San Diego Part 3: All the Rest of It

The tiniest pine cones I have ever seen.

Obligatory seagull photos.

On the way to Mt. Palomar observatory. The first trip was unsuccessful, as the observatory was closed due to icy conditions or some such, but the second time we went it was open. Although it was a very cool thing to see, huge and with lots of cool scientific feats involved in its construction, it was fairly anticlimactic - sort of like an hour and a half drive to a small museum.

At the observatory. I think it was more than 5,000 feet above sea level (thus the snow). No one was around but us really. Inside the telescope was this massive glass lens that was casted in Corning (I think it was some odd thousands of tons heavy, took three trucks to transport it up the mountain, one pushing behind the one that was carrying it and one pulling from the front, and it took around ten years to cold work/polish. Something like 10,000 pounds of glass was polished away. It was pretty insane.)

A fat and happy squirrel at Spanish Village Art Center in Balboa Park.

San Diego Part 2: Seaweed

Yes, seaweed gets its own post. I've seen seaweed before, but never like this. This here is legit SEAweed, from the freakin' ocean. None of this lake business. It looked like aliens. Or sea spaghetti with a goiter. But it was quite pretty. There was a tropical storm that hit the day we arrived in San Diego, and I guess all the wind caused crazy waves which carried all this seaweed onto shore, and it was lying around in huge heaps everywhere on the beach and there were these giant trucks and fork lifts going around cleaning it up. It looks like it misses being underwater. It's not used to gravity.

San Diego Part 1: Art Stuff

Here is some of the awesome artsy stuff I saw during my week-long stay in San Diego:

By Leonardo DaVinci. We went to the DaVinci exhibit at the Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park. They had a bunch of models of his inventions set up for the main exhibit, but I was more attracted to the series of sketchbook drawings put up in one of the corners.

Awesome. Seen at Spanish Village Art Center in Balboa Park. I forgot the artist's name. It was something Russian-sounding. I'm so bad about writing things down... Sorry artist, your work is excellent!

This is a not-so-excellent photo of the small hot shop area that was set up at Spanish Village Art Center. No one was using it because the lady who ran it was ill the day we visited (go figure), but it's used to give introductory glassblowing lessons.

And here are a few corners of one of the galleries in Spanish Village. (Spanish Village Art Center is pretty sizeable. There are tons of little galleries to check out, and multiple artists per gallery.)

This piece was one of the ones that particularly struck me. I used to work mostly in 2 dimensional mediums, and this was a nice example of drawing in something that is normally a 3-d medium. I just appreciated it. Yeah, glass powder!

And here is a glass that I gave my brother for Christmas one year that I drank out of while I was there. That was nice. I love that I can give people functional things like bowls and glasses that I made myself and can actually be used on a daily basis, or at least frequently.

December '09 Alfred Senior Art Shows

Yesterday I worked a six hour morning shift, after which I returned home for approximately 14 minutes (my goal was 10) before jumping in the car again and heading down to Alfred to see the three art shows of the graduating seniors. I was not disappointed - the shows were stellar. Three of the five individuals showing were my classmates and friends in varying capacities, one of them was in my class, right from Freshman Foundations, and all of them are excellent people.

The first show I saw was Zac Weinberg's. The photo above includes his "Redundancy Lamp." I really admire his glass and neon work. He not only has the craft and the concept of his work really solid, but also the way he presents it. There were two girls, one of whom I knew by face but not by name, who were singing and playing the guitar with a neon sign behind them that flashed "Applause" after a song ended. (And they were really good musicians! I couldn't believe the singer's voice. It was fantastic.)


Obviously there were more things in the show(s) than I have photos of, but here is one of "Animal Goblets For Animal Cans" (I may not have the title exactly right since I'm recalling it from memory but it was something to that effect).


Next I saw was Bill Warner's show, which consisted of roughly shaped and beautifully textured ceramic work. The colors made me happy. And so did the raised-slip line drawings that stood out of some of the pieces! That was something I hadn't seen much of, if ever, before. They depicted outlines of people in various poses, my favorite being of someone in mid karate kick, which I didn't get a non-blurry photo of, but you can kinda see it in the bottom right piece two photos down.


Finally, I reached the excellent show of my excellent friend Wunetu Tarrant. She used lots of different materials in her show - cast glass, giant thrown-looking and hand-built pottery, cast bronze and iron, wire pieces, drawings, moss and rocks, to name the ones that are coming to mind. The giant pots/trees were crazy and larger than life, and even though she had many objects made from a lot of different materials in a limited space and her pieces varied drastically in scale, her show still felt unified. It was a visual feast!


Congrats Alfred BFA seniors! Your shows were killer!

