Today's Menu: Take it or Leave it

A while back I chatted with Jane Braddock on the phone. We compared health notes, as we both had had some major hospitalizations, and we concluded that we were fine and healthy now. She invited me to her home for lunch and more conversation. I couldn't refuse!

Jane is a good cook and a hostess with the most-ess, despite this plaque over her cooktop:

If I had invited her to my home for lunch, I'd probably have given her a sandwich. But Jane grilled salmon for me. I am really lucky!

And it was yummy.

Jane graciously gave me the first class tour of her wonderful home. It is chocked full of fabulous art from her friends, her travels, and her African collection, not to mention her own work. Impressive does not fully describe it!

Next came the studio... Jane and Birdie. 

 And in her living room...a large diptych. On the left is a painting from her Shakti series. It is married with a newer work, Sweet Cold, from her text series.

You can see more of her fine work at http://janebraddock.com

More from Martha Christian

Martha sent this updated photo of the tapestry with this note:

"Hi, Just to prove I finished sewing slits and blocking the "rough" version!"

Martha

Isn't it spectacular?

A Monumental Masterpiece

I know very little about weaving besides warp ( the vertical strands) and weft (the horizontal strands that rhyme with "left".) But on April 25th, I was invited to Martha Christian's studio to witness the cutting of her tapestry from her 80" loom. What a treat for all of us who gathered to be a part of the process. Her studio, dominated by the loom, is a spacious room over the garage in her home.

 Isn't this a HUGE loom?

After sampling the refreshments and chatting with the other guests, we listened to Martha speak a bit before beginning the cutting and tieing procedure to remove the tapestry from its birthing place.

Martha Christian is a tiny person. The photography makes her seem much larger than she actually is.

Here she is talking to us about the process. She holds the cartoon drawing of the finished work. The "cartoon" is the design of the work. 

A closeup of the loom with lots and lots of knots

 

Lots and lots of string  

That must be cut precisely and knotted

To free the tapestry from the loom

  

 

   

Then, it took several people to move and position the tapestry on the wall where we all could see it better. That "we" included Martha herself, since the weaver doesn't get to see more than a 6" swath as she weaves.

Martha with her creation

explaining the connections

And the completed work

The wools are wildly intense and saturate the senses. It is magnificent in color and scale,
don't you agree?



Last week Martha sent me this photo of the tapestry blocked out on the floor

with this note:

"Finally I finished sewing the slits. Now the tapestry is pinned to the rug pad and ready for steam pressing. Wish you were here to crawl around with me.  Martha"

Hot Time in Cool Mass

The 4th Annual Encaustic Conference heated up Montserrat College in Beverly, Massachusetts, from June 11-13, 2010, and beyond. It was a jam-packed four days of panels, lectures, demonstrations, and for me, one day of art making in Miles Conrad's class, Off the Wall: Encaustic in Three Dimensions. Here http://montserratencausticconference.blogspot.com/  you can find numerous accounts of the goings-on. The conference was informative, empowering, and exciting. On top of that, it was FUN. Kudos go to Joanne Mattera http://www.joannemattera.com/ for organizing and directing the conference and to Montserrat College http://www.montserrat.edu/ for implementing and supporting the events. It was outstanding!

Best Foot Forward

One of the features of the conference was a presentation area for each participant who wanted to display one of their works. The organizers carefully delineated a one foot square section of wall for each conferee.

This is my work, The Day the Line Broke, which I completed before the flood in Nashville in May. How did I know that Nashville would be flooded?

Hot Wax, Cool Wax

Following the conference I took a workshop with Miles Conrad on Encaustic in Three Dimensions. What fun!! We dipped all sorts of objects, like wire, a paper towel, muslin, corrugated cardboard, foam strips, and seed pods into a container of hot wax. Our objective was to fashion orbs out of those unlikely materials. These are (clockwise) baling wire, monofilament with cable ties, and a strip of corrugated cardboard.

The entire class curated this grouping.

Our final assignment was to choose more than 2 of our "creations," combine and attach them to our substrate panel, and pour hot wax onto the panel, which had been taped to provide a containing "fence."

Here's my "creation":

Seed pods, twine, and jute combine with the monofilament line and corrugated cardboard strip on a field of wax.

And our final exhibition.

That's Miles!

Blue Like the Depths of the Unknown

I wrote three posts for this blog back in April and May. But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming “live”, life got in the way. In mid-May I decided that I needed a good beginning post. The other posts that I had drafted are here, too, in the Archive.  “Isn’t that just like an artist,” a friend commented.

Over May 1st and 2nd, Nashville received 15” of rain which flooded our city. If you ever thought about building an ark, this would have been a real test of its worthiness. The rain just kept coming. Places flooded. Places that never flood. It was an astonishing amount of rain, and the televised coverage of what was happening painted a picture of misery all over our city. Streets became rivers. Homes filled with water up to their ceilings. Basements soaked up what the saturated ground could not contain. People waded in water up to their chest. Soon, boats rescued trapped citizens. Cars washed away. People died. It was a shocking sight.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of the flooding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI&feature=email

During the flooding, my church had a river running through it. On Sunday May 9th as I was sitting in my pew, I surveyed the aftermath of one week of professional cleanup. There were no prayer books or hymnals, no cushions, no baseboards, nor drywall from 2 feet down. But there were a gracious plenty parishioners who partook in the communion of bread and wine and mourning for two beloved parishioners who died in the flood. They were on their way to services.

Mixed Media on Canvas on Panel          24" x 24"

As the rector was preaching, I was struck by his words and realized that the painting that I finished yesterday was influenced by the floodwaters. Earlier in the week, the upper part of the painting had been mostly fleshed out with overlapping pieces of encaustic monoprints printed on Asian papers. But the lower part (textured with hydrocal) was quite a challenge to integrate. After many starts and a variety of colors, I settled on Prussian blue. The darkness and deepness of the blue set the tone for the finished painting. Blue like a body of water. Blue like the somber stillness of nightfall. Blue like a saturnine mood. Blue like the depths of the unknown.