in the Pacific Northwest

Dick and Jane's Spot in Ellensburg, WA
Floating the Yakima
Petroglyphs
Wapato Bead Store
Silk from Nepal
The Goldfish

John and I came back Sunday morning from nine days in the Puget Sound and central Washington, visiting his family and friends and having as many adventures as we could around that schedule. We had sunny weather the entire trip, on both sides of the mountains. Sun in Yakima is nothing new almost any time in the year; back-to-back sunny weekends on the sound side are a rarity. We saw Rainier every day of the trip. The weather could be a result of global warming, or it could be an anomaly. It is not yet a reason to move west. Despite the sun, I was wrapped up several days, and every evening. I am not accustomed to the feel of wool in July.

1. Dick and Jane's Spot On Sunday evening, we drove from Seattle to Yakima, stopping in Ellensburg to see Dick and Jane's Garden Spot, a display of yard art that John had told me about last year. While we were looking at the garden, Jane came out to move a sprinkler and chatted, then Dick came out and invited us in for a tour of the garden behind the fence. It is an amazing place, full of their own art and the art of other artists, as well as flowers and plants that don't grow easily in the humidity of central NC. I would love to try a teddy bear totem pole, but I think the mildew would take it within a year. Dick said, "large numbers of anything are an organizing principle." I am more encouraged to build the ironing board fence I've been thinking about, and I need more concrete in the backyard. I need to learn to weld.

Dick had several pieces of neon art sculpture around the garden and lit one for us before we left. I've never seen this interpretation of neon before. I have no clue how neon artists work, or what equipment is involved, but I have seen EL wire in action, and I am inspired. The downside of EL wire is that it has a tangible half-life--700 hours--which limits its value. The upside is that it can be assembled on the dining room table. I am contemplating an apostle's knot in EL wire, perhaps with a sequencer that will let the colors chase each other. I know nothing about electricity, apart from not to touch bare wires, so this may be a pipe dream.

2. Floating the Yakima. Monday over breakfast with John's children, we decided to float the Yakima River rather than drive around the valley. $140 later after stops at WalMart and a Truck Supply store, we were off. The water isn't quite snow melt, having been tempered slightly in Lake Keechelus before flowing down to Roza, but it's not exactly Jordan Lake-warm, either. If it hadn't been 103 degrees out of the water, it could have been cold, but the sun warmed enough blood to prevent hypothermia. We floated almost four hours and saw deer, sheep, a bald eagle, blue herons, diving ducks, and a flock of Canada geese, as well as other boaters and rafters. Powered boats are restricted to the Roza Dam vicinity, and we got out when we heard the JetSkis. I'm pretty amazed that we could have that much fun from a suitcase and $140, compared to what it takes to own a JetSki.

I have to add, I was amazed by the agriculture in the valley. Many of America's tree fruits come from central Washington, except for citrus. They're all grown under irrigation, coming from snow melt off the eastern side of the Cascades. I have seen commercial orchards before, in South Carolina, so the trees weren't much of a surprise. Hops are an interesting crop with a huge amount of infrastructure required (vine support) but I don't drink beer so they are an academic interest. I had never given any consideration to the commercial production of mint, or dill, or asparagus, and so was more astonished when I recognized those crops and their processing paraphernalia. I still don't know how Del Monte peels pears.

3.Petroglyphs There's a cliff face in Yakima that has a number of small petroglyphs. None of the local tribes recognizes the symbolism; they're pretty simple. The pictures are fully-exposed to the elements and a touch faded but still clearly visible--I wonder what the pigment is that has lasted at the very least, longer than white people have been in the area. There was a fair amount of graffiti, now largely controlled, in the past. We talked a little about defacing historical sites, but I wonder if perhaps the petroglyphs may not have been driven by the same impulse that makes people carve initials into a tree? Unknowable at this time.

4.Wapato Bead Store I was in the PNW for a week in 1998, and it was that trip that kicked me into being an "artist," rather than the crafter I was at the time. I remember being disturbed by my "shopping," which I don't normally do at home, and that I was buying beads when I don't actually make much bead art. Later, friends pointed out that sometimes "shopping" is an attempt to be creative when real creative outlets are blocked, and that I might enjoy travelling more if I carried art materials.

This time around, I thought hard about what to carry, got it wrong, and recovered. I didn't take the hat I have been knitting for John because I'm almost finished and thought it would take up more space in the suitcase than it would provide creative energy. Then when I thought about sitting at the family reunion as "new girlfriend," I realized I had to have something in my hands. Michael's was the only venue available to me, and by Monday night, I had a new fluffy scarf.