Magical Felt

Check it out. I made some arm warmers out of a wool sweater I found at Goodwill, and they actually came out okay. I got the idea when I went into the city to check out some craft fairs (namely the holiday sale at More Fire Glass Studio and the Second Storie Indie Market at the Visual Studies Workshop) and there was a vendor selling things she'd felted from thrift store sweaters. Since I'm broke, naturally, I told myself "I could totally do that." And so I did!

The cut ends are not straight enough for my satisfaction yet, so I'll even those up soon, but these arm warmers are indeed very warm and cozy. It was hard to get a decent photo by myself, so bear with the not-so-great picture. But back to the process of felting... it's magical. I know I don't really have cause to be so mystified since the process makes a lot of sense - basically you just agitate and heat the knit wool until it's matted into felt, but it was so cool to just pop the sweater in the washing machine and 30 minutes later, BAM. Felt.

My next pair is going to have thumb holes.

Scissors & Glue

Things I have been cutting up: magazines from the 50s (Better Living), papers from my 2nd and 3rd grade box, and current science and art magazines. I really like the images from the 50s though, too bad I only had five magazines. My room is a mess again. Didn't take long. :P

Don't know exactly what I'll use any of the cutout images for yet. Just building up a stock of things to use should I want them, I suppose. Also, I found a bunch more fabric that would look awesome covering books. There is SO much fabric around! In the garage, in the barn, in my relatives' attics and basements - and I'm usually able to find things that are relatively old and sort of dated-looking, which I love. This latest fabric I found is a deep blue and rusty brown tie dye-looking fabric, with the dye-less areas being white. It probably looks a lot cooler than I'm describing it, it doesn't look like your run-of-the-mill tie-dye really. It's quite striking and almost African-looking. Anyway, I bought some board today to use for more hardcovers. I was using a bit of leftover board from a bookmaking class I took junior year, but that's all pretty much used up. The last of it went into the blue floral book in that last photo.

I really enjoy making these books, especially since I'm using cloth that isn't boring to cover them with. The only drawback is that I don't have an awl, which makes it a bit painful to put holes in the quires of paper (pages nested together). I use six sheets per quire, and shoving a sewing needle through them all six times with my bare hands gets irritating. Gnarly calluses, here I come! I think the normal number of sheets per quire is eight or twelve... but my poor fingers wouldn't do very well if I added another two or six layers of resistance. I gotta get an awl.

Rabid

Acrylic and black permanent marker. Not necessarily finished. I messed around with the colors a tiny bit but it just doesn't pop as much in digital format. Don't really know what led me to paint this, since I don't paint a whole lot these days. I think maybe I was just sick of not making things, but I actually kinda like it. Hehe.

Bookmaking

Lately I've been working on a number of cloth-bound books using old fabric I found in my aunt's attic. Here is the first one I've finished. The spine is a little less reinforced than I could have made it but since it's small and my first sort of test-run book, it's okay. The book is roughly 4" x 5.75". I didn't pay attention to the grain of the paper and board this time around, so the covers are a bit bowed from the glue in the photo, but I have since flattened it out. There are 68 pages of Canson sketch paper inside.

Jammin'

It is getting to be that time of the year - actually, what am I saying, it is smack in the middle of that time of the year (how did that happen so fast?) after the growing and harvesting is all done with and the winter holidays are rapidly approaching. I spent the first three or so hours of today making jam with my aunt. I adore making jam with my aunt. We made four batches - strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and strawberry rhubarb. My aunt's jam is like none other, even though it has practically the same ingredients as lots of jam (sugar, fruit, pectin, and a teeny bit of butter). I don't know what makes it so superior to everything else. Maybe love, or the fact that she grows ALL the fruit herself. :) Anyway, I thought I'd share some photos of the process.

She reuses glass jars and lids to put the jam in. Wooo, green!

Yes, that is actually more sugar than fruit. I like to just focus on how great it tastes when it's done and just accept the fact that it's a LOT of sugar.

These are the two giant pots involved, with one more small pan on a back burner for heating the jar lids. The silver one on the left is what the jam is made in, and the black one on the right is full of boiling water. The jars go in this one to heat up while the jam is made, and after they are full of delicious jam and lidded they are re-immersed for about ten minutes and then finally taken out - after this final step, the jam is done and can be set aside to cool (which takes a looong time).


Et voila. Jam. :)

One More!

• NotPaper - A blog about collage. One that I just discovered tonight. And it's pretty cool.

