Time and Energy?

May 31, 2006

We just wrapped up a month of discussions about the work of Liza Lou, bead and installation artist, on the Ragged Cloth Cafe. When I first signed onto RCC, I was skeptical, then involved, and then dropped out for a long while. Then when founder June Underwoood thought about pulling the plug, I volunteered along with twelve others to lead month-long discussions to keep the thing going.

Lou is most known for her entirely bead-encrusted environments KITCHEN and BACK YARD that each took years of her life to create. After a month, I’m not sure I’m any more closer to a better understanding of her art, maybe a first impression is okay. Maybe a month is too long to discuss one artist. But recently I read this quote from Jason Pollen in the SDA newsletter:

“I have noticed, as an academic, that more and more art students choose not to look at or research the work of other artists, not to read much in the way of fiction or non-fiction, not to be politically informed. There is a general lethargy and lack of interest in philosophy and religion (traditional and not), and relatively low fire in the furnace. This manifests itself in surprisingly low creative output.

I ask myself, why is this? And are we as mature artists and designers abandoning the search for the essence in favor of glitzy and glib solutions, sending the wrong message that digging is not enough of a reward? As we play with shape and color, texture and light, can we also be brave enough to reveal our vulnerability, provoke our poetic potential, and excavate the veins of precious ore just a little bit deeper down and a little harder to get to?”

So it’s hard to know what to do. Ignore the world and make art. Or is it our awareness and interaction with the world that makes our art interesting and vital? I guess I’m asking myself this because I’m tired. I’m tired of working all the time — working a day job, working on art in the afternoons and evenings. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just go home, have a nice dinner, and drive out into the summer night to get an ice cream cone. But instead I’m always working.

Last fall when we were in Little Rock, we visited the Clinton Library. Not something that I thought I’d enjoy - not because of politics, but presidential libraries just don’t seem like my kind of thing. Actually it was very interesting. Most interesting to me were the correspondence of Bill and Hillary. How do people like presidents find the time?

You probably can’t read the writing, but this is series of letters between Bill and Paul Newman. Granted Bill is always trying to raise money, but there were scads of hand-written letters between the Clinton and people of note. I remember that, and think, I gotta write more letters — but then I haven’t caught up on all the correspondence from our last two trips!

Filed Under journeys | Leave a Comment 

Illustration Friday: CAKE

May 29, 2006

Happy coincidence! The theme for Illustration Friday this week is “Cake” — I’ve already used this drawing for another theme - “Song”, but now I’m working on the quilt so this one is in fabric! It’s based on a summer job I had once delivering singing telegrams. I actually jumped out of a cardboard cake wearing a red, white, and blue costume and singing lyrics to Yankee Doodle Dandy:

Oh, he’s a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
A Yankee Doodle do or die.
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam,
Born on the Fourth of July!

Filed Under drawings, illustration friday | Leave a Comment 

Paley at the St. Louis Zoo

May 28, 2006

Thursday we went to the preview event for Albert Paley’s new installation at the St. Louis Zoo. It’s made of COR-TEN steel, is three-stories high, weighs over 100 tons, and features over 60 animals. “Animals Always” is the largest public zoo sculpture in the world and the largest sculpture in St. Louis, other than the Arch.

Animal-lover Thelma Zalk was touring Paley’s studio three years ago and was intriqued by some sketches she saw on a wall. She wanted to buy a sculpture based on the drawings, but Albert said — You know, that’s a drawing for something really big I’d like to do someday. Zalk said — I know, I’d like you to do it for the St. Louis Zoo. And so she donated a million dollars to make it happen. Amazing!

We had planned on just driving up for the dedication, but we ended up staying for a nice dinner with Albert and Frances and their staff at Balaban’s in the Central West End — right next door to a place I used to scoop Hagen Daas ice cream for a college summer job. Diving home at 3:30 in the morning was a little tough, but much better than driving through road construction on I-44 the next day.

Filed Under other artists | Leave a Comment 

Good ole RW&B

May 24, 2006

It feels good to be back in the studio. Here’s what I’m working on now — a red, white, and blue theme. I’ve been collecting these patriotic fabrics for over six months and when I pulled out the collection, was surprised at how many star fabrics I’ve collected. I’m not sure that I can even use them all, but I’ll give it shot.

Filed Under process | Leave a Comment 

Where did last week go?

May 22, 2006

What a week of constrasts! Here’s a photo from the reception at Grounds for Sculpture. It was a great event, and lots of people turned up…

some family and friends too.

