Ditch Fish Project: Walnut dye

This is my adventure into creating an art installation for the Art in Rural Storefronts project sponsored by The Arts Center of Corvallis. ARS serves regional audiences in Linn and Benton Counties by bringing innovative, thought- provoking art projects to rural communities that lack spaces dedicated to contemporary/non-commercial art.  Three artists were chosen to participate.  Art in Rural Storefronts is a collaboration between The Arts Center and Rural Development Initiatives. The project is funded in part by the Oregon Arts Commission.

When I made my proposal, I had several ideas about how to cover the wire squares. One idea was to use seed bags used by the local grass seed growers. On further investigation, I learned many bags are now created using woven plastic (tough for me to glue quickly). Not a good route to take. Plan B incorporated valley dirt to color a white paper. After checking out our valley river loam, I determined it would not create good dye.  I would need to use some pretty heavy paper to hold up to a long mud bath. Scratch that idea!  What do I do now? What natural dye material is found around farm fields or farmers homes that could color light weight paper? Walnuts! Ok. It’s not fully related to the fish or grass seed, but the old graceful trees are often found next to the farm houses.

I spent a little time picking up fallen walnuts in the area, some with green coatings while others had already started to deteriorate into a dark brown mess. I tossed them into a pot, filled with a gallon or so of water and boiled for 20 min. There was an art critique meeting that night so I shut off the heat and left the pot covered on the stove.

Poor Dave came home to a pot of black inky something with green monster eyeballs floating amongst the darkness. Definitely not dinner!

How far should the reduction go? I wasn’t certain if the 20 min of heat would produce a dark enough color so a quick test was done. A scrap of Hosho paper  received a few brush strokes from the liquid. The paper was much thicker than what will be used for the project. Will it be enough? I’ll give it a go for now. If I need it darker, I’ll reduce my stock in half.

The brew was cooled for over 24 hrs then strained using a coffee filter, funnel and empty plastic water jug.

The coffee filter helped remove extra walnut fiber sludge from the water.

Will this be enough to dye all the paper needed? Time will tell.

Boiled walnuts anyone?

Ditch Fish project: Site visit

October 16: I jumped at the opportunity to head to Sweet Home for a site visit and meet building owner Sarah S. A big thanks to Sarah for connecting with me!!  The drive was beautiful, sunny and feeling so much like fall! It took almost an hour to get there from home. Sarah showed me the building: back portion is mainly a gymnastics/cheer/ fitness space, front is in transition. Photos below are of the front windows I’ll be working with.

My main focus will be the corner windows close to the front door. They measure about 61″ wide and are about 21″ off the floor. I’ll need to build some sort of a raised surface but nothing fancy since it won’t be supporting much weight. I’ll also need to figure out some way to hang fish from the upper long windows in the last photo. What do I do with the vertical narrow windows? A lot to figure out in one month! I do love that the front door is so big. It makes it easier to bring assembled sections into the building!

Pulling out the charcoal

        Start of a poppy drawing: stage 1 & 2.

How do I procrastinate from tasks needing work? Typically I pull out a completely unrelated art form like knitting scarves, printmaking or something totally different. Yesterday it was drawing with charcoal.  Maybe I can partly blame fellow blogger Rosie Scribblah in Wales. I adore her blog. Her daily scribbles of people she encounters, cats, pigeons,  you name it, are all incredible. If it sits still for a little bit, she’ll capture it on page! Since she’s always sketching, she has a fabulous hand especially with human subjects. If you’ve not seen her blog, please check it out. Besides drawing, she is also a printmaker. Recently she started on a different charcoal technique I’ve never encountered: reductive drawing using turpentine on gessoed paper covered in compressed charcoal. I’ve actually woke up at night thinking about starting a piece. So I thought it was high time to start a basic drawing on a toned scrap of paper (Somerset) with charcoal.  No gesso yet, but I plan on repeating the process using the reductive method in a few weeks.  The poppy image has been waiting for months to become a drawing.

Paper size: 25cm x 70cm

More refinement to go.

Thanks Rosie for your inspiration!

Garden Harvest

Planting crops in late July probably wasn’t the best for achieving a big harvest, but it was what I could manage this season. We did grow enough purple tomatillos to make a good batch of green salsa for a dinner or two. Green tomatoes might also become something tasty. The Black Krum heirlooms  really didn’t do well but  I continue to munch on Sweet 100’s when watering the garden. Temps have dipped to 30 degrees at night and the squash leaves have gone black and shriveled. Only two little yellow crook necks were harvested and a couple of zucchini remain on the plants to see if they will grow a tad more. One lemon cucumber is now larger than a walnut shell. Peas are still blooming and producing well.

Maybe we’ll finally receive a little rain by the weekend. We’ve been without for months. I don’t count the showers that fell on September 21 as real rain.

🙂

Ditch Fish Project: Venue Change

I had a sneaky feeling my request would be misinterpreted. Maybe it’s for the best.

Here are the images for the NEW location, still in downtown Sweet Home. Address is 933 Main Street. I had really hoped for a longer expanse of window but I’ll just have to work with what I’ve got.

To be truthful, I’m currently having enthusiasm problems. Not terribly surprising with everything else happening around my life. Fortunately, my back problem seems to have healed after spending almost a full 7 days in a reclined position.  It’s been almost 2 weeks and I can walk a 5K daily, sit fairly comfortably for longer periods and manage pain with ibuprofen when needed.

Here are a couple more shots.