Artist Blogs to Check Out

Today I think I'll talk up a few of the art blogs I read regularly, due to the awesomeness of the artists as well as the fact that I know some of them:

• Late Breaking Noose - the blog of Judith Schaechter, who has rapidly become one of my favorite glass artists. She works in stained glass, and each of her pieces leaves me in absolute awe. Her style is a bit dark and sometimes grotesque, yet stunningly beautiful all at once. Fantastic, and just my kind of thing.
• The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet - This is a terrific blog that will keep you up to date on the latest and greatest happenings in the glass world. You'll discover a new glass artist at least every few posts.
• It'll Glow On You - blog of my friend and former-classmate Carolyn Kassnoff, who makes really a broad variety of things, including sharpie sketches, super fun plush lamps, photos, neon work and awesome batik silk scarves. She also talks on a regular basis about the work of artists she admires (recently Sandow Birk and Bruce Nauman, for example).
• Art Without A Net - A Boomer Tale Of Art School - blog of another friend and former classmate, LuAnn DiPaglia, who is currently hashing out I believe her final year at Alfred. She has recently been casting little bells and pendants in bronze, and also painting. This is definitely one of the more detailed and engaging blogs I've come across, periodically waxing philosophical - such is the life of an art student. Love it.

Check 'em out.

My Latest Artwork

Not to mention the seeds that came out of 'em - I roasted them in olive oil and seasoned them with salt, garlic, and chili powder.

The top guy is actually my dad's handiwork.

This is what happens when I go job hunting.

I come home with an obscene amount of books.

I realize that this is fairly tangential from the intended subject matter of my blog, but nevertheless: today I found out that the maximum number of books you can take out from the local library at once is 35.

(I only have seven library books out but that's going crazy since it's me we're talking about. I just had to ask at the counter to make sure I was safe - turns out some people read a LOT. And I've always been slightly envious. It's not that I'm lacking interest, because I'm interested in quite a lot of things, as my selection above probably tells you. I just really don't have the attention span required to be a "reader.")

But man it feels good to check out a pile of books.

Also I applied for another job today. Cross your fingers...


EDIT: I am now immersed in "Arabic: At A Glance" and it is kicking my butt so far. My goal for this week (other than to acquire gainful employment) is to demystify this language, at the very least. I have done some lessons on Rosetta Stone already, but I am still pretty lost, and I think repetition and writing things down will help me immensely.

This and That

This has been a fairly eventful week - I've been applying for more jobs and venturing further into the crafting frontier, not to mention doing a bit of traveling around NY state. No source of income as of yet. Hopefully that will come together sooner rather than later... In the mean time I've been keeping busy making things like these quilted coasters. I personally have something of an aversion to (more or less) unnecessary items like coasters, but I think these are kinda cool-looking and hopefully someone will want them or be able to use them. With the help of some family members, I dug up a good amount of fabric with great colors and patterns. The craft sale's in November, but I'm still trying to decide if I can produce enough to justify getting a table.

I also got some exciting mail this week:
The fall issue of The Flow arrived, and I spent a solid five minutes staring at/drooling over that chandelier on the front cover. Good stuff. It's too bad the magazine only comes out with new issues quarterly, cause I eat it right up.

Speaking of eating, I just want to share with the world that I made hummus for the first time ever this evening and it tastes spectacular. I think the reason I'm not so much into baking, but very into cooking is that I dislike measuring things. I will occasionally work from a recipe, but if I do I doctor it relentlessly and dump in lots of miscellaneous things until it tastes exactly how I want it to. Or close. To this particular hummus I added (beyond the basic chick peas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and cumin) sun-dried tomatoes, plain yogurt, chili powder, rosemary, tahini, whole sesame seeds, and salt. It came out a very nice orangey color because of the sun-dried tomatoes, and a near perfect consistency with the occasional un-blended chunk of tomato. Awesome!

Blast From The Past

Last night I went over to my friend/senior-year-of-high-school-glass-teacher's house to catch up and make some beads. It was awesome to see her again! (She literally changed my life. I probably would not have gone to Alfred, had the best four years of my life, or even been an art major if it wasn't for her.)

She has a Bethlehem Barracuda torch and a Nortel Mega Minor. (I used the Barracuda even though I was only making soft glass beads. I did test out the flame capabilities though, and I bet that thing could melt some good sized boro.) The Barracuda is the torch I started out on in high school.

The beads I made are hopefully going to go toward a Christmas Tea & Craft Sale in November. It's still up in the air whether I'll have enough sellable stuff. I'm sort of low on ideas, and I don't really have the means to make jewelry other than hemp, so if you have any ideas please feel free to comment. I was thinking of making little quilted coasters or something. I want to make more pendants too. I'll have to see if next time I visit G I can work boro, cause I bet those would sell.