another residency application on its way!

Well, I'm taking the plunge again! This time, I'm trying for a sweet spot in Wyoming next spring at Ucross. This is a residency program that a few friends of mine have done, so it's been on my list for many years. It's different than the ITE residency, whereas we get free room and board as well as studio space. I, alone, am psyched at the prospect of have someone cook for me for a month so I can play play play! Yee haw! I find out if I'm accepted in a few months, and I'll be sure to keep you posted on the status of that. Wish me luck! In the meantime, I decided to post my essay here so you can see what I'm thinking about right now.....

Description of project for Ucross residency 2007 Hilary Pfeifer

I am a mixed-media sculptor whose working process is heavily influenced by craft techniques, stemming from my educational background in ceramics, woodworking, metalsmithing and book arts, as well as drawing and design. My installation work in the past eight years has been primarily made from wood and altered found objects such as nails, bone, fur, sewing pins, wooden utensils and lead weights.

Two years ago, I completed a piece where I upholstered a couch with soft sculpture forms that were made to mimic the wooden wall sculptures that hung on the wall above. That project sparked an interest in seeing how soft sculpture, felting, or upholstery techniques could be incorporated more directly into my sculptural forms, rather than as a separate entity. During an artist residency in Philadelphia last summer, I visited the Fabric Workshop and was inspired by what was going on in their galleries and studios. I decided to pursue a residency at Ucross to have some isolated time to implement some of these ideas I’ve had over the past few years.

I plan to bring a duffle bag full of various fabrics, my sewing machine, needle and thread, and a mess of found objects. One interest is to create my own fabric surfaces, using a needle to attach various embellishments and then coating the fabric with the rubberized paint I am so fond of. These fabric swatches could then be upholstered into existing sculptures. I have many more ideas. I would like to leave room for pure experimentation so that learning something new, such as felting, would allow me to play and discover how this might enhance my work.

The time period I am requesting falls between two installations I have scheduled for next year, so I expect that I will use the time to start a new body of work and conceptualize my next big project. Since my themes tend to center around nature, Ucross seems like the perfect place to be to do this kind of creative play.

Not your grandmother's doily!

Hey Dear Readers!

Last Thursday, I attended the opening of the "New Embroidery" show at Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery, curated by Namita Gupta Wiggers, Annin Barrett, and Manya Schapiro. I always love the openings at CCMG on a social level - and then I usually meet someone who is good to know professionally as well. Their programming is quite strong, more so in the past 5 years for sure, but this show was definitely the best I've seen there. (Before I go on, I want to mention that the piece above is by Jenny Hart)

One thing that made it especially strong was that they used the entire gallery, including the space usually reserved for the permanent collection. But the work held its own for sure. The central theme of this show is to show a lot of the contemporary work done that uses embroidery on vintage linens and found textiles. There are several pieces by 21 artists, both men and women, that make up this fascinating show.

One of the most stunning pieces in the show is a huge wall piece where the artist Susie Brandt darned together hundreds of "found embroideries." It takes a minute to understand that she didn't do the embroidery herself, and then you take in the fact that the intense darning process over such a large surface area has caused the cloth to undulate. This makes for a very dynamic piece overall, but I also love the way it reminds the viewer of the process. Click on the image to get a better look at it, but you'll have to see it in person to really understand how amazing it is.

I really loved these simple pieces by David Wilburn that appliqued found fabric onto cloth and then simply stitched the car outlines. He had another piece that I don't have an image of, but it had a stitched image next to a tree made from green synthetic pom poms. That one really pushed the kitsch element for me.

These pieces were also nice in their simplicity, pieced and stitched by artist Andrea Vander Kooij - this one is called "Cliff's Tattoos" and I wonder if she meant that he had tattoos that looked just like that or if these were bandages covering fresh tattoos of flowers? I like both ideas, but mostly I love the composition of this piece.

Here's a piece I really loved by a longtime favorite of mine, Wendy Huhn. My parents' gallery had her work in the 80's and 90's so I grew up loving and learning from her sense of humor, which is often infused into her art quilts. This piece was especially nice because she took apart cloth flowers and stitched them flat to make the border on this piece. The center is xerox transfer, I believe. At least that's how she used to do it.

