March 11

So many different things in a day in the studio! 

INSTALLING ART

When I arrived, SPA's executive director, Sue Higby, was ready for me to install the insects in the main gallery for the new exhibit, Up & Away: A group exhibit about flight. I brought down the six wooden insects I'd made, and we installed them hanging on monofilament. They turn and move in a pretty cool way.

 

 

We also installed my hanging bird (Athena in the background).

 

Sue did seem a little disappointed that I hadn't made more, smaller insects, which I had said I might do, so I went up to the studio and made ten more small ones with wood I salvaged from an older piece with wings made from mica that a friend had given me. Down to the gallery again to hang the little ones.

 

 

 MAKING ART

 

I've worked on a piece called Mum over the last several days, and it's now in a place where I'm pretty happy with it. One of its arms is extended, and there are also hands in the chest area, made with stuffed gloves, stiffened with polyurethane (though clearly someone else's hands, as the thumbs and hands are in a position such that they would be your hands, possibly, in the sculpture...). Are they protecting, or are they enforcing the mandate to be mum?

 

REPAIRS

One of the many tasks in the studio is fixing things that have broken (I'm a terrible breaker-of-things myself, but in this case it was a piece owned by someone else). The mounted photograph (with application of black wine foil for clothing and a hat) had come unmoored, and a small perfume bottle broke off.  I had to do the gluing in two separate operations. Here it is waiting for the glue to dry on part 2, the perfume bottle. I had to have some way of stabilizing it, and a clothespin seemed to do the trick. I'll find out next time I go into the studio.