The Tidelands Project begins

For the Heaven and Earth Exhibition this year I was selected to make work at a new site- Shilshole Bay Beach. What I intend to do is go out each weekend and sculpt another piece based on famous works though out history. These pieces will be in chronological order, beginning here with one of the earliest known examples of sculpture, and eventually I'll replicate my way up through art history as I work my way up the beach. As these sculptures are made of sand and clay I intend them to be gradually washed away by the tide, just as time gradually washes away all of mankind's endeavors. Here you see the first of my installation: a Cycladic figure. There have been many of these figures found in the Cyclades isles and are dated from the third millennium BCE.

The very next day I went back to see what was left of it after a full tide cycle and a night of hard rain. You can see that I'll have to adjust my building strategy if I want to have these "gradually" erode. But learning better methods and techniques of preservation was a challenge for our ancestors as it is for me today.

GAS

The Glass Art Society just had their annual conference here in Seattle, so of course I had to go. I wasn't sure at first if it would be worth the money, but a full three days of inspiration and wonder has changed me for the better!

I also recently finished my first class in kiln casting and here are the results- beautiful things. I think I'll stick with this for a while. So many ideas, so much art to make, I love it!

Kiln casting glass is taking over all my workspace! and my life. I'm currently enrolled in a class at Pratt and tonight we are loading the kiln for the second firing. Here you see the three stages of creating a cast piece: the wax positive (dark thing on the white binder) the plaster cast (this piece will be an open faced mold) and the final cast glass piece (round grey thing in front of stainless bowl)

getting ready for more installations this year- just imagine if these sculptures were 6ft tall and in a public park setting! i'll be applying to the project soon, so wish me luck.

Fun with Stencils

This weekend has been home improvement time. It must be the warmer weather, I'm starting to want to clean, organize, and stencil the walls! So I made this design by stylizing the dandelion into a very nouveau motif and I had hoped the repetition would make it look like wallpaper. I think it worked. Now I no longer notice all the cracks, holes and shoddy paint job underneath. YaY!

An Experience

Our journey started when a friend recommended Greg and I watch a documentary called The Art of the Steal. It tells the story of an art collector, his collection (one of the best post-impressionist collections in the world), and how a man's last will and testament can be systematically picked apart and discarded for personal, political and/or capital gain. At the end of this film we were warned that the collection would be moved to a new location at the end of 2012. So this meant that we booked a ticket to Philadelphia as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Jet lagged and sleep deprived, our plane reached the airport in time for a major snow storm, so we were rerouted to Baltimore to wait for an hour and a half. When we finally touched down at our intended destination, unloaded baggage at the hotel and found transportation to the suburb where the art currently is located, we were three hours behind our original appointment time. (You have to make a reservation for this place.) The staff of the Barnes Foundation was very welcoming, I was pleased to note. They all seemed very happy with thier jobs and I was sad to think that they were soon to be disbanded.

The museum was amazing, to put it mildly. Mr. Barnes had an incredible discerning eye for art at a time when the European impressionists were not appreciated in the states. He built this beautiful building to house his vast collection and used it to educate artists and art lovers. He even wrote a few books on his theories of art appreciation (I got one) and I was amazed to learn that he was close friends with John Dewey, the art critic and philosopher who wrote Art as Experience (also a book I own).

We did not have much of a chance to see any more of Philly in that trip, for the next day we were off to visit relatives on the east coast. But even for a few hours of looking, the whole trip was worth it! Art is an experience, especially when those who understand this are rich philanthropists devoted to making the experience accessible to the common man.

October and November at a glance

My week of vacation finally came, and I spent it in San Francisco. I saw the sun, it was warm! I stayed with my best girlfriend and made a lot of food! But most notably I visited the California College of Arts to tour facilities and talk with advisors. That was probably the best thing I've done this year. By the time I returned to the cold and wet I was so pumped about going back for a masters that I jumped right into the projects I've been avoiding, and they've been getting done!

I had bought a bunch of beveled glass jewels to make snowflake-sun-catchers from to sell for Christmas. You can bet from that description that I was dragging my feet all the way. However, since I started seeing the possibilities of using three-dimentional stained glass for larger projects I've been getting more into it and using it as an exploration of forms in that medium. (and it would be nice to make some money from these experiments.)

It was about three years ago that I threatened to make more plates to eat off of, we have two currently. And since returning from SF I threw four more when the temperature was still bearable in the garage. These too have an exploratory function. I am now carving intricate scenes into their faces to practice my bas-relief sculpting and prepare compositions worthy of translating into cast glass- a project that has been growing in my mind for some time.

Finally, I've been revisiting my stockpile of yarn. It was the snow- preventing me from reaching work two days in a row, and then Thanksgiving, that allowed me to spend half a day going through and removing all the nasty worm casings and nibbled yarn ends left over from a moth orgy. It made me very sad, but also motivated to get to my yarn before those nasty pests do again. I'm thinking of making a skirt.

That's all for now.

Happy Turkey Day.