I had seen this piece before in Hildur Bjarnadóttir's show last year at Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery, but it was nice to have it included in this show. Her work has always spoken to me because it directly addresses the art vs. craft issue. I saw a review of her show in the August/ September issue of American Craft, if any of you subscribers care to look it up.

One thing I really wish I had an image of for the blog is these wonderful 3-d pieces by Shanon Schollian that looked like little footstools. They were so curious. Maybe I'll get Katherine Bovee to hook me up with one. In the meantime, here's an image of a "stump cosy" she made for another show. You get the gist of her sense of her style here.

It made me a little sad that this show hadn't happened next year when they were in their new space in downtown Portland, only because there are a lot of people who would appreciate this show and probably won't see it because their current location on Corbett is too out of the way. There was a good crowd, but this show would have been absolutely packed if it were in their new location, I can guarantee. On the other hand, maybe such a strong show now will get the publicity it deserves and help them raise the last bit of funds they need in order to make their move next year.

What really was inspiring and timely about this show is that I am presently writing my application for the artist residency program at Ucross next year. This is quite different from the ITE residency, in that we work more in isolation (on our own projects in our own studios) but I have several friends who have done this one and say it's great. My idea for the show is that I have long wanted to incorporate soft sculpture and upholstery techniques into my sculptural work, and I am hoping they'll give me a few weeks to experiment with this. I'm working on that essay tonight in fact, so I'd better run. Hopefully writing this blog entry will warm me up for something persuasive and passionate.

Thinking Gender

I'm not sure if it's the kombucha I've been drinking or what, but here I am with another blog entry - just like the good old days of the residency last summer when I posted every other day at least. I just had a few things to report. One is that my work is going to be on the poster for a conference at UCLA next year. I am not sure how they found me exactly, but it's such a perfect fit - the title of the conference is "Thinking Gender" and they are using an image of a piece I made for the show I curated at Diamond Tanita Gallery over two years ago, my thinking cap lamp. My only request was that they send me copies of the poster, so I am hoping it's full color glossy and big!!! Ah, what the hoo - the only people who get to see this in person are my friends, since it's in my living room. This is one of the pieces that I just can't sell. I'm glad to give it a second life in print.

Three art-filled days

Been doing lots of arty things lately - here's a little recap for you, dear readers.

First stop was last Thursday when my friend Kristin Shiga and I went to the Portland Art Museum to see three of the biennial artists talk about their work. I went to pick up Kristin at her new job at Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery, where they had a really great show of Rain Harris' work. Rain makes sculptural vessels that look like conjoined twins - but decorated with decals, metallic and luster glazes and a few feathers. I absolutely love the forms, but the craftsmanship is also excellent. When I was doing ceramic work, I always wanted to experiment with ceramic decals, but never got around to it, so when I see contemporary work using them, it makes me feel happy that someone is carrying that torch for me. This is some of the best work I've seen that uses these traditional decals that are intended to be used sparingly. Rain collages them intensely which elevates the kitsch factor in her work.


So onward ho to the art museum we go. We were mainly going to see Bill Will speak - he's one of my favorite Portland artists, a former teacher, and now a friend. Bill is one of those people who you look to when you can't figure out where to find something like an art material or business that sells some specific supply. He's been in the Portland art scene for over 25 years and has amazing connections. But I also genuinely like him--he's smart and we share a similar distaste for snobbiness in the art world. His piece in the biennial was his big torpedo tree he made for Nine Gallery a few years back. I have never seen Bill talk about his own work, and it surprised me that the discussion was almost entirely about craftsmanship and process - his work is so highly concept-based that I'd have expected that sort of discussion. That said, Bill's work is always very well-made, and it was nice that he reinforced this because I always appreciate when conceptual artists spend the time in the making, which seems to be a dying practice these days. I can't understand it at all.

Lucinda Parker also talked that night - and I have never really gotten into her paintings, so this was a great thing to hear her talk. Her work is really abstract, and she, like Bill, has been a part of the local scene for decades. She always seems to make it into the Oregon Biennial too, which made me more curious to hear what she had to say. Early in the talk, she pulled out this big drywall tool and told us about how that's her main painting device. Motioning across the canvas, you could see it. She talked a lot about color (she loves grey and yellow together) and form (her paintings are all about shapes and balancing them across the canvas) and she demystified the abstract paintings in the biennial by telling us what objects we were seeing. I really appreciated her confident casual matter, and also the way she showed genuine appreciation for artists of all generations in Portland. This painting is about the New Carissa - the oil tanker that caused major environmental damage in 1999 when it ran aground on the Oregon coast.

