Inventory in and out

I just picked up my work from The Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University. Yakima River Diaries is over and suddenly I have a lot more inventory and a much messier studio. I did go so far as to unpack the work I brought home, but then I realized that I hadn't upacked the work that came home from the gallery shows I was in over the holiday.

my work at Yakima River Diaries

My studio has also become a temporary home for the boxes, bags, old clothes and printers that were removed from our living space over the holidays. We replaced two semi-functioning printers by replacing them both with one that works for often than it doesn't. My studio is heated separately so over the winter we tend not to spend time out there because we don't keep the heater on and the studio gets cold. Because it is cold outside and because the studio isn't used over the winter, the studio becomes the stopping point for things that should go out to the trailer for recycling or on to goodwill.

I will have to reclaim the studio for art before the summer, however, since I am having people visit for the Larson Gallery's Tour of Artists' Homes and Studios on May 18. Luckily spring break comes before the tour. Also, my mom has offered to help us get the house ready for the tour. I'm hoping to clean the studio over spring break and install some of my wall piece in the house. Then spread the serious cleaning out over several weeks. No one in their right mind would plan to clean ahead of time when living with a five-year-old--at least not if they planned for the place to stay clean.

Ooishi Pod--detail

After an enjoyable afternoon in Ellenburg with visits to old favorites Gallery One, Sugar Thai (please move to Yakima) and the Children's Activity Museum, my daughter and I stopped by Bailey's Biblilomania Books because my mother-in-law's dog's name is Bailey. I was impressed with the variety of books, especially since they had more than one shelf of art books and they had at least three clay books. Even Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle only had books on polymer clay. But more than the selection, I was impressed with the fact that the owner had set up a coloring table with coloring pages. This was the first time since my daughter could walk that I was able to look at as many books as I wanted when she was with me.

We took the Canyon Road home because it was a beautiful sunny day--sorry family in the Midwest and East coast. People were out fishing and watching the hawks and big horn sheep. I even saw a heron fly overhead.

When we got back I packed up a piece to send to Woodstock. The piece will be in a juried show, Women's Works, at the Old Courthouse Arts Center in Woodstock, IL. The website is pretty vague on information but the show runs March 7 through April 28 with a reception from 7-9 on March 16. I won't be able to go, but perhaps folks I know in the midwest will be down that way. I would post hours, but based on the outdated state of the Old Courthouse Gallery website, I wouldn't trust the times anyway.

Ooishi Pod (currently en route to Illinois)

Now that my inventory is back home, I guess its either time to enter some more shows or find shelf space in my studio until May.

Opening Receptions This Week

I'm exhausted. This was the first week of classes and I've already been to three opening receptions on Thursday and Friday with one more on, Saturday. I was hoping to post wonderful new pictures of my installation in Ellensburg but I really need to get in there with a tripod and an empty gallery. The opening reception was too busy to take good images.  

Yakima River Diaries

my installation piece

The exhibition at the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery in Ellensburg had a nice write-up in the Yakima Herald this morning. They included only four pictures and a short video of Nickolus Meisel installing his work, but still it's nice to have press. I am mentioned and without any inaccuracies, so that's nice.

The show is up through Feb 8. The card indicates that the gallery is open weekdays 10-3 and weekends 1-4. I am going to try to go up again this weekend with a tripod to get good images.

   

my newest work (finished a week ago)

work from this summer (at Yakima River Diaries)

Voices of the River
After the reception at the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery most everyone walked over to the Museum of Culture and Environment to see the related exhibition, Voices of the River. The curator of "Yakima River Diaries" had installed a replica salmon stream in the lobby of the museum and had orchestrated a procession of wooden fish and children with balloons to walk over to the museum from the art gallery.



Abaya and Beyond
Larson Gallery in Yakima hosted a reception for its first show of 2013, Abaya and Beyond. The artist, Dr. Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield, taught art to women in Kuwait for five years and the paintings and photographs in the gallery are mostly from her time there.

