Sticks, Stones, and Paper Stew Blog

Waiting

Yes, the above image is a rusting piece of reinforcing bar (aka re-bar), a material used a lot in building foundations. It adds strength and stability to the concrete. It’s something I feel is missing in life right now. The past few weeks have been very strange and unorganized, which isn’t good for my brain. I’m one of those people who like an organized schedule where things don’t shift too much. Sometimes I feel very boring and difficult to work with, especially during spontaneous situations. I probably drive my husband nuts on weekends because I have a hard time adjusting to his very unorganized patterns. Anyway, this week my husband had to travel to Boston for a few days, which upsets the dog population and household life. I also started physical therapy for an ongoing foot issue. PT will really kick in next week, alternating between different mornings, another thing to disrupt my brain path. Things are also wrapping up on the house sale. We were presented with two fix requests: water heater issue and roof leak by Monday morning. I’m glad the buyers are willing to be flexible with the due date.

Supplies for the Camas project are still in route. Friday, I should finally receive 5# of Damar resin. I’m also scheduling bees wax pick-up that day or Saturday. The secret glue is still waiting for payment clearing before shipping. I’m glad the company is in California and should ship quickly next week. Oil bars are at Hester’s desk, waiting…. or at least I hope they are still there and she’s not passed them off to someone else! I have several people with paper ready to contribute. I just have to connect all the dots and I should be in business.

Thursday I did a big push to clear part of my to-do list for work. I configured 205 image titles for an upcoming jury process, with another 5 yet to arrive. Not terribly exciting stuff, but I certainly appreciate when artists follow directions and tag their photos correctly. Otherwise I spent an awful lot of time renaming files. I was only working on the data sheet to accompany the images. The image file is yet to come. I hope that won’t take quite so long, plus I’ll be rewarded by viewing all the photos! Much better than lines of text! I’m also getting off easy with having a fairly small group of entries. I can’t yet imagine processing 100+ people! Brings back memories from working at Fall Festival.

I think the only other thing to report on is my disappointment with having dropped off so many lanterns at the new shop in Salem. The shop is finally open, had a ribbon cutting and my work remains boxed up and not out for sale. In truth, the shop doesn’t seem able to accommodate additional work after examining photos from the opening party. Makes me want to yank my inventory and sell it someplace else. In my opinion, craft work requires a bit of space in order to appreciate the quality. When everything gets crammed together, the presence is lost. Where will my work be placed and will it even be safe with everything else around it? To remove or not to remove , that is the question! I’ll ponder that more next week.

Quiet but busy

The rain has finally come back to us after many days of beautiful sunshine. It’s needed since the pollen counts have been dreadful. I’ve been trying to gain a better grasp of organizing my time between all sections of life. I feel more glued to the computer, anticipating things popping up from work, artists slowly resubmitting images for a show, and trying to organize my thoughts for the installation work due by September 1. Back in May, it seemed so far away, but now it doesn’t seem long enough. The next two weeks will be more swamped with the final house sale. Inspections happen today. After that, there will be more negotiations for fixes. I certainly learned my lesson with the last house sale back in April, so I won’t be negotiating much. They have already received a pretty darn good deal and I won’t give more.

Physical therapy for my foot starting next week. I’ve been trying a few additional things to see if diet has influenced the swelling. Last week I dropped the last evil food: processed sugar. Can we say withdrawal? Talk about lethargy and total sweets craving! At least it’s getting easier now. Alcohol has been fully dropped (except for special occasions), along with absolutely no corn, dairy or soy. Right now I can’t say it’s helped much, but the pain has lessened a bit. I’m also 10 day into a 30 day abs program. The muscles are finally strengthening, but I dread everyday’s increase. Now, I need to step up cross training on bike or swimming.

It’s been weeks since I’ve worked on a lantern. The push to get enough together for the new shop was plenty. However, my home stock levels are down to 2 completed, which is pretty pathetic. Even if I don’t sell any over the summer, I’ll need a fairly good level for Philomath Open Studio tour in October/November. Better to spread things out over the coming months rather than lump it all in October. There are also experiments I need to start working on, but still not certain when to fit that into life.

Dave leaves Monday for 3 days in Boston. 2 days of travel and one full day there. I’m hoping that will be a perfect time to just settle into artwork with no one to worry about. Ok, the dogs are still in need, but I’ve become very good at shutting them out of the studio. Poor guys! I can’t even take them walking right now due to the foot pain. Not a good situation for them.

