hilary pfeifer

Randall Children's Hospital

2012-01-24T16:23:00.001-08:00

I was commissioned to create five large sculptures for the new Randall Children's Hospital in Portland, Oregon in winter of 2011-12. Each floor of the building is a different ecoregion of Oregon, so I created two pieces for the Cascade region (bear with lupine and hummingbird and gray wolf with bluebird and trillium,) one for the Willamette Valley (Brush Hare with Western Tanager and Daisies) and two for the coastal region (puffin with sea anenome and Brown Pelican with Silverspot butterfly and violets.)

Here's a slide show that takes you through the process from drawing to sculpture!

Want more? Subscribe to me.

2012-01-22T20:50:00.000-08:00

Hello Beautiful Person!

If you've been a long time, even if occasional, reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I don't post here as much as I used to. Most of what once landed here has been going to my Facebook page, and I now see this blog as a place to occasionally post on smaller works of note, or a more in-depth focus on installations of other large-scale art projects as they come to life. Fortunately, Facebook now has a handy dandy subscribe feature, so if you're already part of that network and want to join me there, simply login, search for my name, and you can figure out what to do next, I'm sure.

As I mentioned before, I do intend to keep using this 6.5 year old chronicle of my art adventures in the future, so if you want to tune in for my active periods, I suggest you sign up for my email list and then you'll get a better sense of when to catch up over here when I'm actively blogging away.

Cheerio!
Hilary

hands

2011-12-27T18:48:00.001-08:00

Don't forget my 2012 workshop in OZ!

2011-12-20T19:06:00.000-08:00

Click on the image to enlarge it, or click here to head straight to the Fibre Arts website.

Elephabet on OPB!

2011-12-09T14:40:00.001-08:00

Being a big time public radio geek, I was thrilled to be recently profiled in a nice little video piece about Elephabet on Oregon Public Broadcasting's website--by jeweler and erstewhile videographer Sarah Fox!

Click here to watch the video!

hellooooooooo!

2011-12-05T20:33:00.000-08:00

I just finished a brand new book and animation called Elephabet, which collectively feature over 100 elephant sculptures I created last summer.

Velvet da Vinci Gallery has a selection of elephants from the book on display, and I have some others for sale here.

Also have some of my organic necklaces in the Sparkle Plenty show at Quirk Gallery, which you can read about here.

new podfuls

2011-09-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

I made two new pieces for the Woodworks show at the University of South Carolina that I'm excited about! Here are some shots of my work. You can learn more about this show by clicking here, which includes Bihn Pho, Todd Hoyer, David Ellsworth, Betty Scarpino, and more stalwarts from the wood domain.

Exhibition in Motion, redux

2011-08-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

I can't agree more with this thoughtful review by Gabriel Craig on the AJF Blog of this year's Exhibition in Motion | Objects Performed. You may recall my Epiphyte shoulder piece which was selected to be in this usually fantastic part of the SNAG Conference.
Here's the video of the Exhibition in Motion performance--judge for yourself before or after reading Craig's review.

I had much higher expectations than the actual performance offered, but really appreciate Craig's concluding comment that whether or not this show was successful, it reveals that there's so much potential out there for collaboration between dance and craft. I've been talking to dancer Carla Mann in the past few months about a future epiphytes project, so I'll let you know how that evolves.

velvety delicious

2011-07-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Just got this yummy blown-out image of my work installed on the wall at Velvet da Vinci!

naturally, unnaturally

2011-07-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

Exciting to hear about Velvet da Vinci's upcoming August show--a traveling exhibition of Australian contemporary jewelry called Unnatural Acts. There's even a blog for this show co-written by co-curators Lauren Simeoni and Melinda Young, so you can follow it as it tours the world. I'm pretty sure this piece isn't in the show, but I am especially in love with Kiwi Nadene Carr's colour challenge, pictured here and on the Unnatural,Naturally blog. The only thing I do know about the show is there's a collaborative piece partially done by my new friend Anna Davern, but we'll have to wait for the images. I'm hoping I can somehow make my way down south to see what promises to be another great collection of wearable art and soak in some Aussie culture for next year's journey down under.

I love the way he describes his process.

2011-07-06T20:29:00.000-07:00

A musical house for New Orleans

2011-07-06T12:25:00.001-07:00

CONTEMPORARY JEWELRY : Making other crafts jealous.

2011-07-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking so much about all the wonderfully LARGE jewelry I saw folks sporting at the recent SNAG conference, so when I saw the recent photo shoot on the Art Jewelry Forum Blog by Jennifer Cross Gans the other day, I was happy to relive some of the high points. Here I am in my Arthur Hash necklace. (The reflector pin on the right is one I swapped with Lloyd Herman!)The big grayscale pin on the right of Betsy Douglas' bosom is the one piece from SNAG that I really can't get out of my mind, so I'm thrilled to be able to show it to you. It's by Marjorie Schick and is such a simple, elegant painted canvas piece with a stick pin to hold it in place. It also has a full spectrum reverse side for two--count 'em, TWO!--wearing options.

Here's Jillian Moore (above) wearing one of her ambitious plant critters.

And, just to turn the tables a bit, I found this great image of Jennifer Cross Gans (above) herself from another website. There are more great portraits by JCG at the AJF site, but I'll leave you with one of my all time favorite SNAG photos by Mike Holmes (see below.) Taken at the Bellevue Arts Museum, this baby is hungrily eyeing one of the wearable pieces from Exhibition in Motion.

happy birthday usa!

2011-07-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

VW Bus

2011-06-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

via

p.s.

2011-06-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Ai Weiwei is freeeeeeeee!

I'm soooooo excited

2011-06-22T20:59:00.001-07:00

....to announce a workshop for 2012 in Australia! I've been invited by Fibre Arts Australia to be part of their July 2012 curriculum and of course it will be my tried and true the playful object | ssǝɔoɹd lnɟʎɐld ǝɥʇ. I am planning on adding needle felting to the mixed media lineup of flocking, gilding, and guttural thinking.

Anyone who has suggestions of books to read or other art/craft things to investigate in the SE region of this amazing country....I'm all ears!

perfection

2011-06-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

I love it when I get the spring to appendage ratio just right! This wall piece is currently en route to its new (temporary) home at Velvet da Vinci.

epiphytes - series 2

2011-06-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

I have a new set of rings, made for my epiphytes series.....a new body of work is slowly taking form....

Are you going to SNAG?

2011-05-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Hello to all of you beautiful people, especially those affiliated with the Society of North American Goldsmiths, better known by its acronym SNAG.

This week is their annual conference, held in Seattle this time around. I will be representing in two different arenas during Saturday's programming. In the morning, I'll be part of the Professional Development Seminar, a panel discussion about promoting yourself as an artist. The focus will primarily be on the work I do under my alias Bunny with a Toolbelt.
Even if you're not registered for the conference, this is one event that anyone can attend. Click on the image below to find out more details about the Professional Development Seminar.

If you are attending the conference, I hope you got tickets to Exhibition in Motion at the Bellevue Arts Museum. This year's theme is Objects Performed where dancers will wear and perform with the featured artworks. My piece epiphytes|epaulet will be part of this performance. In a nutshell, Objects Performed is a performance that provides a stage for craft artists and dancer/performers to explore how objects are made to function, and the imagination and improvisation activated in one’s pursuit to use. Curated by Stefano Catalani, Venetia Dale, and Tia Kramer in collaboration with choreographer Amelia Reeber. This is a one-time-only event and sold out, but you can view all the pieces that will be included by clicking here.

Harold Schnitzer (1923-2011)

2011-04-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

Very inspiring life story of Harold Schnitzer, one of the biggest philanthropists of this region. I adore this image of him kissing his wife Arlene, after they contributed significant funding towards the restoration of the old Paramount Theater downtown and renamed it in her honor. Portland will never forget this amazing man.

free Ai Weiwei!

2011-04-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

Avaaz is sponsoring a huge campaign to locate and free Chinese artist Ai WeiWei by creating global awareness about his recent disappearance. Please click here to read more about their campaign and help spread the word!

Here are some other sources who have covered this story as it has evolved:

BBC -- Chinese Artist Held for Economic Crimes

NYTimes -- China Takes Dissident Artist Into Custody

The Guardian -- Cultural Revolutionary

CNN -- A Dangerous mix of art and politics

The Atlantic -- The Art of Bubbles: How Southeby's Predicts the World Economy

ooh that smell

2011-04-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

I just heard that the World's smelliest flower, aka the 'Corpse plant' bloomed last Friday, the first time in 75 years! There are several specimens of this plant at botanical gardens worldwide, this one is in Switzerland at the University of Basel. The plant is aptly named for its pungent smell, although it looks like it would be worth it to see this big beauty.

beauty of repetition

2011-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Beauty of Life was included in a recent Lark Crafts blog about studio multiples. Click here to read it and see inside the studios of a number of studio artists including of my favorites, Arthur Hash.

Imagine, Measure, Cut, Hammer

2011-04-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

One of my earliest creative spaces was the little workbench my father made for me in the corner of his wood shop. I loved being there with all the tools, smells, and best of all, my dad! This article from the New York Times made me think about the importance of that formative experience. Click here to see the rest of Imagine, Measure, Cut, Hammer - Slide Show - NYTimes.com

I would love to see a return to these kids profiled in 30 years to see if it made an indelible mark. You know...like this:

Augmented Ecologies

2011-03-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

The integration of biological and technological systems in the design of an interactive human interface is explored through an installation where plants rigged up with sensors provide a kinesthetic user experience based on movement, touch, sound and light. Human interaction with the system affects an algorithmic projection and soundscape. Click here to see what's currently going in Guido Maciocci's mind.

master tatter

2011-03-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

Don't miss this great article from the Oregonian about my family's longtime dear friend Gene Beugler, who's known around the world as a master knitter and tatter.

sneak preview of my latest piece!

