A new body of work

A couple of months ago I got the idea to buy wood painting panels as supports for collage.  I thought they would give substance to the work, and avoid the necessity and expense of framing.  So I bought a five-pack of 9 by 12 panels and set to work.

I decided to work on all of them at once, and that all of them would have the same general elements.  At a workshop last year I made several pages worth of calligraphy, just writing in black india ink, sometimes overlaying the first page of writing with more writing in a different scale and a different direction.  I used those pages as the bottom layer.

Each collage would include a map, most would include an old photo, and I found four old books that I would tear up as collage elements for each of the pieces.  Then I added bits and pieces of this and that until the collages seemed finished.

The advantage of working on several pieces at once was that it gave me time for the various paints, inks, glues and mediums to dry; by the time I had worked on all five panels the first one was ready for another step.  I used plenty of matte medium as the top coat, or I should really say top coats, because I kept slathering that stuff on until some of the the surface resembled encaustic.  Toward the end I added some mystery junk for 3-D interest.

The five panels that I started with eventually grew to about ten, and I kept working on them bit by bit through the summer, not sure whether they were done yet.  The first one to be declared finished was a birthday gift, on a smaller but deeper panel that allowed me to add stuff on the sides and a roof on the top.

This week I declared two more finished so I could put them in the sales room at Pyro Gallery.

Messages: Eschenbach (detail below)

Messages: Allouez  (detail below)

I like the way this work is turning out, especially when several of the series are seen at once.  I like the way the various elements are finding their own balance, and the old photos and old book fragments seem to go well together.

Good thing, too, because there are at least a half dozen more of these in the studio waiting for something before they too can be finished.

My favorite things 37

One of the nice things about being a member of a co-op gallery is that you get to spend time hanging out with the art while you do your shifts of gallery-tending.  After I joined Pyro Gallery last fall, we had a pre-holiday show in which all the 22 member artists displayed work.  During my shifts I noticed that some of the art was definitely priced to sell -- perhaps it had been sitting in the studio so long that the artist didn't want to bring it home again.

I was drawn to a limestone sculpture by Mike McCarthy which looked vaguely pre-Columbian, and when we held a 10 percent off sale the week before Christmas, I pounced!  I wanted a sculpture for our front yard, something that would hold up to the weather, too small to be noticed from the street and too big to be easily stolen if a miscreant did spot it.  This one filled the bill.

When Mike brought the statue over, it was the dead of winter and this part of the front garden was just dirt.  My husband the gardener thought it was pretty much plant-free, although he wasn't sure what might come up again in the spring.

We sited the statue so it gave the big eye to people walking up the path, but also to those coming down off the porch.

As the spring wore on, daffodils came and went, sometimes crowding the statue on one side while leaving it empty on another; obviously no professional landscaping had occurred in the testing of this product.  But in August all of that changed -- brilliant zinnias came up to the left, scarlet sage came up to the right, framing my pre-Columbian guy in color.  He guards my front walk with a stern, all-seeing eye (and peeks into the guest room window with his back eye if you open the curtains).

Good news!

Here's a long story about a small quilt.  If you've been reading my blog for years you've heard parts of it before.  It started out in 2010 as the leftover bits from a group project organized by Terry Jarrard-Dimond, in which a bunch of people collaborated on a quilt design.  After Terry sewed the final version together, I asked if I could have the scraps, and made two small quilts.

Or more accurately, two small quilt tops.  Only one of them got finished at the time because I wasn't pleased with the design.  I carried the other one around with me for years as a workshop sample, and at one workshop I had it pinned up on the design wall.  I was talking about how you should always evaluate your work, and that it's often more important to understand why certain things didn't work than to understand your successes.  I pointed to the quilt top on the wall and said I never felt that the top half played well with the bottom half.  And then I heard these words come out of my mouth:  "What I really should do is cut it in half, right about here..."

So I went home and did just that, separating the Siamese twins.  And they have been much happier as companions than they were together.

Left Coast

And now the latest chapter in the story.  I entered one of the quilts in the 24th Annual Juried Art Exhibition at the Krempp Gallery in Jasper IN.  I've been in that show several times before and try to enter every year; it's a beautiful space, the show attracts a wide variety of entries in all mediums, and best of all, the jurors seem to be very happy with fiber art.  In fact, two years ago another of my quilts won best in show.