Then last night, I attended one of PICA's events for their TBA festival. This was a show by Blinglab, a collective my friends Bruce Conkle and Marne Lucas--a puppet show (for mature audiences) about the Lewis and Clark Expedition that they started during an artists' residency at Caldera earlier this year. It was hilarious - this is the "untold story" of L&C, and so perfect to counter all of the serious events around in the past year because it's the 200th anniversary of their famous trek west.

Here's Chardonnay and Sockeye-jaweah. The set was perfect - it was kind of like those weird things you see in history centers where they have mannequins or some other sort of human or animal form narrate whatever story is being told. At the top of the stage in a small opening was the narrator who had the corniest voice ever. There were three stages - a large one in the center and two smaller ones to the sides. I loved how the puppets would twirl around 180 degrees when they talked, a mark of amateur puppetry that worked so well in this send-up. I tried to take notes for the blog of some of their salty banter, but reading it today is so out of context that I will just leave it. For more information about this, they have a website they made for this project, as well as the other Blinglab exploits.

Today I took a break and went downtown to see a few art shows. First on my list was the show of Tad Savinar's work at PDX gallery. Like Bill Will, Savinar is one of my favorite Portland artists. He uses a lot of text in his work, and I love the social commentary. I still regret not buying a print of his years ago when he participated in the "Prints for PICA" show. This show had a variety of wall and sculptural works. DK Rowe wrote an article in Friday's Oregonian about his work, which is what inspired me to get out of the house today. (The image I used at the tippy top of this blog entry is a photo collage by Savinar.

Then I went next door to Pulliam Deffenbaugh to see another favorite, Brendan Cleneghan. I fell in love with his work when he was in the Oregon Biennial in 1999. He uses joint compound to create these very curious and sensuous surfaces. It was nice to see how his work has evolved from rather repetitive simple patterns to more complex abstract vignettes.

At Elizabeth Leach Gallery was another favorite - Sean Healy. He has also evolved in the past few years - using his casting skills to make some really wonderful conceptual work. This ended up being my favorite show of the day. When he first came on the scene, he was doing these nice wall pieces using cast resin and photos, but this show has evolved to have a mix of photography and a variety of cast wall pieces, and then one wall piece called "Behind the Bus Station" which was a 14" circle of cigarette butts, filter out. Nice use of found objects and in keeping with some other large round wall pieces on the opposite wall. I really loved this big piece called "Class Ring" where he had all of these different faceted shapes cast in glass and then mounted in this ring form on the wall on little shelves.

He had several works with cast chewed gum as an element - this piece was pretty good on many levels. It's titled "Egghead." I really loved the composition, the long table tilted against the wall was quite beautiful, even though this piece seemed simple in its humor off the bat. Healy, and Cleneghan as well, both have strong craftsmanship, and it really helps to advance the impact of their work overall.

I stuck my head in Blackfish before I left - they had a big Michael Knutson show of drawings that was okay. In the very back was a show I liked more - and unfortunately I don't have an image to put here on the blog. Artist Judith Wyss did portraits of all of the artists who are a member of the Blackfish collective gallery, and she asked them to each think of an object that was important to them. I love these projects that many Portland artists have engaged in recently, of doing portraits of artists in the local scene. It's so nice to see what people look like. The objects gave this series a freshness that I liked. Marne Lucas is doing a series of photo portraits of artists/musicians/filmmakers that I was looking at on her website today - and that's the image I used for this paragraph. It's of Bruce Conkle. She's a really amazing photographer.

Talked to Team Scobie tonight. So sweet of him to call. He said that he and his wife Liz are looking for residencies in Australia for me. Wheeee! Bring it on, I say! He also offered up that he could have taught me to milk a cow this summer, but I pointed out that there were no cows around. Maybe I'll make it to Australia next year and take him up on that offer. As long as I also get to see a chook plucker, it's a deal.

a few more for the list of 40

Well, this topic has got me back on the blogwagon again. I thought of three more today to add to the list:

15. learn how to make felt
16. spend an entire day in my pajamas watching movies by one director (preferably with company)
17. go to the 99W Drive-in-Theater

and then I also had to include this hilarious entry from one of the websites I most love to kill time and surf: the "How to of the Day" site. It's a how-to manual that anyone can write or edit and has really interesting topics like "how to drink more water" or "how to carry on interesting conversations" or "how to measure the height of a tree" etc. I have it on my customized Google page, so I always look at the one they're featuring for the day, and today's topic happened to be: "How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger." Cracks me up.

