Artist Steven Derks just introduced me to a new blog, Tu Scene, dedicated to the visual art scene in Tucson. The woman writing the blog, who I understand is a newcomer to Tucson, is doing an amazing job of pulling together a detailed calendar and info about what is happening locally artwise. Check it out. I have added it to the blogroll list to the right for future convenience.
I have just joined Facebook, so if you are already a member, please find me and invite me to be your friend and become a fan of my page. I am new to this whole social networking thing, so please be patient with me while I learn the ropes. I joined because I’ve been hearing from many sources that social networking is the new wave of art marketing, but as a bonus, it looks like I may get to reconnect with some old friends as well. I very much look forward to that.
I also realized that I have been blogging more than I knew—just not in this blog. Instead, I have been posting updates to my home page, when I could have been doing it here instead. Realizing that will make me come here more. In addition, I will be figuring out how to integrate this blog into my Facebook activities, so there is added incentive to write more often.
I have neglected my art business this year, as I have focused on fixing up our new (to us) house. As I near the end of the major tasks, though, I find myself turning back with renewed drive. I am determined to be more disciplined on the business side of my art this year, beginning with my online presence. I am also bursting with ideas to try out on and off the lathe.
If you haven’t seen them already, here are some new-ish pieces that might hint at some of my new directions.
My studio is almost together, but I had to stop working on it to focus on the house itself, so that we can move in by the end of the month. It’s a satisfying but exhausting experience. Everything I do is for the long term: no throwing on paint to make a room livable; instead, it’s careful (and, yes, tedious) preparation followed by meticulous execution. Still to go is more painting and then laying floors.
Here are some photos of the initial transformation of the garage into my studio.
As you can see, the aluminum siding covered simple wooden louvers. I dismantled them and used the wood to frame the windows and air-conditioner and the siding on the outside, as well as for a frame for my dust collector, as you will see in later photos. Recycle!
Under the tutelage of my friend Art, I learned to frame a wall, install windows, put in insulation, put up drywall, and much more. In this photo, one wall opening has been framed and drywalled; the other is in process.
Since this photo, I’ve installed an air-conditioning unit and added trim around everything. I still haven’t finished caulking and prepping, and I still need to prime and paint, but I will get to it, I swear.
And inside, I’ve added a lot of new equipment—bandsaw, belt sander, drill press, dust collector—but haven’t yet moved over my lathes and tools. Except for a demonstration, I have not turned since the end of April. I miss it, but I am finding satisfaction in these other pursuits. It is exhausting, though, so I make no promises as to resuming regular updates to my blog.
My partner and I close on the purchase of our first house in less than a week. This means I will have my own studio for the first time! I’ve been having fun shopping for new equipment and planning my new space, which will be in the garage. The electricity in the garage is insufficient, so I am having an electrician install a new panel and a bunch of outlets. A friend of mine and I will frame one wall and install windows and a room air conditioner.
Besides working on my studio, I will also be laying new flooring in the house and repairing walls and painting and doing maintenance on the roof, so it may be a month or two before I actually return to turning full-time. In the meantime, I can still work in my current studio—whenever I’m not working on the house or packing and moving our stuff.
I will try to keep you up on the progress of my studio. I have been avoiding blogging because this has been the most stressful month I can remember in years! Besides, I’ve barely had time to turn. But very soon I’ll have something to blog about again.
As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, last month I prepared (and gave) a talk for the docents of the Tucson Museum of Art, on woodturning as an artform. Besides giving a brief history of artistic turning, I described the basic anatomy of trees and discussed some of the characteristics of wood and the vessel form.
Thinking about the anatomy of a tree unsettled me this time around. Trees are living organisms; that wood was once alive, I feel, makes it unlike other media (except maybe basket materials). But the heartwood that woodworkers so value is dead wood. Heartwood is formed as a tree’s cells die; the life of a tree is all in those layers between the heartwood and the bark.
Heartwood, dead wood; a living organism dead at its center. The image has been stuck in my mind like a sand grain in my shoe.
Today, my perspective shifted. It occurred to me that heartwood is the tree’s past. It lives in the tree as our past—also dead, having literally passed—lives in us. Our history forms our structure, storing molecular bits of ourselves, recording cycles of abundance and privation, unseasonable frosts, long summers, lightning strikes, patterns of growth. Like trees, we become who we are as each old layer dies, as each new layer forms.
