got back, got upacked and re-stacked now i am ready to rock

so it will take me awhile to assimilate all the new work into my space, but it should help .so got things a little bit more organized.
so now all the work from the summer, the ox-bowresidency, and the vermont studio center, will begin to mingle and cross polinate each other.

so i am really begining to contemplate juxtaposing these smaller objects with the large scale objects and installations to create entire environments

this is a small set of images from the drive from vermont to charleston, most of the pictures are from new york and washington dc, which were our major stopovers along the way

well we finally got back home on wednesday. I spent friday and saturday unpacking artwork and organizing the stuff i made in vermont and revisiting the work i never organized from ox-bow. On some level i still feel like i never fully renovated the studio or finished moving in. I only have a couple more work days left this year, but maybe next year, or tuesday as it is known, will be more productive. Now that i have everything together in one space i can work uninterrupted and get everything finished. I have been paying particular attention to the importance of scale. I seem to be accumulating a decent set of medium sized objects and simultaneously feeling a sense of urgency to work towards an architectural scale. I have three packets that I need to finish and get in the mail and then on wednesday i start working for mark sloan. oh and i think the wedding is in like 3 weeks but i am trying not to freak out about it and just let that happen the way it is supposed to happen.

Packed, stacked and ready to make tracks

well it wasn't a bad month but I am so ready to get home and see brooke, and get back to my own studio. Vermont studio center was an amazing place and i will definitely come back in the future. the tally for the month wasn't bad, 12 works on paper in varying states of progress, and some major head way on the steel piece. along the way i got diverted with those little wooden constructions and the snow does wonders for creative focus. brooke gets in tomorrow around noon and that should make for a fun roadtrip back.

cd's and sub-zero weather do not mix

I got in the truck today for my weekly trip to the laudromat. This is also my weekly ritual of digging the car out of the snow. i got in the truck and started to listen to a cd, then suddenly it went silent. i removed the cd to see if there were any scratches on it and low and behold the entire surface of the cd was fogged up. I guess that'll teach me.


it's hard to tell but the river is slowly freezing over and becoming a stream eventually it will be solid all the way across.

so the other night i really wanted to make some prints but the print studio is a cold and icy walk from my sculpture studio, so I improvised. I inked up some coffee cup sleeves with sumi ink and hand printed them onto sketch book pages then i chine colle'd/collaged them onto a larger sheet of paper and just followed the curve of the sleeve until it made this gesture. Kind of a zen mocha effect.

so this piece is becoming more water bottle like each day I get to work on it, but I have not been able to work on it the last couple of days because i ran out of welding gas, but barring no blizzard delays the gas delivery should be here today.

So I made this pair of objects, kind of like a snow dialog. They are made of laminated scrap wood from around the studio here, which i cut and formed then shaped with the sander. the one on the left is stained with sumi ink and the one on the right is pearlescent white gouache with a top coat of blue gouache.

working some more

here are some quick shots of the progress i am making. I did another walking snow drawing, i made a large coffee cup sleeve, and begin to shape the direction of the steel piece. I am now shaping the steel piece into a giant water bottle. I think this really makes the piece and still gives me options for how to install it in the future. If it is an object like a water bottle, I can place it in any orientation and it will still read like a water bottle. I can also see it as a modern version of heideger's wine jug that he writes about in his thing essay, only i have turned wine into water. Oh well I can't believe I only have 11 days left here, I really hope I can come back sometime in the future, this place has really helped me sort out some things and allow me to make some progress on work I might have struggled to make otherwise.

sidetracked a little bit

so this is the view from my studio, very snowy




on the right a big ear plug made of wood based on my drawing of the earplug, and on the left is a spray painted piece of the sculpture, but there is something about white that says finished piece



today i had a studio visit with shelia pepe around the time i normally start working. part of my working method is to begin working before i interact with people and my brain has time to wander. Because i talked with shelia this morning, and she brought up some really interesting ideas i got side tracked, in a good way and made a small object based on my earplugs. I also decide through a simple spray paint test on the cut off part of the big sculpture that i want to clean the big piece when i finish and get it coated with an automotive pearlescent white paint. It might be the simple influence of the snow all around me or it might just be that I think I am ready to remove rusty steel objects from my palette. I think i will keep making the rust prints , but I am starting to crave highly finished objects, or at least today i am. Tomorrow I think I will just get back to work on the steel piece, until a conversation with someone derails my train of concentration.