2011-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

I am working on a new series based on epiphytes. This is my first piece! The entire project is still taking form, but I am so excited about this one I had to share....

photography by Courtney Frisse
modeled by Eve Connell

the playful object | ssǝɔoɹd lnɟʎɐld ǝɥʇ

2011-02-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all! I'll be teaching a workshop called the playful object | ssǝɔoɹd lnɟʎɐld ǝɥʇ at my alma mater Oregon College of Art and Craft at the end of the month. There are still a few spots left in this jam-packed weekend of play exploration!

Course description: A broad-based arsenal of materials and processes can be vital to any artist working in any medium. Join Hilary for an enjoyable weekend investigating improvisational processes and creating extraordinary objects, discovering new ways to use old methods of art making. The class will cover aspects of exploring from and shape as well as developing the use of surface techniques such as flocking, metallic leaf and paint. Though there will be opportunity to discuss ideas for each individual to incorporate into their current artwork come prepared to share and participate in discovery as group. Artists from all fine art and craft disciplines are encouraged to take part in this opportunity to learn from each other.

February 25-28, 2011
Friday 6pm-9pm
Saturday and Sunday 9am-4pm.

Click here to sign yourself up!

you looking at me?

2011-02-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite and no doubt influential memories from childhood was the glass eyeball that my dad would pull out every so often. The story went that when my dad was a Boy Scout he went on a tour of a glass eyeball factory and this was their souvenir. It wasn't a full eyeball, but probably a castoff since it was not a sphere but more of a blobby cupped form. I loved getting to see it and was especially thrilled when it made its appearance in his halloween costume one year when it was embedded into facial makeup so it looked like it slid down his face in some horrible accident. If only I had a photo of that formative moment. Sigh. For now, you'll just have to enjoy this very cool video and watch the magic happen.

The Glass Eye Maker from Tomas Leach on Vimeo.

Speaking of making eyeballs, the image from the beginning of this blog post is of a giant eyeball that was part of a temporary public art installation in Chicago last summer. You can click here to read more about it, or watch this video about how it was constructed.

wrapping it up....

2010-12-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the final installment (at least I think so...) from the Beauty of Life show--sending the pins out to the nearly 100 Kickstarter backers! My trusty sidekick Alice was there to lend her shipping expertise (plus the donation of little boxes from Red Horseshoe Paper!) to the effort.

I had already written all the thank you letters I promised--found the perfect stationery at SCRAP after searching high and low for about an hour. Finally I discovered way down low in the paper section, a plastic crate filled with old paint color samples waiting for a future re-use. Among the slim strips were some larger pages from a sample book for local eco paint company Yolo Colorhouse. These were much more beautiful than the typical hardware store variety--the paint is applied in thick swashes and I decided to cut them down into something more abstract, like a Rothko painting and then write my letters there.

Alice and I worked together for about five hours and got all the shipments ready to go. Here I am holding up the printed receipt from the Post Office--it's taller than I am!

Thanks again to everyone who supported this project...I'm already making plans for next year, so stay tuned an happy holidays!

One last note: I have posted many of the pieces remaining from the repeating sections for sale online, which you can see by clicking here.

Last Week for Beauty of Life + Sitka Auction!

2010-11-08T17:42:00.001-08:00

Hey Beautiful People! This is the last few days you can see the Beauty of Life, so get yourself down to the Portland Building if you haven't already! At 6pm on Friday, the doors will shut forever on this one. Usually I find another venue to travel my shows, but because of the early sales on Kickstarter, this one could only be shown once in its originally intended format.

The upside of that is that I have found inspiration from my highest level Kickstarter supporters to transform some of the unsold work from this show into a new entity. This weekend is the 17th annual Sitka Art Invitational to benefit one of Oregon's gems, the Sitka Center. I have been fortunate to be invited to participate for the third year and made a few brand new pieces for the event. Inspired by my Beauty of Life show, I made four little wall-hung panels that house a number of small brooches, which can be removed and worn.

The panel is about six inches square, made of walnut.

This piece is made from old frames and many of the leaves are various hardwoods. The scale of this bird brooch is smaller and more detailed than many of the pieces from the Beauty of Life. Here's an image of the reverse side, showing the pin backs and how the mounting system works.

This was a lot of fun to work on and I plan on making several more for Velvet da Vinci before the end of the month. Here's a few images to show you what will be at Sitka this weekend:

I also have a menorah in the Sitka auction this year. Each piece is freestanding and half of them have a little birdy on the base.

See you at Sitka! (click on the image below to see a larger version with more details about this event, or click here to be magically whisked away to the Sitka Art Invitational website.)

Mayor Sam approves this installation

2010-10-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

I had a very special guest yesterday at my installation--Mayor Sam Adams who walked over from the birthday celebration for Portlandia! Perfect timing with Sabina Samiee on hand to take pictures! I will share more of her lovely photos soon.

The Beauty of Life.....it's alive!

2010-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Beautiful People!

I'm pleased to officially announce that the installation is complete! Alice and I put in another 9 hour day yesterday and completed the wall work, put the carpet in place, and called it art. The one thing I needed a bit more time to contemplate before publishing the final pictures was whether I wanted the carpet at all, but my return today confirmed it. The installation is right next to the desk of David Muir, who has seen every single installation in this venue's 15 year run. David is shown here helping adjust the vining parts that extend under the rug, which he took a particular liking to. No wonder he was Spirit of Portland Employee of the Year in 2009!

I recently found out that this month is also the 25th birthday of Portland's most beloved work of art, the brobdingnagian babe Portlandia, who sits above the entrance. This Friday afternoon at 3pm there's going to be a party with cupcakes and a public ceremony, so I decided to come on down and also make it an unofficial opening for my show. Click here for more information about that event.

Thanks again to everyone who made this show possible--the labors of: Alice Mclean,Tura Sugden, Kristin Mitsu Shiga, Junko Iijima, Andrew Lorish, and Matt McCalmott.

A huge shout out to the 96 people who supported this project by pre-purchasing pieces via Kickstarter: Locey Pfeifer, Clarke Green, Beka Amblin, Marthe Le Van, Tom Romero, Abigail Spring, Deena Preston, Donna Sutor, Sylvia Engelman, C. Robertson, Kathe Swaback, Temple Lentz, Jen Neitzel, Hal Pfeifer, Marla H Bane, Teri Thomas, Tina, Samuel Hernandez, Ann Morton, Gretchen Schutte, Cristina Ljungberg, Amber Landgraff, Kierstin Gray, Karon Flage, Jody Creasman, Arthur De Bow, Sara Flemming, Barrie Gillies, Rosmairta Kilara,

Liana Weiland, Jody Lemke, Mindy Tchieu, Heidi, Barb Stark, Mary D Reuter, Amy Ruppel, Renee Hudson, Merrian, Priscilla Nielsen, Karla Reinhardt, Husam Alghamdi, Richard Osborn, Janet Frohnmayer, Heather Shirkey, Mindful Mimi, Caryl Schiavon, Sheila Cannon, Tali Weinberg, Jololove, Heather Sabin, Phoebe Baker, Guido Stein, Kelly Cowing, Margo Thoma, Melanie Van Weelden, Julie Sabatier, , Wyvonne Colombo, Ruth Ross,

Nayla Hadchiti, Namita Wiggers, Penny Craig, Susan Ator, Brea Cali, Jordan Pfeifer, Maria Matson, Mathias Craig, Garth Johnson, Mary Rumsey Dorskind, Lisa Palmatier, Sylvia Riveland, Shir, Nancy Turner, Melissa Matson, James Gourlay, Lisa & Scott Cylinder, Brandon Shelton, Sarah Jesudason, AnnaCaroline Tod Sonier, Jennifer Menken, Patty Sgrecci, Louise Edgerton, Steve Keeble, Brigitte Martin, Lori Kobayashi, Kendel Ratley, Issy Tavares, William Craig, Tracey Waldron, and Rev. Steve Sharp.

And, of course, all the fine folks the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

After my Kickstarter backers have selected their pieces when the show concludes, I will make more of the work from Beauty of Life available. If you'd like to be notified when this happens, please join my email list by clicking here.

installation: day one

2010-10-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

The last few days getting things together have been intense, but I've also made sure to appreciate it all--I love the thrill of seeing a big idea come together and it's only a few weeks a year that I allow myself to be completely immersed in an art installation without any other distractions. On Saturday, my friend Junko Iijima came to help out for the morning and together we put all of the pin findings in the finished pieces. Junko is a great artist herself--click here to see some of her work. Checking this off my big list gave me one last task--to finish all of the one of a kind work for the wild sections, which I have been slowly chipping away at as I did the repeat parts, but one last push Sunday made me feel like it was time to start putting the pieces up on site.

My assistant for this final push is Alice Mclean, who I met a few years ago through Art on Alberta. We spent the morning hanging the wall panels that Matt built, and mapping out where the main part of the repeat pattern will live with repositionable painter's tape. The tape will be removed once the repeat sections are in place.

