Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios

This weekend was Larson Gallery's Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios. My house was on the Tour and my work was spread throughout the interior of the house, the front porch and the garden. I also had several artists showing their work at my home including Monika Lemmon, Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield and several of my clay students from YVCC. 

my house, ready for action

Monika Lemmon

Monika Lemmon is a Selah artist and painter. Most of the works she had on display at my house were her paintings. She does beautiful work that is fascinating, surprising, intricate and impressive. 

Monika's paintings in the living room

I loved having her paintings in the house. I really enjoy looking at the pieces. I had seen a few of her works before and loved them. Monika has work in the permanent collection of Larson Gallery and three of her works are installed in the room on campus where I usually eat lunch. I have also seen some of her tall figures in shows at Larson Gallery and Allied Arts in Yakima.

two of Monika's paintings and some ceramics by various people

My favorites of Monika's works are the ones where she seems to hide and reveal different layers. She does this often in her figures, such as the birds or people who seem to be partially dissected or taken apart. She also does this in her landscapes and she sometimes combines the two subjects.

I love the color, and patterns inside the body and the feathers

I see similarities between Monika's work and my own, in particular in the hidden and revealed layers, complex and varied textures, busy surfaces and even in the gears seen in my SRAM sculpture and Monika's standing male figure. Unfortunately I didn't take good pictures of all of her best work in my home. Two of the paintings I spent a good deal of time staring at before and during the tour somehow were missed or photographed badly, so I have to go to her website to see them now. (Look for "Dissection" and "Buried" in "Portraits and Figures.")

I love the contrasting blue lines and dark sections. I also love the red veins.

When we were setting up for the tour, Monika brought several works and indicated she had more at home, so I sent her back for them because I like having a lot of work on display. I was surprised by how much I liked her landscapes and even her painting of corn. Since I liked the figures so much I just expected to be less impressed with her other work, but I was impressed and the work held its own at a smaller scale. 

The color seems to be dripping out of the cloud buildings

Monika's color choices are bold and there is a sort of repetition of textures, lines and patterns in her surfaces that I find rewarding to look at for long periods of time. Her images are complex and reward the viewer who invests time looking at the work.

This one looks better in person; the patterns are more visible on the right

We set up most of the work the day before the Tour while my daughter was at school. When she came home, my mother, who had come to help get the house ready for the tour and help with preparations and staffing (and moral support) during the tour, brought her through the house to show her the work and help her understand the importance of being careful around all the art. 

The grays of the tree and sky make the bird's subtle color pop.

When my daughter got to the living room, she looked at the work above the couch. She said that she liked it because the woman was partially hidden behind the water and the water looked like it had sea creatures in it. She also liked that she could see the woman through the grey areas of the painting. Monika agreed to trade the work with me, so I now get to look at this piece every day. The piece is large and complex and the copper sections in the hills seem to change depending on the lighting or time of day. Some people don't notice the figure at first glance.

my new painting! "Lithosphere"

And if this wasn't all enough, Monika brought some metal work from when she was an undergraduate student. My favorite was the lizard skeleton with flexible joints and fine detail. The piece is about eight inches long and just as amazing as her other work. 

metal skeleton

She brought several other pieces with fine workmanship and detail, including a working "Ear Guitar" with an amp and several hinged containers, like surreal lockets made of hearts and teeth.

playable ear guitar with hinged back

Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield

The only other independent artist at my house for the Tour was Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield. This past year she showed paintings at Larson Gallery from her time teaching art in Kuwait. The show, Abaya and Beyond, featured paintings of women in Abaya (full body covering) and paintings of pomegranates as well as photographs of men and women in Kuwait. Yvonne also wrote a book about her time in Kuwait, entitled "Suitcase Filled with Nails." At my home she exhibited some of her ceramic works.

chest plates and masks cast from a fountain (with the water off)

