Moving a Sculpture, or this weekend reminds me why I make quilts

May 25, 2008

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We finally got back up to Omaha to pick up this sculpture purchased at the Bemis Art Auction last fall. It will be a fun Memorial weekend project to move it back home for our new sculpture garden collection.

bemis2.jpg It’s very heavy and awkward to move — took six guys to drag it to the edge of the loading dock at the Bemis, before it could be lifted with a fork truck. Opps, lost a wheel. bemis3.jpg

bemis4.jpg Actually it the end, it worked better to take off all the wheels and load them separately. bemis5.jpg

Oh well, if the wheels really worked, it would just spin in a circle anyway. The sculpture is very heavy and now the truck and trailer is difficult to drive on the highway. Although it was a beautiful evening in old downtown Omaha last night, today the forecast is for heavy storms, wind and hail. Should be a exciting trip home!

Also stopped yesterday at the 51st Brownsville, NE historic flea market and craft festival. Wait till you see what I got there…

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International Quilt Study Center and Museum

April 8, 2008

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While in Lincoln, I was able to sneak over to the new International Quilt Center and Museum very early in the morning before the sun rose, because I had heard the new sculpture in front of the building was beautifully lit.

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The sculpture by Linda Fleming is called “Reverie” (daydream) is wonderful to walk around and through — lots of different viewpoints and even some matching fantasy chairs inside the structure.

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The museum itself is another work of art designed by architects Robert R.M. Stern of New York. The wall of glass front facade wraps about interior gathering spaces, exhibition rooms, and will house the world’s largest collection of quilts. Currently and through the summer exhibits include: Quilts In Common from the museum’s collection and Nancy Crow: Cloth, Culture, and Context which traces the development of Nancy Crow as a studio artist.

Lisa and I also got a chance to see another beautiful exhibit of quilts by Michael James in Lincoln’s historic Haymarket District. You can see a slideshow of James’ “The Life in a Day” series of quilts based on abstracted photographic imagery on the Modern Arts Midwest gallery website here.

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Olympic Sculpture Park

October 16, 2007

calder.jpgSunday was a beautiful day in Seattle. The last sunny day, my friend Susan told me, for the next nine months, so a great day to tour the new Olympic Sculpture Park. It’s a zigzaggy park that switches back and forth, up and down over reclaimed brown fields surrounding the railroad that runs along Elliot Bay.

Here’s one of Calder’s stabiles (as opposed to his mobiles.) Look at the little bird perched on the very tip of the piece, which happens to be titled Eagle.

serra.jpg Serra’s powerful Wake was designed using computers and a demilitarized machine that once made French nuclear submarines.

roymcmakin.jpgBut my favorite of the day was artist/furniture-maker/architect Roy McMakin’s landscape installation called Love and Loss. It’s full of verbal and visual puns — loss.jpgL is the high bench, O is the table, S is the lower bench, another S is a stair-stepping sidewalk. Look closely, the painted bark on the tree makes the V in LoVe - a tree that seasonally blooms and loses leaves in nature’s cycles, much as our own lives have such cycles.

You can see all the sculptures in the park on a flash tour on the SAM site, which thoughtfully shows the full park overview and where each piece is located

susanncrab.jpgSusan drove us around town in her bright red Mini, to Uwajimaya for fresh crabs and oysters, and to her house to eat them. Also to Kobo on Capital Hill. If you embrace wabi-sabi like Christine, check out their cool site. Today I’ll try to get to the other Kobo to see the exhibit of wax and ink drawings.

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Out the Front Door: In Memory of Pat Renick

May 21, 2007

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This morning someone left the front door wide open, so that when I got up for breakfast, a huge gust of spring air hit me full face. I felt like I was almost drowning in the glorious morning air.

Strange that I should feel so invigorated, since we had been up the whole night before, driving home from Cincinnati from the memorial celebration for Pat Renick or “Mother Art” as she’s often called. Pat was an artist, a sculptor, an educator, a mentor, and a friend to so many. We were lucky to see her at various sculpture events around the county, sporadically and sometimes far between. But she was one of those people whose words and contagious enthusiasm would stick with you long after. You can read more of her accolades on art critic Sara Pearce’s blog.

Pat always wore a hat. She said they were handy when you don’t want to make eye contact, or are rather bored at meetings, and that conversations when you’re wearing a hat are always more interesting than conversations without. So everyone wore a hat to the memorial celebration — wonderful hats with dinosaurs, hats with barbie dolls, with shovels, vegetables, sunflowers, you name it. It was a great event for a great lady.

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Looking back to her work in the 70’s, her themes are still universal and fresh. She made a VW car into a dinosaur to send signals about our dependence on fossil fuels. And later this sculpture, Triceracopter: The Hope for the Obsolescence of War, is a dinosaur built on the body of a honest-to-gosh army helicopter. It’s amazing to read her descriptions of how she built these things, using roasting pans in her kitchen oven and a tent in the back yard in this conversation in Sculpture magazine.

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Later work her work became more haunting with Life Boats: Boats about Life — sculptures that make allegories to different voyages in life and death.

But as Pat said, “I’ve often had two parallel lines of creative work. One is playful and humorous, especially in drawing and sometimes in sculpture. At the same time, I’ve had enough experience to recognize issues in my own life and in the larger world. My work moves in both directions, and sometimes the two come together in unexpected ways.”

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When we stayed at her house last year during Russ’s Cincinnati installation, I had lots of time to study drawings on the walls of her house, drawings that sometimes feature the adventures of Sky Woman, who would fly around the world, tirelessly fighting those who “thrive on tearing the wings off dreams.”