Halsey is excited about their upcoming installation. Information and photos of the model were passed along. The school children in town will also receive additional connection with the work through the education section at The Arts Center. Since my work touches on many things (botany, first nation people, valley history, & recycling), teachers might be able to have a fun time using it with a lesson plan. I’m still gathering materials from different sources and hope to get seriously working on it next week (in-between everything else on my plate!) Life certainly isn’t boring! I’m still craving going to the coast…. but that will have to wait until July.

Time to get working on something… I just don’t know what to choose!

🙂

Figuring

A few days back I learned a tad more about my upcoming space. The building length is 21 feet or 6.4 meters. My floor height, interior and exterior, are equal (except down on the sidewalk). Plus I will have the full front space, up to 5 feet from the windows, including the front door! So that means 21′ x 5′. Pretty sizable! How does this affect my plans? Well, for starters, I won’t have to produce any flower stalk over 6 feet. My idea of creating a stage isn’t necessary and would take a lot more work. So, here is my idea:

Recycled plant containers, PVC pipe, and cement! If extra side tip stability is needed, I would add bars through the drainage holes. Below is my quick check with gravel rather than cement.

Eventually the brain lands in the right grooves! It’s slowly taking shape. I need to place orders and cracking on this project!

😀

On the hook

Hook #1: Two offers have come forward for the family home in Eugene on one day. I was just shocked! Offer #1 was from the first family who negotiated for several weeks in early May, but they continued to low-ball the price. Now they increased their amount to a more respectable number, but it’s not as good as offer #2! I suspect they upped their offer because they learned of a second bid coming in. Gotta love a real estate agent who works for ya! So now we play the back and forth negotiation dance with family#2. They actually have family in the area (10 houses up and over the top of the hill for those who know the area) and are familiar with the home, having admired it for many years. Family #2 actually wrote a letter of introduction to us, which was a cleaver move! I still hate to think of what awful changes they will make to the interior and exterior, but as my father used to say, “walk away and don’t look back”. Me, being inquisitive about people, did a little research and found he is an upper-up at a major technology company that happens to employ my nephew. Hmm. At least they will have the bucks to take care of the home!

Hook #2: My husband’s car has been in the shop this week so he has been using mine. For some strange reason, people always approach him and talk cars. He’s received a huge amount of interest from onlookers with the electric iMIEV, and many conversations regarding the Honda (1992 Civic SI). We are actually at the stage of needing to sell the Honda and he was approached while at lunch about selling the car. Unsolicited! How freaky is that?? Of course, it is contingent upon us agreeing and purchasing another vehicle first. The little red car is not allowed to leave until I have a new used something. Most likely, it will be yet another Honda because they last forever. I’ve had mine for almost 20 years and it still gets better gas mileage than almost anything new out there! However, the little red car doesn’t fit 3/80# dogs, 2 adults, and gear for a coast trip. It just doesn’t work!

Life sure moves in interesting ways!

🙂

Writing it out

Sometimes I wish I had the wand Dumbledore used in Harry Potter to extract thoughts and drop them gently in a glass vial. I could store them in a row and if someone needed to see what the heck I was thinking, I’d pull out the pensive and let them have at it. Friday I spent many hours composing my ideas on paper for this project, mainly in a form of a letter to go to the city. Then I moved on to trying to draw up something coherent for the approval committee. I don’t have actual dimensions for the building as of yet, so I estimated by looking back at photos taken in early May. The windows are very tall so I estimated them to be about 7 feet high. The exterior is deceptive because when you are inside, the bottom of the window are about 32″-36″. When standing outside, the lower window ledge starts at about 18″. I can already tell I’ll most likely be creating some sort of stage to help boost the flowers, but also to provide support for the stems. The flower stalks will have quite a bit of weight to them. A couple more recycled doors should do the trick! Below is the image of the building I’ll be in with the narrow tall windows. Then comes my starting layout drawing with building overlay. My goal is to get the tops of the flowers at about 6 to 7 feet high when you are standing outside and looking in.

I’m really uncertain how far back into the space I can move and I also need to make sure I don’t obstruct the one entrance on the side. My brain is already laying out how to move everything there safely. U-Haul and a crew of 2 extra bodies should do the trick. There goes my focus again! Present moment! That’s where I need to be today. 🙂

Model Camas

camas flower — Camas Sculpture Model- wire, tracing paper, wax. ©2014GaleEverettStudio

Camas on a stick anyone? This is a sneak peak of my current concept for the Art in Rural Storefronts Project for Halsey Oregon. The above model has received limited hours of work, has no finished color, and a very quick assembly. Very quick!! It’s been constructed strictly to see if my ideas are feasible and they are!!! The piece is only about 20″ ( 46 cm) tall (from the bottom petal to the top flower bud) which is about 1/3 the expected finished size. Plus there will be multiple stalks of camas. Eventually the viewers will be looking through a” field” of giant camas. Kind of like when you’re a kid laying down in grassy fields, taking a bugs eye view of the world. Adults never seem to do that anymore. 🙂

For the backdrop, I’ll be using recycled interior doors. They will be linked together with a loose charcoal landscape drawing over the surface. Still working on a title for the piece.

