Productive Day in the Studio

Today I started five new pieces. I sketched, formed pieces from willow, tied knots, and stretched temporary skin over one piece. Four are small wall pieces as I try to make some small pieces to start a momentum of production. Then there is one long pod piece that will hang on the wall. It is a much more bulbous pod than the recent long, narrow pods, Like Prairie Wing.

In addition, I have also been refinishing an old piece. Somehow, I feel like a cheat. I used oil paint on the surface of this piece. I love color, but all of my sculptural pieces have been the color of the clay or of clay related pigments that I have applied to the surface in various clay plaster mixtures. It is so strange, because, of course it is only my own rules I am breaking. And what is oil paint anyway, but a mixture of pigment and oil. Does it matter that someone else mixed the pigment with oil instead of me mixing powder and wax or oil in my studio? All pigments come from the earth somehow, somewhere. So where do I draw the line? What pigments are eco-friendly? Natural dyes and pigments have the same chemical properties as their synthetic counterparts. So the natural colors can be as toxic or as safe for people as the synthetic ones. On the positive side, tubes of paint help me avoid any dust particles in my breathing space. Did I mention, I love color. True to my own process, I applied the paint to the surface in a plaster-like manner. When the final wax layer dries, I will take a picture and post it. Before the paparazzi find it first. Ha!! some big juicy confession here.

New Cob Oven

Puff, the magic bread oven, has been reborn. We reconstituted the cob at a workshop during the Arts Festival in downtown Eau Claire. We had help stomping and re-building from several young people and a group of elementary kids. Puff has different eyes and more spikes. He may look meaner, but a little bird perched on his tail testifies to his gentleness. The creativity of the group was exhilarating. Thanks especially to Elizabeth, Tom, and Simeon.

Booth shot at ACC

Here is a shot of my booth from the American Craft Show St. Paul. My booth was more like a gallery booth at a SOFA show than a fine craft store booth. I think I was the only white booth in the entire show. The white walls came from Art in Motion in Vermont. I was able to hang my pieces and the shelves. Josh, Paul, and Amy made sure my booth was set up when I arrived. All I needed to do was to put up the shelves, arrange the art and put up the lights. What a relief for me. Paul Jeremias from Asheville, NC, the official ACC photographer, took the booth shot.

ACC Craft Fair This Weekend in St. Paul

The American Craft Show in St. Paul will feature more than 240 craft artists. I will be booth 807. My work is featured in a new category called GREEN CRAFT. Artists who use eco-friendly materials or recycled materials are included in this new category. The show expects to draw a crowd of 10,000 visitors. I will be Booth #807 - pretty much in the center of the fair.

LOCATION
St. Paul RiverCentre
175 West Kellogg Blvd.

DATES AND SHOW HOURS
Friday, April 18 (10 am - 6 pm)
Saturday, April 19 (10 am - 6 pm)
Sunday, April 20 (10 am - 5 pm)

Preparing for my first major craft show with this line of work is a major undertaking. I think I am starting to feel ready, although there are many little details left and much packing to do. I have been given a "buddy" to help me prepare for the show. Mainly I have been able to ask questions about lighting. Other friends have lead me to resources for walls and carpets. A circle of friends is so important.

Vertebrae (above) will be featured in my booth along with a new large vessel. I will have many other new smaller and medium sized works.

Things I learned

After buying more supplies at Continental Clay, I learned some things about the materials I have been using. There are differences in white clays. Some are softer than others. Kaolin is the whitest, but also the softest. So it may not be the best white clay for my sculptures. Ball clay has much more strength, but is very gray.

Mica has different colors and can be ground into different grades. The 40 mesh from Continental Clay is used in raku clay bodies. It does not have much shine for clay plasters or clay paints. It does, however, make clay plasters very workable. It can be substituted for sand or used in addition to sand in a clay plaster recipe.

So, I just mixed some 40 mesh black mica with a red clay slip and some fibers to make a plaster for one of my forked branch vessels. There is some shine. I like the subtle shine. When I mixed it with white clay, it was like adding graphite. It made it very dark.

Burnishing

I spent the morning burnishing a piece of sculpture with a smooth stone. As I worked, I thought about the history of burnishing clay surfaces. Of course there is Maria Martinez and the Native American pottery of the Southwest. Maria Martinez used smooth stones handed down from her grandmother and possibly used by ancestors before. The stones became smoother and smoother with use. Listening to Martinez describing her burnishing in a film from the 70’s, it is evident that she is extremely proud of the effort that she put into burnishing her pottery. My pieces, however, will not be fired. They will not turn black and hard with high temperature and smoke. There is also a history of burnishing clay walls. When I read about the Moroccan tadelakt process, burnishing played a big role.

I wrote about tadeladt in February 07. Tadelakt is a Moroccan technique. After applying a special lime plaster, the craftsman polished the surface with with stones and olive oil soap (sabon beldi). This adds shine and water resistance that makes the treatment suitable for not only walls, but also floors and bathtubs.

Hazelnuts

Last summer I tried to mud dye cloth. I was teaching an Eco-Art course for the local Summer Institute program and experimented with ways to paint red clay on cloth and make the dye permanent. I used these nut hulls to mordant the cloth; boiling the nut hulls and cloth together. I never got the great results of mud cloth in Mali, but the experiment was fun. Judy Dominic is quite the expert on Mali mud cloth and has tried many plants for the mordant. The plant used by dyers in Mali does not grow in North America. In addition, I certainly tried to make the process more speedy. Now, however, the hulls get a third life embedded into the clay of one of my sculptures.