And so it began....I started with the section in the middle so that all parts could build out from that section. This will help me maintain the ideal density of the overall pattern and account for the subtle differences in size of the 32 pieces in these sections. I taped up my diagram right next to the rectangle and started placing the pieces in their corresponding spots. We only had about 3-4 hours to start filling the wall today, so tomorrow will hopefully allow us to completely finish the mammoth task. We seem to be figuring out how to be more efficient as we go along. I cannot wait to see it done--so far I'm pleased with the density because it feels as lush as William Morris' Strawberry Thief pattern.

Beauty of Life opens next Thursday!

2010-10-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Beautiful People!

See all those lovely black X's on my huge checklist? I'm coming down the real homestretch here with my Beauty of Life installation--late last night I finally completed all 768 of the pieces that will make up the repeating sections. Wanna see?

(Add ibuprofen and Excedrin PM to my materials list for this show!) Now I have the next five days to resolve the rest of this monsterpiece, such as attaching the pin findings, the detail work on the four wall panels, installing the work, and transporting it to its final resting place, the Portland Building. I have slightly adjusted the official opening date for this show to Thursday, October 14, 2010, so I hope that won't affect travel plans for any of you who are coming from out of town. Please note that there is no formal opening reception for this installation, but it will be on display through November 14th during the building operating hours Monday-Friday 7am-6pm.

I have a new team member to introduce to you--Tura Sugden, who soldered all 1600 of my pin findings, plus another 50 wires for two of my smaller designs. I met Tura through Velvet da Vinci initially, and she really came through for me in getting this massive part of the project done. (This picture is of Tura processing the hundreds of pounds of honey from her father's bees last year!!)

x12 (redux)

2010-10-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

x24

2010-09-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

flowers and birds and strawberries and nuts and bunnies and leaves...oh my!

2010-09-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hello Beautiful People! I've been plugging away in the studio this week and am ready for an update, but first and foremost, I want to send a huge thank you out to my fantastic Kickstarter backers whose support of this project was overwhelming! 220% Funded! Wow--I am humbled and honored--this early influx of cash will really help me realize this project as I come down the final 17 day homestretch! Here are some studio shots of the current state of affairs:

I was working on the multiples for the Compton piece and found that I was three brooches shy of the ruler sections I needed for the petals. I could have gone out and bought some used rulers somewhere, but instead decided to look hard around the studio and see what I might be able to substitute.

I found a ruler with some sweet little paintings from El Salvador and decided to sacrifice that. Still needing a couple more, I cut into a dreidel I recently scored at SCRAP. Both of these elements add some color to these pieces, more like the original Compton design that Morris created.

I have been putting in some very long days and it will continue to be that way until I cross the finish line. My studio is utilizing every single horizontal surface, with about five stations that I rotate between, working each station until something needs to dry or set and then I move onto the next. I'm slowly checking off my huge checklist and by the end of this weekend, my goal is to have at least half of the pieces done. (Except for attaching the pin findings, which will happen just before the installation.)

I am back to working solo in the studio--Andrew has completed his portion of the available prep work and it's up to me to do the final assembly and detail work in the next 2+ weeks. I did meet with another team member on location the other day--Matt McCalmont, who I met when we were both attending Oregon College of Art and Craft. He is involved with two interesting projects--his art collective Nowhere, which will be at Appendix Space next Thursday night, and his business Art Substrates. Matt's my go-to guy for many of the little things I need built for my projects, and I'm happy to be working with him again. For this project, Matt will be building the stage where these pieces will be shown. What this means is that He's building a false wall that's only 1/8 inch thick which will allow me to mount the pins onto this wall with the pin back holding it from behind, and then attach that to the real wall. I am planning on leaving a wide enough space on one end so the viewer can peek between the walls where all the pin backs will be, just to prove that they're all functional!

tool users and strawberry thieves

2010-09-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

When we last saw our heroine, she was looming on the precipice of a three day marathon, attempting to accomplish a miraculous feat: 50-100 new pieces for the outer portions of her installation. Said heroine put in a good 30+ hours on the project...but, well, we'll just say that there's enough to give you, dear readers, a good idea of what the one of a kind pieces will look like. We have to save some surprises for the show, right?

I have been thinking so much about what it was like being in my thesis year at Oregon College of Art and Craft over a decade ago when I was coming down the homestretch of my first major installation. What a difference a decade makes. I wouldn't trade places for anything, but I must admit--I do miss the energy my early 30's afforded me. That said, I am definitely happy with what did happen this weekend and can't wait to tell you about it.

Friday had some interesting insights that were very helpful in forming my approach to the task at hand: how to transition the 24 repeat panels on all sides into a more wild environment. I returned to the original inspiration for this installation--the Strawberry Thief. I know a lot more now than I did a year ago about William Morris, but this design remains in my mind as the one pattern whose title evokes more of a story than any other.

May Morris wrote a pretty hefty book in 1936 that chronicled her famous father's life's work, and she describes the Strawberry Thief as Morris' first multi-colored print.

She goes on to say: "You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds and telling the gardener who growls, 'I'd like to wring their necks!' that no bird in the garden must be touched. There were certainly more birds than strawberries in spite of attempts at protection. And the walls of the little dining room are hung with this note of the June garden and the little lords of it."

As a gardener, I fall somewhere between the gardener and William Morris on this issue. Behind my house, right next to my studio, grows a gigantic English walnut tree. It's easily the largest tree on the block, creating a canopy over half my property. I have a love/hate relationship with this tree which attracts a herd of squirrels who sit in the branches all summer and drop nutshells, and then dig up my light deprived garden below to store the unconsumed nuts for later. Don't get me started.

Still thinking about this, I heard a great piece on one of my favorite radio shows Science Friday that added another dimension to the birds who would dwell on the outskirts of this piece. Here's the video accompaniment to the segment:

In addition to the strawberry thieves, I had already been thinking about the crows who steal jewelry and other shiny objects from open windows, but this confirmed for me that I wanted the one of a kind pieces to be smart, nonconformist birds. (William Morris would be so proud!)

For this one of a kind section of the installation, I returned to my tried and true method of making the wall sculptural work that I did for my thesis, and continue making periodically to this day. The overall goal is to work faster than I can think, so I make a huge pile of forms. Here's a few shots from my workbench with all the forms laid out so I can assemble them later. Usually the forms I make are more abstract but for this project, they are bird bodies, beaks, leaves, nuts and flowers.

It's a combination of found wood objects and regular old recycled wood. I also made a pile of fruits that were somewhere in between a strawberry and a chili pepper for some of the birds to perch upon or maybe eat.

So....I still have another day or two to finish this batch up, but I have a couple dozen that I can show for now, since the Kickstarter campaign will end bright and early tomorrow. These pieces are all one of a kind and I expect there will be around 75 of these. (Please refer to my last blog post for information on how the selection of works from this show for the Kickstarter backers works.)

Please note: there may be some adjustments to these pieces before they're in their final state, but it will be minor--usually a tiny painted element like the leaf or beak or something like that. This group will basically give y'all an idea of how the more decorative and formal pieces from the center will break from form and get their wild sides on. I'll show more mid-week after more, hopefully all, are done.

I like how the last two are holding a stick, but really it's the same element I am using for the bird's leg. Okay...that's it for now. I have to take a little break from it all now. Thanks for your time and interest in my project. I am so thankful to my Kickstarter backers for your huge support in helping me get this mammoth project done. I will continue posting updates for the little over three weeks until this project will see the world outside my studio! Woo hoo!!!

final four and the big to do

2010-09-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today I resolved the final four pieces in the overall repeat pattern for my project. Yay! Ready to meet them? First up is a larger piece, about four inches wide. It's named Kennet, after another of Morris' designs that I love.

This tiny little leaf pin--each will be made from some ornate picture frame and my wrapped stem. This piece will simply be titled "leaf."

This is another teeny tiny pin, titled "Acorn." I have been loving having a few nuts in my pattern and couldn't resist filling in a gap with another. The carved leaf adds to the turned nut form nicely.

Finally, I present you Compton--this is a name I've been drawn to for the entire project because this is the first pattern by Morris that I ever attached to. I don't remember specifically, but I think I had a notebook or journal with this pattern when I was a teenager. It's one of Morris' most vibrant patterns to my mind, and I thought this petaled flower was perfect, even if it has a less flashy palette. In addition, this is appropriate for the last piece I'll title in the repeat because the pattern "Compton" was designed by John Henry Deale for Morris and Co. in 1896, the year of William Morris's death. Upon Morris's death Deale was appointed Art Director of Morris & Co.

Since my Kickstarter campaign ends on Monday morning, I thought I'd spend the next three days trying to give my backers an idea of what the one of a kind elements that will surround the repeat pattern will look like. I have been making and collecting some forms along the way of designing the 32 in the big repeat section, so that I can put together about 50-100 additional pieces that will live outside the boundaries of the 24 section repeat. This is where the installation will start to grow wild. By Sunday night, I will be able to give you a pretty good idea of what these pieces will look like and will post another last minute update before the campaign ends.

A reminder about Kickstarter supporters and how it will work--the people who pre-purchase work via Kickstarter from this exhibition will be able to choose first from the finished work in this show. I will document every piece, and after the show is installed, post images online. Everyone will pick their pieces, with a few backups, and I will reserve them based on a ranking system: moving through the support levels from the highest to lowest, and from the earliest supporter in each level to the most recent. For those of you who haven't supported yet, now's the time to get on board! For any of you who have supported already but may want to adjust your levels, you are allowed to do so until the funding period closes at 11:11 am Pacific Standard Time on Monday, September 20th.

