You can learn a lot about a person by the things they collect, and the stories they tell about those objects. A collected object often has a history of how it was found, when and where.

Or was it gifted? Then there is the story of who gave it and why. Maybe it was abandoned, and if so, there is a rescue story. Sometimes objects have been altered. Sometimes there’s a mystery — Who made it? How was it made? How old is it? What is it??

For an artist like Carla who uses found objects in the creation of art, the way objects are collected, organized, and stored is a window into their soul. Especially for someone who lives in a small house, everything saved is precious because space itself is precious.

When I visited Carla on Monday, she had just hung artwork in two shows, so her studio was almost empty, clean, and ready for new projects. Everything was stored neatly on shelves behind homemade curtains — until she started pulling out her collections of inspirations, resources, and materials to show me.

“These are old photos that I found at the Treasure House pawn shop”

“Here are some antique Japanese books that Hueping gave me”

“Here’s some scrap sign vinyl from your Halloween party”

“These are globs of paint that I peel off yogurt lids that I use as paint-mixing palettes”

“These are painted papers I’m going to cut out for collage”
“How did you make them, with a dry brush?”
“Yes, and with sponges and that one on the corner of the table was done with a cabbage.”

She showed me a photo of four people in a boat. We guessed it was from the the 1920′s judging by the style of clothing and hats and wondered who took it.

A Japanese book, a thistle, paint peelings, and painted papers

“Hueping gave me this Japanese book. Look, I can carry by the string like a purse!”

Some things are too beautiful to cut up, so Carla scans them and preserves the original.

A collage of two houses that hangs in Carla’s hallway has always been one of my favorites. Curiously, it’s hanging right outside her son’s bedroom, a boy whose time is divided between his mother’s house and his dad’s house that is right next door.

When I stopped back by later that evening to see how the light had changed, Carla had already cleaned up her studio because she is getting ready to go on a trip.

Going to visit her family, Carla showed me old photos from her childhood and her mom’s Chinese family in Hawaii. Her dad has passed away and her sister is struggling, Carla is going home to help her mom move into a nursing home.

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This is a photo essay that I did as part of a Mobile Phone Workshop I’m taking with Sion Fullana. All the photos were taken on my iPhone and edited with photo apps including Snapseed, Noir, Crop Suey, and touchRetouch. Thanks for letting photograph you Carla Stine!

His current passion is creating a national folk art museum and library in Nebraska and probably enjoyed the drive down here because he got the chance to explore the countryside.

Russ gave him a Ralph Lanning stone sculpture called Mountain Goat for the Flatwater Folk Art Museum, so that was probably another incentive to drive a car with a big trunk. Ralph Lanning was retired dam-builder from Republic, Missouri and mentioned towards the end of this New York Times article about outsider artists.

After Lanning’s death last year, his entire estate of concrete animals (including a two-headed dog), figures, small churches, and other carved stone went up for auction, and Missouri State University bought many of them through a grant and rep of the Kohler Foundation.

However Russ was also there and bought about 20 of the smaller stone carvings, and also this curious lady mermaid. She has fins for hands, but also the raised hand looks sort of like a heart, and a small mirror is embedded on the other side — so you could wonder if she’s looking at herself. Also I swear that, depending on which direction I approach, her mysterious smile/grimace seems to change at times.

Sound familiar?

Another large Lanning sculpture at our studio we call Adam, although I’m not sure why since he’s holding a baseball instead of an apple. I happened to find this Photo of a Naked Concrete Man and His Message on panoramio.com. Apparently it was taken on location long before Russ acquired the sculpture, because it has some parts that are now missing due to a public dispute between Lanning, a chemical waste dump across the street from his house, the Republic City Council, and kid with a baseball bat.

Adam and the Mermaid make a great pair, and with many other smaller stone carvings, we have quite a collection.

I’ve been reading and writing a lot lately about public art and museums and had been thinking how art connects people through time and space.