CROQ

I wrote an article for the Indie Craft Zine, CROQ. In another life, not long ago, I owned a fashion design business. The article is about dye safety. The article explains my obsession with colors from nature. On the other hand, I was working with natural materials and their unadulterated colors in my sculptures long before I started the business. You can see some work from my other business at my Calascio Designs blog.

Heather Mann from CROQ did a wonderful job editing and the layout of the article is fantastic. There is so much energy in the young Indie Craft movement with DIY roots. The movement combines the idealism of the 60’s and 70’s and the cynicism of the hip and savvy 2000’s.

Willow artist from France

The gallery of Ateliers d'Art France site led me to French basket maker, Laurent Weiss. Some of the woven baskets appear to be covered with wattle. Perhaps it is just pigment or paint. Look for the pictures of his atelier. His portraits beam personality. He attended a landscape school and the National School of Wickerwork.

Gallery of Atelier d'Art de France

Agnes His

Yesterday's mail included a brochure from a French gallery that I visited at SOFA Chicago in November. They announced their exhibit at SOFA New York in early June. I was very struck by the wood vessels of Marc Ricourt. Spiraling gouge marks created intriguing shell-like forms. His subtle surfaces were coated with matt applications of iron oxide. The new brochure tells me that he is a self-taught woodturner. He had a residency at the Woodturning Center in Philadelphia in 2001. The Center was established about the time I left Philadelphia. The ceramic work of Agnes His repeatedly pulled me back to this gallery. I was disappointed that her work is not on this new brochure. So I had to look her up. I liked textures made by the marks on her surfaces filled with white pigment. Although one artist used wood and the other clay, the works had a very similar sensibility.

Growing Willow

My husband just planted basketry and furniture willow at our "farm" in Chippewa County. He ordered the willow cuttings from Bonnie Gale of English Basketry Willows in New York State. I met Bonnie Gale in the early 90's during a willow conference near Liverpool, England. The conference featured artists, biologists, craftsmen, urban planners, and business people. At Ness Gardens, we participated in making outdoor sculptures, learning about the great variety of willow types, the many ways of growing willow, and how willow can be used to create sound barrier fences in neighborhoods near busy motorways.

Bonnie has been growing willow since the early 80's and teaches traditional willow basketry skills. She founded the American Willow Growers Network to share information and exchange cuttings. Her page on living willow structures is interesting.

Some of my structures contain willow growing wild on our farm. I will be able to harvest a greater variety soon.

New Work for Grand Hand Gallery

I will be delivering work to the Grand Hand Gallery in the Summit Hill area of Saint Paul. They are moving to a new space on the corner of Grand and Dale. They will re-open on Tuesday, May 8 with shows in both the old (a few doors east on Grand) and the new locations. They have a wonderful selection of craft objects in fiber, wood, clay, metal, and other materials. I am excited about beginning my relationship with Ann Pifer and the gallery.

I took some photos outside yesterday, enjoying our wonderful spring weather. The indirect light on my porch did not give many shadows. So these are not the best photos possible. But I think they give a good idea of the vessels I have been making with the Grand Hand in mind. The first one is a folded construction. In making this piece, I worked much like working with a clay slab. The second piece is from my "Forked Branch" series. I am making more pieces using forks of willow branches as the skeleton.

American Craft Show - St. Paul

This weekend, I met Holly, my partner in the Textile Center Mentorship program, at the St. Paul American Craft show. We visited the booth of Kelly Marshall, a fellow Mentor in the program. Kelly has woven some new tote bag designs with a clever closing that uses only one handle. Her woven rugs featured sophisticated colors, as usual. I especially liked runners with blue squares that sang next to background rectangles of neutral colors. Holly checked out booths for display ideas for her recycled mittens and hats. We both enjoyed the felted creations of Lesley Hansard of Hansard Welsh Design. She had unusual scarves with calla lillies or other flowers three dimensionally draped into the background color. Holly purchased a ring for a reasonable price. She is planning a felting workshop in Guatemala this summer. I was very impressed with the baskets of Elizabeth Smathers. She has been turning wood bowl forms for bases of her pine needle basketry. All of the wood is salvadged.

Art vs. Craft - an Old Debate?

Long ago, I thought I was tired of the old art vs. craft arguments. Then I read the Redefining Craft, a blog by Dennis Stevens. I think Stevens’ comments on appropriation struck me with new vigor because I am wrestling with this issue in my studio. I know an Afghan threshing utensil from a Santa Fe gallery inspired my current project. The thresher was a large wooden form hanging on a white gallery wall, separated from the context of it’s original use. Rows and rows of sharp stones embedded in the wood added mystery, until I knew their function was to separate grain from straw. It gave me the idea to put stones into a clay/fiber piece. After collecting stones, I lined them up in the studio. Living with this row of stones for months convinced me that they were like vertebrae. Now they are embedded into clay/straw that I pressed between a narrow ladder-like form of branches that arches slightly away from the wall. I sometimes marvel at the way different influences converge into a piece. While the natural materials and the raw branches give a certain primitive look, I hope that this piece does not look derivative, that it has some poetic ring.