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

Story-telling: Part One

Over the years, my hands have explored a brilliant spectrum of surfaces, textures, and forms. They have dove into emotion, action, and reflection. All of it spawning from story.

My first encounter with art-making came to me at 7, fresh out of my last hospital stay with asthma. That day, I went back to my safe place, where I would always wander. With just some metal clips, sticks, glue, and paper, I had my first kinetic sculpture..other-wise known as a windmill. I still have no answer to my parents for where I came up with the idea. Perhaps artists are simply mediums for materials.

 

Recently, my work has found itself discovering a higher intent...that the purpose of art-making is simply to tell a story.

In the world of plaster artistry, I often get calls from clients who are going through an important mark in their life..a birth, a graduation, a desire to have beauty after tragedy. It's always an honor to create. Starting in one room and going to the next. Stroke after stroke, I watch my client's outlook transform.

This year has delighted me with an abundance of opportunities to not only to create beauty in spaces, but also use my skills to illuminate and preserve a family's legacy through glass.

 My client, Ted Lagreid, comes from a rich line of sculptural talent. Either through building the observation tower at Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island or constructing the stone pillars at the Woodland Park Zoo Rose Garden, both his father and grandfather were master stone masons.  Taking the best earthen artifacts and placing these forms and textures for all to enjoy was something that they were driven to do.

In honor of the Lagreid family, I am creating a series of casted glass hearts. This heart shape was generated from a mold I made off of a very precious rock from one of the pillars at the Woodland Park Zoo Rose Garden, another sacred site from my client's ancestry.

As I continue to use my own hands and skills to transform and capture this history, I realize I am beginning to tell my own personal narrative about the importance of texture in our lives.

As time passes, technology quickens its pace. Objects and processes continue to be faster and smoother. If the towers and pillars that the Lagreids constructed nearly a century ago would have been built today, they would probably be erected in record time...but would they have been sculpted with the same amount of love, care, and patience?

....Here's to the blessing and gift to tell story through texture!

Spackle and Fade...

My hands are officially on both coasts! I just returned from plastering my second Aveda store. This time, my trowel took me to New England, where settlers plastered walls in lime, sand, and even used straw and cow hair to provide added strength. Bewildered by old towns like Salem and Ipswitch, in awe of seeing the old walls of Paul Revere's house, I came back with a renewed passion for all things old. I felt my ancestors hands trowel their surfaces as I gave my final touch to the clay walls.

 Our most treasured spaces have been sacrificed to the cause of the New and Clean. Even though the witch trials and revivals have long passed, we still strive for purity. Smooth and shiny building skins, disguising the badge of Wear and Time. This is an ancient habit. Colonists wore wigs, makeup, and did all sorts of tricks to appear flawless. Today, we have Botox and Bondo, to fill in where time has gouged away.

As a plaster artist, I give conscious attention to my work. When you have hand-troweled finishes, accept the fact that it will eventually get damaged. In high-traffic areas, consider giving the wall a bit more visual texture, so that when the blemish appears, it becomes part of the surface character. Also, it is helpful to select a material that is easy to repair. American Clay is my favorite pic for this. Simply, infill the nick, allow it to dry, then blend it back in with water and a plastic putty knife. Sounds similar to the way the aristocrats might have patched their faces before a promenade. :)

I wish I had a answer for us accepting our flaws as beautiful. We should take pride in ourselves and our craft. Yet, somehow we end up fighting the marks of time. Perhaps we can strive for ambivalence here and consider wabi-sabi as a ray of light. Purity in imperfection?! Hmmm. You decide.

“Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. Wabi-sabi is ambivalent about separating beauty from non-beauty or ugliness. The beauty of wabi-sabi is in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly. Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.”
― Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

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!

Weekend @ VALA: Finding "Home"

 

What an honor to be selected as a VALA Artist in Residence! VALA (Venues for Artists in the Local Area). VALA connects artists to artists through the VALA Artist to Artist Series which spotlights featured artists to discuss their inspiration and process with other artists and is open to the local community. www.valaeastside.org

 

 

We spent our first weekend together building the bones, collecting materials, refreshing the walls and making the old Borders Books in Redmond Town Center our home for the holidays. So many ideas to share and space to offer!! Everyone will have the chance to make and be inspired by art!  The holiday season is off to a great start. We VALA artists are proud to share our gifts with the community!

Spaces were allocated over the weekend and artists started to move in! My mission: create a “dog house” out of the old cash register. When you walk into our new space, scents of evergreens and cedar will abound! Digging around at the local wood pile and coming home to build whatever I wanted was such a release! No need to worry about “what if..”…just use your instincts and have a blast! The "Dog House" will be a space for mold-making and I invite anyone interested in kiln-casting glass to come down and participate.

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of art-making is spent within the niches of our houses and studios, hands caked in gritty plaster…quietly engulfed in thought or chasing the next idea. The VALA 2013 Holiday Artist in Residency couldn’t have come at a better time for me. By sharing my passions with others, art-making ignites the FUN, which is the main ingredient for beautiful works to come!

 

Thank you VALA for connecting artists!

 

 

Clay Craze

I received a call recently from a contractor who had applied American Clay three times on a project and it kept on cracking. It sounded a lot worse than it actually was. These areas were more smaller "crazes" than buckling "cracks", but still it needed to be resolved for a happy client.

Binders such as clay and lime once applied as a plaster lose all of their water to evaporation. If there is excessive water, the plaster is not compressed whilst drying small to medium cracking can occur called ‘crazing’ or ‘checking". Clay contains more water content than lime plasters. It also requires you to add water back to the surface while compressing it, so extra caution should be paid on this critical final step. Compressing ensures that the layers of applied clay have been pushed together to form a mechanical bond to the substrate. It's critical for a smooth and solid finish.

 In addition to the cracks, there was also greyish burn marks on the surface from using a steel trowel. The friction from using your trowel to compress the wall causes the plaster to turn grey from the steel material. Metal is heat conductive so a plastic trowel should be used especially on lighter surfaces. Both the burnish marks and the behavior of the cracks indicated it was a an issue in compressing the clay rather than a product or substrate failure.


Here's my prescription for bringing the beauty back!

• Scrape down any loose plaster and apply a sanded primer to the surface. This might be overkill, but creates a new vapor barrier and layer for the old and new plaster to adhere to.

• Use a plastic trowel to compress lighter colored surfaces to avoid unsightly grey burn marks.

• Compress clay when it goes to "set", "tack-free", or "leather-hard". This is when you can press your finger into it and no plaster is removed. You also know it's the right time to compress when the color starts to lighten. This requires less water to be used, which minimizes potential for cracks to form.



Clay - Ready for compressing!



 

 

 

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