hot off the workbench!

Hey Beautiful People! I'll be testing the virtual waters next week with my first online sale of my new necklace line for women AND men. The sale starts on April 5 at 9am PST, and items will be available on my etsy site until they're all gone. I did get a mention in yesterday's ultra, and there's one more potential design blog I adore who expressed some interest, so if you are hankering for one of these babies, get on my special mailing list by entering your email in the box to the right. (If you're already on my mailing list for my hilarypfeifer.com information, you can get into your account by entering your email, and then you can see the various mailing lists I offer for my bunnywithatoolbelt lines, or my special sales of one-of-a-kind work that will happen throughout the year.) Here's a sneak preview of the necklaces I'll have on sale next week. Enjoy!

Are you Experienced?

Hey Beautiful People! Christian just reminded me that one of his (team's) recent Second Story projects for the National Archives in Washington DC is online. Most of what they do can only be used when you're in the actual museum itself, but here's a chance for everyone with internet access to see how one of Portland's bright and shining interactive stars makes the magic happen for cultural institutions across the nation. In this case, the website serves as a way for people to bring their museum experience home with them and continue learning what's in this important collection of historical artifacts. Click here to go directly to the site online. And stay tuned, dear readers, because in the next week or so, another exciting Second Story internet-accessible project will launch on the web, and you can bet I'll let you know when that happens.

Peeple with too much time on their hands

Funny how things come back around sometimes. Today's postings on the HOW Magazine blog I mentioned yesterday included a link to another Peeps diorama contest from the Washington Post. If you couldn't get enought of yesterday's blog entry, click here for more Peep show action!

Most of these entries are corny, I will admit, but this one really caught my eye. I will quote directly from the How Blog's comments because I love the details they point out in this piece for their design-savvy readers: "The bedposts are crayons, and the slippers and vases are made of Sculpey. The dresser and wall mountings (including a portrait of a Peep labeled "Mom") were drawn in ink on white paper, then scanned into a computer and reversed into white lines on a black background. As evidenced by the precision, Byer is, in fact, a graphic designer. But he deals mostly in print and has never worked with models or dioramas."

Hap-peep Easter!

My mom sent me this link to a contest in the Chicago Tribune of dioramas with the famous Easter peeps--in case this American phenomenon hasn't crossed the pond yet, they are marshmallow chicks (green, yellow and blue in this image) that come in multi-packs sold this time of year. In the past decade or so, the Rodda company has expanded to all sorts of colors and animals, including the pink and purple bunnies you see here. My favorite was this one called "Peeps' Perils: Playing with Fire" created by Lawrence Voss. Click the image to see the rest of the entries on the Trib's website.

I must also say that this is an EXCELLENT use of Photoshop. To learn more about the things you SHOULDN'T do with Photoshop, click here to see a great blog about Photoshop disasters that I recently discovered via the HOW Magazine's excellent blog.

how to count to 50 with a tape measure and scissors

Hey Beautiful People! I thought I'd give you a little "behind the scenes" look at the pre-planning of my next big show Natural Selection, which will show this September at Ogle in Portland. I've been feeling a little nervous about my priorities lately--although it was also very necessary to get my new retail website done. In any event, I have made some great progress this week. First up is my color-coded to-do list, which is a must for all of my projects of this magnitude. I call the palette of this list "Homeland Security" because it's intended to put the fear of God in me, way before anything concrete actually happens. (Although in this case, something WILL happen. Don't get me started.....) I basically made one page per month, and posted it in my "clean studio" to keep me on track. I took this image before I started actually checking some of these things off the list, but the very first thing was to call my friend Fred, who will be building the greenhouse element of this project.

Fred and I met Wednesday at Ogle, tape measure in hand, and figured out the dimensions this humdinger needs to be. The open gallery space is over 18' square, although the wall extends another 18' in one direction beyond a large support beam. I will keep the greenhouse in the 18'square, so it's looking like it will have an 8'x8' footprint. I see the greenhouse as the canvas for this project, and will use the interior and exterior space to do my thing. At this stage, we're talking about framing a really basic house form, using recycled patio door glass for the walls (hopefully getting a donation from the ReBuilding Center for this) and putting a faux mullion on top of that to emulate smaller panes of glass. The roof would be spectacular if I can afford the multiwall polycarbonate (as seen here.) I love that stuff! It was key to start planning the building this early because it's going to dictate how many pieces I make for the inside to get the optimum artwork density I desire.