I will leave you with this image of the giant task list I made up today. I have a huge month ahead of me assembling all the little parts into the jewelry, so I thought it best to make a small checklist for each piece so I can keep on track and combine tasks where I can. My goal is to have all pieces assembled by October 1. Can I do it? We shall see!

news from somewhere

2010-09-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Hello Beautiful Person! I can't believe it's been a whole week since my last update. There's so much to tell, so I'll dive right in: Much of my energy was spent putting together my open studio/Beauty of Life preview event last weekend, and now that I'm feeling fully recovered, I will declare it a success. I believe I hosted about 100 people during the course of the day, showing the public for the first time the 40 square feet where I spend most of my days puttering about at one project or another. On this day, there was a little less sawdust, and a little more staging so I could easily explain my process and project to my visitors.

This table held the display of the single repeat showing many of the completed or nearly completed pieces, my sketchbooks, and other books I've been using for reference. This image is the far end of the table, where I stacked the parts I've been working on, which will eventually be assembled into the final pins.

One of my teaching props was this tiny framed drawing that I've had on my wall for about 20 years. This was a simple little design created for a greeting card line by an artist who was a big inspiration to me from my early 20's on, Lynn Ihsen Peterson. Lynn showed her work in my parents' gallery Opus Five for many many years and blew my little mind with her mastery of so many media including drawing, painting, sewing, bookmaking, ceramics, etc. She has a show right now in Eugene, which you can see by clicking the link on her name.

Another artist friend Anne Connell came by and was curious if I was going to be using some of the mirror image symmetry present in the original Morris Strawberry Thief design. It's a good point--if I had more time to work on this project, it could be something interesting to include, but she lent me her copy of this book that explores the topic. I must say that this project has got me thinking about another William Morris inspired installation I'd like to do, so I think it would be a great read for the future: Handbook of Regular Patterns, An Introduction to Symmetry in Two Dimensions by Peter S. Stevens. Anne should know about symmetry--she uses a lot of geometric patterns in her incredible paintings which you can see by clicking here.

Near my sanding station is my Strawberry Thief yardage, along with a few other images for handy reference like the way the repeat pattern will work that I showed you earlier.

So now it's time to show you my four new pieces. I unfortunately have to abandon the image I had been using to reveal the overall pattern because, well, I'm just about done with the new members as of this blog entry. I have two more large ones in the works, and so I felt I needed to rethink the final pattern arrangement because some things changed along the way. The pieces on the red reflect the place I'm at with the final pattern as of this writing, and two are still unfinished. The drawing to the left is one I did to keep track of the names, and the blue tape marks are where I might add in three additional teeny tiny pin designs at the last minute.

The first new design is Windrush, named for another one of Morris' beautiful leafy wallpaper designs. This will be a slightly larger leaf than Froissart and Lodden that I showed you a few weeks back.

This second design is named Trellis, after Morris' very first wallpaper design.

The next two pieces are named in honor of some new friendships I've forged as a result of my public conversations about this project. I mentioned before that this installation was mentioned on the blog of the William Morris Society. I've had a few interchanges with different members of the society who took the time to contact me since then and their stories inspired these new works.

Mark Samuels Lasner conveyed the message from his partner that I should do a rabbit piece, noting that William Morris had a strong connection to the furry creature. This was exciting to me because I happen to run a business called Bunny with a Toolbelt, so I looked into it and made this piece based on a pattern called Brother Rabbit. I wasn't originally intending on including any other animals besides birds in this piece, but this suggestion came at the right time as I was struggling with a large rose element that I needed to balance the large bird heads in my design titled Epping and Woodpecker. I love the way the rabbit is hiding under the leafy foliage in the original Morris print.

Over the weekend, I received another nice email from Gary L. Aho, who is on the Governing Board and editing Morris's Icelandic Journals. In my readings, I briefly noted the fascinating fact that Morris spent some of his days in Iceland, and decided to name this piece accordingly. Morris studied ancient Norse with scholar Eiríkr Magnússon, and together they did many translations from the Icelandic classics. I'll call my latest brooch Niblungs, after an epic poem that Morris wrote inspired by his love of Iceland's rich history, titled the Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs.

Six days left on my Kickstarter campaign! If you have been waiting to get a good picture of what this installation will look like, or update your pledge amount to get more pieces, now's your time to click here and get in on the action!

the fruits of my labour

2010-09-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Hello Beautiful People! I've got two pieces to share, but first there are a few announcements. I was thrilled yesterday when the William Morris Society took note of my project and included it in their blog News from Anywhere. I have been looking at their website a lot while working on this project and it's an honor to be part of their important work. I took the obvious next step and am now an official card carrying member of the William Morris Society.

I have started to assemble my team (thanks Kickstarter backers!) to work on this project and want to introduce you to them so you will rest assured that it's money well spent.

First is Andrew Lorish, who is my key assistant on the project. He started last week, and will spend much of his tenure assembling the brooches from the pieces I sculpted. Andrew studied sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as running their Sullivan Gallery where students learn the ins and outs of bringing their artwork to the public eye. He has worked as a studio assistant on some very interesting projects, such as the Mt. Baldy Expedition and John Rose's beautiful windows for the Eugene Public Library. I am really glad to have Andrew on board while we come down the homestretch in these last five weeks.

Next up is Kristin Mitsu Shiga, a longtime friend of mine, who is also an accomplished metalsmith. Kristin is finding some time in her busy schedule to act as a consultant for the double life that this installation will lead, acting as both sculptural and functional object. It's imperative to me that every single element is well-made and Kristin has been working with me to come up with the best solution for the hundreds of findings that will support the piece when it's on the body. Click the link on her name to see the piece about Kristin from a recent episode of Oregon Art Beat.

The third person I've started talking to is Sabina Samiee, who has been volunteering her photographic talents to my favorite little nonprofit organization for the past year. I am hiring Sabina to come in for several photo shoots during the making and installation phases so the project is professionally documented.

Okay...it's time to catch you all up on the latest news straight from my workbench:

I'm continuing to work on resolving the large group of bird heads that I showed in the last update. Now they all have wire feather elements on their heads. They now await the final elements of wrapping the wire and painting the balls on their tips.

This bird pin features two apples. William Morris often included fruit in his patterns, so I wanted to make sure I honored that. this piece is simply titled "Apples," as so many of Morris' titles were succinct and to the point. This piece is around 3-4 inches high. Click here to see an example of a Morris apple pattern from the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection.

The 24 pieces in this series will each have a ruler sculpted into a leaf. I have amassed a little collection of wooden rulers over my years of collecting found wood scraps and decided to sacrifice a few for the installation. This piece will be titled Blackthorn after one of my favorite Morris patterns.

I am coming down the homestretch with new designs--four more are about to be finalized, possibly today, and I'll present them as soon as I can. Five weeks left until the installation and there's no time for rest.

Don't forget, if you're in the Portland area, you're invited to come see these pieces this weekend at my Open Studio event!

jokes are cool.

2010-09-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

Epping and Woodpecker

2010-09-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

I have two large bird head pieces to show today--these are around 6-8 inches in length.

There will be one black and one natural wood bird head in each repeat.

One of the birds will be holding a strawberry. His name is Epping, for the forest that Morris explored when he was a child. He started his intense love of nature there, and could identify all local species from an early age.

The second bird will be holding a small nut. His name will be Woodpecker, after one of Morris' tapestries.

There's more variation in this design than most of the other elements in the repeat sections of the installation. Some of the found materials I've used for this design are: turned rosette moldings, game pieces, a giant Tinkertoy block, toy wheels, and a dismantled Mexican molinillo.

These pieces are almost done, but not quite. Of course I need to decide who gets a strawberry and who gets a nut, but I will also add a curly wire feather detail to the top of each of these large brooches.

openings

2010-08-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

While I'm finishing up a few new pieces to show you from my Beauty of Life show, I thought I'd do a short piece about the place where it will soon live: the Portland Building Installation Space. This tiny venue has been lovingly attended to by the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) for the past 16 years. For many years, it was one of the very few places to only show installation work in Portland and it continues to be one of the city's hidden art gems to see work by emerging and established regional artists. The image here is from a 2009 project by Nickolus Meisel.

The installation space is in the downstairs lobby of the Portland Building, where the city keeps its municipal bureaus and departments such as: Environmental Services, Human Resources, Management and Finance, Parks and Recreation, Risk Management, Technology Services, Office of Transportation, and the Portland Water Bureau. It was designed by Michael Graves in the early 1980's and remains controversial to this day with its colorful postmodern facade, and the pronounced lack of natural light for those who use it on a daily basis.

Above the front entrance sits Portlandia, designed by Raymond Kaskey. This huge bronze amazon has become one of the city's icons. It also happens to be the second largest copper repoussé statue in the United States after the Statue of Liberty.

RACC supports eight shows a year in this space. The building is open to the public from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and staffed by security around the clock, seven days a week. I love this space because it's mostly seen by city workers and those who need to use their services. Anyone is welcome to enter the building during their operating hours and see the exhibitions. I was lucky enough to snag a spot once before, in 2004, where I premiered my Vertical Garden. (Faithful blog readers may remember that I found a permanent home for it last year!) RACC has a great online archive of the over 100 shows that have been in this space that you can see by clicking here.

There's no opening or closing events for shows in the Portland Building Installation Space, so I decided to host an open studio event all day on Saturday, September 11th and show this project in progress. Please click here to see my website's calendar for hours and location. I haven't ever had an open studio presentation to the public before, so I'm curious to see how that goes. It's also the 100th birthday for my house, so I figured a ritual gathering of some sort was in order. I hope to see you there!

plus six....with more on the way

2010-08-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend in the studio and have lots to show! It's an exciting milestone for me because I have only a dozen or so pieces left to resolve and I'm hoping this will happen in then next week so I can start focusing on the one of a kind edges of the installation where it starts going wild.

