Ludvig and Mapping

Ludvig is at the gallery.  I tried a different clay for the heads this time but managed to keep them from blowing up in the kiln.  It still isn't the exact mix I want but I'm working on it.  He's holding a little shell in his hand.

I'm still doing maps.  What size is this? What color of ink do you use? Why is the paper rippled? How do you get that shape? Inquiring minds want to know and I will tell all, as promised.

The size is 6x8 inches, the paper is from a Strathmore Drawing paper tablet. When Susan puts the pictures on the computer she usually does a rough crop to eliminate the edges of my sloppy photo so the actual image you see might not show that proportion exactly.

We set the tablet open on the kitchen counter with a piece of aluminum foil under it and a piece of foil under the top clean page.  When we have finished drinking coffee for the day I take out the wet coffee-loaded filter and put it down on the page. Randomly, just where it wants to go.  During the rest of the day we sometimes push down on it. Sometimes the grounds spill out.  Sometimes we splash a little coffee back on it.  Look at the map above and you'll see a vague filter shape starting at the bottom left.

The next morning the filter is taken off, foil put down on the other side of the tablet and the damp page flipped over and a fresh page is ready for its filter.  At the end of a couple of days some of the pages will be totally dry so their foil can be taken out but the stack will still be several days worth high.  The pages are very rippled because they dried with a wet blob on them.

Susan tried ironing them.  Nope, didn't work.  She tried ironing them with a damp paper on them.  Smelled just like fresh coffee but totally diluted the color.  We've been given ideas about how watercolor artists "stretch" wet paper but haven't bothered to buy expensive paper. Yet.

The ink? Just fine point Sharpies and (preferably) Pigma Micron pens or Faber-Castell Pitt pens.  Once every page in the tablet has some stain marks on it and the whole table is dry I can start marking on them.  This series of maps needed a unifying element so I started by making dotted lines through every page first.  No thinking allowed!

Susan has told me to read the book The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet and the map illustrations look really cool but I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

However, I have taken time to watch the movie The Grey with Liam Neesom.  It's the movie about guys trapped in the wilderness as they are stalked by wolves.  I learned a valuable lesson watching that movie:  Never take a leak in the woods at night.

Children, Lost and Found

Lost Childhood: Galveston, 1900

In 1900 a horrible hurricane tore across Galveston Island, Texas. On the west side of Galveston, at 69th Street on the seawall, was St. Mary's Orphanage, established by Catholic Sisters of Charity. The two dormitories were home to 93 children and 10 nuns.

As the winds increased and the water began to surge over the seawall, the nuns gathered the children around and led them up to the second floor of the girls' dormitory. They all heard the crash of the boys' dormitory as it collapsed and was carried away by the flood waters.

Each nun took clothesline rope and used it to tie between six to eight of the youngest children to themselves, hoping to protect them. Three of the oldest boys climbed onto the roof of the orphanage.

The death and destruction in Galveston was unbelievable. More than 8,000 died and their bodies were littered throughout the city. All 10 nuns and 90 children died in the storm. The sisters were buried wherever they were found, each with the children still tied to them.

Today, where St. Mary's orphanage once stood, there is a Walmart.

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I made this piece in 2010 and Seth Apter chose to include it in his book, The Pulse of Mixed Media. Seth is an extremely talented artist and I appreciate greatly his generosity in letting me share my art with you.

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Yes, this was previously posted last year. It's time to revisit it, for several reasons. 

One reason is that when we were in New York City last spring Susan took a bunch of pictures of people wearing bright colors.  Because our life has turned upside down (The Big Move) in the last year she didn't bother to look at all of them until recently.  This one caught her eye and was an eerie echo of the Lost Childhood: Galveston piece shown above.

 Now more about the ceramic pieces.  I have a lot of them.  Sometimes we call them The Children, sometimes we call them The Little Sweaters, sometimes they are The Sweater Children.  

