So many great things have been happening lately it has been hard to keep up! I have been really fortunate to have so much love from my fellow Mid Missouri artists recently. I had a great experience going down to Jefferson City to be on Mid-Missouri Art News with Rick Jey. We met at the state fair, talked a bit about our experiences in Japan and he invited me down to be interviewed.
It was just so neat to be on tv. The cameras and lights are technical and nerdy brilliance. I forgot to bring a piece of art to talk about during the interview. Luckily I never clean out my car and my work from Missouri Valley College was in the back. My friend and I had a lot of fun artfully draping it around one of the set ladders. Three cheers for having friends that like to come hang out and help install shows!
I was the second artist to go on. Sorry about the clicking in the audio. The mic was bumping into my necklace and I talk with my hands. Rookie Mistake. All in all, It was a fabulous experience and really nice people that help support local arts.
My solo show "Spaces in Between" will be opening at the Liberty Center in Sedalia, MO on March 21st 6-8pm. They were so nice they gave me two whole galleries and you've never seen such a beautiful space. The work is all soft sculpture based on plants and human bodies. It's a bright, whimsical and surprising show.
It took us three days to install the show because there are two major floor installations, one in each gallery. The people at the Liberty Center are fabulous because they let me explore some crazy new ideas and gave me the time to do it. I really learned a lot. Gravity is still my arch nemesis. I hope you can come out and see it!
Another great bit of art news is that I got accepted into the Jentel Artist Residency Program in October this year. This is really huge for me. It is a very competitive residency and I'll get a month to make art and pick the minds of some supremely talented people. Plus I get to bring all my great hand knitted socks that I never wear in Missouri because it will be cold.
Seeds are started! If only it would start warming up. Gonna order those kiwano melon seeds soon.
Wow this book is great! It's like mid level between clickbate science and doctoral dissertation. Just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Which is how I like it.
Louis Tomasello - I love this piece! It's not lit up. It's actually painted neon orange on the underside to the shapes and so it glows.
On Sunday we decided to go to the Nelson Atkins museum and participate in their big picnic on the lawn event. We played ball, ate ice cream, watched giant puppet insects and looked at sculptures. They have a really great show up right now, Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity. It was so amazing to see how an famous chef thinks and plans out recipes. I liked how the show was presented but I feel like I needed more information to enjoy a lot of it since so much of his writing was in Spanish.
Lots of inspiration and fun was had.
The exciting news of the week is that my latest collage got into the Missouri state fair's Top 50 show. Everyone loves a gut window. It makes me want to put together some more collages in the series and play around with pop up techniques. I got a shadow box frame that has grooves for layers. It should be interesting.
I've run into some snags with my jawbone sculpture so now much progress has been made. Mostly it just got tore up and then restitched and then tore up again. But I am caught up on all my podcasts because of it. Someday I'll get it right.
Some more fun news is that I'll be hanging my work in the Old Drum Coffee House for the month of September. I'll be down there during the last Friday art walk at the end of the month to demo and explain the craziness.
In a fit of ennui I cut my first weaving off the loom and am in the process of rethreading it with a atrociously neon pink construction string. I've been lusting after it at the hardware store and finally brought myself to buy it. Now what thread for the weft?
First weaving on a four slat loom.
The studio really is a mess now. You can't walk through it but I'm not ready to clean yet.
Toddler socks from scrap yarn.
What I've actually been applying myself to is knitting up Bea's socks with my left over yarn so that I can move on to some purple socks. It's procrastination really because I have this goal to finish a sculpture by the end of the month.
Reading: Kids craft books for things to make with Bea.
Listening to: Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast about skateboarding girls.
Cooking: Spring rolls. Such a filling, light summer lunch.
Since I know I wont be able to post for Thursday I'm posting for Work in Progress Wednesday.
My first weaving on a loom! All out of mystery fibers from my stash.
I'm having a little difficulty with the edges of the weaving but I've yet to consult the Youtubes for help. I am also starting to think that my reed slats are too wide for the thread I'm using. There was another reed with smaller spacing but I found out too late how to change them out.
Reading: Missouri off the Beaten Path: a Guide to Unique Places by Patty DeLano. Next stop Leila's Hair Museum!
Listening to: Mucho discussion over gays now being able to marry. Congrats folks!
Cooking: Canning experiments from my Farmer's Journal Canning and Freezing cook book: Ginger Peach Butter, Thai Curry Green Beans, and Sweet Pickles for my toddler. I also ground up most of my basil plant for pesto. I have a feeling it would succumb to mildew soon. So. Much. Rain.
This week I finally started the weaving process. My hubby got my warping board finished and I sat down with my DVD on how to warp my loom. Here's the process.