At sculpture events, I usually feel like a tag-along, a non-sculptor. But not around Pat. She always had time to check in with me and to encourage me through the years before I found myself making art quilts. She’s one of those people I have much to thank for, but most of all for her belief in me, as an artist in search of an art. For her belief that everyone can find the artist within.

So this morning, when the fresh air hit me with gusto, I thought it would be good to start a ritual of throwing open the front door and walking out into the morning, rather than sneaking out the back door as I often do. And I felt Pat’s hands on my back, pushing me through the front door.

In closing, here’s a photo of Pat at one of her and Laura’s grand parties and a quote by one of Pat’s heros, Molly Ivins:

Be sure to tell those
who come after
how much fun it was.

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Art Teachers Tour Studio

March 8, 2007

Last week really did turn out to be a scrabble to get ready for a tour we agreed to months ago. The Missouri Art Educators Association had their state conference in Springfield, and one of the professional development tours was to visit Russ’s public art and studio

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The only problem was Russ’s metal-working area was still full of water-damaged stuff. Actually, I shouldn’t say that, the other problem was, our front offices are now missing ceilings, carpet, and furniture. Looks like a bomb went off up there.

But the teachers still wanted to visit, so we got to cleaning — actually it was a good motivator for me to roll up my sleeves and start to deal with all this stuff. Trash it, salvage it, replace it — what to do with each item? Yuck. I think the decision-making part is more tiring than the physical work, although whenever we get ready for a big event, I usually get blisters on my feet no matter what shoes I wear because there is so much space to cover.

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But we did pretty well, and Russ has a new work-area set up in the back warehouse. My studio is pretty much back to normal (except for water stains on the pin-boards), so that part was easy. The teachers were thrilled, cheered at the end of the tour, and invited us to their lunch banquet — which for me was rather eye-opening in terms of the state of education and creativity in our schools. More on that later, I’ve got lots of news saved up…

You may have noticed I haven’t written in a week. I’ve been working late every night getting all my old blog moved over to WordPress, and it was a bear of a job. I couldn’t find a way to import all 300 posts over the last two years, so I had to cut and paste. I still need to work on my sidebar, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to move all your comments, but I hope to be better at responding. Just leave me your email in the address box when you comment, so I can! (it doesn’t get published.)

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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….

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Kinetic Man Sculpture Dedication

May 21, 2005

Lots of kids, big and small, showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Kinetic Man. There were free ice-cream sandwiches for everyone…

and everyone got a turn to make K-Man move. I think the little kids like the fact that it’s just a little bit hard for them to turn the handle because it makes them really feel like they’ve accomplished something.

For more photos from yesterday’s event, go to RuBert Studios blog.

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Raining Fire

May 20, 2005

After I got my Viking entry in the mail, I went back to the K-Man site with dinner for the guys and again later to take them some jackets. There is an awesome aspect to the site for the sculpture that we didn’t anticipate.

When the baseball games across the street end, the finale fireworks explode right behind K-Man’s head. I took the above night photo, but didn’t get a good photo of the fireworks when they were exploding I was still driving up the street, watching firey chucks of lava fall on my truck and got a burning spark in my left eye.

I wonder if they’ll quit blowing fireworks inside the city if this happens again? Hope I get a good photo before that happens.

p.s. Had a great meeting of our art group yesterday–some new people showed up. Hope to post those photos soon.
p.p.s. It’s two in the morning, and Russ is still out working on K-Man. I could only hold the flashlight so long, then I took a nap in the truck and came home.

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Kinetic Man Announcement

May 19, 2005

At sort of the last minute Russ decided that he’s like some announcements sent out to 400 people about a sculpture event on Saturday. Or was it sort of last minute I actually listened to him. Or was it at the last minute, I actually had an idea and inspiration of something to send out?

Regardless of why, last minute means that I design something, print it on the laser printer, cut, fold, stuff, address, lick, seal, and stamp it all by myself. 400 times. So you can see what I’ve been doing for a large part of the last two days. The fun part was drawing the kids and the mechanical gears that look like flowers or snowflakes.

I put his web site address on the back, so that means I also had to frantically update his web site (I actually just did the front page, someone else did the interior site and I still haven’t gotten to that) and I also created a new blog for RuBert Studios to show the daily stuff going on in the sculpture part of the studio. I admit I back-posted some stuff, but basically just dated the posts to match the photos I’ve been taking for a while now. Check it out for installation photos of Kinetic Man yesterday!

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The Gates article

March 11, 2005

It’s been a big week for publicity at the studio. Russ was interviewed by a local TV news station and the piece aired tonight. Also he wrote a guest feature article about The Gates for Thursday’s NewsLeader. He doesn’t really consider himself a writer, so I was proud of him for doing it. They published several of his photos in a very nice layout. If you want to see his full gallery of photos, go here.

Me, all week I’ve been tinkering around on several websites, so I haven’t really finished one thing. But tonight I finally put a new links page on www.pamrubert.com and kind of gave the whole site a few nips and tucks.

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The Crane Beast

January 17, 2005

I was waiting for Russ to come home for dinner. And waiting. And waiting. Finally I called him, and he wasn’t coming home because he was trying to move the crane from the front of the studio to the back when it stalled. In the middle of the intersection in the street. So he stayed at the studio until midnight trying to get the crane running again.

It really is a beast of a thing, and especially frightening when it’s stuck in the middle of the street. I have this fantasy of someday getting some spray paint and fixing it up really arty and painting “The Beast” on the side.

Sometimes it’s very interesting being married to a sculptor.

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