Before I start tonight, I have some business to take care of. I've been doing some more thinking about how this Kickstarter campaign is going to work: I will document all of the pieces online once the show is installed. Each piece will have its own name and placement code in the big picture of this installation. When it's time for my Kickstarter funders to choose which piece(s) they want, I will ask you for your top choice(s) with two backup choices. Then I will move down the list from the first supporter on down, fulfilling the earliest bidders from the top pledge tier first, and move down through the levels accordingly. There will be over 700 finished pieces in this installation, so there's a pretty good chance that everyone will get what they want. But if you're lurking in the shadows, you might think about getting your name on that wait list soon!

Okay. Enough business talk. It's time to unveil the weekend's offerings:

I'm going to title this mostly monochromatic piece "Pimpernel," after a very lovely design Morris did that you can see by clicking here. This piece is about three inches wide.

This is Rosebud. It's a tiny (two and a half inches high) pin named for a really sweet pattern designed by J.H. Dearle for Morris & Company. Dearle worked for the business nearly all of his life, coming as a teen and eventually being appointed art director of the firm upon Morris' death in 1896. He was multi-talented, creating beautiful designs for designs for tapestries, embroidery, wallpapers, woven and printed textiles, stained glass, and carpets

The piece on the left is "Cross Twigs" and the one on the right "Cherwell." These are small pins, no bigger than two inches in any direction. Cherwell was another Dearle design, with a beautiful thistle in this two-color print.

This piece will be titled "Dove and Rose" after one of Morris' prints from 1879. It's about five inches high.

Last but not least, I present Wandle. This is a piece I'm excited about because it's a new modification of a found object--the honey dripper.

As a reminder, every one of the pieces you've seen today are part of the 24 panel repeats that dominate this installation. I have two more that are pretty close to being done that I'll post in the next few days. Goodnight!

one brooch. one necklace.

2010-08-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

I have two new pieces to show today. First is another bird brooch--this will be the largest in the entire grouping, around eight inches long! I wanted one piece to be so long it would straddle someone's entire chest, so here it is! As with other similar brooches from this project, the flower in each piece will be unique. The wing is a piece of ornamental picture frame. This one will be titled "Snakeshead" after another memorable fabric pattern by our man William Morris.

Next up, I am excited to show my first necklace for this installation! I came up with a design for these pieces where the ends are really two brooches, tethered together by a six foot cord that I have carefully wrapped so it has a ribbed plantlike vine. The two brooches attach to the garment as seen, and the cord can loosely orbit the neck. I'm open to other ideas if you have them about how this piece can be worn. The necklaces in this installation are near the bottom, and the cord actually travels beneath the carpet and peeks out again at the edges. There will be eight necklaces in the entire installation, each one of a kind.

I decided to name the necklaces after some of William Morris' poems, so this one is titled "Love is Enough." Here is the original poem, written in 1873.

LOVE IS ENOUGH

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,

And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,

Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover

The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,

Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,

And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,

Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter:

The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter

These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

Evenlode and Acanthus

2010-08-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Two new pieces to show. They are both leaf forms, but about 6x the size of the teeny tiny leaves I showed a few blog posts ago. I'll title the green one on the left Evenlode, after one of Morris' textiles. The original Evenlode is part of a series of designs that Morris named after tributaries of the Thames river.

One of the great resources I've been using for this project is Linda Parry's book (simply titled William Morris) she wrote over a decade ago that accompanied a big survey show of Morris' work at the Victoria and Alberta Museum. Here's a little anecdote from the book about Morris' original naming of the Evenlode pattern that I found amusing, only because I know how hard it is to title work myself:

"[Morris] drew the pattern at Kelmscott House while suffering from gout, and found some difficulty in naming it. In a letter to May on Saturday 3 march 1883, he wrote 'I have been at work pretty hard & have made a new pattern which in honour of the occasion I ought to call "Colchicum": only as Colchicum is nothing less than a crocus & I have stupidly omitted to put a crocus in, to avoid questions being asked I must fall back on a river and call it Evenlode.'"

I will title the second brooch, the simple brown leaf, Acanthus, after one of Morris' most popular designs you see here. I know the Acanthus all too well--an eager gardener who owned my house years before I did planted Acanthus all over the property and it has been extremely difficult to get rid of, as every little bit of root left when you try to dig it up starts a new plant. Agh! It's not such a bad plant, but one or two is plenty for my small property. I know that my simple leaf brooch is not as ornate as the original plant or Morris' design, but the curvy stem reminds me of the way he's rendered these leaves to make his pattern.

I was excited to get my postcards for the show the other day! A shout out to Portland printers Colormation, who I love to use. The cards have a wonderful heft and the color is perfect.

plus five!!!

2010-08-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

Yee haw! I have five more finished designs to share from my upcoming installation the beauty of life! My kickstarter campaign is inspiring me to keep plugging away and I love watching this repeat pattern come to life. Anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about should click here and catch up with me! And for the rest of you, onward ho!

Here's another of the bird pins. Its fairly straight forward, using various found woods for the bird itself. The wings of all 24 birds in this design will be made from different Scrabble tiles. Oh, yes, almost forgot to name this one. I'll call her St. Catherine after this beautiful tapestry done by Morris' wife Jane.

This ornate floral pin is titled May, after the daughter to William Morris. She was an expert in textiles and a champion of embroidery techniques and design.

Here's another bird pin, which I'll call Grafton. This name comes from a simple wood block wallpaper print that Morris designed in 1883, and the impressed designs on the bird's body is somewhat reminiscent of this pattern. I found a bunch of picture frames in different colors with this same pattern at SCRAP, so they'll be used for the entire series. As with the Sussex brooch, each one of the flowers in this bird's beak will be a different carved, colorful flower. If you click on the image, you'll get a closer look at the eye--I found some beautiful nails many years ago that have numbers on their heads, and decided to use them in this series.

The rest of the pieces I'll show you will be smaller in stature, adding more designs to the $25 level for my Kickstarter supporters. The piece on the left just begged to be left alone, so there's no color on this rose and leaf combo. The title of this piece is Loop Trail, after another memorable wallpaper design.

The pear and strawberry pins will be eponymous.

The last one is a simple nut form, which will also be self-titled.

plus three

2010-08-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

Three new pieces to show...

Tiny leaves are one of the smaller elements in this project--these are what I refer to as "tie tacks" and are available at the $25 level in my Kickstarter campaign. There are two different styles of this tiniest leaf--one painted green and one made with a nice dark brown walnut and clear coated. The leaves are a little over an inch wide.

The walnut leaf will be called Froissart, after the famed chronicler of the 14th century French monarchy. Morris created ornate and leafy designs for the published works of this writer that were stunningly beautiful and intricate.

The green leaf will be titled Lodden, after one of Morris' more colorful fabric designs. On both leaf pins, the stem will have a striated curled stem.

This bird pin, named Sussex after Morris & Company's rush-seated chair designs. The bodies of all 24 birds in my pattern will be made with a different wood, taken from some great eco-flooring samples I found at SCRAP.

I'm excited about the wings, which are another SCRAP score--I was wishing I still had the handful of ink-stained wood letterpress spacers that I found there years ago, but they have been used on various projects already. I tried looking on the web to see if anyone was selling such a thing, but to no avail. Then I noticed the bag of used popsicle sticks I purchased, intending to use them for paint stirrers. Many have an imprinted text on them, and others have the fruity patina of whatever flavor they once supported.

The flower that each of the 24 birds is staring at will be a slightly different shape--here are some of the forms I carved the other day that might be used for that element. They will be painted, not raw wood.

Kelmscott

2010-08-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

At this point, I have designed the general forms for all 32 brooch designs that will be in my 1x2 foot repeat. Since there are 24 repeats, I will need to make each design in a multiple of 24. On a day-by-day basis over the course of the next month, I will develop the colors for each design, complete one prototype, and make the components for all 24 pieces.

I'll introduce the pin series with the one that's already completed and shown in my Kickstarter video. I am naming this one Kelmscott, after the town in England where Morris spent much of his life and was buried in 1896.

The 24 birds based on this Kelmscott design will not be identical. Looking back at the grid I showed in yesterday's blog post, the brooches in the 15 aggressive repeats might find themselves going a little wild. As you see here, most of the bird bodies are made with a fluted piece of architectural molding, but six of them were made from a turned molding, and a single one will be made from the handle of a found wooden spoon with grapes carved into it.

Since these pieces are located right in the center of the repeat, I will stick fairly close to the original design when assembling them later.

When these are completed, each of the 24 pieces in the Kelmscott series will have the title and numbered section of the installation written on the back.

on a lark

2010-08-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Marthe at Lark Crafts for featuring my Kickstarter project on their blog today! Click here to read it.

watch me blog

2010-08-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

Okay...so here's the plan.

Remember my early drawing about how the The Beauty of Life installation will look? Here's a reminder of what I thought way back in October when I wrote my proposal to RACC:

Well, of course things have evolved a bit since then, but not too much. The only major changes are the density of the installation and the fact that every piece is going to be wearable. I've finally worked out the strategy for getting this project done. Here's the sketch I did of the repeat sections that will make up the installation.

So, basically, there will be 24 repeated sections. I broke these down into three main categories. The nine darker sections in the middle are what I call the "static repeats" where the pieces will more or less be identical. I say more or less because there will be subtle variations in each element so that no two pieces will ever be identical, but this center section will establish the repetition at its core.

