With the annual Fourth Street
event coming up over the Labor Day weekend, I’ve been trying to spend as much
time in the art studio as humanly possible. I even make the sacrifice of eating pie for breakfast (with
espresso) in my art studio!
I’m
currently working on a northern pond piece, which is really the home for my
loon. I have completed the
background, the cattails and the accompanying leaves. I made them out of used paperclips that I straightened out
and wrapped with yarn. I found a
nice brown chenille to make the actual cattail heads.
They recall a warm, fuzzy memory for me, since in Czech the
word for cattail is ‘cigar’. I
remember as a child trying unsuccessfully to light them. I’m also working on tomatoes for a
piece, and I am eight tomatoes shy of the completed work. I still have to make some of the stems
and leaves, but I have several meetings ahead of me. That translates into plenty of tomato poking time. I hope to have the piece completed by
Labor Day.
I got to work on the components of
the Tomato piece because we made one last trip to Grandma’s before school began
on Wednesday. We had a delightful
trip, and in addition to making tomatoes on the drive, I made progress on a
number of other fronts. I had been
thinking about making more underground pieces. I was looking for memorable and rusted objects that evoke an
emotional response. Pieces that
trigger a memory of something forgotten that used to be a regular part of your
life. While Jim and Tommie were
off fishing, Grandma, Jacob and I went off to an antique mall across the street
from our lunch spot. I found a
tintype photograph of two army officers that I knew I wanted to incorporate
into a weaving. I also found
rusted old metal cars and a rusty fishing lure, among other treasures. Grandma said she had plenty of those
old rusty lures out in Grandpa’s pole barn. Sure enough I found plenty of those, as well as a trove of
other rusted treasures. While I
was there, Grandma’s neighbor Kathey Gibson came over and saw what I was
doing. That brought on an
invitation from Ben Gibson to dig through his garage. He had years of rusty history in his garage! I found old keys, antique welding
goggles, rusted tools, and treasures of all sorts. I have two big bags to sort through some quiet day this
winter.
As I sit to recount my memories of
the past few weeks, I realize how jam packed the whole time has been. We brought back two big bags of
transparent apples from Grandma’s prized tree. They became three freezer pies, uncounted tupperwares of
frozen chunks for muffins, and a big bowl of applesauce.
The boys wanted to go on one last
kayaking adventure, so we went to find the place Cindy Creek, the boy’s first
grade teacher who got us started on kayaking, called Crinoid Beach. We paddled across the lake to find the
‘beach’ – they are really more of limestone outcroppings. I’m not sure that we landed on Crinoid
Beach but we landed on a beach with lots of rocks with holes in them – perfect
for incorporating into weavings, so for me it’s now the Rocks-with-Holes-in-them
Beach.
The boys got to swim and we
all had lots of fun splashing around and having our lunch.
And on Friday night, Jim tested (and
passed!) his test for half-red, half-black belt in Taekwondo. We’re so proud of him!
Until next week,
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