day 8 at ox-bow

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i only went to starbucks once so this was all the stir sticks i could get this time



i have been adding to the pins bit by bitso i am starting to get the hang of the brazing and i now have an idea what tp dp with this piece



the relative solitude and peace here at ox-bow was at once disturbed and enhanced this weekend with the arrival of re-enforcement artists from chicago. The new crop of chicagoans all seem to know each other giving the impression that chicago must be both a big city and a small town where everybody knows everybody. I managed to fiddle around in the studio part of today and to work on another application for a nother residency. There is a certain irony about working on a residency application while one is already an artist in residence. Tomorrow i need to go back to home depot to exchange the pipe cutter i bought for cutting copper pipe and to do some more research at the local starbucks.

day 7 at ox-bow

i think i am realizing that my time here may be spent best as time away from the studio routine. Today i found myself incredibly uneasy with the surrounding natural environment. The constant chirp of the crickets in the studio drove me over the edge. To cope with my overwhelming discomfort with the natural world i retreated to my natural environment, startbucks. Thankfully there are three within driving distance of here, providing a much needed outlet. I did however take a brief walk around the campus and discovered an incredibly disturbing sculpture installation.

Day 5 & 6 at ox-bow

yesterday was the fall open house at ox-bow. Several members of the community came through the studios to look at what we have been up to.the event was really nice and i got to speak with some people from the town, one of which offered me some free materials from a barn he was renovating. Today i did laundry, and tonight i think people are going bowling in the town. after several days of mild weather it got downright hot today. I have been working on the bag stack, and several failed attempts at copper brazing. I am not sure if i am getting more comfortable around here or if i am getting bored with what i am working on. I have not been able to bring myself to start on the next couple of rust prints, but maybe tomorrow i will.

day four at ox-bow

this light puts a nice glow through the fiberglass chair, that is hard to see in the day time.
in an effort to teach myself a new trick i got a bunch of copper pipe elbows and have been trying to teach myself improper techniques for brazing copper.
so these lights were in the 50% off section of the hardware store and i just built fixtures around them the way they were.
this is a long view of the studio

last night was really exciting two of the other artists, japeth mennes and Rebbecca Baldwin, gave artists lectures. after their lectures we had a fire and made s'mores, and spent our time gushing about a mutual love for public radio personalities and other things arty. I am getting into a strange routine. i feel a bit like jerry from edward albee's the zoo story. Jerry explains how he " has been to the zoo" and proceeds to give play by play of how he walked north and how he went to the zoo and ended up in the park. Well I went to The home depot yesterday to get brazing supplies to braze steel wire with. I actually got the wrong stuff and ended up with copper brazing supplies. No worries so i ventured out to the local hardware store to get steel brazing rod, but they do not stock it. The cashier told me that if i went to the right for 8 miles i would hit the blinking light and then if i turned left there and went another 2 miles i would hit fenville and that the true value hardware store there would have the rod. Sure enough hey had the rod, but they also had a 50% off table with three of the circular fluorescent energy efficient bulbs on it. So i bought those three bulbs because i thought it would be cool to see them just lit up by themselves. I bought outlet and wire and some plug and wired up my very on set of in the box lamps. Tonight two of the other artists are lecturing and hopefully following that will be another fire.

day 3 at ox bow

Monday i ventured out a little and discovered a dollar general store with some pretty amazing bargains, like all these balls for 10 bucks. They were in packs of 4 that were normally a dollar but they were 25% off. I also “discovered” an office furniture manufacturing plant and talked with the secretary there about getting some of their scrap. She put me in touch with the plant manager, but i only got his voicemail. She was optimistic that as long as corporate approved them giving away their scrap it would be okay. So i will give it a day and then i will head back there again. I made it to the local lumber store which is incredibly overpriced, if i need anything that the dollar general doesn’t sell, then i will just drive the 20 minutes to home depot. Well here comes day three of my residency and i am starting to figure out how best to use my time here



The silence is deafening. No really the noise from the crickets the hum of the fixtures in our shared studios, the sound of silence is giving me a headache. I am not sure what to do with my time here. I am not really into escapism and isolation so the rural setting is thus far lost on me. I did however find myself very still in the studio this morning as the sun was coming up, and made this video as a meditation on silence.

day two at ox-bow

i think i will take a break from working today and just explore the area and get some new ideas. I have met some of the other artists in passing but haven't really gotten to know anybody all that well. This is probably mostly my fault since i go to bed around 10:30, and get up around 6:00. I think I am starting to get anxious being here, so i hope that leads to some new ideas and work. i orderd 25,000 stir sticks yesterday for the sumter show and i hope that will be enough.

day one at ox-bow

so this is a strange view of my bedroom



i did this last night after dinner

so this is my first attempt at combining the coffee cups and the rust imagery some test patterns
just making myself right at home

i woke up this morning and got showered and dressed to head to the studio like any other morning but then i caught myself reaching for my keys. Now i just have to walk around the corner to get to my studio. Although I am in a shared studio with 3 other artists, there are several outdoor spaces that can be utilized here. This morning i checked on some rust prins i started after dinner last night and then began some new ones. I am trying to get several test patterns before i start on the 20 foot roll of paper. I think this is the beginning of a happy compromise merging my pattern making work with my coffee obsession and fortunately i have time and space to see it through out here.