"turning" 40

Okay, I'm gonna get really personal here. Think of it as a work-in-progress, okay? I'm turning 40 next year, and got this notion a week or so ago to do 40 things that I've wanted to do for a long time. It's a little daunting, remembering that there are 52 weeks in a year, so it would mean I'd have to do something nearly every week, but it's simultaneously exciting. I guess one motivating factor is that it creates more opportunities to meet my soul mate, which would be the best 40th birthday present ever!

So, here's my list so far.

1. Milk a cow
2. See Crater Lake
3. See Multnomah Falls (up close)
4. Get hypnotized (although I have no idea what for yet!)
5. Go to a show at Darcelle's
6. Do the Shanghai Tunnel tour- the ghost tour - I heard the regular one is a big disappointment.
7. Be on "Wheel of Fortune"
8. Do theJelly Belly Factory tour
9. See Picasso's Guernica in Barcelona.
10. Get a tattoo of one of my lovebug sculptures on my back
11. Get a soldering torch set up in my studio
12. Get my studio re-roofed with a few skylights
13. Make infused vodkas
14. Acupuncture


any suggestions, dear readers????

a Velvet weekend in the home of the martini....

Hey Beautiful People!

Well, here I am on the road again, this time in one of my favorite cities in the whole wide world, San Francisco. The only thing not great about being here is that it's at least 10 degrees warmer and sunny in Portland, (as opposed to fog fog foggety-fog.) I have been so happy to get to have a bit of idyllic Oregon summer after the mug mug muggety muggy weather in Philadelphia. I wanted to make a trip down here this fall for personal and professional reasons, so I timed it for the opening the other night at Velvet da Vinci Gallery of my dear friend Greg Wilbur's work. Yippeeeeeeee!

Velvet da Vinci is my gallery too. They are showing the most cutting edge contemporary art jewelry (and craft-influenced sculpture) in the United States, and I hope that eventually the craft powers that be in this country will take note that they are a visionary leader in the field. Their artists come from all around the world and it's sooooo refreshing to see thought-provoking and extremely well-made work that completely debunks the tired old "craft vs. art" saw that I'm soooooo sick of. It's paid off for them to take this risk - they moved to a larger space two years ago and have been increasing their customer base (which tends to be younger demographically but certainly not exclusively) and best of all, they happily increased their sales to boot. The main reason I show here is that I really like the owners, Mike Holmes and Elizabeth Shypertt on both a personal and professional level, and I really feel honored to be shown with the other artists they have chosen. I have been at Velvet for seven years, and they've been kind enough to give me 2.5 solo shows as well as being included in several group shows that have traveled worldwide, and we now have one more thing in the works. Yippeeeeeeee!

I love the openings at Velvet da Vinci. There's a great group of usual suspects who are friends and artists and customers interested in the featured artists, and a cadre of customers who have become friends of Mike and Elizabeth. I was really sorry that artist/friend/Velvet insider extraordinaire Tom Hill was out of town, but I will see him at SOFA later on this year. Tom's dog Truman was in the house, wearing his usual "don't feed me" sign for the opening. Poor unsuspecting pooch! Here he is trying to get Kent to give him some yummy cheese.

Greg had some fantastic new work for this show. In case you don't know the work of Greg Wilbur, he's one of the few artists in the country who still practices the ancient tradition of "raising" metal. This is done by taking a flat sheet of a metal, such as copper, repeatedly heating and then hammering it literally thousands of times in a circular pattern over various sizes of steel stakes until it "raises" up into a bowl form. This image is of a series of copper pieces Greg made to show the process going from flat metal to vase form. Raising doesn't make the metal that much thinner - it just moves it around until it's a different shape. Greg is a master at this technique and I can't figure out for the life of me why he isn't a more nationally recognized name in the field. It's one thing to be able to solder or granulate or any of the other things that artists do with metal, but to hammer a flat disc until it is a narrow-necked vase elevates you to the level of Superman in my book. I have been threatening for years to write an article for American Craft about what Greg does, and this might be the year to do it since writing this blog during these past few months has whet my appetite for writing for the general public a little more often.