YVCC Clay Students

John Peterson

I also had several students from YVCC clay show their work. After I bullied him into showing, John Peterson brought five intricate and complex sculptures. Bizarrely I only have a photograph of one, though I showed them off and spent time looking at them during the tour. (I am hoping some one will get me photographs of the others and maybe I can add them later). Though John takes clay classes with me occasionally, he trained as an artist and is not really my student in the same way the other students are mine. John's work is much more sophisticated than undergraduate work and incorporates a variety of media. Each of his sculptures have a story behind them, like the mechanical heart transplant or the Orville Redenbacher Lander. Visitors on the Tour were fascinated by his work and by the stories that he told them about his work.

in search of a popcorn planet

Grace Keller

The rest of my clay students who showed work at my house began their clay careers at YVCC with me. In the room with John Peterson were Grace Keller, Timer Harrison-O'dell and John Harrison-O'dell. Grace is an advanced clay students. She makes functional work and has a small studio in Glenwood Square in Yakima. She set up her work like a dinner party on the dining table. Unfortunately her work was not for sale during the Tour, as it was already promised to other people, but she does take commissions. Grace has a casserole in the DoVA show at Larson Gallery which won an award and was on the cover of the DoVA postcard. 

Grace's plates, bowls, mugs, casseroles and salt and pepper shakers

Timer and John Harrison-O'dell
John and Timer are intermediate and advanced pottery students respectively, though Timer has also taken a hand-building class with me.

Timer's sculptures and dish and bowl

Timer and John set up Timer's fountain and animals and John's functional work as a forest tea party at my daughter's little art table in the dining room. Timer's fountain was running throughout the day and the display was sweet. John's focus has been in making functional work, including vessels for cooking. Timer's work has ranged from functional to sculptural. Timer and John both have work in the DoVA show at Larson Gallery. Timer won a design award for her purse inspired by Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield's "Abaya and Beyond" Exhibition.

Timer's fountain, owl and skunk; John's teacups, saucer, bowls and casserole

Katie Schnieder

Katie Schnieder is now an independent study student in clay. She has taken all my clay offerings at YVCC and is becoming a very strong artist. Her work ranges from functional mugs and bowls to sculptural vessels to free-standing sculpture. 

Notice that the Zombie is coming out of Bosch's hell

Katie took her first functional pottery class with me and came back later for her second. In her second class she suddenly started making sculptural work in addition to her functional work and her work took off. She can hand-build or throw large work and some of her most successful pieces are those where she alters the thrown form after throwing it.

Katie's large hand-built and thrown vases

Katie has also taken my hand-building class and is very comfortable sculpting realistic figures and animals. Her Tyrannosaurus Rex won the Best of Show award at Larson Gallery for the YVCC Department of Visual Arts Student Exhibition. 

zombie gnomes, of course

Katie, Grace and Shannon Hoptowit, as well as Monika, will be showing their work at the upcoming Emerging Artists Exhibition at Oak Hollow Gallery in June.

Shannon Hoptowit

Shannon Hoptowit was unable to be at my house for the Tour, but she brought some of her work. She started working with clay as my work study student for over a year before she first took a pottery class. When she finally started to throw she already knew about clay, firing and glazing and had watched other students' successes and failures. She has now taken at least four throwing classes and is currently in independent study with me.

Shannon's planters, bowls, and vases

Shannon's work is functional. She is able to throw large quantities of clay and make large pieces. She has also made several multi-part planters, including a strawberry planter she had at the Tour. Recently she has been focusing on carved surfaces on medium sized vases.

Shannon's strawberry planter

Shannon and Katie have also collaborated on several of these carved works, Katie throwing the vase and Shannon carving the surface. Few of these are glazed and fired yet, but I had them bring the works-in-progress for the Tour.

bisque-fired carved vase

My Work

I also had some work in the Tour. Normally my studio is designed so that the work is stored away in cupboards and on shelves on the edges of the studio, with the oldest work stored highest, lowest, and farthest back. The newer work is out on the shelves in front and at the middle level to be available for shows (and so I don't forget I have it. The work in progress is out on tables and counters because I am working on it. 