Turns out that Left Coast, one of the Siamese twins, won best in show this year.  I am so proud of her!  If you're anywhere in southwest Indiana in the next month, drop by Jasper and check out the show -- there's plenty more fiber art besides mine.

Hello to the new gallery...

Yesterday was the first day that Pyro Gallery's new space was open for business, and after it closed for the day we gathered for champagne to celebrate.  We took possession of the new space 12 days ago and it's been a flurry of moving, painting, and hanging the new show.  Although there's plenty left to be done -- almost half the space is still under construction, and we don't expect that finished until early next month -- it's great to see the place clean, sparkling white, extremely well lit, and with art on the walls!

Come visit if you're near Louisville -- our new address is 1006 E. Washington St.

Goodbye to the old bathrooms....

Yesterday the construction workers came to start on our huge bathroom project, in which two small bathrooms are going to be combined into a single beautiful one.  We've lived in this house for 31 years and I've chafed under the poor design ever since, but could never figure out what to do about it.  Finally I hooked up with a bathroom/kitchen guy who took one look and drew up plans that promise to be wonderful.

The smaller of the two bathrooms hasn't been used for its intended purposes in at least a decade, and instead became the garage for cardboard boxes.  Why do you need so many damn cardboard boxes, my husband has continually wanted to know.  But without cardboard boxes how would I ship quilts and other artworks hither and yon?

Now the boxes have taken up residence in one of the guestrooms.  We'll see how many of them survive the project.

My concern is whether construction dust is going to invade the other rooms on that floor, which include my studio.  The contractor assures me he will cover everything with plastic, tape doors shut, etc. and I don't have to worry.  I think I will worry just the same.

My favorite things 36

During the Great Depression my father, like so many other people, had a hard life.  His dad died of cancer, but not before using up the family's savings on hospital bills; he had to drop out of college after two years; he had a bunch of crappy jobs that he hated, including selling Libby's canned goods on the road in central Michigan.  But as things got better, he had a great opportunity, to work at and subsequently buy half of a weekly newspaper in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Frankenmuth was a tiny town settled by German immigrants in the 1840s.  Their plan was to save the heathen Indians not by sending a single missionary but by sending entire villages of people who would set a good example by living in Christian harmony in a community centered on the Lutheran church.

Unfortunately for the missionary effort, when they got to Michigan the Indians were long gone, driven out by loggers and settlers, so the immigrants simply went about their business, living in Christian harmony in a community centered on the Lutheran church.  My great-great grandfather was one of those immigrants, arriving in 1853.

Dad and a bunch of other young men came home from World War 2 determined to breathe new life into the staid old town, where people still spoke German as easily as English.  Dad had a great idea: Frankenmuth should capitalize on its German heritage and go for tourist business.  There were already three hotels in town that had become famous for serving chicken dinners, and people were accustomed to stopping for a meal on their way to and from Detroit.  The guys persuaded the local bank, ready for a new building, to use Bavarian architecture, and from then on other businesses did the same.

Pretty soon Frankenmuth had become a kitschy tourist town famous around the world.  Dad's buddy Wally Bronner opened a year-round Christmas store, selling ornaments, artificial trees, inflatable Santas, every kind of holiday stuff.  The hotels, now remodeled in Bavarian style, cranked out chicken dinners by the bazillion.  Main Street was filled with shops selling Germanic souvenirs.  The town was the first place outside of Germany to get an official imprimatur from Munich to hold a sanctioned Oktoberfest.  For years Frankenmuth was either #1 or #2 in the list of tourist attractions in the state.

When our family moved away from Michigan (I was 9 years old) Dad still kept his half of the paper as an absentee owner.  He always said he was waiting till I got out of journalism school and could take it over.  Privately I thought I would sooner move to Siberia and herd yaks, but didn't say this out loud.  Nevertheless, I was kind of hurt when, in my senior year of college, he sold out to his longtime partner without even discussing it with me.  All for the best, of course.

We buzz Frankenmuth whenever we go back to Michigan, which isn't all that frequently.  We always bring a cooler so we can load up on sausages at Kern's, and of course drink a beer and eat a chicken dinner.  And I always walk by the Frankenmuth News building, which is now the local history museum.  As Oscar Hammerstein wrote, "This nearly was mine."