The pink sections are what I call the "aggressive repeats." This means that although there will be a lot of similarity here to the static repeats, there will also be elements, particularly at the edges, which will become more wild and organic, moving out of the formality in various ways.

The third category is the nine neckpieces which will extend from the wall under the carpet and re-emerge changed. I think I figured out today that these pieces will actually be a combination brooch/neckpiece, whereas there will be a brooch that will pin to the shirt, and a lightweight cord will emerge from it and orbit around the neck multiple times before finding its way to the second brooch which will pin to the wearer's garment. It's an expansion of my necklaces I made for the New West Coast Design show. More on this later.

I have basically designed all 32 brooches /pins /tie tacs/ whateveryouwannacallthem at this point and decided that I will develop each one on a day by day basis, revealing each one here on my blog for as long as it takes me to get through them. Some are infinitely simple and others more complex, so we'll see how it goes, but my goal is to get through all of them before my big open studio event on September 11th where you can come see the actual works and support my Kickstarter campaign when you see the one you want for your very own! Here's a sneak peek at the early stages of the big layout--tomorrow we'll get started on the nitty gritty details so I can start showing you some finished pieces.

kicking it up a notch

2010-08-10T05:30:00.000-07:00

I have launched a fundraising campaign through Kickstarter to help me fund my latest installation--supporters get first pick of the original pieces of brooches, tie tacks, and neckpieces that will make up my wallpaper print.

to read more and support my campaign, click here to go to my page on the Kickstarter website! Thanks so much for helping me make this dream a reality.

do the bird

2010-08-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

Great progress this week on my installation! First of all, I have a title: The Beauty of Life.

I chose this because it's also the title of an essay written by William Morris when he proclaimed "have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." This statement was what inspired me to make this installation double as jewelry pieces. I also think it's a great title because the natural vignette will transform from beauty and order to wild chaos, and the implication that it's all beautiful and all a part of life is appealing to me.

I have also been working on making my components, hoping to pre-sell some of the pieces in this show so I can afford to hire a team of jewelers and craftspeople to help me with the assembly and construction. Now that it has this wearable aspect, it increases the labor involved by at least threefold. More on that later.....

Feeling dissatisfied with my simple songbird in the preliminary sketches, I decided to turn to Charley Harper and see how he rendered birds, hoping to push me in a new design direction. It was definitely a helpful exercise and I made this pin to see how it looked. The body is made from a piece of architectural molding. There are some other found object parts in here, mixed with some I sculpted from scratch. Seeing this finished element makes me excited to start to design what will surround it in the larger installation.

Here are some of Charley Harper's illustrations that I really looked at, and then a few more of my drawings of compositions I'm contemplating for the show.

RIP MAM

2010-08-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

I've been putting off writing this blog post because it's been hard to accept--a dear friend and mentor passed away two weeks ago, Marcia Macdonald. Marcia came into my life almost twenty years ago when she worked for my parents at their gallery Opus Five in Eugene. Although I was already familiar with American Craft Magazine and had attended a fantastic summer session at Penland School, it was Marcia who gave me a glimpse of her life as a part of a national art community that made me decide to formally study art and pursue a career of my own. I can't deny that Marcia's artwork had a profound influence on me as well--her use of color and loose style were eye-opening, to say the least.

There have been a few nice memorials online for Marcia--I'll let them tell you more about her professional accomplishments.

Obituary from the Greensboro, North Carolina Record
Obituary from the Eugene Register Guard
Society for North American Goldsmiths
Penland School of Crafts blog

You can see in each one that she made a personal impact on so many people. The timing of her passing, sandwiched between a week of two new babies in my family's inner circle, reminds me of how Marcia was there for me at a time when I experienced several significant upheavals in my life. She was good that way. My dad always called her Marsh Hawk, which made me smile. He doesn't give out nicknames to just anyone!

Memorial contributions may be directed to Hospice and Palliative Care
of Greensboro or Penland School of Crafts.

more sketchy sketchy

2010-07-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am loving the idea that these are going to be pins too--makes designing the elements a new challenge, plus I get to use my metalsmithing degree a bit more!

sketchy

2010-07-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a few drawings for the Portland Building installation I did while traveling south last week. I'll post more in a few days.

have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful

2010-07-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

I decided that my upcoming Portland Building installation needs a new angle after reading the above quote by William Morris. It won't look visually different, but I think this installation needs to double as something "useful," in this case, I want to make every element a piece of wearable art: brooches on the walls and the parts that vine under the carpet would be necklaces. Adds a bit more work, but I'm hoping to be able to hire some extra hands to help me make it happen. Still need to find my title. Unghhhh..that's always the hardest part!

burn after reading

2010-06-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

What is Next Nature? It's a great blog that writes about this:

Some centuries ago landscape painters taught us to appreciate the quality of an untouched landscape. Ever since we have been doing everything to recreate it.

We camouflage cell phone antenna mast to look like tries. We fly thousands of miles to experience a pristine landscape. Some countries even go so far to reconstruct prehistoric landscapes at obsolete industrial sites – revived extinct animals included.

Within our society, nature is continually presented as a lost world. It is associated with originality, yet appears only once it is has disappeared. Do we have genuine experiences of nature any more? Or are we living in a simulation of it?

---

In other news, I just bought a Little Torch! Woo hoo! Watch out world!

Alberta Street, June 2010

2010-06-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Ampersand Vintage has added a sweet little gallery space in the back of the main room--it's a pass-through to the shared courtyard out back where they have occasional events, but still gives the artist room to show a small body of work and the viewer a private room to contemplate it. For me, it was a welcome respite from the Last Thursday craziness to see this show by Misha Capecchi.

(the following is from her artist's statement) This body of work seeks to revisit the history of eugenics and to examine the artifacts of its theories that affect contemporary ways of thinking about human genetics, individual potential, and racism. I am interested in looking at this point in history (1900-1940s) where science, acting as an absolute truth, was exposed as merely a human construct; a product of culture.

I attempt to objectively revisit this period and its contemporary remnants. I conduct my own experiments, reconstructing the eugenicist’s tools and photographic documents out of comforting materials: cheese, chocolate, bread and fabric. I then allow the nature of the materials and its exposure to the environment to direct the final outcome of the piece. The cheese and the bread with exposure to elements in the atmosphere slowly decompose over time. The chocolate, though in a stable state now has the potential to melt with exposure to heat. The fabric, due to the nature of the material, and its inability to translate detail, creates an object that is abstracted and removed from reality.

The work is small, and therefore begs a concentrated interaction with the viewer. The work is not meant to repulse, it instead is meant allow for quite reflection on society’s capacity to normalize brutality and inexcusable ignorance. More specifically the work seeks to examine the potential that every individual has to play both the victim and the predator.

----

I also loved this wall of work at next door Together Gallery by David Wien--reminds me of some Alexander Girard pieces I love. I love it when 2-d artists really contemplate the wall behind their work as he did here.

start making sense

2010-06-25T02:37:00.001-07:00

Great journal entry from David Byrne, whose daughter is apparently attending California College of the Arts. I would love to see him address one more little issue in this article: the importance of being intentional about poorly-crafted work. Or maybe that's a separate journal entry....anyhow, I wish he had been a candidate for the Editor position at American Craft Magazine! I love this Ted Talk he did titled How Architecture Helped Music Evolve. Brilliant.

Click here to read the Byrne article Arts 'n' Crafts.

tharp. gates. lake. clark and blankenburg. and weegee.

2010-06-19T18:11:00.001-07:00

Storm Tharp has a pleasantly sparse show at PDX--I know he's had a busy year, what with the Whitney Biennial and all--but managed to squeeze out a few large ink pieces for a PDX show. I love the juxtaposition of them with the pink panels that remind me so sweetly of Agnes Martin and in the case of the poster-sized show announcements which were stacked in a pile by the door, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (Thanks to Calvin of OpenWidePDX for the stack photo.) I will never get tired of looking at Tharp's incredible paintings. Their technical mastery is eye candy to me.

I spied a nice little preview of some of the collages by Eva Lake on the internet a few months back, read the review on PORT, and heard the interview on her Art Focus show, but it didn't subdue the true pleasure I felt seeing her latest body of work in person. I was just as happy standing at the door and looking at the entire collection as I was seeing each of the bullseye pieces from a closer perspective. A brilliant use of color. Click here to see more images from the show.

We also caught the moving performance today of Theaster Gates at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. This show has been a steady progression of artists working in the museum space, adding to the body of work left behind. It was perfect to be there today, Juneteenth, and witness Gates' beautiful voice as he sang songs and whitewashed the gallery with a pale gray ceramic slip. Here's a taste of the performance.

A few last nods to the shows in the Nine Gallery (Christine Clark and Mary Blankenburg)
and a nice little bicycle-themed photography show at Charles Hartman that included this piece by my doggie's namesake.

Happy Anniversary Bunny with an Artblog!

2010-06-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

The opening celebrations for the World Cup Soccer Tournament are commencing, and it's reminding me of the early days of writing this blog when I was a scholar at the Wood Turning Center's International Turning Exchange.

Here's the 2010 Lineup:
Luc DeRoo, artist, Belgium
Irene Grafert, artist, Denmark
Jay Heryet, artist, UK
Wonjoo Park, artist, South Korea
Derek Weidman, artist, US
Dave Huntley, photojournalist, US
Karl Seifert, photojournalist, US
Stefano Catalani, scholar, US, Italy

Click here to go to the ITE blog where you can follow along with 8 weeks of collaboration, creation, and education.

