studio ramblings and stir stick ordering

some frames i found braced up with c clamps

Somebody was throwing away all these perfectly good wooden frames. They are actually the frames used to brace acrylic vitrines that top off pedestals in sculpture displays( I get these from the various preparator jobs i have been doing around town). On the left behind them is a similar set of frames for bracing vitrines that have been turned into a spiral patterned sculpture. with these new ones i think i will be painting them a certain spectrum of colors related to the pigments i have been using in my drawings. Once they are in their final arrangement they should resemble some sort of 60's era art piece, far out! sometimes i am just amazed at the sheer amount of material out there in the world that has found it's way into my studio, and into my output.

So i keep working on my practice round of stir sticks, which are slowly becoming their own discreet piece. Now that i have a better understanding of the room i will be working in at the dam stuhltrager gallery I am pretty sure i will be building a structure that moves out from a central tube and wends it's way around the existing walls of the space. Although I still have not seen the space, I do have diagrams and have had a few explanatory conversations with the gallery owner and now have a better understanding of the space i will be working in. The primary focus of the installation though as always will be the transformative power of labor, namely mine over the course of 14 days. I am confident, as with past work that the process will dictate the end result of the piece. With only four weeks until i fly up, I have to be careful to focus my nervous energy on something other than the impending installation. So far it is working, I have been focused on other work around the studio, namely the never ending task of "getting organized". I used to be really hard on myself for not keeping my studio more organized and jumping around from work station to work station and piece to piece, leaving different piles of in progress work along the way. Now, though I understand that cleaning up the studio becomes a source of new work, as i get side tracked organizing the various detritus of other projects, and playing with the materials that are part of the never ending renovation of the studio, i discover new directions and material usage that i would not normally have found. When things settle i plan to tackle the parts of the mdf wall that got water damaged, but i keep getting distracted when i realize how cool the bulging shapes caused by the water damage in the mdf wall actually are.

Below the stir stick weaving is probably closer to the shape i will begin with in new york, but really won't know until i start. Brooke(the blurry red streak in the background) came to the studio so we could re-finish a couple bertoia chairs that i found.

The process of ordering stir sticks has been interesting so far. Of all the art processes i utilize consumer techniques and bargain hunting has become indispensable to my work. I am tired of trying to get different price quotes and may just go with a supplier that is reliable and sells the sticks i am familiar with so i don't have to do something like open an account with a whole seller or send a certified check to Canada, which scares me a bit. I am also anxious about getting to new york, starting the piece and then running out of materials, but then i remember new york is a big city and i should have no problem liberating additional stir sticks for use in the installation.