Then we headed to rural Pennsylvania to visit some friends

who have sculpture studios in a couple of rustic barns

and a quaint old one-room school house.

Then another stop in Cincinnati to visit friends and check on details for a sculpture conference that will be held there in June. Even though we we had lots of meetings, Russ and I still squeezed a trip to the Carl Solway gallery and brief visit to the famed St. Theresa’s Textile Trove that will be history after July. And yes, I bought some fabric at St. Theresa’s!

Filed Under journeys | 3 Comments 

Positronic Neural Net

May 13, 2006

This interactive installation is called Positronic Neural Net by Russ RuBert. The frames are fabricated aluminum filled with fragments of found neon that are wired to motion sensors, so that different segments of neon light up in response to people walking around them.

We had about a minute to take photos with all the neon completely lit last night — after they are plugged in, the neon goes on all at once. Then the motions sensors warm up, and it’s difficult to keep everything lit at once with only one person.

I tried running around, but couldn’t run fast enough to keep everything lit.

The inspiration behind the work is how thoughts, ideas, memories, and dream images spark and fire in different parts of the brain. Sometimes it’s obvious what’s setting off the neon as in someone walking directly by. Other times it’s mysterious - clouds move or something moves far across the room. The sensors took lots of work to adjust for these kind of effects, not to mention all the complicated electrical wiring.

I was a big help unloading, cleaning and setting up the parts, yes the grunt work! Neon is so fragile — but I didn’t break a piece! But then Russ had to do all the tricky stuff alone, so I had lots of time to sit around the museum, drinking gallons of cappacino and surf on their high-speed internet. Now I’m just hanging around waiting for the reception to start. It’s going to be fun to see how it works with lots of people.

Filed Under exhibitions, sculpture | 1 Comment 

Outdoors at Grounds for Sculpture

May 12, 2006

I’m starting to feel like we live here! We’ve been staying in the artists’ apartment “Donatello’s Digs,” but this morning had to move over to “Michaelangelo’s Make-Out Suite” because someone from the Rickey Foundation is arriving this evening. The George Rickey show is opening tomorrow in the other exhibition building.

The weather today is gorgeous, so I snuck out for a walk on the grounds. There are 35 acres of gardens with 230 outdoor sculptures. The master gardeners have been hard at work all week making the grounds look good for the reception tomorrow. This is a striking sculpture by Strong-Cuervas. No wonder it appealed to me, when I looked her up on the web — found out she has a big head thing going on too!

I can’t resist Red Grooms — “Henry Moore in a Sheep Meadow” is hilarious. I also found a big book of his sculpture and interviews in the book store. I’ve been thinking alot about Grooms lately, so it will come in handy when I get home and get started on my 3D quilt. Oh my, I just noticed, it’s another big head!

No big head here, but a lovely George Sugarman. I hope the weather is nice for the reception tomorrow — I hear they’re expecting 600, by invitation only. But if it is cloudy and rainy, then Russ’s sculpture will be that much brighter. So we can’t lose!

Filed Under journeys | 1 Comment 

Active Neon

May 10, 2006

All the neon is in place and wired into circuits so that different sections will light up as people walk around the sculpture.

The color of the glass tubes does not necessarily foretell the color of the light. This blue glass becomes pink when lit, and white becomes green!

Filed Under sculpture | Leave a Comment 

Installation at Grounds for Sculpture

May 9, 2006

Today I thought of Liza Lou (she’s an artist with a huge amount of patience that we’re studying on the Ragged Cloth Cafe this month) as I peeled tiny bits of protective paper off tiny intricate parts that Russ has made for the neon sculptures. These brackets he’s designed will be installed on the metal frames.

Here’s me installing the brackets on the metal frames. I’m on a ladder (ha!) but it’s a baby short one. Isn’t the silver metal much prettier without its protective paper?

And Russ is working on some of his complex circuit board and electronics which will activate the neon.

We’re working in a beautiful loft area of the Domestic Arts exhibition building at Grounds for Sculpture. It’s light and airy, and would be a wonderful studio (but then I always think that about lots of buildings I visit.)

We can look over the half-wall, down to the first floor and watch artists and curators installing other kinetic sculptures for the MomentuM exhibition that opens Saturday. We also have great views of the sculpture garden surrounding the building and the friendly peacocks.

The birds know not to come inside, they just hang around this door and look inside. I love that old tile work on the outside of the building!