And back to the World Cup for a minute--I came across these images of a special project that artist Diem Chau did with Wieden+Kennedy and Nike for the World Cup. The project is called Write the Future and Chau's contribution was to carve a set of 6 of this year's football stars for a special promotional package. Here are a few images of the press kit, and then a video so those of you who weren't lucky enough to get one can learn more about Write the Future. (via Notcot)

she's baaaaack.....

2010-06-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

Hello Beautiful People!

Yes, I'm still here....finally recovering from an amazing year putting together a huge art event. Phew--talk about a learning experience. It really makes my previous 100+ piece installations feel like a cakewalk. I have loved being able to work with my immediate community, meet a ton of new people, and in the next few weeks will see four permanent murals added to my neighborhood. My work with Art on Alberta isn't done, but I'm also glad to be able to return to the studio this summer with time to focus on my first new installation in two years.

To get me back into the swing of blogging again, (and to celebrate four years since my first Bunny with an Artblog entry!) I thought I'd share a few things that I've been thinking about lately:

1. R.I.P. Louise Bourgeois. Read about her here. Thanks for reminding us all that life can begin at 70.

2. Miranda July has an installation in Central Park this summer called Eleven Heavy Things. The cast fiber-glass, steel-lined pieces are designed for interaction: pedestals to stand on, tablets with holes, and free-standing abstract headdresses. A series of three pedestals in ascending height, The Guilty One, The Guiltier One, The Guiltiest One, ask the viewer to ascribe his or her guilt relative to the people around him. A large flat shape, painted with Burberry plaid, hovers on a pole, waiting to become someone’s aura. Another hanging shape looks like an intricate lace headdress. A series of tablets invite heads, arms, legs and one finger. A wider pedestal for two people to hug reads, “We don’t know each other, we’re just hugging for the picture.” July assumes and invites the picture — 11 photo opportunities, in a city where one is always clutching a camera. Though the work begins as sculpture, it becomes a performance that is only complete when these tourist photos are uploaded onto personal blogs and sent in emails — at which point the audience changes, and the subject clearly becomes the participants, revealing themselves through the work. (from the Daily Plant Newsletter)

3. My buddy Tom Hill is part of a show at the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design. He, along with three other artists, have created installations using traditional craft materials of paper, metal, wood, etc.

4. Also in San Francisco is another buddy Gideon Chase's solo show at Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

See you this weekend at Art Hop!

2010-05-11T12:57:00.001-07:00

Hello Beautiful Person!

Pardon me while I step away from the blog for a few more days and focus on seeing through this huge event I've been working madly on for the past nine months: Art on Alberta's 11th Annual Art Hop! I am wrapping up my tenure as President of my neighborhood's all volunteer art nonprofit and have been having a lot of fun putting together an exciting mix of art activities like community mural painting, a Destination DIY Stage hosted by Julie Sabatier, bitch magazine's stage including a feminist quiz show, TED fellow Colleen Flanigan's BioRocker Coral Conservatory Zone, a community stage and three music stages, and the Art in Hand Portland Playing Cards show, where my King of Hearts will be on display. For more information, visit Art on Alberta's website by clicking here, or show up to get yourself the printed program with all the information you need for a day of fun!

bunny luv

2010-04-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

Yay! It's finally time to announce my participation in a great project--the Art in Hand Playing cards! This is a deck of cards that features the work of 54 Portland artists, and yours truly got to design the King of Hearts!

All works are ready for your viewing pleasure at Bidding for Good - click here for the link to my card, but look around to see the entire deck, which is fabulous. My piece can be purchased through this auction site, and over 90% of the proceeds will go to my favorite nonprofit organization, Art on Alberta!

We'll be presenting all the works live and in person at the 11th Annual Art on Alberta Art Hop so you can see before you bid. This exhibition will be at our Grow Gallery May 14-16th, 2010, from 11-6pm each day. Grow Gallery is located at 1614 NE Alberta. Art Hop will be on May 15th.

Art on Alberta is also selling the card decks for only $13. Click here to order yours today!

let me see your true colors!

2010-04-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hey Portland! My favorite nonprofit organization Art on Alberta is having a fundraiser tonight! Won't you join us for fun, prizes, and lots and lots of colors?

murals galore

2010-04-11T16:35:00.001-07:00

Hello Beautiful Person! Remember how I said I was super busy these days? Well, here I am to finally be able to show some of the fruits of a LOT of planning in the past year. For those of you who haven't heard, I spend a lot of my spare time running a little arts nonprofit organization in my neighborhood called Art on Alberta. Our big annual event is every May and it's called Art Hop. This will be my last Art Hop as President, so I wanted to go out with a bang and really leave some lasting legacy behind. (For the record, I'm staying on at Art on Alberta, my term is just up as grand poobah.)

Art Hop typically picks one or more artists and highlights their work as a main focus of the event, which also includes around 150 artist vendors, multiple music and creative stages, on one big day in May. This year, it's on May 15th. It's really evolved into a quite lovely event, last year we drew 20,000 people! I really enjoy the opportunity to step out of the somewhat isolated studio life and all too often cloistered art world to lend my talents to making my neighborhood a better place.

This year's Art Hop will focus on adding four new murals to Alberta Street! All of the murals will be community-painted too, so everyone who comes to our event will be able to be part of the public art on the street at some level. Today I'll talk about the educational component, where we have invited several area youth groups to learn how to design and create public art.

This could not have happened if it weren't for two amazing people. One is Mary Bryant, who stepped in last year as Education Coordinator for Art on Alberta. We went to an event at p:ear last year and met the inspiring Rodolfo Serna, who has been working with youth groups all over the city to let a lot of kids find themselves through art. Mary and Rodolfo gathered a team of mentors to help guide teens from Alberta Street's House of Umoja, Girls Inc. and the George School to go through the mural process and ultimately display them on our street. The images here are from the sketching day, I'll check back again soon to talk more about the historical content involved, thanks to another Art on Alberta volunteer, Patrick Forster, who has delved into this neighborhood's creative history over the past century. Click here to see the Flickr site that Patrick put together as the first step in this youth murals program. If you have any to add, we are welcoming all submissions to this exciting project.

So...stay tuned for more information about what these murals will include. I will let you in on one exciting tidbit--last year's Art Hop featured artist Thelma Johnson Streat will make an appearance in one!

Support Women Artists NOW!

2010-03-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! I'll be part of a roundtable discussion titled "Women in the Creative Fields" as part of SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day this weekend. It's part of the Energy Trust Better Living Show out at the Expo Center. Click here to see the great lineup for this weekend's event! The roundtable discussion will be from 1-1:45, but there's a full two days of Portland female artists strutting their stuff.

sketchy

2010-02-18T02:52:00.000-08:00

I've been inundated with another project for the past few months, but managed to sneak out an evening with my sketch pad the other night. In June, I'll be able to plunge fully into my Portland Building Installation, but for now, the closest I get to it is my phone's wallpaper when it turns on. It's the William Morris print I'm modeling my design after, dontcha know?

storm+pablo

2010-01-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

Nice interview between Storm Tharp and Bean Gilsdorf on Daily Serving. Longtime readers will know that Tharp is one of my very favorite local artists, and I'm so proud of him for making the cut for the next Whitney Biennial. Click here to read it.

I was, of course, interested to see him talk so much about process in this interview. The technical prowess of his pieces, especially in relation to traditional craft has always been a draw for me. I also smiled at the very end when he talked about Picasso--I recently returned from a trip to Chicago and was enamored with a painting he did in 1959 called Nude Under a Pine Tree.

I don't think I've seen this one before--a rare occurrence since I pretty much immersed myself in his works when I was a budding artist. Probably more than any other artist, his abstraction made a huge influence on me. This painting was made late in his career, which is probably why I wasn't as familiar with it, but it hearkens back to many of his early explorations of human form. I saw the piece on a visit to the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute designed by architect Renzo Piano. A stunning building--a great place to bring new life to that museum. I usually focus my sights on the Museum of Contemporary Art, but this time I lapped up all that AIC had to offer. Click here to see a nice documentation from the New York Times when the building opened last year. And....it's a blogger's delight since they let you take photographs there! Here's a composite picture I took of my sweetie in the Ellsworth Kelly room. Enjoy!

tabula rasa

2009-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Hello Beautiful People! I am writing on the second to last day of 2009 with amazement...where did the time go? That said, I think back on all the installations I made, residencies, shows I saw and creative people I met and it makes me smile. I am also looking forward to a jam packed 2010, between my day job, my favorite hobby, and my next big installation in October.

Today I decided to clear the decks, so to speak. One wall in my studio, right above the area where a lot of the initial forming of my work takes place, is where I hang images that I want to be reminded of while working on the next big thing. Click here to see an image of what it looked like this morning--hasn't been cleared off for a good four years, since the Natural Selection show took so long to evolve. Along the very bottom are some of the long term keepers: a cover from Tintin book I loved as a kid; a picture I clipped of a man stacking stones that's been on my wall for about 20 years and a similar photo I paired of Jean Arp in his studio surrounded by sculptures; a National Geo cover that I love where diamonds are lain upon an oozy ripe strawberry, each diamond as big as the teeny seeds; Dave Brubeck's Time Out; a picture of moldy tomatoes from hidden gem Selby Botanical Garden calendar; a card for my favorite movie The Gleaners and I; a George Nelson marshmallow sofa; a postcard from my brother. (You can click on the above image if you want to see anything just a wee bit bigger.)

And the larger top region of this wall, for a brief moment, was blank.