live from ox-bow

this will be my home for the next 4 weeks here at ox-bow

and here are some shots of the consumer fetish objects in the redux reorientation show

hour one in my ox-bow studio


so i made it to ox-bow tonight and have my studio, i just need to get some vinegar from the kitchen and then i will be ready to start working. On the drive up here i really enjoyed just looking at the clouds and watching things roll by. The clouds in indiana were amazing and it really made me want to take a roadtrip someday without a destination. as I get into a routine here I will try and update as often as i can. I plan to just relax and make some new work and develop some writing ideas. My first impressions, meaning how i feel after just one hour;I am a little bit nervous about being in a shared studio space, since i was planning to make rust prints, and some people don't like the smell of vinegar, but we will see about that. I brought a 20' roll of paper with me and was planning on working on that so maybe i will just make a really big drawing. Tonight after dinner i will just wander around and try and see the grounds some more.

psyched about sumter, and anxious about ox-bow

this is the general state of thinsg in the studio right nowon the table is the piece with the spikes, which i will probably take to ox-bow with me to finish up there
so the plastic piece is being slowly rebuilt
these are some better views of the space in sumter
so i plan to change the lights in the chandelier to ultra-bright low energy bulbs and then build a stir stick structure all the way around this opening. This will create a stir stick piece that is lit from within throwing shadows all over the place.

So on saturday i went up to sumter to get a better sense of what i will be working with at the accessibility residency and to look more closely at the site. While i was there i got really excited about the project because the space is spectatcular and the folks showing me around were amazing. I really got the sense of how exciting this event is going to be. I am really looking forward to this. I leave friday for ox bow which has me nervous since I am driving. It is not the driving that makes me nervous, but the fact that I had to take my car in to get the brakes fixed today. I am afraid of the sticker shock coming my way. Tomorrow brooke and i are going to meet with our top choice for a caterer and hopefully make a decision in that area. I am planning on taking the spike piece to ox bow with me to finish up there, but if for some reason they do not have a welder for me to use, I will just work on rust prints, writing and preparing for the sumter show. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the twin towers attacks. I was thinking about how in this instant contact media saturated world how we never really get to process anything thoroughly. I was behind a car with a bumper sticker that said 9-11-01 we will never forget. It struck how odd it is that such a significant event never gets a true identity or name but rather is forever known as the date when it occurred. With pearl harbor we have to think about the date but we know the event, even though less of us experienced that day in person, if someone says december 8th, we don't immediately think pearl harbor. But september the 11th will always be that way, fixed to one date rather than one event. It almost limits our acknowledgements of this tragedy allowing us to mourn only one day, instead of 3000 lives and counting.

some new rust prints and slow progress on another tedious sculpture

i've started using the spikes that i am making the sculpture with to make rust prints and i am getting some really satisfying results


so this is still only about a 1/3 of the spikes i have to use for this piece, and as usual i got them all for free from someone else who was getting rid of them

so i've been working pretty steady on these couple of pieces, and while i was making the welded spike sculpture it occurred to me that they would make great rust prints.I also hung the coffee cups at redux this week and that made me feel anxious. I always get a little bit of anxiety around group shows where i have no control over how the work is presented, and this weekend is especially nerve wracking since i am in two group shows that i had no control over what was being shown. I also get a weird sensation being around my old stomping grounds, i feel like i am right back in college which opens up all kind s of anxieties. So friday night will be the opening at redux, and on saturday i am going to go to sumter to do a site visit and make some plans for that show. Next week i leave for the ox-bow residency and hopefully i will be able to get the work organized and make a plan for sumter, because immediately following the ox-bow residency i begin the sumter residency. I had delusions of finishing the renovations on the studio before i left, but once it became a tolerable working environment, well i just started working. Today is brooke's only day off from field work so we are going to spend it looking for a car for her and doing wedding planning stuff. Oh and our save the date cards arrived so hopefully we will get those addresses and in the mail soon. and one more non-sequiter before i forget. i think today when people say they have been "researching" they really mean they have been googling and youtubing stuff, I long for the 4 hour trips to the library i would take in college. Back then research meant i would wander to the periodical section and read the village voice, and other newspapers from around the country. Next i would wander upstairs and walk the art aisle of the library scanning the spines randomly for the names of artists i recognized and then i would sit down with a stack of artists monographs and spend some time getting to know the work. now that was research, no googling experience will ever replace real research.

thanks owen

owen crocheted this wonderful door cover thingy while he was here.he also crocheted this magnificent coffee cup cozy while in residence here.


this is owen, owen is playing my bass, that is all.so owen crocheted my buddha a hat

so my friend owen came to town for a little while and that was interesting. Before owen came i had almost completely forgotten that i went to grad school. While he was here we tried to show owen as much of historic charleston as possible. when we weren't walking around the city we were hanging around the house where owen showed off his new crochet obssesion. It is really cool and now several things around here have their own personal crocheted covers. Today is labor day and unfortunately brooke has to leave later this afternoon to go back to georgia and labor some more, and i have to go back to the studio to get ready for the installation at redux tomorrow. Oh that reminds me the reorientation show opens this friday at redux, and next week on the 10th, 11th, and 12th, I will be teaching a printmaking workshop at redux, and then on the 15th i leave for ox-bow.