We drove through Wapato on the Yakama Reservation on Tuesday, looking for a restaurant that had been recommended (and was closed when we got there). I saw "Wapato Beads and Pawn" and had to stop. True to title, the store had an extensive inventory of mostly seed beads, as well as a small pawn shop. I could have bought a lot of beads, but I'm not actively beading right now (and don't see it happening anytime soon, short of disabling injury). They didn't have any Native American beading books that I didn't already own. I looked, and left, and smiled when we drove away in the car. I didn't have to buy someone else's art form because I am comfortable enough in my own. Should you find yourself in central Washington in need of beads, I can recommend the store in Wapato, however--they have a great selection. Suspect they have a low-enough rent that they can afford more square feet of retail space than the average bead store in a more populated area.

5.Nepalese Silk Yarn I wasn't particularly looking for a new knitting project when I wandered into the Diva Yarn store in Port Townsend, but when I saw the first display of recycled silk yarn from Nepal, I gasped. They had three more bins of it throughout the shop, priced to indulge. The yarn is spun from the tails (warp?) from sari looms, as well as shredded old saris, in shades of mostly-red that range from very bright to subdued. There is no dyelot, per se, as each skein is colored according to what the spinner finds in her basket. There is a strong parallel to the rugs produced by women at the Endless Possibilities workshop in Manteo, NC, (above). I bought ten skeins, enough for a shawl, and then over lunch realized ten was not going to be enough, and went back for more. This time, I bought enough more for a sweater AND a shawl and had most of my yarn shipped home. I started knitting on the ferry back to our apartment and had all four skeins knitted up before we left for home. Now I'm waiting on UPS to bring me the rest.

After my visit to the Endless Possibilities gallery, I started collecting fabric from the recycle shed at the dump, and maybe I'll play with it. I don't want to go to a real loom, but I've seen pictures of knitted items made of sliced-tshirts, and I have an idea about crocheting forms from fabric. I don't quite know what will happen yet. Although I have been knitting (again) after a hiatus, I haven't done very much with textiles-as-art. Textiles are my first art form--I can't remember learning to knit and crochet. Stay tuned.

We encountered several vendors of alpaca fiber later on the trip, which provided another opportunity to come to terms with what is my art form and what isn't. Alpaca is fabulous fiber. It's expensive enough locally that I don't even consider buying it, and I think the prices from the farmers in the PNW were pretty good. However, the colors are those more traditionally associated with the PNW--all the muted heathers--than with India, as is my silk. Even the hand-painted skeins were subtle, rather than jaw-dropping bright. I was able to resist (having already violated my rule about not buying for the next knitting project until the current project is finished). Tuesday, my mother called and told me she was sending me some alpaca fiber she'd bought, intending to make shawls, but it's too fine for her hands in their current arthritic condition. Interesting circle. My friend with the llama insists that an alpaca (herd? flock?) would be a good addition to my menagerie; John remains adamant. If only they preferred to eat grass, rather than shrubbery...

6.The Goldfish Friday morning, we took the ferry out to Friday Harbor, both to wander the island and to meet up with two friends from Oak Harbor who were vacationing on the island for the weekend. We had lunch, and they showed us some of the shops (lavender, hot sauce) and went over to Roche Harbor to see the changes in the Inn and the old Lime Factory, and we wandered a bit more and then parted. We had an hour before the ferry home and walked around town a bit more, visiting galleries. Elephant Crossing, an Asian importer, had a fabulous mirrored and gilded carved goldfish in the window. I have carved a few fish in my time, and this was an amazing flowing fish and I thought it would make a great model. I also realized I was in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. "Upscale" doesn't begin to cover the prices, so I didn't think I had to worry about getting the fish home. We went in and asked, "how much is that goldfish in the window?" The shopkeeper said, "Funny you should ask. It's broken, so we're selling it at cost. You can have it for $70. Normally, it would sell for $350." I was fully prepared with a "I love it, but I have no where to put it" answer, which I've heard as a vendor many many times myself (alternate: "If only you had a pair!"), but $70 for that much fish, mirrored, gilded, and totally over-the-top fabulous as only the Thai or Vietnamese can go, was something I couldn't pass. I asked, "Can you ship?" and she said, "Yes." Many of her customers fly to the island on sea planes with tiny luggage limitations. Others arrive on boats--large boats, in relation to the ones hauled in and out of Jordan Lake on a Saturday afternoon, but boats nonetheless, and few boats have much extra room. Of course she could ship.

