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

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

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

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

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!