New York City, Part 1

Miss me? I've been getting my eyeballs scorched by looking at way too much art, my brain fried by pondering too many techniques and my feet exhausted by museum tromping. New York City is an under-4-hour non-stop flight away for often less than $175. Thank you, thank you, JetBlue. The hotels are another story but we economize by not eating anything but sandwiches or grocery takeout or museum cafeterias.

We have a friend in New York City who is alternately amused/horrified/disgusted/unbelieving about the number of people we make friends with in her city. New Yorkers cold and unfriendly? NOT! Of course we always start out with a smile and put on our Texas drawl as we say "Hey, how ya'll doing?" whenever we encounter someone.

Never fails. Proof positive in the picture above. That is Lu, or Liudmila, the cabdriver who brought us from the airport to our hotel. She has been driving a cab for 3 years and wants to bring her mother here and has a son in college who hopes to go to medical school in San Antonio. It was a 45-minute cab ride and lots of conversation about current events also, as she is from Russia. She's also half Polish, as is Susan, so they bonded right away.

First up was the Museum of Arts and Design. 

 

 

The top image is one we took in the museum, the second is one from Google Images of a similar piece. The artist is Angelo Filomeno and the piece is "As the Lilies Among Thorns, So We Fall Like Love".  I couldn't find a website for him specifically so you might want to check Images yourself.  Susan recognized him from a show called "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery" a few years back. The piece he had there was "Death of a Blinded Philospher and it was 42" x 10'2" - huge!

 

 

One of the interesting things about seeing pieces in a museum is the shadows they make due to the lighting. The pictures below are of an enormous display (floor to ceiling, about 10 feet across) made up of three "screens" by Piper Shepard, "Lace Meander". This is her description, which I find absolutely incredible, " ... gessoed muslin that has been coated with black graphite and entirely hand-cut using an X-Acto knife". Based on the amount of work shown on her website I don't think that knife ever leaves her hand.

 

Detail:

 

More travel and museum talk to come.

Three Keepers and a Lot of Give-Aways

This little park is near where we live and I've put a lot of "learning experiences" out here. We'll see how long they stay.

 

These guys are keepers. They are made from a different clay than browner ones and I'm still trying to decide which I like best.

 

Speaking of keepers, we like to keep Austin weird.

 



 

 



Tweet, Tweet

 

Here's what a birdie should look like if I'm doing it right.

 

 

Nope, not my birdie. Just Austin street art.

 



Another successful birdie.

This particular wall gets a lot of street art and a lot of repainting by the property owner. Maybe they really like the changing art or maybe they think a blank wall could possibly just stay clear. Ha! Not in Austin.

What NOT To Do, Version 2

First, you don't make the bird so big it looks like quail on steroids. It should fit nicely in your hand and not feel like a boat anchor. Second, you don't put dried clay shards in the wing area thinking it will look like nice texture. Birds do not think that is a nice look. Third, you don't overdo the raku.

The bad news is that the perfect examples of poor work have to leave home. The good news is that they become Give-Aways. I like to think that eventually someone will find my Give-Aways and be absolutely thrilled. I don't like to think that someone will find one and say "What the  %$#@  was he thinking?!?"

From a distance -- he's in the tree bump in a nearby cemetery.

What NOT To Do

First, be sure you make sure your ears are put on correctly. Second, try not to use the wrong glaze, unless you really want to look pukey tan. Third, try to remember that there is such a thing as too much texture. Susan constantly tells me "Edit! Where IS your focal point?" I constantly try to throw everything I can on one piece of sculpture all at once. Isn't that called Good Time Management?

Here is an example of what I should aspire to:

This guy was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Way cool. Here's the info on the piece, by Frank Fleming:

Martha's Stars

I'm lucky enough to have Martha as a friend. More than a year ago she gave me some little metal? aluminum? stars. I've started finding a way to use them. Above is Kupka and below is Yoyab. Where do their names come from? The same planet they come from.

Yoyab is actually a lot happier than he looks. Honest.

Wearing Green

OK, he's got a little bit o' the green on him, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and I have no idea what the deal is with green. It's all blarney to me. This little birdie didn't turn out the way I wanted so he became a give-away.

He's in a tree on the creek about a mile from our place, we often walk down there.

Susan asked me what the heck was that white thing on the ground by the tree. It's my coffee cup, of course. You can't take a walk without carrying some coffee with you! You never know when you'll need to spring into action to escape an errant bee or fly and the caffeine will help you move really fast.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'd take a video of Susan rolling her eyes at that but if I did, I'd probably find my camera/phone filed up my rear end.

Later this week I'll walk down there again to see if he's still there.

Chaos

 

Been wondering where I am?

 

Eventually I'll be back.