Here we are starting to put the neon inside the frames. We had around 50 pieces of different colored neon packed in the truck between the metal frames. That’s why it was so hard to adjust our load and drive across county — because this is old vintage neon and very fragile. Can’t wait to see it lit up! When we’re done, the paper will come off the base, and you’ll be able to see all Russ’s cool gizmos in the base.

I got lots of good answers about my puzzler yesterday. Yes, the answer is this — he let air out of the tires, which lowered the truck and enabled us to drive out the door. Because we have a compressor to run air-tools at the studio, he was able to add air back to the tires right after he got outside the door. I never would have thought of this, so you are much smarter than me. I’m glad to have such clever readers!

I may be off-line for a while, because tonight we’ll be moving to the artists’ residency apartments for GFS. Hope not for too long!

Filed Under sculpture | 1 Comment 

PaMdora’s Puzzler

May 8, 2006

Saturday it poured all day, and we weren’t completely packed anyway. So we waited to leave until Sunday which was beautiful, cramming the whole trip into one 21-hour drive that ended up into New Jersey in the rain again at 4 a.m. That’s a lot of blow-pops, my junk keep-me-awake food of choice for driving.

Here’s the truck in front of the Domestic Arts Exhibition building at Grounds for Sculpture. It was built for an 1800 fairgrounds to display women’s arts such as sewing, knitting, and quilting, and is now a beautiful exhibition space. Look close - what’s odd about the photo?

There’s a peacock in it! They hang around the building, preening and calling their loud “meow”s all day long. I grew kind of attached to them after a day of working there. Wonder if I could get one for a pet. They seem to be very attracted to people, and watch all the activities of sculpture unloading with great interest. Only problem is they leave little surprises on the sidewalk.

But I tricked you! The puzzler wasn’t the peacock at all. Here’s the real puzzler…

This is my cute husband, unwrapping the protective paper off the sculpture from the trip. I originally told you that the sculptures were loaded so we could drive through the truck loading door at the back of studio. But just when we were ready to leave, we found that in adjusting the straps on the load, it was 1 and 1/2 inches too tall to get out of the door. My genius husband did something so that we could get out of the door. Look back at the photo of the load in the truck. Can you guess what he did?

I’ll post the answer in a couple of days!

Filed Under sculpture | 8 Comments 

Fragile Load

May 6, 2006

Off on another adventure to take sculpture to Grounds for Sculpture. Execpt we’re supposed to be already gone, not still loading. At least Russ leaned the sculptures sideways so we can get out of the door.

What? all this neon has to go to? It’s going to be a long drive….

Filed Under sculpture | 3 Comments 

Cell Baby Quilt

May 4, 2006

Cell Baby has been so popular that I thought he (or is it she?) deserved his own quilt. So I made this little 11″ x 17″ quilt. When I thought of a name for the quilt, I had to laugh. It’s called “Family Minutes.”

It’s been a while since I made anything this small. Next time I want to work small, I think I’ll work Medium!

Filed Under quilts | Leave a Comment 

Flying School by Diane Landry

May 2, 2006

Around here we’re having a drought, even though all it did all weekend was rain. Everytime I used my new umbrella (with a handy rectractable button — got it on my last trip at Brookstone at the Cincinnati airport), I thought of the Flying School (Ãcole d’aviation) installation by artist Diane Landry. We saw this at the gorgeous Rice University in Houston last fall, but I never got around to posting it. Probably because Russ took so many great photos, it was hard to choose.

The umbrellas are all on Landry’s mechanical contraptions with hand-made bellows that breathe air in and out — raising and lowering the umbrellas. Constantly moving at different rates, the bellows make sighing-singing noises, and the umbrellas slide up and down, open and close in sort of a solemn dance. How wonderful to take such a common place thing as an umbrella and make it into art!

And to someone like me who uses commercially printed fabrics in my art, I cannot but help to appreciate the wonderful array of umbrella patterns that Landry has assembled.

As they move up and down, the umbrellas which are lit from below, casting ever-changing star-shaped patterns on the ceiling of the gallery, and so beautiful to watch!

In the next room there was the Mandala Naya, an amazing contraption that moved a light bulb in and out of a plastic laundry basket surround by empty water bottles. The moving light created an ever-changing performance of light on the wall.

That night R went to an art performance by Landry, and I went to the QA reception at the International Quilt Festival. I still wish I had gone to the performance also!

Filed Under other artists | Leave a Comment