As the snow storm approaches I find myself working on
another winter scene. The story behind
the piece is a little complicated, but I wanted to extend my series featuring migrating
animals. The champion travelers are
arctic terns, which have the longest path known for any animal. Each year they loop from Greenland in the
North Atlantic to the shores of Antarctica, or about 43,000 miles! I decided my composition would feature a lone
arctic tern perched on a weathered wooden post surrounded by ice-covered snow
on a beautiful cold day with a crystal blue sky.
Before I launch on a piece I need a good idea about the
color story and the materials I’ll use.
I started collecting ice and snow for this piece many years ago, even
though I didn’t know it at the time. The
boys and I rented kayaks on Lake Monroe and paddled around to various landing
sites to scavenge the beaches, play in the water and enjoy the sun. On one of our stops we discovered giant piles
of beach glass that we collected in a back-up t-shirt that doubled as a
collecting bag. I brought back the
pieces and soaked them in peroxide and later detergents to get them as clean
and clear as possible. I’ve used those
bottle fragments, collected around eight years ago, to create the sheet of ice
layered over snow.
I still needed a color story, and a memory clicked into
place as I considered this piece. For
years I have driven past a billboard on the way to the airport that always
caught my eye. The featured lawyer
wasn’t memorable, but the color story featured shades of grey and orange that
I’ve always wanted to interpret.
Although the warm color component in my piece is a deeper red to connect
the tern to the background, the overall color story feels the same. It’s weird how objects and ideas get linked
together in my brain, which often happens based on colors and color
stories. So I have a beautiful arctic
tern with beach glass ice from lake Monroe connected by the colors on a
billboard on the road out of town!
This past weekend I did the Garage Sale Art Fair in
Kalamazoo Michigan with my friend Dawn Adams.
We loaded up the van with both of our art displays and headed
north. We had a delightful stop in
Angola Indiana for panini at the Caleo Café. We then strolled through a couple of antique
malls where I found some interesting vintage treasures. The one that really sparked my interest was a
pie crust crimper. The shape was
interesting, and I thought it would make a great present for Jim—and that
sparked a great new idea for a weaving. The art piece will feature all things
associated with making a pie—the tools and the ingredients.
When I got home I dug through all of my vintage-ey
cooking tools and started building a mental composition. I’m seeing a slice of pie on a lifter, three
forks with fruit, a pie crimper and a vintage dough slicer. I’ll probably put blueberries, cherries and
an apple slice on the forks. I don’t
have the full color story yet—I guess I have to keep an eye on the local billboards,
but you never know where the spark for a color story might be hiding.
This week I also finished up the last of my felted tile
pieces that will make up a six-panel commission. I was down to the last details of the
animals, and I had to create a baby painted turtle climbing up onto a lily
pad.
I also made a green frog crawling
along a fern branch to see if it can get a better peek at a nearby bug. The challenge for both animals was getting their
mottled skin textures right. As I was
looking for just the right material to convey that texture, I opened one of my
green bins to find some fleece I that I picked up years ago at the Fleece Fair,
before it was called the Fiber event.
The dappled olive, forest and lime greens in the fleece was just perfect
for my project—what luck!
My weekly report wouldn’t be complete without a pie update,
and yesterday I hit the jackpot. Jim
made a tart cherry pie, my absolute favorite, with an amazing crust. The cherries were from a June farmer’s market
trip, and yes, he used the vintage crimper to get a nice look around the edges. I guess I need to find another crimper to
encourage more pies.
Until next week,
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