It was a bit of a rough exhibition for her. On the way back from Kuwait to the US her box of paintings was run-through with a forklift, damaging frames and glass and ripping through canvas. She has spent at least the last year repairing the damage in anticipation of the show. Then, just a week ago she fell, managing to break one foot and the other leg. She was at the reception in a wheel chair with both legs held straight in front of her in casts.

"My Student" by Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield

Emerging Artists Exhibit
The exhibition I haven't gotten to yet this weekend is the Emerging Artists Exhibit at Allied Arts of Yakima. This exhibition opens Saturday (today) from 11-3pm. I don't know most of the artists, though yesterday I was disappointed to hear that they aren't local artists. I saw the call for entries a few months ago but it was unclear what Allied Arts meant by "emerging artist." As far as I could tell from the prospectus, I could apply. But I certainly don't consider myself an emerging artist in this community.

The Yakima Herald Republic also gave this exhibition some press earlier in the week.

Yakima River Diaries

Before Christmas I installed some work for an upcoming show. Yakima River Diaries opens January 10, 2013 with a reception at 4pm (yes, that is a Thursday afternoon). The show will be in the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University. The show features artists whose work relates to water and specifically to the Yakima River. The other artists are John Clymer, Robert Fisher, Justin Gibbens, Anna Hoover, Louis Kollmeyer, Cynthia Krieble, Nickolus Meisel, Greg Pierce and Derek Young. There will be an associated exhibition at the Museum on they CWU campus.

I haven't seen any of the other work yet, as I was the first to install. I believe the other work will be installed during the first week of January (this week). I do know several of the artists and am familiar with others with the work of others. Bob Fisher teaches drawing and painting at Yakima Valley Community College with me. Greg Pierce is a ceramic instructor at Columbia Basin Community College and I have a print (of the Tieton River Canyon) by Justin Gibbens in my dining room.

My section of the gallery. We moved the TV.

The show is set up so that each artist is in a different section of the gallery. Bob Fisher's work will apparently be in a temporary room built for the show. When I was at the gallery his room was in the process of being built and painted. 

Unfortunately when I was there to install my work the light was not great. My area was actually quite dark, but the curator and gallery staff will set up the lights before the show opens. I was able to install my work, though the lack of light made it a little tricky to determine color relationships in the installation. When I looked at my photos later I realized that the existing lighting made my photos look indistinct and dull.

My installation work laid out as I began to plan the installation.

Before I got to the gallery, I knew I was going to put up an installation on the wall similar to my installation last year at Larson Gallery, but I didn't have a great sense of the gallery space until I arrived.
I brought all the work I still have from the Kekino installation in the "From the Ground Up" show last winter as well as some pieces I made this summer. I sold several pieces from the previous installation but, anticipating that I would make a similar installation eventually, I made a few new pieces designed to hang on the wall. I was asked to participate in the "Yakima River Diaries" show in October of this year.

"Kekino" installation from February 2012.

When I arrived at the gallery the curator suggested that I might consider wrapping my installation around the corners. Since this sort of flowing arrangement was something I had wanted to try anyway, I took his suggestion and planned my installation accordingly. I discovered, however, that it is harder to plan a bending wall installation than a flat wall installation. Normally I lay my work out on the floor in a similar order to how they will be hung on the wall. It is then just a matter of picking up the work and hanging it vertically in the same arrangement as it was in on the floor.

My work on the floor arranged for installation.

With an installation that comes out at you, it can't just be laid out on the floor because it will bend toward the viewer as it moves onto the second wall surface. It is harder to gauge those sorts of relationships because laid out on the floor doesn't offer that third dimension for planning. I also discovered that the pieces look different when viewed from a 3/4 angle than when viewed from straight on. Though I have photographed my installations from an intense angle, the side view is not the standard view of the work.