Greg had a really nice mix of pieces for the Velvet show. My very favorite was this big piece called "Gweduck" (which I believe was also Mike's favorite piece.) It's a huge wide open vessel form of hammered copper with several smaller pieces that fit into indented parts. The smaller parts are either heat patinated copper or silver. I love the interactive nature, but also the mixed colors and metals that nestle in so nicely.

I've always loved Greg's dipper forms and someday I will need to get me one of them. He did several dippers for this show, some were hung on the wall and some flat on the shelf below. To make these forms, Greg uses a long piece of metal and hammers out the bowl form and then curls in the long handle using techniques not unlike making a spiculum in anticlastic raising. Usually he hammers out a nice leaf-like form at the end.

Several years back, Greg began to create some more intricate wall pieces that are like expansions of the single dipper forms. Some are wreath shapes, and this one is a big grid. I love the shadows it makes. If you would like to see either his wreaths or the full wall piece I shot this detail of here, the website for Velvet da Vinci has every piece from the show online. (And don't forget if you click on any image here it will open up a little bit bigger for you!)

Here's a piece that you fans of wood will appreciate - one of the most successful in the show for sure. Greg did a collaboration with Michael Peterson who was in the Wood Now show at the Wood Turning Center this past spring. Michael is known for his hollow rectangular forms that warp beautifully as they dry - and Greg hammered out a nice silver sake set that sits atop one of Peterson's traditional forms. Another nice thing about this collaboration is the surface treatment - Greg chose to put a heat patina on the silver so that it raises the copper to the surface which mimics Peterson's surface treatment. This piece was snapped up by Steven Smith who teaches metalsmithing at City College in San Francisco. Lucky boy!

Also on display at Velvet this month was the interesting work of Rebecca Strzelec. These brooches are made entirely with the computer, using CAD design and Rapid Prototyping machines to execute the work. This process fits in quite nicely with the concepts, which are based on orchid forms. In her statement she calls attention to the preservatives that these flowers are subjected to in order to be used as corsages. The army green color refers to the casualties of the war in the Middle East, making the connection between mass-produced and controlled nature and expendable soldiers. These pieces were quite strong from a design standpoint, so I'll show you three of them here. There were several dozen altogether, which are also on the Velvet da Vinci website.

The rest of my San Francisco trip was spent with family. Here's my sweet niece Alma (with Bibo) - we had a really great time together reading books and having tea parties and flamenco dancing and looking at pictures on my computer and playing hide and go seek, etc. She's growing up to be a really great kid and I love getting to watch it happen with the special role as "Aunt Hebe." Sometimes she really reminds me of myself when I was little - sometimes I can see her mother in her face, and then lately when she squints her eyes and smiles, she looks just like Bjork!!!!

Oh, before I go, I took a picture of this sign I walked past on my way to the opening at Velvet. I'm not sure who decided that it was still a "Philly" sandwich if it had chicken as the main ingredient. Must be a California thing. Look at that price for a sandwich! Definitely California!!!

Back to Portland now - excited to see a bunch of the events that are part of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's "TBA Festival" this week. Will report back on those art happenings as they happen. Stay tuned, art lovers! (A special nod to Dan Kvitka who took the nice studio shots of Greg Wilbur's work I used in this entry.)

roll call!

Hey Beautiful People!

Well. Well well well. Well well well well well! Well, well well well well--well well well well well well? Well well well!!!!

What I'm trying to impart is that the word "well" is the first word that always comes to mind when I'm starting to write another blog entry. What's up with that??? Is it that I'm stammering, or trying to sound artificially casual? Is it that I'm digging deep into the well of my life to tell you a new story? Am I trying to let you know that I'm holding my own, fighting the good fight against injury and disease? Whatever the reason, and I'm not going to go back and actually count the times I did start the blog with that word, I'm just going to name it and move on like a good sensitive new age gal should.

There's a few of my personal projects that I'm going to catch you up on tonight, anticipating my exciting and art-filled weekend visit to San Francisco, which will commence in exacty 12 hours. But first....