I’m not certain if I can really incorporate the upper windows (to the left of the front door)  into the project or if the windows to the right can be viewed well enough. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit the building in person (inside & out) soon. I might just stick with the large corner “fish bowl” window next to the front door.  The fish body length will have to be adjusted to fit the space. Backdrop will need to be sorted out to deal with the gutted empty space behind. I wonder if there might be some electricity? Lighting the project would be nice.

Time to start cracking down on sketching out possible ideas and assembling wire squares.

Going to the Dogs

During the final week of September, local artists were able to submit a trio of works to be juried into the Corrine Woodman gallery for the 2013 season. I hmmed and hawed and finally submitted three dog print images. They were all works viewed by friends on Facebook , Etsy, or for those who happened to see them develop on the blog.  They had never entered a gallery. I figured “What the heck! I have nothing to loose and it’s free!”

For some reason, up til now, I haven’t taken the dog prints too seriously. They have been designed for friends, family or print exchanges.  I have several more dogs I want to create to add to the collection.

Tuesday, I was surprised to learn my dogs were accepted. Well, Annie the pug will have to loose her “thoughts of love” to be viewed in the gallery, but that’s fine. The original design didn’t include the heart but I wanted a “cute” factor during its Valentines day run on ETSY. She belongs to a fabulous family that I adore. The block print measures 7″ x 6.5″.  Moby is a reduction screen print and measures only 3″ x 4″. I’m looking forward to creating my old dog George and a friends border collie in the reduction method. Little miss Emma the terrier was just too sweet sitting on a bench at Chip Ross park in Corvallis. She belongs to dear friends. She too is a block print measuring 6″ x 8″.

There are numerous other prints and charcoal drawings I want to create, so hopefully by summer I’ll have a large enough portfolio. Not certain who I’ll be teamed up with for the space, but it would be nice to have another dog artist.

Around Oregon Annual

The show opens October 4th.  I was fortunate to have my one work accepted by Juror Arthur DeBow, gallery director of the Hoffman Gallery at Oregon College of Art and Craft.  It should prove to be a spectacular show.

Brown Bag talk on Wednesday October 10, 12Noon

Reception on Thursday October 11, 5:30-7:30pm

katieshafer's avatarscissors, glue & paper happiness.

I was honored when a fellow blogger and artist (that’s you Gale!) reached out to me to a make some baby name artwork for a new arrival! I was pretty excited to make something for someone who isn’t a friend or a family member (let alone a fellow blogger on the big world-wide web)! I learned that the parents have a lovely long hairy Siamese that is part of the family so… why not a curled up kitten?

I decided to post a snapshot of my sketchbook. This is usually how it all starts – making a list of ideas and some notes (i.e. cat in mug?).  I usually do a few very quick sketches (i.e. bad sketch of cat in a mug). Then I end up doing something that would actually look nice on a nursery wall…

I learned a few things – such as spelling the baby’s name correctly…

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Start of the Ditch Fish Project

Today I had to secure my site for the Rural Storefront Art project. I admit, life has been super busy and I’ve not been able to run over to Sweet Home to check the sites, but I had two to choose from and hopefully I chose wisely. Google street views helped a bunch. I won’t be receiving a huge amount of moolah for the gig and I don’t have a place for the fish or fishes to go in the end, but things will come together. They always do.

Here are a few images of the site. The building is unattached to any others (positive and negative attributes) but I hope my project will help draw attention to the location. There are three GIANT window spaces to fill. Whew! Have I got a project on my hands!

Looks like I have two months to complete the project with December 1 being the deadline. It will remain up until February 1, 2013.

If you’re driving through Sweet Home, the building is almost right across the street from the Rio Theater. 1344 Main street. I’m glad they have nice parking right on site!

Information overload

Some intelligent person once said “Information is power”. It can certainly work in one’s favor when dealing with medical issues. Getting routine blood tests, physicals, mammography etc is a way of providing a baseline for you and your doctor to work from. For the past two months, I’ve been getting caught up with overdue tests. LDL & HDL’s are just fine and dandy. There was a lipoma that was giving me issues so a general surgeon removed it. I’ve been wondering about possible food allergies so I went to a specialist. The skin poke test provided zip information but the blood test showed something amazing. Celiac Disease. Who knew?! I was blown away to hear the results. The doctor said my numbers were so high that there was absolutely no way I couldn’t not have it. So good bye to gluten forever. You make my small intestines really unhappy and don’t allow absorption of nutrients. You’ve probably been the culprit for all my miscarriages and countless other issues. Oh, anything related to moo juice (milk products) can take a hike too! Hopefully I can make our home totally gluten free without too much problem from the other resident.  He seems resistant to letting go of certain bread related items. Just as long as there is no cross contamination on the bread board, I’ll be fine. I had already been shifting my diet to gluten free back in May. Now I have to be much more serious about it.

On the same day I received news of my digestive woes, I got a letter (and a phone call) about needing an additional mammography/ultrasound for one breast. Today, I went in for the second round  and learned of an almost 1 cm lump in my breast. It’s not quite at the size they do an automatic biopsy on, but I can certainly have one done. At this time, the doctor wasn’t concerned but wants me to return in 6 months for a recheck. I don’t have breast cancer in my family except for my dads mother. Fibrous tumors have occurred in both my sister and mother. So, do I wait out the 6 months or just get it biopsied and loose the potential worry??  Think I’ll talk to my regular doctor tomorrow about what she suggests.

Jeez!

At least I’ve worked my 5k time down to 45 min! Maybe in October I’ll be ready to do the Pumpkin run! Wonder if Mr Moby, my running companion, could run too…