 

They didn't start out to be children, they started out to be a Dude with a sweater on. That idea crashed to earth really fast but the shape intrigued me so I made several more.  Once you have several similar pieces looking at you it becomes time to listen to what they are saying.  And while you are listening to them, you are listening to NPR news.  So, in reality, they didn't start out to be the Galveston children, they started out to be the Poverty Children.  The statistic was this:

26% of the children in the state of Texas are living in homes

that have incomes below the national poverty level.

 

The plan was to make an installation of 100 of them, 26 with the darker oxide shadowing on them (top left in the picture above) and the other 74 with just the plain white clay.  To me that mean that the 26% didn't have a chance to be as clean as the others. Unfortunately, after I got about 60 made I realized that people might misinterpret it as indicating skin color.  No, that wasn't it, but I let the project go. 

 

Then Seth gave me a goal of a piece for his book and I knew I wanted to do something with the Children.  Susan and I pondered it for several days and came up with several ideas.  One was to take some that were really damaged-looking and have them represent the children used as soldiers by the Rwandan government. Another idea was to glaze some of them bright red and yellow colors and have them represent the 33 children who died in 2011 because they were accidentally left in a locked car on a hot summer day. Another idea was to have them surrounded by pairs of baby shoes. The shoes would actually be bigger than the little sweaters and the size juxtaposition would question whether the sweater was for a doll the child had or were the shoes just out of proportion.

 

Finally, I thought of the story of the children in Galveston (where I was born) and created the nun and arranged the right number of children and that was that.

 

And now the reason for revisiting the piece:  What should I do with all the other Sweater Children I made?

 

They are no longer lost.  They will be found. Someone will find them and wonder Who? Why? What?

 

We were in New York City this January. Yes, we try to go at least twice a year. January is a good time to go because the bad weather keeps the amateurs away and the museums are uncrowded.

 

 

 I took some with me to be placed in the city. It's a hard thing to do there because the "See something, Say something" mantra makes me a little spooked about putting something down in public.  But I persisted. These pictures are near the bears at The Met.

 

  

 

 

These pictures are in the subway stop at the Natural History Museum.  In the first picture you can see me nicely bundled up, getting ready to head on out to wait for a bus, Sweater Child placed.

 

 

 

And here we are, 6 hours later, on our way back. 



 

Some Sweater Children have been given to other people to put in secret places.  Stay tuned.



AdornMe and Rudie

I was supposed to take doo-dad stuff to AdornMe to make into jewelry. I never know what that means but usually what happens is that I never use my stuff because I learn how to make new and different doo-dads.  Above is what I took.  Below is part of what I actually learned how to make.  Eventually I'll have more to show you.

One of my classmates was very talented Liz from Chicago.

And of course my good buddy Janis was there. She concentrates very hard. She also raises chickens when she isn't making jewelry.

Just to keep my life really scrambled I do both jewelry and ceramics.  Rudie has gone to the gallery.

Women and Equality

Today is International Women's Day.
Today 60% of those living in poverty are women.

Dorothea Lange took this timeless photograph during the Depression. The image and following information are from from the Library of Congress:

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Two Directions

Stick a fork in them, these Penguin Pods are done.  These were glazed (underglazes) at the same time I did the small painting (here). They may get a buffing to give them a slight sheen but that's it.

And to prove that I am working hard, take a look at my Works-In-Progress shelf.  The headless Dudes are still there as a reminder for me to pay attention.  Martha found them interesting so I eventually will do these as a Art Give-away.  That will really make someone wonder "What the .....?"

Surprise Visitor

This semester I'm taking a Sculpture class in addition to ceramics.  There is a cemetery up the road where I ride my bike and sometimes I'm able to get big chunks of wood when they do landscaping and clear out old dead (of course, it's a cemetery) trees.

I was strongly influenced by El Anatsui and his show here in Austin.