Cleaned the studio and set up warping board. It's a frame with pegs. The laundry basket is to hold my ball of thread and let it unravel well.
Getting all my threads on the warping board so that all the warp threads are the same length.
I took the warping threads off the board and chained them so they are compact and easy to manage. All that contrasting thread is to hold the cross of the threads and the choke that keeps the threads together.
Sleying the reed. The reed is a plastic screen that has slots for every warp thread. Sleying mean pulling each individual thread through the reed. The reed is on a beater bar that you use to beat the weave back. It's being propped by the lace book.
Now I thread a warp thread through a small hole in each of those white strings. The pattern of my weave is determined by what harness the white threads are attached to. I have a four harness loom. I think I'm weaving a twill because the lady in the DVD is weaving a twill and I made a smaller version of her pattern because she is working with an 8 harness loom. Barbie was my daughter's idea and Ginger wants the curry I am holding while I take this photo.
So I was beginning to pull the whole warp through the loom and wind it around the back bar crank thingy but a couple of my warp strings broke because it's old string and I was pulling on it too much. So now I'm stopped until I either repair the threads of start all over again. First times.
I finally have a sculpture finished! Now I have photos to edit.
Cooking: Endive au Gratin! Is there anything more divine then a perfectly executed bechemal sauce? Also My new favorite way to cook beets is my roasting them on the grill and then drizzling them in red wine vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme.
I love fairs. Fair week was what I waited for all year around. I remember running between barns, completely filthy, taking care of my rabbits, cleaning up after my brother's cow, feeding my pig burgers. I still remember the awesome cheese burgers our little burger shack back near the barns. The rainy nights sleeping on top of my brother's cow. These weeks were the happiest of my teenage years. And then there are the ribbons.
I won two artistic excellence ribbons in the Pro category at the Knob Noster fair last week. I'm now an award willing artist. The next fair in my sights is the Missouri state fair. They have a huge show called the Missouri 50 that is being judged by a guy that curates for a really nice gallery in St. Louis. I'm pretty excited. Even if I don't get into the Missouri 50 at least I can still show my work in the open pro show. I just can't wait for the end of August.
After about 15 minutes of wracking my brain trying to figure out how the loom looks standing up I got it put back together. The only thing that helped was thinking there was no way the manufacturer would let their logo be upside down. After that things were cake.
Then I watched the warping your loom DVD and found out that I need a warping board to make all my warping treads even. Shoot. So now Ian is making me a warping board. I like handy husbands. Not much weaving has happened yet but it's only a matter of time. So now it sits on the studio floor.
I've challenged myself to finish a piece once a month. This is really necessary because I have been making little components of sculpture but not actually getting anything put completely together. I think it's just fear. Sometimes I think little elements or materials are just too precious so I never push them to become pieces. Now I'm working on my seed pod sculpture to try and finish it for June. It's close I can almost feel it.
Reading: The Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen. I read the first book in December and have been waiting patiently for the second one to come out. And it's here! I rarely like fantasy/sci fi or series (does every author have to sign a contract that makes them write three books?) But this is sooo goood. Much blood. Very Politic. Such Magic.
Listening to: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps" I forgot how much I love this song.
Cooking: I found endive! It's endive au gratin time!
Long have I been a fan of tapestries. I first started to get really excited about them in undergrad and have thought about doing my masters about them. Last night was the KC Fiber Guild meeting and I borrowed the guild's loom so that I can start teaching myself to weave. We'll see how that adventure goes.
So this pretty piece came home with me last night and now I have to teach myself to warp it. Luckily I have a DVD and Youtube. It's all collapsed in the photo so I'll have to figure out how to make it stand and stuff like that. I thought a fun project to start on my loom would be sakiori, a Japanese weaving technique that uses fabric scraps. I took a class at Komaki Onsen in Misawa and really loved the idea of using up all the fabric that I have kept. I'll work my way up to tapestries in a little bit.
This week in Knob Noster they are having fair week and then Whiteman Air Force Base is having their air show. Much to do all around. I entered one of my flower arrangements in the flower show and then a quilt and a couple of art pieces in the art show. Both shows are in the basement of the First Christian Church on Monroe St. in Knob Noster. The judging is today so it should be fun to see if I won any ribbons tonight. I was big into 4-H and fairs as a kid and so I love winning ribbons. Next I'll try entering the Missouri State Fair since it is just up the road.
Palm, Star gazer lilly, white aster.
Other flowers at the show.
Saturday is World Wide Knit in Public Day so I'm gonna take my lime green socks down to the air show and knit next to some jets. Maybe I'll even stand in line forever and knit in a cockpit.
Making: Strawberry cake with a lemon curd center and strawberry icing all from scratch for my daughters birthday. I have a three year old running around the house. Can you believe it?