Friday, May 12, 2017

oven silversmith ouzel

“being a painter means knowing how to paint, 
and when to stop.”   Picasso 

Yup, STOP!
My old friend Pablo has something there.

My face now looks like a I'm wearing a plastic dry cleaners bag that somebody has shrink wrapped and then let loose a herd of mice to chew me out.  Fortunately I can still breathe, but look worse every day, not better.

So to escape the chances of anybody seeing me, off to the studio I went.  I mostly messed around folding more fabric and throwing small pieces into a box to take to the class I'm teaching in July.  It helps to de-scrap much more frequently than I do.  But I am also finding lots of things I forgot I had stuffed into the shelves so that's good. BECAUSE...

I also started sewing down a few more strips to look like wind on the Hurricane Gates and just wasn't happy-  which is exactly why I've been so good at avoiding working on it.
See original strip on the left, just basted down.  The plan was to simply raw edge stitch but it looks like hell.  So I decided to cut new strips and make them into bias binding-  they nave to be bias to turn all the circles.  I thought because the whole quilt is raw edge, the wind should be too but nope.
So, I threw out all the strips I had cut, smack, right into the basket:

And this is where the folding=Good Thing because I found a whole new stack of B&W stripes in the jam packed stacks-
and cut up some double wides and was sewing the edges closed to make long strips most of the day-
So, now see how much better the bias folded over strip looks than the raw edge shredy one?
So I am pulling out the bad ones, double stitched on each side by machine-  ugh ugh, ugh but it's what I need to do to make it look better.  So, it's kind of a slap in my face for being too hasty and it means I won't make any deadlines I have ahead of me but at the very least I am happier with the whole project and maybe by tomorrow will stop beating myself up over it.  Maybe by Sunday?

So, I got a ton of thinking-work done, a bunch of preliminary work done, nd yippee, have started on the black fabric shelf.  So today I am having a celebratory 

ARTY PARTIE!
actually a 3-parter!





 As part of this year’s DUMBO Arts Festival, sculptor Tom Fruin installed his famous plexiglass house, Kolonihavehus, in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The multi-colored house was lit from inside and temporarily inhabited by performance duo CoreAct who engaged in a collaborative physical performance that is described here by DUMBO:
The colorful glass house is inhabited by two performers, who portray everyday dilemmas and lifestyle paradoxes in a subtle manner. They have lost the ability to meaningfully discriminate, and are trapped in a long chain of procrastination, mirroring our current social patterns.
Tom Fruin Studio is pleased to present Watertower, a new sculptural artwork by Brooklyn artist Tom Fruin. For the US premiere of his internationally recognized Icon series, Fruin has created a monumental water tower sculpture in colorful salvaged plexiglas and steel. Watertower is mounted high upon a water tower platform becoming part of the DUMBO, Brooklyn skyline. This project is the fourth work in the plexiglas and steel patchwork Icon series which features scavenged, reclaimed, and recycled materials constructed into sculptural tributes to architectural icons around the world. The series began in Copenhagen with Kolonihavehus in 2010, and can be seen as a three-dimensional evolution of Fruin’s found drug-bag quilts and flags for which he is well known.







Designed and constructed by artist William Lamson, Solarium is a functional greenhouse with 162 windows made from carmelized sugar at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York. Via his artist statement:
Like a mountain chapel or Thoreau’s one-room cabin, Solarium references a tradition of isolated outposts designed for reflection. Each of the 162 panels is made of sugar cooked to different temperatures and then sealed between two panes of window glass. The space functions as both an experimental greenhouse, growing three species of miniature citrus trees, and a meditative environment. In warm months, a 5×8 ft panel on each side of the house opens up to allow viewers to enter and exit the house from all directions. In addition to creating a pavilion like environment, this design references the architecture of a plant leaf, where the stomata opens and closes to help regulate the plants temperature.

 




Stained glass artist and jeweler Neile Cooper had a vision for a sanctuary: a small cabin behind her home in Mohawk, New Jersey that would feature her glass designs on every available surface. The result is Glass Cabin, a structure built almost entirely from repurposed window frames and lumber that features dozens of panels of her stained glass work, depicting flowers, birds, butterflies, mushrooms and other scenes from nature. Cooper explores many of these same motifs in her popular jewelry designs. You can see more photos of Glass Cabin on Instagram.

                                      👍
There-  I'm done, waiting now to take the dogs out to pee so I get more time in the studio.  Pepper is too anxious in the car to take him anywhere-  he jumps down into the foot area where the gas pedal is-  He Who Must Be Restrained.  Fortunately I wasn't in traffic last time he tried that.  And today especially I must stay Police Free because if I have to have a mug shot taken I could be in big trouble when I try to run for office.  Maybe dog-catcher wouldn't be appropriate.

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