Do a Google Images on his name and you'll be impressed incredible size and beauty of the work he does. The part that caught my eye was his wood carvings:

At the beginning of the semester I was given a scrap of wood to practice on and I made this little box. Susan collected some of our stuff to put in it but told me she thought the holes in the wood were what she called "worm holes" and were actually made by worms. Oh sure. Like worms can get in hard wood. She warned me not to used any junk recycled wood right away, to let any critters move out of it before using it.  Oh sure...

When I brought my three wood guys home I set them up on a shelf and the next morning told Susan to look at them and see what she thought.  She walked right up to them and immediately said "What is that sticking out of the head?" I picked it up and looked at it.  ????? IT MOVED!!!

I'm not sure if Susan was madder at me for ignoring her about critters in the wood or for not taking a picture of the worm sticking out before I pulled it out and threw it outside. At least you can see where it was.

Catching Up

I'm not the only artist here. This is from Susan's sketchbook.  She is the one who taught me how to make maps.

We made our annual winter trek to New York City's museums last month. The week before the big storm. The week that was very, very cold.  We like to go in January because the cold weather keeps the amateurs away.

What else in our lives? I finished reading Gone Girl and gave it a 5-star rating. I'm now halfway into The Dinner and it will be getting a 5-star rating also.  I wish it was possible to give more than 5 stars to the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. That's a must-see.

Off With Their Heads

When you don't let your Dudes fully dry before going into the kiln for their first firing their heads will blow up. And their fingers will break off. Someone I live with has rudely told me this is a mistake people make in their first year, not their 6th year.

These guys might survive better. That really isn't blue clay, it's just a different clay. I think. They are going to get really, really dry before being fired.

Giving it away again, at a park near us.

 

 

 

 

Valentine's Day

We gave this to ourselves for Valentine's Day.

Susan's grandfather came to the United States from Poland when he was 16 years old because he was told the streets in America were paved in gold.  His first name was Valentine.

The sign is available here.

Keep It and Giving It Away

Yes, I AM working. It's been a struggle because I've been going off in about 10 different directions. Or, as Susan refers to it, farting in a colander.

Remember this give-away?

All that's left of him is the base he was on, it got tossed on the grass (performance art?).

Here's the latest give-away:

 

 

 

Giving It Away Again

Just a little "Potato Head" man.

It's been a week and maybe no one has noticed him or maybe they have. I thought he'd have disappeared by now.

This pole is right across the street from my apartment, there is a crosswalk just past it and a bus stop to the right of the pole as seen here.

Some cities have an "Art in Public Places" endeavor. I'd like to think I'm contributing... in a sort of Guerrilla Art way.

Now I'm Painting

They are small, 5x7" canvas panels.

I like painting. These aren't quite finished yet.

Art ain't about paint,

it ain't about canvas.

It's about ideas.

Too many people died without ever getting

their mind out to the world.

 

--Thornton Dial, 1993

Giving It Away

Can you see it here? No, it's not in here because this is the Before picture. But I can promise you it is within walking distance of where I live now.  Check the last (After) picture below.

When we did our major downsizing and moved I sold a lot of my ceramic art. I also got brave enough to throw some away (they were really bad pieces).  But a lot got packed up and came with me and they were supplemented with everything I made during the summer and this past fall. 

Not a problem, Susan said, just make shelves to put the pieces on. I knew I was in trouble when she kept laughing when she said that.  There isn't any more wall space to put shelves on in our apartment! We have shelves everywhere with stuff on them, shelves over the doors (I now know how to drill into steel studs), shelves on the walls, shelves over the toilet....

A lot of the stuff is not really that fancy or maybe I've moved on to doing it differently or maybe it didn't work out the way I wanted. No, it can't go on my Etsy shop, it's too hard to ship it successfully and if it's a Dude that didn't suffer a catastrophe in the kiln it's at the gallery.

We have devised a new plan: Giving it away. Secretly. Anonymously.
The trick is that you have to find it.

Hint: It's one of my Penguin Pods, about 6" high.