We live in the layers between our past and the (also dead) outer bark that protects us.
During my last show, I sat a lot with the piece called “Offering,” and I want to share some of how I feel about it.
The vessel was born of green wood, wet, as we are. My labor was long. The hollowing took two sessions, and to keep the wood from shrinking overnight, I swaddled it in wet cloth and stored it in plastic. After the hollowing, as the wood dried, the body took on its own shape: oval, rather than round, taller than it is wide when the long lip is down. The wood (pearwood) is imperfect, a little blotchy, bruised, even. But the vessel is lovely, softly lovely. When I cup it in my hands, I feel it sing itself, quietly, out to the world, offering itself—to me, to you, to the cosmos, to God, however you may conceive that energy or entity. In turn, I offer it on a platter, on a bed of its own shavings, the remains of what it was, by-products of its passage to what it has become.
I’m wondering if the universe just wants me to shut up for a while. I’m so crazy busy that I barely have time to breathe!
I leave for a show in Casa Grande in a couple of hours, then I come back to prepare a talk for the docents of the Tucson Museum of Art and prepare for the spring show at the museum. And, oh yeah, my significant other and I are trying to buy our first house at the same time! One with my own workshop, of course.
After being glued to the computer for 10 days or so, I have finally finished updating my work-for-sale pages. “Finished” is, of course, a relative term. There are about a dozen pieces I need to rephotograph before I can post them, but for now, I’m declaring I’m caught up, so today I get to go back into the studio!
I have so many pieces I want to make. Forcing myself to sit at home and work on my web site has required discipline. These tasks are not the ones you imagine when you think about being an artist. But if you don’t do them, you have to find another way to pay for your artmaking—or at least for your food and shelter.
I will blog more later. Now I’m off to make stuff!
I had no idea it had been so long since I last posted. I was busy preparing for and then enduring the Tubac Festival of the Arts. It was five long days (two days longer than justified by the traffic it attracts, I think), and now that it’s over, I am focusing on updating my web site, specifically the work-for-sale pages, which have been down since before the ITE last summer.
I hadn’t photographed any of my work since the ITE, so I spent two solid days before the Tubac show photographing everything I had on hand. Regrettably, I neglected to photograph the new work that I have sold over the last six months. Now I have about 750 photos of remaining new work to tweak, crop, and load into web pages. (The large number is because I take multiple views of each piece, both for documentation purposes and so that online customers can really see each piece.) This includes my remaining ITE pieces, which heretofore had been photographed only by John Carlano—and only one view of each, at that.
Here are two views of a reconceived “In Her Dream.” This is the piece originally (in the Wood Turning Center’s “alTURNatives” exhibition) displayed suspended in a Japanese maple branch. There was no way to transport that very fragile branch back here after the exhibition, so I had to redream the context of the piece. I love what evolved. I started by displaying the vessel on the stones, then added the carved, dyed sassafras base just before Tubac.
I think of this second image as a boudoir shot of the piece. It makes me smile.
I’ve given myself until the 24th to finish updating my site, because I will be out of town next week.
Now that I’m almost caught up, I’m going to try to set aside a regular time to photograph work. Posting photos here will be an incentive. So will not having to face this mountain of work all at once.
This post has to be brief, because I have too many things to do, but I did want to update you all on some of what I’ve been up to.
I took the plunge a couple of weeks ago and registered for the smARTist Telesummit, an event that gathers 13 experts covering various aspects of making a living as an artist. The presentations are done over the phone and recorded—some 15 hours’ worth. The timing was bad for me, as I have been busy preparing for my upcoming show and coping with a major change in my family, so I was not able to listen live, but the recordings, which are available online, make it possible for me to let it all unfold at my own pace. Thus, though the event is technically over—that is, all the speakers have spoken—I am still engaged in it.
I have to say I have been impressed with the abundance of information provided and the range of topics covered. I will go into more detail as I soak it all in.
I’m sorry I didn’t share this ahead of the event, but registering was a last-minute decision for me, and I did not want to seem to endorse something before I had checked it out. Do check it out now, though, if you’re interested; I suspect the recordings and handouts may be made available at a later date.