But I could never put it so nicely as George did in his Visual Literary Statement that he shared with us:

“A work of art serves as a linkage of the human continuum — past to present, present to future. Cultural artifacts must be experienced and understood as both a physical object and an event in time. As an event in time, they carry numerous complex attributes implying intellectual, spiritual, social, philosophical and scientific records of experience and speculation that are unique to the time and place of creation.”

– George Neubert, Flatwater Folk Art Foundation

Now whenever I look at these primitive stone carvings in our studio, I feel like something is looking back at me from a different time and place.

As Julie said in a previous comment on my blog post about hosting PechaKucha Night – it sounds a bit like speed-dating for artists. I love that description.

The format of 20 images with 20 seconds to talk about each one puts you in the range of 6 minutes 40 seconds to present your work. That’s a lot of time compared to the oft-promoted elevator talk  — the 30 second spiel you can introduce and explain yourself to a stranger in the time between the elevator door closing and re-opening. At the his reception at the Art Museum last week, Roger Shimomura told us he often juries NEA grants where artists are permitted 10 images with 10 seconds per image. So PKN is looking like a good first date.

PeshuKucha Night vol. 4 at our studio was great fun. We had over  a hundred people — maybe more with some people coming early, some late. Although the format of presenting sounds rigid and the presenters do have to do their share of prep, the actual event is pretty casual atmosphere. Our doors opened a half hour early, there was a half hour intermission, and we invited folks to hang around afterwards — so there was lots of informal time to network, ask questions, explore the studio or just try out the vintage submarine game.

We had the big screen for the presentations strapped to scaffolding in the middle part of the warehouse with a lot of mis-matched chairs from various sources.

Russ also added some creative ambient lighting using old slide projectors and slides of Mesopotamian and other historical art (courtesy of the MSU art department who last spring auctioned off all their Art History slides and projection equipment at a surplus auction for, uhm, $5)

He also did a special installation of neon that spelled out PechaKucha on our framing table that added atmosphere and a great place for group photos.

But getting back to talking about art. One of the most interesting things I learned was how my friend Stephanie Cramer talks about her vibrant and evocative paintings. She likes to say, “You go first, then I’ll share” which is a terrific idea that I never thought of, because then she has the opportunity to learn what people see her paintings before she gives them her ideas. Another thing she handles quite well is the issue of time. This is a often-discussed to death topic I see on artist email lists and forums. Some artists and some people who create incredibly complex hand-crafted items seem to hate being asked, “how long did it take?”

Stephanie just says, “this painting took me three years” and then moves on. Nevermind that she was also working on about 20-40 other paintings during that time. Art takes time to gestate, transform, evolve, to become what it is.

You can hear more of how artists talk about their work in these videos of Stephanie Cramer, Russ RuBert, and Kat Allie’s presentations on our studio PKN page.

The other thing that was great about the event was the opportunity to work with such a great team of creative people. Amanda Taylor organized all the volunteers and presenters, ran the projector, and still had time to take an awesome set of photos during the evening. It’s the first time that I’ve really been able to put together a good photo gallery of a studio event that included all the setup and weird stuff that seems to happen whenever we’re setting up for a big event.

At PKN-4, we got to see 9 presentations, including Brandon Dake, AIA, president of the Springfield chapter of The American Institute of Architects present on the efforts to rebuild Joplin after a devastating tornado, and raised $360 for the AIA efforts to help in re-masterplaning there. So it was a good evening of art speed-dating.

Related links:

• Global PechaKucha Night website
• AIA Springfield website
• PechaKucha Night vol. 4 photo gallery
• PechaKucha Night vol. 4 video gallery

It’s the time of year that I sometimes work on art for the Japanese Fall Festival. I don’t do it every year, but over the past decade have designed many posters and t-shirts, so looking back through my files, you can see sort of a snapshot progression.

I often return to Japanese wood-block prints from around the 1800′s for inspiration. There I often find originality of compositions and stylization of forms of nature that I need to reinvigorate my work. I love the way flat shapes are filled with complex patterns, and depth inside the picture frame is created not through shading, but by scale, color and composition. I also like the way images seem frozen in a moment of time, and yet at the same time tell a story by selective use of people, objects, and landscapes.