 

And it isn't even me doing the work. My Blog Wrangler is coordinating the contractors on this.

She has announced she has no life.

We eat sawdust. Our neighbors (we live in an apartment building) hate us.

WHAT????

Because of a chicken foot? A chicken foot?!?

 

 

The looming demise of print newspapers will definitely put an abrupt end to world-shattering news items like this one.

 

And an end to valuable information! My potato head men and I had no clue that chicken feet were even edible. Sort of like crunchy potato chips?

Happy Valentine's Day, 2014

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

 

 

 

Hedgehog whistles, about 4 inches long.

 

Trivia: Susan is 50% pure Polish, complete with a maiden name that has z and w and s and all sorts of odd letters in it and is not easily pronounced. Her grandfather was born in February in Poland and was named Valentine. He came to the United States in 1907 when he was 16 because he heard the streets were "paved in gold".

 

 

The Egg Came First

I'm a pretty decent cook and hard-boiled eggs are a snap to make. We like to always have some in the refrigerator for last minute egg-salad sandwiches or when we are hungry but in a hurry to go somewhere. Can't say no to protein!  We've learned the hard way to not only keep them in a separate bowl in the refrigerator but to also mark on them. Otherwise, it makes for an interest episode when two people are working in the kitchen and one will be using hard-boiled eggs to make egg-salad but the other is going to make scrambled eggs with the regular eggs and they both have put their eggs on the counter and the one using the hard-boiled eggs always cracks the egg by slapping it on the counter.... you get the picture.

Susan just grabs a pencil and scribbles a mark on the egg. This question will be on the final exam:

In the picture above, identify which eggs have been marked by Susan

 and which eggs have been marked by Don. 

 

 

These aren't eggs, these are giant acorns, about the size of a tennis ball. Their stems could have been a little thinner and maybe their caps a little shorter but I'm liking them. They are going to get some color added with a paint wash. For a long time I've fought using paint on my ceramic pieces -- they are supposed to be glazed! But I'm beginning to realize that I can do anything I want -- My art, My rules.  Robert Rauschenberg can put quilts on his paintings, I can put paint on my ceramic sculptures.



Weather Alert

More little birdies. I've been trying out different glazes and techniques.  The top two are raku, the bottom two are high-fire. The only one of the four I really like is the green one and even the glaze on that is spotty. But I like the wing pattern on him.

Today is the Super Bowl, the Puppy Bowl (on the Animal Planet channel) and the Kitten Bowl (on the Hallmark channel). I plan on trying to nap/doze through most of them. Everyone says the commercials are the main reason to watch the game but they are usually on the internet the next day so I can catch up then.

Just in case you are tired of our ugly winter weather - anyone talking about global warming lately? - I provide you with an all-purpose weather report. WARNING: Video contains offensive language. Don't watch it if you don't like offensive language.

Ceramic Abuse!

Whoa! I'm really worried about the ceramic squirrel. I can't find any more data than this.

Should I get nervous about my birds? Susan wouldn't fuss about beer but she sure likes to be sure there is cream for her coffee in the morning.

Frank and Susan Collaborate

Above is their final result.  Susan told Frank, our next-door neighbor, that doodling was really an art form called Zentangle and if he would just start giving his doodling (could that word be any weirder?) an art form name it would mean he actually was an artist.

So Frank produced this doodle, I mean Zentangle, while he was on a phone call one day and gave it to Susan.

Susan scanned it in her computer and started playing with it with Photoshop Elements 2.0, which she refuses to upgrade*.  The beginning is below and the final result is at the top of this post.

Susan speaks: Upgrading just gives me grief. I made the fatal mistake of upgrading Microsoft's Street & Trips 2009 to the 2013 version. How is it possible for a company like Microsoft to totally ruin a decent product? How can they take a road that was in use in 2009 and still exists today and runs for nearly 300 miles and is heavily traveled and completely remove it from the program? How can it be that IE 10 is slower than IE 9? Why is the sky blue?

I Have No Idea

I have no idea what creature this skull came from. Nan G guessed a "teeny owl" but he'd have to be really teeny because that's just a big soup spoon he's in.

Susan took these pictures for me and said I need to dust. As if.

When we were at the MOMA we saw a large installation of these hanging bottles and found the knotting to be really interesting. The artist is Nari Ward. I'm thinking I could do something like that with some ceramic pods I could make but then I'd have to make a whole bunch of them and that sounds like work....

Odd Ends

Sometimes I make really tiny birds. The bigger ones in the back were made by Debra Fritts, one of my very early instructors. She makes really interesting sculptures and she taught me a lot about letting your hands "listen" to the clay.

These guys are really interesting. They were a Christmas present from Susan -- a new pillowcase. How cool is that!??! Bet nobody else got a zombie pillowcase from their Bed Buddy.