HAND HELD



Once, our hands were tools. Grabbing twigs….twisting, turning tight. Imprints on clay cave walls were a message.  Today, we have the ability to use our hands to decorate, create, and connect. While our thumbs might evolve into nicely knobbed cell phone gadgets, we have the power to change that. There is time to still use our hands to find our own gifted voices and to be completely wired into our community, in the most primal analog way. Humans are wired to touch, our hands long to press and reveal the texture of experience embedded within.

"Current" 2014
Kiln-casted glass circuit boards

I'm honored to be a 2014 artist resident at VALA Eastside. VALA's effort to promote community through art inspires me deeply. Redmond continues to be built up and the vertical pace continues. VALA's art center has taken root and has provided a much needed anchor for creative connection. My residency at VALA is about offering my passion for art-making to my community. This is our space. Let’s take it over! I hope you are ready to speak your mind about how technology and art can unite…..or are they oil & water? You decide. Let’s make. And then talk. And then make! 



 

 

 

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

Gifted

The spirit of art-making sparked early this holiday season and glowed bright.

During Thanksgiving, I was inducted into the tribe of the Sophie-zombies...what an honor it was to be painted by my gifted niece!

I came back and sank myself right into my first art residency at Vala Art Center .

My objective was to inspire public art-making by creating a "pop-up" activity space where anyone can come experience mold-making, casting, or perhaps paint! Yes, it is the holiday season where felt and silk parade with light,...but why not come clean and leave a bit dirty with a pocket full of ideas!?

The highlight of my time at VALA was gift-giving. Anyone that dared to roll up their sleeves and make a mold of their hand were invited. Dental alginate is a safe, easy to use material to make quick molds from. It's body part friendly too, so kids of all ages can play. Unbound curiousity with just enough mad science.

One minute cake batter, jello next. Then wax. Once everyone removed their hands from the molds, I poured melted beeswax into the voids. Viola! the wax hardens, molds uncrack, and so does the art! Ah Ha!

Mold-making is a foundation for casting in wax and other materials. My favorite is glass, which is  casted into molds by melting it in a kiln or furnace. I currently teach kiln-casting at Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle, and am planning on teaching glass casting on the eastside. Contact me if you are interested in taking a class!

 

There was a buzz happening. There were no visitors, only participants. I really enjoyed watching Redmond Town Center transform from a marketplace to a community space. VALA gave it just the right pulse.

As both my residency and 2013 close, I'm excited about growing my local arts community. I deeply appreciate the work of the VALA staff for making this happen. Seeing the city of Redmond and businesses support local arts programs has invigorated my own commitment to teach and share ideas with my community. I learned just how hungry people are to use their hands and make. The look of wow and wonder when you discover....your own gifts.

Wishing YOU creativity in 2014!

La Loba

Myths of triumphant forest goddesses fascinate. Artemis, Devana, Morrigan, Brigid, Skeleton Woman, Baba Yaga.....and La Loba.



What do all these sage women have in common? The ability to honor our natural cycles of growth and decay, synthesizing and sculpting the disparate bones of life. In La Loba's case she sings them back to re-birth the wolf. Life-blood at it's finest. Flow replaces vacancy and the cycles of life... repeat.

“La Loba” in folklore is the “Bone Collector”. The more bones she collects, the more alive the animal becomes. La Loba is one of many powerful spirits Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ph.D discusses in her book "Women Who Run With the Wolves".  When I first read about La Loba, chills rushed and my eyes watered. There is a Bone Collector goddess?!! Ahhh...heroes. This book continues to inspire my journey through life. The true sculptors are my own dogs who deliciously etch and wear each bone. Molds are made and my own sculpting begins.

 

 Life is blending, fading, then bursting open again...



La Loba 2013 Casted Glass - Sherri Gamble

"You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave marks of illness upon it, and scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it is protected by La Loba in the underworld. She is both the finder and incubator of bones. Bones are heavy enough to hurt with, sharp enough to cut through flesh, and when old and if strung, tinkle like glass.

The bones of the living are alive and creatural in themselves, they constantly renew themselves. A living bone has a curiously soft "skin" to it. It appears to have certain powers to regenerate itself. Even dry as a bone, it becomes home for small living creatures. Today the old one inside you is collecting bones. What is she re-making?" 

 Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ph.D, Women Who Run with the Wolves

Below Our Feet....

Yesterday gifted me with the feeling of Christmas Eve. A warm Tuesday night of art-making and I patiently grinned. Method was a hymn as I planned color schemes and packing my molds for my next glass casting.

My control releases as the the kiln ramps to 1575 degrees. Saturday will be THE day. What will become? While my next forms are molten, I ponder the simularities between my two biggest creative passions: cast glass and earth plaster finishes.

These materials and processes resonate a quick, forceful intensity. You are lost in that brief moment when nothing else matters except what is in your hands. You must GO..don't ponder. "Catch that edge before I set!" says Lime. "You have 2 minutes till I become brittle!" shouts Gypsum. Your instincts sharpen to a fine .01 tip.

My sense of materiality is rooted in textured, stratified earthen layers. Plaster speaks through shiny hand-troweled veneers or heavy hand-built forms. Marble, clay, lime, gypsum, cement, terracotta, silica, all bring different qualities and purposes. Knowing the languege of each can help us transform spaces and evoke the spirit. It's amazing that we can find this creative abundance in the earth below our feet.

”The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.” -- Picasso.


I invite you to visit www.sageartemis.etsy.com to view more of my kiln-cast glass work!