Another interesting aspect of this annual festival is that making outdoor banners for the event is kind of how I got started making fiber art and art quilts. I was trying to come up a with a way to make big outdoor banners — not signs – but vertical banners that would hang from posts — so I started experimenting with kite materials that could survive outdoor weather.

This was about 15 years ago, and they are still used every year at the festival. In the photo above that Russ took last year, you can only see the backs. The fronts are more colorful because they are appliqued color layers edged with black satin stitching. The black kanji above the figures was painted by a famous Japanese calligrapher who was visiting Springfield, and so I left room for him to paint in whatever characters he wanted, then we heat-set the paint with an iron.

“Secret of Kells” is the story of Ireland’s sacred artifact, the Book of Kells. The film by artist/animator/director Tomm Moore is filled with screen after screen of gorgeous stylized characters, plants and landscapes filled with textures and patterns.

The lines are elegant and the composition, always a delight. I just want to buy the dvd, freeze every frame and soak in it.

“My Neighbor Totoro” is an older film by Hayao Miyazaki creator of many wonderful films including “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away.” This film is especially good for younger kids, since one of the main characters is a small girl taking care of her even younger sister while their mother is away. (video clips here)

As for the fantasy that Miyazaki so well blends with every day life, Totoro is a mysterious and funny – with his great big mouth, strange staring eyes, and bizarre howls. He’s also good at twirling and flying into the sky. But my all-time favorite has to be the amazing Cat-Bus that has upteen legs, runs across Japanese landscapes, and jumps into the sky.

What a lot of people don’t realize is there’s “art” behind the art. The art of making things work, the art of presenting, the art of bringing things to completion.

These are just a couple of photos from last week’s take-down of the Vital Threads show at Stephens College in the Davis Art Gallery. Annie Helmericks-Louder’s  husband John Louder is removing Annie’s butterfly from the wall. He’s especially motivated because he’s going to install his landscape paintings for the next upcoming show.

The wood piece is actually the hanging hardware for Annie’s huge art quilt, but you’d never have seen this elegant structure during the exhibition. It’s completely hidden behind Annie’s big butterfly that is composed of all sorts of fabrics, threads, and other embellishments. You can get a better sense of the texture of Annie’s work if you go to her website to see the nice close up photos she has on her welcome page.

One of the nice things about exhibiting with other artists, you get a chance to see how they pack, transport, and install their work. I’ve learned so much from watching other artists – both at shows I’ve been involved with and with my husband’s sculpture and gallery work. Plus, it’s just darn fun.

Annie’s system is pretty amazing. The wooden frame has small hooks screwed into it, and the hooks all match hand-crocheted rings sewn onto the back of the quilt. At first I thought she had crocheted thread around rings, but she said no, they are completely made of the yarn or thread so they are more flexible than metal would be.

For more photos of the exhibition, go to the Vital Threads photo gallery on my website. I’ve finally gotten my website converted to WordPress, something I’ve been trying to do for what seems like a year. I don’t have all my quilts there yet, but some of the more recent work.

Now after going to see Annie’s website, it makes me think mine needs a lot more work. Thanks for the inspiration Annie!

An ice house, I found out is a place were they used to cut up, store, and redistribute big blocks of ice that were brought down on the railroad from frozen lakes up north before there were such things as electricity, refrigerators, and deep-freezers. Hence the old-fashioned term “ice box” was a wooden cabinet where you put a block of ice below your food to keep it fresh.

For the open house of Marlin Company in their new digs, massive blocks of ice stood like sentinels at doorways and in the front lobby of the third floor of this massive old building. Blocks of ice with words in them.

Begging the question, I don’t know how to make such good-looking ice cubes, but here are a few photos. Not only did they look good, the quotes inside had inspiring themes such as “Build upon a grand Idea, and nothing can tear it down,” and “Creativity is the currency of Tomorrow.”