Thingy one: I continued my ITE residency experience immediately upon returning by having a few beers with Kevin Burrus. As previously mentioned, or at least implied, I knew that he'd understand my deep desire to express collaboration by destroying the final product. In fact, Kevin had the brilliant idea of turning our collaboration into paper pulp and then pulling a sheet of paper for another artist to draw on. I am now thinking we should find an artist team to do a collaborative drawing on said paper. Woweeeee! Here we go!

Thingy two: The installation for the office of Bresler & Reiner is progressing. It has evolved from something abstract and more typical of my work into something more in keeping with the function of the office. This has been a really fun departure from my normal "look" and I have been embracing the idea of taking on an assignment and making it mine. They wanted something architectural and like a cityscape, so I went "shopping" for all the things I love about buildings like dentil molding or the turned bullseye moldings - we're working on a really fun collage of shapes and woods that will push me personally and make a splash for the entry of this office. I am really excited about it. My friend Terry Bostwick is helping me on this end of things, as it's not completely out of my educational training, but I need a spiritual guide if I'm going to do something as precise as this project is turning into.

Thingy three: I went to the Portland Art Museum earlier this week with my fellow Plinksters Junko Iijima and the aforementioned Terry Bostwick. It was a pretty good show - saw a few things that were interesting, but not much that completely rocked my world. My very favorite piece was by an artist who I already knew I liked: Chandra Bocci, who did an installation called "Gummi Big Bang II" which was great to see on both an artistic and technical level. Here is her artist's statement for the piece:

"I'm currently fascinated with the deluge of brightly colored, disposable mattyer generated by consumer culture. Checkout aisles, soda commercials and novelty shops present the materials--and modes of spectacle--I'm drawing from. I'm interested in distilling the seductive methodologies of marketing and utilizing them in an art context. By using cheap materials and techniques to address heavy, real phenomena, I search to strike a tension between the frivolous and the profound.
With Gummi Big Bang II, I am exploring parallels between the most significant cosmic event and one manifestation of commercial culture: gummi candy. Every system, no matter how trivial, follows similar patterns of innovation and entropy, ever increasing in complexity. Just as our universe began with a single event/object with infinite gravity and zero mass, gummi began with bears. Today, however, one can find an infinite range of gummi shapes, including squid, tarantulas, and hamburgers."

Thingy four: I have a show at the Portland Modern window next year and I am getting really excited about my idea for it. Moving off of the 's Warm ideas and how that was based on the odd but true fact that lovebugs mate while flying and are subsequently killed in the process because they are attracted to a chemical in auto exhaust that mimics the scent the females emit to let the males know they are fertile--the idea I have for this new show is purely fictional. I am going to make a swarm of "Killer Butterflies" hearkening back to my obsession with Killer Bees as a kid. My artist's statement will be about the Killer Butterflies crossing the border. This exhibition space is visible from the street, so during the day, the butterflies will be more decorative, pretty. At night, the blacklights will kick in and reveal their more sinister nature. As you know, dear reader, I have a particular fondness for things that glow in the dark, so I'm excited to work it into one of my installations. I have some other big things to do before I can start on this project, but I just went and looked at the window tonight on my way to meet a friend and am getting really excited about working on this, my next new show. It's going to be next spring. I'll let you know closer to the date, not to worry.

Thingy five: One big thing I learned during the residency was how nice it is to live without so much stress. I think having two months to practice this got it into my head that stress is a choice and not a neccessity. I have been thinking a lot about how to make my professional life feel a lot less stressful, and last weekend spent some time making this colorful flow/actions chart on my living room wall so I can visually work out a masterplan. This chart was intended to help me work out things in both my personal and professional life, and my professional life is split between my artwork and my art business, so this is going to be a work-in-progress until I can figure out what I want and how to do it. Since I work best visually, it feels like this is really helping.

Thingies six, seven, eight, etc....: Aphex Twin.  Irish Breakfast Tea.  ActivSpace.  Amber beer that's very hoppy.  Penis jokes.  Identical Toyota Tacomas. iChat with Liam. A conversation with Leah about why we make art.

Back atcha in a few days with a report from the city where I hopefully won't leave my heart. I think I will be needing it when I get home again.