So....knowing this information, I did a scale model of sorts yesterday. Usually I do this in chalk on the back patio, but it was too rainy for that today. So instead, I created a fake shelf to scale out of paper, so I could get a physical feel for the installation. All of my materials were from my art material mecca SCRAP--I bought this big roll of yellow paper there years ago and it has come in handy oh so many times. The only room in the house large enough to get a decent 8' run was the living room, so I taped the paper down to the floor 8' x 16".

Then I cut oval forms from some groovy old posters from the NW Film Center (another SCRAP find!) that are roughly the size of the bases of my bonsai forms. (They're flipped over to see the white backside in case you're trying to figure out where the macrame owl is!) I laid them out in the desired density, as you see here. For a little extra information, I also cut out rectangles that would be like the plastic botanical name markers for the plants, to make sure they would be readable.

From the looks of this, I will need around 50 pieces for the show. That's a relief, honestly, because I worried it would be more. There will be more, because I will also have some of the plants actually living on the building itself, but this was the number I was most curious about. I have divided out on my checklists the number of pieces I should do each month to just stay on track and not be bogged down at the end. Since I am also scheduling in promotion, it's an imperative part of my process. I'm a lifelong list maker, a trait I inherited from my Mother, no doubt. I love checking things off the list--it feels so ceremonial. I also think it's a great way to chart progress in general. A realistic view on the project on this end, and a feeling of accomplishment at the end.

I am happy to have the blog around to chart this huge project. The last thing that felt like this was my Lovebug installation at the Fuller, which was pre-Bunny with an Artblog. I made a online slide show of my process for that project, which turned out to be quite popular. But this project is even more involved on many levels, so it's nice to also have the ability to write about it. I decided the other day that I want to create a photo album via Picasa and post it here on the blog--it will have images that are also posted in my blog entries, but over time, it will succinctly document the images in sequential order.

I will leave you with two images of works in progress--an orange sponge form, and some slices I made on the bandsaw of a wooden chinese ladle handle. The slices are shaped like orange segments, and I plan to use them as foliage. It's a great example, though, of how a discarded object can inspire form--I may not have thought of that particular shape if it were not for the original source.

Hungry Planet

My friend Alison just sent me a beautiful photo essay of what families around the world eat in a week. The images are from a book called The Hungry Planet. I was mesmerized by the orderly arrangements of the food on the table, and excited smiles of the families as they take part in photographer Peter Menzel's innovative portrait series. I was happy to discover that Time Magazine put together a nice online slide show with 18 images from the book. Click here to see it.

Rally 'round the flag (for Fred!)

I recently heard some sad news that one of my favorite metalsmiths, J. Fred Woell, suffered a stroke last week. I don't know much, but he did suffer some paralysis and the prognosis is good that he will make some recovery. He is engaged in acute physical rehabilitation to strengthen his left side and apparently working very hard and keeping his stellar wit intact.

I met Fred Woell many times when I attended, assisted, and later taught workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Craft, a magical place in Maine that I hope to return to sometime soon. Fred spent much of his pre-Haystack life either making or teaching in some of the country's leading metalsmithing programs. For those of you who do not know, Fred Woell is noted for being the first in the field to work with cast found objects and found objects in his metalwork for political and social commentary. In his younger years, he knew John Cage and was strongly influenced by both his music and philosophy. Fred chose to spend his early retirement years as the shop maintenance man at Haystack, which is when we crossed paths. Pretty cool. I can see the attraction, as I have serious fantasies about moving to that community every time I return.

I have two things in my possession that keep him in my mind often. One is a mirror that he made by cutting up an old American flag that was replaced at Haystack, and he used the bits to make buttons and small pocket mirrors. Mine is one of the stars, as you see here. The other is a piece of thin but ultra-resilient rubber that he sold by the foot at Haystack--this was some 3M product that is really great to use if you don't want to scratch up a piece of metal in the vise or when you hammer it. It's been a decade since I bought my slice, and it's been a very helpful thing on many a project.

There's currently a campaign out to have 1000 postcards arrive at his hospital room. If you would like to participate, here's the address:
J. Fred Woell
Room 877 Eastern Maine Medical Center
489 State Street
Bangor, ME 04401

Hi...remember me?

Hey Beautiful People!