Marlin Company is a creative agency, and some of the people who work there are also artists. And they support local artists in a big way. The front lobby is full of art.

Here’s some of my friend Stephanie Cramer’s work in situ. I didn’t really know it was hers until I had to walk across the room because I fell in love with that blue bird — and saw her name on the tag.

The big gear coffee table? Made from a gear out of the old elevator shaft of the ice house by Michael Stelzer, president of Marlin Company who creates hand-forged sculpture in an old barn in his spare time.

The flowers were done by the Flower Merchant over on Campbell. Some of the arrangements looked almost like alien beings, and the main centerpiece like a formation of moon and the planets swirling around our solar system. And since Marlin’s specialty is working with national food companies, of course all the food was art!

Click on a thumbnail below to see larger images and captions:

Last weekend we helped out long-time friend Christine Kreamer-Schilling at her studio Mosaica during C-Street Steampunk Loftwalk. Christine has been a working artist for years, doing public art projects, teaching workshops for kids, collaborating with other artists, and making and selling her sculpture and art furniture.

Since she works often with recycled materials, her studio is stuffed to the brim with shelves and tubs full of potential art-making supplies. She has an old building on Commercial Street that she’s slowly turned from a junker to a gem, and everywhere you there are interesting surprises.

I loved the look of these giant letters spelling out “more” down the steps, but wondered what it meant — until I turned around and saw the second part of the installation on the wall behind. JOY.

That pretty much sums up Christine.

In recent years, she’s made several trips out to Burning Man, and that’s brought a lot of new energy into her art. She’s the first one who introduced me to steampunk, and her idea to add a steampunk theme to the C-Street Loftwalk was an inspiration. The mix of Victorian and industrial-tech is a great fit with the electic nature of historic Commercial Street that is being revitalized by artists and art.

Here’s Christine moving a mannequin outside to advertise her open studio at the loftwalk – love the stripy tights and the colorful trim on her building.

The event at her studio was to get the community and other artists involved in a charrette to develop ideas for a steampunk fence she’s planning to build at the entrance of her sculpture lot — you can just barely see the entrance to that lot in the back of the photo.

Here’s an interview with Christine on KY3 and also on the Springfield Public Art blog — a Steampunk loftwalk and design charrette photo gallery.

I’ve never really tried to recreate nature in art. Been tempted and wished I could. But actually nature makes me feel pretty inferior as an artist. It just seems enough to be out there, there’s nothing new to be made. So I don’t know why I always take so many photographs. Maybe it’s just to try to remember the moment.

While I’m writing this, we’re watching a video of Andy Goldworthy on Netflix, which says a lot about my bad habit of multi-tasking. (But it’s hard to do in a day everything we want to do, right?)

Anyway, hearing him speak about his thoughts about sculpture as he makes has given me new insight into his work. His works are beautiful in that they are from nature, they work with nature, and somehow they don’t disrupt the landscape that they are part of.

It’s also interesting to hear him say that photography is a way that he understands his own work. According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.” (from Andy Goldsworthy: Art of Nature.)

I had been was looking through the book Hand Job: A Catalog of Type to find inspiration for a project I was working on and found much more than I expected.

It’s a great book showing the work of graphic designers and artists who prefer using hand-drawn letters instead of digital fonts — packed with sketches and journal entries along side finished drawings, posters and illustrations by 50 talented artists.

“Graphic designer and hand typographer Michael Perry has selected work that represents the full spectrum of design methods and styles. Whether you are looking to invigorate your design work or are just in need of a little offbeat inspiration, Hand Job will have you reaching for your favorite pen.” –Brunswick Street Bookstore

Then I stared seeing hands everywhere I looked…in my studio, in the warehouse, everywhere….

P.S. I forgot to say that another reason I really enjoyed this book as because in school as a kid, instead of paying attention in class, I used to spend a lot of time drawing signs and messages in letters that were little cartoons of snakes – each letter had a little head with eyes, vogue, and a mouth.