In photos all I ever see is the carpet, but theres some work in there too. It's like Where's Waldo

For the Tour I pulled all my pieces, almost everything, out of cupboards and off the floor and out from behind things. Instead I put all my tools and clay and glazes away in the cupboards and out of sight. I brought the work out into the main house on the coffee tables and end tables in the living room.

The only picture I have of the coffee table includes a blanket and half-eaten waffle from my daughter's breakfast.

I installed some work on the wall above the oven last weekend and on the wall and the high shelves in the laundry room. After clearing out the laundry room this past week, I installed some more work on the windowsill in that room.

laundry room shelf

An army of small creatures protecting the house from invaders.

Of course my studio had every surface filled with work. I brought out all my old work, not just the work I made in Yakima. I turned on some old fountains I had made in Iowa or Wisconsin before or during graduate school. Most of my pumps appear to have died of old age, so I was only able to turn on a few fountains. I also discovered my hands have grown since 2005, so I was unable to reach inside the small openings of some fountains to adjust pumps I know I adjusted in the past.

A fountain at the right with an array of work behind, in my studio

I brought out my raku fired work which came mostly from my senior show at Coe College in Iowa. A few raku pieces were done after college or maybe during graduate school (though the school raku kiln at Wisconsin was a beast to fire).

raku work on my wedging table

My mom helped me arrange some work when I reached the point where I could no longer make decisions. It helped to have someone else take over some aspect of the decision making, even though she had also helped considerably with cleaning the house and putting out flowers in the rooms.

my mom's installation

When people entered the clay studio especially, they mostly commented on how much work there was. I was pleasantly surprised; I feared they would all just laugh at the strange carpet on the walls of the studio. Plenty of people also commented on the walls, but it wasn't the first thing they noticed.

my more recent work, and a very old painting of a clay table

I had work out from graduate school too. I still have wood fired pieces and pieces from the lawn installation of my MFA show. Before the preparations for the Tour kicked in to high gear, I had been preparing our home garden with my daughter. I put most of my remaining "lawn sticks" out in the garden or in the planter on the porch. I also hung some work from my MFA show around the house.

lawn sticks and mug planters

Of course I had recent work made in the last few years. Last summer I didn't make much, because my bike part project took so much time, but I had one bike part piece (one is at the Student and Faculty Show at Larson Gallery and the other went to the fundraiser event in NYC). I also had work from the last seven years in Yakima--or maybe the last five or six years, I don't remember making much my first year or two here.

work right beside the studio door

Since my summer last year didn't result in a vast quantity of finished work, I showed a vast quantity of unfinished work. Only about a third of the pieces I made for my Daily Mini Sculpture Project last Spring were finished. The rest are fired and partially underglazed so I arranged them on one of my work tables and let people see them as they were. I hope to finish them this summer or during my sabbatical in the fall, though they aren't a top priority. 

unfinished mini sculptures

I had one more set of unfinished work and those are the beginnings of an installation for my show in January 2014 at the Esvelt Gallery at Columbia Basin Community College in Pasco, WA. This installation is similar to one originally called "Ericano." I have installed iterations of this in galleries, condos, homes, and offices in at least four states. I just installed one above my own clay studio door for this Tour. The work for next year's installation is far from complete, but I wanted people to get a sense of the future installation pieces, not just the older raku work that is up in my home.

bulbs for "Ericano" installation

The tour was exhausting, but I think the day went well. Over the course of the day we had more than 130 people in the house for the tour. For me, since I had so much old and new work out, it was an interesting chance to take a look at what I have, where my work was and where it is going. I think just going through the massive effort of moving everything out, arranging it for view and deciding where I put something out (or not) forced me to introspection. I decided not to price my work, in part because there was so much of it, but also because sales were not my focus. It's nice to have a job and therefore not be required to make work to sell. My work isn't appealing to everyone; the freedom from pleasing allowed me to tell more of a controlled story with my work grouped, massed and hidden in and around the house.

My daughter's work was also featured on the Tour.