Then I pinned up the first study for my installation next year: a yard of fabric. It's a print of William Morris' Strawberry Thieves, the pattern that will be most influential on my project. I was happy to find that Liberty Fabric still prints it, and ordered a yard for my inspiration wall.

Happy new year everyone!

something to think about.....

2009-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule

4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.... How many other things are we missing?

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer in the feature writing category for Gene Weingarten's April 2007 story about this experiment. To read more conjecture about this story, click here.

a new installation in 2010

2009-12-06T02:55:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to be chosen to do a piece for the RACC sponsored Portland Building Installation Space once again next October. This is the site of the original Vertical Garden that recently found a permanent home.
Here's the excerpt from my proposal to give you an idea of what's in store this time:

For the Portland Building, I will create an installation inspired by the wallpaper prints of Arts and Crafts designer William Morris. The plant elements will be made of the same materials as my previous work: painted recycled wood. An added element of painted wire will create a dominant vine form, linking my elements and establishing a repetitive, symmetrical pattern of flora and fauna on the largest wall. This wallpaper-like plant will “grow” from multiple sources near the ground.

Upon closer observation, the pieces at the very edges of this main wall will begin to break form, becoming more wild and emerge out of their flat plane. These elements will sometimes seek interaction with the viewer, and in other parts, crave the light coming from the open ceiling above. Elements that creep onto the west wall will become more wild as they go--a bird that may seemed tranquil on the other wall might turn its head toward the audience here, with a provocative object held in its beak.

A monochromatic carpet will fill much of the floor space, and it will be apparent that some of the vines coming from the main wall have been covered by this surface, similar to the black ground cloth we use to smother unruly growth on an urban plot of land. These vines have traveled beneath the surface, however, sprouting up in far corners again. Like the west wall, these plants are slightly changed when they re-emerge.

Expect to see a lot of images next year as I figure out how to make this crazy idea happen!

have an abstract xmas

2009-12-01T17:35:00.000-08:00

I decided to use my improv method of sculpture making for a little holiday project this year. I've had this image of Alexander Girard's famous dolls on my studio wall for years, knowing I'd someday do a piece inspired by them. This was the year, and I made a set of 14 large freestanding angels for Velvet da Vinci.

I did a series of sketches to get myself warmed up.

Here are a few of the finished pieces. I might make a few more next year, it was so much fun playing with a "human" form for a change.
I was also asked to do a window show at Guardino Gallery in my neighborhood, so I made a flock of smaller ornaments based on these same designs.

follow up on Sitka

2009-11-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

My work was used in this article in the Oregonian this weekend regarding the Sitka Center. For those of you interested in the Sitka Center, their place in Oregon, and the challenges they face in relation to Portland's rising star, click here to read what DK has to say. (photo by Darryl James/special to The Oregonian)

Sitka Art Invitational--this weekend!

2009-11-11T11:01:00.001-08:00

I have three pieces from Natural Selection in the Sitka Art Invitational this weekend. If you're in the Portland area, here are some of the highlights of this year's show:

Wednesday, November 11th, David Douglas Room, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Art & Text Workshop by Rebecca Wild Wednesday

Thursday, November 12th, David Douglas Room, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Watercolor Elements of Landscape by Molly Hashimoto

Friday, November 13th, Miller Hall, 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Opening Night Party with the Artists

Saturday, November 14th, Miller Hall, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Panel Discussion - How do art and nature connect?

Saturday & Sunday, November 14-15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Public Exhibit and Sale

The Sitka Art Invitational is an important source of support for Sitka Center's Workshop and Residency Programs. The Workshop Program provides opportunities for artists to teach and study in workshops from late spring through early fall; the Residency Program offers opportunities for artists to pursue individual research projects from late fall through early spring. If you're moved to contribute to these programs and are not able to attend the Art Invitational, please feel free to donate online.

reduce, reuse, recycle....make art.

2009-11-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

A few pictures from my 'sWarm installation were included in Garth Johnson's recent publication 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse. (Garth is the mad genius behind one of my favorite blogs Extreme Craft.) This is a great book for eye-candy, with a simple, contemporary layout that just gives you images and names. If you can't figure out what the hoohaw it's made of, there's a handy index in back.

Among my favorites are these dogs Kropokin and Kongo by Mr. Spunky, made from old toy and computer parts. (I'm relieved to see them bursting out from a wood workbench rather than isolated on a grey fade backdrop.)

Another piece that caught my eye was this beautiful book made by Matthew Lauman called Excerpt of Studies. It's filled with actual pages of his assignments, sketches, and notes from his college education, presumably at Towson University.

There's a two page spread of the stunning book art by Thomas Allen. If this picture intrigues you, click here to see a lot more.

To order 100 Ideas for Creative Reuse on Amazon, click here.

anatomy of Japanese folk monsters

2009-10-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

click here for a romp through the woods with Godzilla's brethren.

thinking craft

2009-10-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying reading about the American Craft Council's Creating a New Craft Culture conference since I couldn't make the trek myself. Thanks to the generosity of bloggers like
Harriete Estel Berman,
Emiko Oye,
Rubi McGrory and Garth Johnson, I could vicariously be in two places at once last week.

One speaker was NYT Times Columnist Rob Walker who writes the murketing blog. (and don't miss his article about Pandora!) Click here to read an interview he conducted with Harriete B. last year.

note: my links may lead you to the middle of the discussion, so read earlier and later posts from that one--if I link to the blog in general, these links won't be relevant in a few weeks!

Vertical Garden's continued urban renewal

2009-10-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

I was checking out the Regional Arts and Culture Council's brand spanking new website and, lo and behold, there was the original Vertical Garden. Sweet. I'm sure this prime spot will be a rotation of all the programs and events that RACC sponsors, but it was a nice honor to be their spokesmodel for all that is new and fresh from their perspective. I'm excited to spend some more time on what was already a big hub for information in my world.

multi touch the sound storm

2009-10-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

I lifted that title from my sweetie Christian Bannister's blog--he just posted a video of his latest development in his pet project called subcycle. Click here to read the blog, which explains more of the thought and physical process behind the mad genius you see below.

The Prelinger Library

2009-10-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

I had one day to play in San Francisco after my big installation, so I decided to use it to visit a friend from my very early days in Eugene, Oregon, Megan Shaw, now Megan Shaw Prelinger. I was contacted by Megan via Facebook soon after reading about the innovative library she and her husband started in San Francisco on the Makezine blog. She changed her last name when she married, so I had no idea that the Prelinger Library I was reading about was the brainchild of anyone whose humble beginnings overlapped with my own!

The Prelinger Library is five years old. Its mission statement reads thus: To foster discovery and serendipity in a browsing-friendly environment; to demonstrate that unforeseen benefits arise from the synthesis between analog and digital cultures; to experiment with new forms of access to information; and to convene community around a collection.

What makes this library different is the way the books are organized. You might find periodicals, nonfiction and fiction right next to each other. This "system" is a lot like looking into the minds of the custodians--the sections are things that they're interested in, and the associations between books in a section are ones they find relevant. They describe if as an extension of their living room. There's a heavy emphasis on visual associations as much as the printed word, and books in the collection are marked to let interested parties know if they can be photocopied, are already photocopied, or are not yet in the public domain.

We only had time for the tour today, but next visit I plan to spend the afternoon browsing the stacks. I might spend some extra time with this book I discovered, which was one of my favorites as a kid. (Megan said this was the copy she owned as a kid herself!) If you want to learn more about how this library works, click here to go to their website.

a garden grows in Marin

2009-10-07T09:58:00.001-07:00

Here's a few pictures from the installation of the garden yesterday--a beautiful setting in the living room of one of the most fun houses I've ever seen. I'm very happy to be a part of the landscape.First thing is to drill all the holes. I do them one square foot at a time, denoted by painter's tape. This assures me that the density will be consistent throughout the finished piece.

My friend Tom Hill came to help me--which helped keep the final install to six hours. He unpacked everything and laid it out on the tables, as well as cutting mounting wire and drilling holes in a few of the pieces that needed them.

Everything went as planned. (whew!) I'm excited that one of my favorite pieces now has a happy home.

sailing away.....

2009-10-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

So, dear readers, I'm off in a few hours to plant my 900 seed garden. Stay tuned for pictures later this week. Appropriately, I just came across some reading material for the journey--The Swimming Cities of Serenissima. This blog chronicles a fleet of handmade boats and a crew of artists as they traveled the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia to Venice this past May and June. They made art boats from junk and performed a dreamy story of a drifting metropolis during the Venice Biennale. Ciao!

the snowdrops

2009-09-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

Today's the last day of finishing up the actual work on this commission--the snowdrops. This is another one of the repeating elements in the Vertical Garden. Like the grass blades, their subtle repetition helps establish a ground for the complexities of this installation. I call them snowdrops after one of my favorite flowers--the first bulb of the year to raise its head out of the earth. They come up in late January in these parts, when I'm feeling cold to the bones. It's a nice reminder that the earth will warm up again...not yet but soon. The snowdrops I make are various colors, each with a fuzzy flocked dot on the top. These studio shots were taken in process, so the flocking sort of looks like snow. I'll blow it all off in a few days and start packing these babies up to ship south for the winter. (Lucky buggers.)

one in 900 (19)

2009-09-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (18)

2009-09-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (17)

2009-09-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (16)

2009-09-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (15)

2009-09-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (14)

2009-09-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (13)

2009-09-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (12)

2009-09-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (11)

2009-09-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (10)

2009-09-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (9)

2009-09-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

one in 900 (8)

2009-09-19T12:09:00.000-07:00