I hope you haven't been too listless, waiting for me to reappear again on the blogosphere. I didn't really have much to say last week, due to the fact I've kinda been coming down the homestretch on a major project--creating a new e-commerce website for my retail work. You can see it by clicking here. I finally launched today, and I'm really happy with it. Now I have to remake the hilarypfeifer.com site! Ha!

I wanted to point out a really nice article in today's New York Times about photo booths. Click here to read it
and if you have a high-speed connection, be sure to watch their interactive video with some great images of surrealists like Dali and Bunuel in their dreamlike poses. I also loved the stories of Andy Warhol spending a day at various Manhattan photo booths with rolls of quarters, directing models for their fifteen minutes of fame.

One of my favorite things to do as a teenager was go down to the Woolworth's in Eugene, grab a shopping basket and fill it with wacky accessories from the shelves, and take pictures in their photo booth, and then politely return everything to their proper locations in the store. I know there's some of these images somewhere in my stash, but the only thing I could find was this montage of my father and me at the Lane County Fair circa 1995. Cheers!!

T for two

Hey Beautiful People! I put together a slide show of some of the shots I took at the Mr. T. Rocks opening--it was crowded and I didn't manage to document the entire show, unfortunately. All the more reason to come on down and see it for yourself! As expected, most people approached the subject matter with some humor, but many of the artists turned to portraiture like this nice gangsta piece by Ryan Berkley. Click here to see more images from the show.

On the other end of the alphabet spectrum, I happened to catch another show last week at Oregon College of Art and Craft of contemporary letterpress work. If you are a fan of this medium, make sure you get up there--definitely not your typical letterpress work in many ways. Among my favorites were this piece by a woman I went to OCAC with, Rachel Wiecking. It's called "Of Bees." Click on the image to enlarge it--it's a very intricate piece that begs you to spend time looking.

I also was very fond of this installation by Heather Green that paired tiny oil paintings with stacks of type. The piece is called "The Burden of Buoyancy" and is about a lifelong relationship she has had with the headland of La Cholla near Puerto Penasco, Mexico. Apparently, she's in the process of creating a virtual museum of the region.

I heart Mr. T!

Hello Beautiful People! I stepped outside my usual box this month to participate in a special group show that my cousin Tripper invited me to participate in. It's called "I heart Mr. T" and has some pretty hilarious work from dozens of local artists that pays homage to our favorite 1980's American television hero. Thinking along the "heart" lines, it led me to one of the Pop Art classics--Robert Indiana's "Love" painting that has become the icon for that era, as well as the city of Philadelphia.

For those of you who readers may not know, Mr. T was a member of a multicultural crime fighting trio called "The A Team," and was known for his oft-spoken phrase which always began: "I pity the fool..." and was usually followed by an ending like "...who doesn't like Oingo Boingo." The main words in his phrase, especially "pity" seem so loaded, that they were perfect to translate into Indiana's iconographic style. A portion of the sales proceeds will go the Opal Creek Scholarship fund for Buckman Elementary School. This will allow some kids that may not otherwise be able to afford it to participate in a special field trip to Opal Creek and have a great time while learning something worthwhile.

If you're downtown for this month's First Thursday openings, please stop by and say hi! MOSHi MOSHi is located at 916 W. Burnside Avenue, close to Powell's City of Books.

This is the time. And this is the record of the time.

My dad just sent me a link to a really sweet website designed by Yugo Nakamura with a perpetually updating handwritten clock. It's a really simple interweaving of the mark of the hand and the amazing things that can be done with computer design. It reminds me of the movie that Terry Zwigoff made about R. Crumb many years back and how great it was to watch his familiar drawings emerge from his pen in the full-screen close-ups of doodle sessions. There's a meditative aspect to Nakamura's online clock and it feels comforting to watch the hands continually writing and erasing, even if I have a pretty good idea what they're going to draw next.

Christian just told me that Nakamura designed the website for the current show at MoMA called Design and the Elastic Mind, so I looked at it and it's amaaaaazing! Make sure you play around on it because it's set up with a tagging system so when you click on a topic, it draws lines to all related topics, and you can click on the tags to go there. (Just for fun, see how long it takes you to find these chocolate nipples by Ana Mir!)

Before I disappear back into the virtual ether, I'll mention another online clock that I have been a fan of for many years--Human Clock. In this perpetually updating handmade clock, all of the images were submitted by others who creatively follow the simple guidelines. Sometimes I use the option to get a "cute little window" of this clock on my desktop and am treated to images from all over the world all afternoon.