So now I'm awaiting arrival of my gilded mirrored goldfish, and I don't know where I'm going to put him, and I don't know how my art will shift as a result of this addition. I am sensitive to the effect of artifacts in my home; sometimes I tell myself I'm a carver/sculptor now in part because of my experience at Mount Rushmore (1997? 98?) and all the postcards of Rushmore I had around the house afterward. When I moved into this house, I decorated the living room in a fairly "suburban" palette, all red and dark green and eucalyptus and peach. It's been a bit stale for a while, and I have wondered what it would be like to live in emerald and ruby and sapphire and amethyst. Might be time to reupholster that couch, once the fish arrives. (I am not sure how I can do this using recycled material from the swap shed, but that's an idea.*) Again, stay tuned. Perhaps fortunately, I have a new house to rennovote (rental property) and I need to get the house finished and occupied ASAP. After that, who knows?

*I am also considering knitting upholstery with the Nepalese silk yarn, available on eBay for an even more reasonable price than I paid in Port Townsend. I'd need to use a smaller gauge to get a sufficiently dense fabric... might be that I could only cover the structural parts of the couch in knit; use some other fabric for the seat cushions... If I do this, I really will have to repaint the living room...

August 12, 2006

Promised an entry a month, so think of something on an unusally cool day for August while I wait on the HVAC person to come by and fix my furnace fan. If a blower has to die in August, it picked the right weekend!

I am feeling stymied about art production even as I push obligations out later into the year.

September 3, 2006

On Useful Forms

So much for August.

Bought the house next door in June, hoping that one day it can be a studio/gallery and in the mean time, pay for itself as rental property. Renovation is turning out to be MUCH more complicated than initially estimated so that project has absorbed every waking moment of free time and creative energy. I get a headache every time my builder asks for another decision. White. The walls will be white. Everything will be white, except for the pink kitchen sink, the purple bathtub (existing, and cast iron; builder refuses to remove). How did I become someone who owns three pink sinks and what am I going to do with them? Some kind of vernacular-mosaic fountain comes to mind. But when? And will it use the "This Old House" copper plumbing lines we took out of the house? Unlikely that PEX tubing will ever be reclaimed for art. I hope that is not a choice that comes to me. (I mean, once we get this house back together, having taken it apart down to the dirt, I don't ever want to see under those floorboards again.) More decisions. Another headache.

I chased a black snake out of that house yesterday.

Hurricane Ernesto passed us by, but took out power and flooded NC 70 in Goldsboro.

I woke up at 3:30 this morning, thinking about the house next door and all the work that remains to be done before I run out of coverage on the homeowner's policy (they don't like to insure vacant homes and I've already had two extensions). Could have expected this to start sooner or later--that early morning insomnia that won't let you get back to sleep. Too early to do anything that requires movement, so I sat and wrote and tried to "make art" through words, which is somewhat less than useful. I'm playing with new-to-me knitting that has been inspired by the trip to Endless Possibilities described back in June. Make something, even if I don't exactly know what it is that I want to be making. Look at books, try not to spend too much money buying equipment (needles and cutters, in this case) until I know that I'm going to stick with the medium.

Three trips through the craft shelves at local bookstores suggest strongly that I own almost all the books there are in the field; there's not a whole lot that's truly new in knitting. Rather, one or two inventive ideas per book, but nothing I need to spend $40 an idea on. And Barbara Walker documented pretty much all the stitch patterns a long time ago; presenting them in current colors doesn't change the core information any.

I could knit this.... or that... or this other thing... I could knit 15' of tube and make a ... I could do baskets... or giant clothing, or Barbie patterns (very different outcome at a gauge of 2 stitches = 1").

Where do I start and how many sets of needles do I need and plastic cables don't work need birch dpns instead. Ginghers can't keep up with cutting the fabric and machines exist to cut wool into strips for hooked rugs (another option, to be explored if and when backing fabric appears at the thrift shop). Who'da thought? But those cutters are $200 and only go up to 1/4" strips; I need 3/4" and I don't have $200 to spend on what is still an experiment.

and so my mind goes remember to buy more dog cookies put a buck back to cover incense (my pay-as-I-go program; works great for tires = the cost of a gallon of gas per tank yes it gets a little busy in here

This is all before sunrise, too.

I hurt. My body hurts, pretty much constantly. Meniscus repair is supposed to fix it but I kicked that into January when I discovered how much attention the new house was absorbing, and then extended the prescription for a pretty strong NSAID that's making it ok to be in my body. The meds work, except they take enough ache out of the picture that I don't NEED to do my own little yoga-lite routine as often as I did when I still thought I could stretch the pain away. So after two hours of trying to write my way into better art, I stopped and paid attention to my achiness and thought it would be good to do a little yoga in the quiet of pre-dawn and laid out the mat.