Of course an entire day spent talking about work, listening to people talk about work and comparing ideas with other artists naturally results in comparisons, ponderings and ridiculous things overheard, but those thoughts are for another post some other day. If you came this weekend, I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't, I hope you enjoy the pictures and if you helped, I greatly appreciate your time and effort. 

Special Thanks to Sean, Mom, Monika, John, Timer, John, Grace, Katie, Shannon, Yvonne, Randy, Lori, Keegan, Linda and Kathy. Thanks also to M R, Jeff, Kim and Jack. Sorry if I missed anyone. The tour was a tremendous effort and I appreciate all the assistance--even if I'm too exhausted to remember it now. 

Cleaning for Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios

With less than a week before the Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios (buy your tickets today at Larson Gallery, Oak Hollow and The Bindery--only $20 per person; $5 with a student ID card), we tried to spend most of the weekend cleaning. We've lived in the house for about 6 years now, so some of the things we cleaned haven't been cleaned in at least that long. I washed a window that required me to climb on a ledge over the stairs. As far as I am concerned, that window can be cleaned again in 2019.

We worked on the house last weekend too, but the pressure was a little less intense so we didn't work quite as hard and we interspersed other activities. Friday was a school holiday so I mostly cleaned my studio, dusted and cleared all the magnets off the fridge. The biggest task I took on last weekend was trying to make the front of the house more attractive.

Our beautiful-ish house

When we moved into the house there were thorny overgrown rose bushes everywhere, including on old trellises in the front. We took them down and took out the brick edging around the entire yard but never quite figured out what to do to replace them. On a trip to the Master Gardener's Plant Sale, I got some good advice about putting out some planters in front of the house. Getting the right planters and plants took a long time, but planting was pretty easy.

This type of plant is easy to grow, it prefers a large empty planter and a reasonable amount of silliness to flourish.

I'm not much of a green-thumb, so hopefully the plants will last through next weekend at least. It would be a bonus if they actually make it through the summer. Apparently you have to remember to water them regularly. I also put out some sculpture, but sculpture in the front of the house runs the dual risks of the lawn mower and general vandalism. These pieces are already a little hard-worn, but I think they do okay for the lawn.

I couldn't find the actual plants that were recommended to me, hopefully these will play well together.

The sculpture to the right has mysteriously lost at least three of its original parts, but not because of the lawnmower.

This weekend, with the time running out I was all over the place. I washed windows, inside and out, climbed over the stairway to dust and rearrange sculpture in the high window area of the laundry room (it's hard to picture until you see our house) and started hiding the food containers that don't normally fit in the cupboards. (We have a lot of storage in the house, but the kitchen storage isn't ideal.)

The view (up) from my studio.

On Saturday, thinking I had tons of time I guess, I decided to install some of my sculptural wall pieces above the oven. I'd been planning to do this for a long time, but never got motivated before. I had a good run Saturday morning, so I was extra productive between about 7:50 and 11:30am.

They say you can catch the drill dust with a post-it. They lie.

A lot of potters keep "kiln gods" above the kiln. I am more likely to need them above my oven.

The wall installation went so well in the kitchen, I added to the laundry room/stairway as well. I only had ten pieces installed there before I started feeling scared of standing on a stool at the top of the stairs. I think I also ran out of L-screws.

Admire the beautifully clear window, washed at great personal risk by your author.

My husband, meanwhile, decided to take off our dining room door and hang it from the tree in the back yard. It seems bizarre at first that he wanted to paint it, but I had gotten used to the missing handle and hadn't considered that might be strange for guests. The handle has been off for a few months. He wanted to repair the drippy paint before replacing it. Preparing it to be painted with a sprayer yielded a weird photo. Now it is back in the house, has a handle, and we don't have to stick our fingers in the raw wood hole to open the door.

Magical levitating door.