Out of town break

Sometimes you just need to get away with friends. Especially those that take you to art stores! We had a “art gals” day in McMinnville to visit a few galleries and spend an enormous amount of time combing through the Merri Artist, an art supply store. I have to admit a lot of my supplies come via online shopping because we have no decent supply source in Corvallis, Albany or anywhere! There is a lovely shop I visit in Eugene, and another in Salem, but McMinnville has one of the best! Ok, they do fall short in interesting decorative papers, but that might change. If you are a painter, you would love it! I adore looking at all the little things, colors, nibs, foil, encaustic, paper, canvases, paints, pencils…. I think you understand. Some people love shopping for clothes, I love shopping for art supplies. Somehow I managed to practice restrained purchasing, leaving with only paper needed for more lamps and this lovely 3 pack of Moleskine blank journals. I’ve been wanting something small and easy to take around for sketches and notes. Looks like I’ll be set for a little while. A big thanks to Carol Chapel, Donna Beverly & Joey Azul for making it such a lovely day!

Ok, now back to work. 😦

Wax

Tuesday I was sucked up by the need to work but torn between jobs. The day started with working on my new job as website manager for the Arts Center. Nothing like learning new frustrating computer stuff while trying to balance art obligations! I’m in a steep learning curve at the moment, it’s bugging the heck out of me and I find it hard to set aside. I actually had to forcibly shift myself to work on the camas model. Put some tunes on and get going! Tuesdays experiment focused on how wax would mix with wire & PVA glue. My current wax is a parafin/beeswax mix. The below image is part of my model. It’s one of the flower buds but hanging down to allow the wax to drip off.

Hopefully by Friday afternoon I’ll have some good images, sketches and writings to submit for the city. Today I’m off to Newberg and McMinnville to check out some galleries with friends. I think there will be a stop off at an art supply shop too!

Sticky fingers

camas sketch

This is going to be a busy week! I have about 5 days to get my plans and introduction together for the Rural Storefront installation project. My brain works best bycombining sketching with model building. The above image is one of many camas sketches but with vine charcoal & pastels. An exercise to get my brain thinking about flower bud volume & form. From there I jumped into creating a model. By working on a smaller version, it allows me to figure out what really needs to happen between buds and stem. How can they be packed together and wired to the main stem? What will the main stem be for the sculptures? Wood? Reinforcing bar? Will the entire form be coated in wax? How many camas plants will I produce? I can already tell I’ll be working with 16 to 18 gauge wire. Look out fingers, there will be pain for the first month! Below is the start of individual flower buds for the first model.

By the end of my session, I completed 9 buds and had them attached to a main stem. No open flowers yet, but soon. More photos to come. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with wire, paper and glue. I had totally forgotten how my fingers turn black from bending the dark annealed wire. Then add glue and paper to the forms and yuck happens. My fingers become a giant sticky black mess that I’ll have to get used to. This is how the next many months will be. Thank goodness water takes it away!

Over the next several weeks, things will become more clear regarding where the sculptures are heading. It won’t be a bunch of gibberish involving random drawings and weird photos of paper and wire. It will become, I hope, an interesting sculpture that takes you on a different perspective of an important native plant in the Willamette Valley.

In search of supplies

This week has been filled with so many things. I’ve been trying to get a handle on my new job, delivered 6 lamps to a new shop, hubby’s birthday, cat care for our neighbor, and much more. There have also been counter offers on my dad’s house too. Research has commenced in earnest for supplies necessary for the sculptural work I will be creating in Halsey. I connected with a local apiary (bee keeper) to purchase unfiltered beeswax. The wax will be combined with dammar resin for an encaustic treatment over paper. It will provide strength and translucency to the work. Cooking the 2 parts together should prove interesting. I hear it takes about 6 hours for a big batch. No cooking it indoors either! Only outside and with pots designated for that alone. There is always something new to learn!

I really need to sit down and start my layout plans so they can be passed along to the committee. I don’t know if they have to approve it or not. We shall see. I’ve still have yet to receive a contract. It’s coming. Hopefully this means the project won’t have to be installed until mid-October when the weather should be cooler.

More craziness to come! 😀