Two steps into the routine, it hit me: the usefulness of a good routine, a form, a familiar pattern. I wouldn't be getting the same relief if I didn't already have a routine I know, however far it is from anything Erich Schiffer would recognize.

Which is what I need to be doing with the knitting for a while. I have a few forms in my mind. Play with them. I don't know--20 each? Make something. See what I learn in the making thereof. Then make something else. Penguins carried me into chainsaw skill, and now I'm much freer to play (although I haven't pulled a starter cord all summer, pending this house...). Cast off what I've started; it'll be there to come back to if I decide that's the right answer. And make some forms and see what happens.

Hey, Jim Hogan, glad to hear everything went well in Seattle. Trying (hard) to keep your boy out of trouble out here.

November 16, 2006

Welding, Knitting, Not Shopping

So much for September, too.

I did actually have a saw in my hands this past weekend. Knocked out a mask, and a beaver commission for a neighbor, and part of a bench, and a stand for a carving that's been sitting too long waiting for some way to be displayed. Just when I think I'm about to be done with saws perhaps, the aroma of sawdust and turpentine, cut with a little gasoline and bar oil, kicks in and I'm off and full of ideas.

I learned that I can weld, and that I enjoy welding, in a one-day class at the Arts Incubator in September. I have stayed away from welding these many years, despite being surrounded by sculptors working in metal, largely because I am aware than every new medium comes with a steep price tag. $50 for the class and $20 for the materials seemed like a fair price tag for the experiment, however, so off to Siler City I went. Eight hours later, I had a picture frame and a table, and I want my own welder.

I did not expect to get a power rush from learning that I could weld. I did. Perhaps some of the welders would have the same experience if they tried chainsaw carving. FWIW, I may have been the youngest student in the class, all women. I haven't started designing for welding yet, given the pressure of producing work for the Studio Tour, but will start to think about working in metals after the holidays. Welding solves some rather sticky problems with grain that wood presents; don't know enough yet to understand all the new avenues for impossible ideas that come with welding.

Lots and lots of tiny influences finally piled up high enough to tip me into a new form of knitting; working with rags and making rugs. I'm having a ball and finding ideas everywhere I look, mostly working with quilting books as source material. I'm a bit astounded to observe that my brand-new Textiles notebook grew to 74 pages inside two months, and many of those pages are full of original sketches. I rarely sketch carving ideas, and never for paintings, and I know I'm "supposed to," and it never happens. But it does with the rugs. And so just maybe I can allow as how possibly I should pursue this form, and let go, at least for now, of my efforts to paint.

After last year's painful waste of money at the Art Expo, I was careful about believing the promises of the workshop listing, and didn't sign up for any classes this year. I did have the trade show on my calendar because the prices have always been so good and it's a great opportunity to stock up on supplies for the coming year. I ran over to the show on my lunch break last Friday, and I had to laugh on my way out. $26.14, for blank greeting cards I intend to use for Christmas. Nothing else appealed. I even looped around twice to make sure I didn't miss some new killer product that would turn me into a painter, but no. The show is aimed at flat artists, with oils, watercolors, and various dry media well-represented. One year, Sculpture House came, but they haven't been back. There isn't much else at all for the non-painters. Whew! Sure made shopping the show easy, as well as sticking to my budget!

Might get an entirely different result if I were to go to a knitting trade show, and a brief sidebar to google shows that there is a knitting camp in April of next year. Stay tuned. (BTW, I will post pictures of the rugs on the Textiles page soonish--recently downloaded them off the camera but still need to process the files.)

John and I went to the Monet show at the NCMA last week. Good, glad I went, wish it had been different, as did the hundreds of other people who wanted to see the art. Monet in Normandy; first time in forever that most of these paintings had been together, including one that's never been on public display before. Unfortunately, the show was crowded, and everything was hung at eye level, and it wasn't possible to get far enough away to see the pictures without lots of people in the way. Even the one example of his wisteria series, intended to be shown at ceiling height in a tall room, was at eye level. And so I whine. Wonder what it would cost to visit at a less crowded time of day? Way more than $15 each, for sure.

In my favor, I noted that I was much more relaxed about looking at the paintings than I have been at similar shows before. Attributing this to the shift from painting to rug-making. Not caring as much about HOW Monet translated what he saw into a painting, although still irritated by the art historian's commentary on the walls (which John ignores completely). No mention of the concurrent events that influenced art--invention of tube oil paints, new colors, etc. Oh well.