On Sunday I helped out with Larson Gallery's booth at Articipate downtown by the Farmer's Market. We were trying to sell tickets for next weekend and we had a texture rubbing Mother's Day card activity going on as well. I helped set up around 7am and then came home for a few hours to install some more bulbs on new L-screws and clean the spiderwebs out of my daughter's sandbox. Children are welcome at my house for the Tour and we will have a fresh clean sandbox and will have some other kids and kids toys in the back yard. Buy your tickets today!

More bulbs (window still clean).

A few hours after I finished the installation, I opened another cabinet in the studio and found about 20 more bulbs hiding in a corner. There have been at least three 100-bulb sets of these used for various installations. I'm starting to think that the little guys reproduce.

Seriously, from whence didst ye come?

The newly sanded and painted dining room door was to be painted with a second color in the afternoon. The paint was half-done and wet when my daughter and I came home from the Farmer's Market (second trip). She immediately went to her swing, where a towel was draped. She picked up the towel and tossed it behind her where it landed, with all its little dirty tree droppings, on top of the wet paint. I took over painting, since my husband couldn't handle the horror, and picked out little bits of tree gunk (don't look too closely).

I was thinking of using half of this picture as my Facebook profile. Know why?

Getting the house ready is a bizarre experience. We cleaned things we never ever clean (things we literally have never cleaned before) and worried about washing windows and making sure top shelves are dusted and paint is patched right. But how surprised would I be if anyone commented on the clean windows or even paint job during the tour. Seriously, you should come. My work will be all over the house. My advanced clay students will have their work at my house and the talented Monika Lemmon will have (hopefully a bunch of) her paintings at my place. And of course there are lots of other artists and homes to see that day too.

The main attraction: my bizarre studio. There's no way to improve that wall carpet.

Busy Art Week for Yakima / Ellensburg

Javier Lopez Ortiz
This evening was the opening for Javier Lopez Ortiz's exhibition at Allied Arts in Yakima. Lopez Ortiz is visiting Yakima from our sister city, Morelia, in Mexico. The artist works with water color and smoke, making quite a varied range of brightly colored and more subdued works. My favorites tend to be those which are more ambiguous. The show isn't up long, just through May 18. I highly recommend you try to get there to see it while it is in town.

For those who are interested, it appears Allied Arts is hosting a watercolor workshop with the artist while he is here. On Monday YVCC students will be able to participate in workshops or demonstrations with the artist. Monday is also a busy day on campus because the Latin Music Festival will be taking place on campus that day.



Alfredo Arreguin
Tomorrow (Friday) the the First Friday opening reception for Gallery One's Alfredo Arreguin exhibition, "Primevera." Saturday Arreguin will be participating in the Dia de la Familia activities in the gallery. I plan to drive up to Ellensburg to see the show on Saturday and bring my daughter.

YVCC DoVA Exhibition
Tuesday night from 5-7pm Larson Gallery hosts the YVCC Department of Visual Arts Student and Faculty Exhibition. We selected most of the award winners today. There are more than 10 (I can't remember exactly how many) cash awards for student work and, of course, many of the works are for sale. The awards will be announced during the reception Tuesday evening. The show continues through June 1.

YVCC Clay Sale
Thursday at 11:30 is the YVCC Clay Sale, featuring work by students and faculty. Much of the work is functional and it's all priced to sell. We have done several extra firings and a series of glaze tests in the last quarter, meaning there should be plenty of brand new work for this sale. We are hoping to fire one last load on Tuesday so it will be fresh out of the kiln for the sale.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

And, finally, though I'm not sure when I am going to fit it in, the Warehouse Theatre Company's art-related production opens this weekend. The show, written by Steve Martin, is about Picasso and Einstein and I believe the star is one of my previous Design students. In my limited experience, Warehouse Theater does a great job. The show continues through May 18, so I'm hoping to fit it in sometime or another.

Tour of Artists' Homes & Studios

That rounds out a busy week of events, though my mind is focused on the upcoming Tour of Artist Homes and Studios on May 18. My home and studio are featured on the tour. Tomorrow, Spring Holiday for YVCC will be my studio and house cleaning day as I try to get the place ready for visitors.