This installation moves from wall to wall around the corner.

Despite the lighting and spacial planning challenges, I think I am happy with the finished installation, though I neglected to get a picture of the finished installation. The planning and set up took closer to 5 or 6 hours to complete instead of the 2 or 3 hours I had hoped to spend. I set up and installed work for a while before going for lunch and then I installed for several hours when I returned. It was exhausting in an unusual way, since the actual lifting and hammering wasn't difficult. I felt anxious every time I hammered in a nail or set a piece on a screw. I also felt anxious every time I made a placement decision on the wall. By the end of the day I was getting tired and I forgot to be anxious when hammering in a final nail. As a result of carelessness, I shook a piece loose and it fell and broke on the floor. That was about the time I decided I was done.

This installation relates to the pedestal piece on the right (poorly lit in this photo).

Besides the wall installation, I have some work on pedestals. The pedestals weren't placed or out when I was up there, but I was able to move in one to get a sense of the relationship between my standing pieces and my wall installation. My plan is to go back at the end of this week to bring a few more standing pieces, make some placement decisions and take some pictures.

Packing and Shipping Work

A funny thing happens every time I get ready to do a show. Shortly before the show, as I am planning for it, I start to worry that I don't have enough work or anything worth showing. A day or so before I am to set up or install the show, the worry turns to mild panic. Then I start to pack up the work for the show. And after a while, I realize that I actually do have a lot of work and I start to be more concerned with whether I have enough packing materials or space in the car.

It used to be that I kept an audience for this spectacle. During those times of my life when I didn't have a large enough permanent residence in which to store the work, I would store the work at my parents house and I would voice my worry, panic and relief to my mother. Who would mostly just laugh at me.

Now I keep my work in my studio which isn't nearly as remote or solitary as my parent's basement, though it tends to be colder. Today as I progressed through an accelerated version of worry/panic/relief, my daughter and husband orchestrated a Angry Birds piggie attack on my studio. I had to use a space eagle to save my ceramic eggs.

hide your eggs!

I was packing up work to take to a show up at Central Washington University. Tomorrow I will be installing a version of last winter's "Kekino" installation at the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery. The show, "Yakima River Diaries,"will feature work inspired by water and specifically the Yakima River.

My "Kekino" installation at the "From The Ground Up" Exhbition 2012

SRAM Gears, made this past summer, will be in Bremerton next month

I also have work boxed up to go to Bremerton for "The CVG Show" at Collective Visions Gallery. "The CVG Show" is a juried exhibition. I am shipping my work, which saves me a trip, but it is much more difficult to pack work that will be unpacked and repacked by someone else. If I am driving work up, I tend to pack it more casually.

the top of my sculpture, partially packed

When I am packing work to ship, I liked to double box it so that it is less likely that something will punch through a double layer of cardboard box and break my piece. I also tend to put a layer of some kind of padding between the inner and outer boxes. This provides extra space and extra cushion in case something does poke through. In high school I had an oil pastel drawing at the state art show. It won an award and was subsequently shipped to the national show. Unfortunately, the show shipped there and back and I didn't have any contact with the piece or control of how it was handled. When it was returned to my parents house, I was there to accept it. The delivery man came to the back door and handed me a wide, thin cardboard box with a hole in it. We repaired the drawing, but I was not impressed. 

labeled unpacking directions for the top of my sculpture

This particular show banned packing peanuts as a packing material for shipped work. I used pieces of foam and egg cartons to cushion and support the piece and keep it from moving around inside the box. The bike part pieces are harder to ship than my usual work because they have more bits sticking out of them. I had to cut a space in some of the support foam for the largest gear to fit. I also taped the foam pieces to the box so that the work could (hopefully) be repacked to be shipped back to me.

foam taped on lid of interior box so that it is easy to open, unpack and repack

To take my work up to Ellensburg where I will unpack it, I've just wrapped each piece in a towel and stacked them in a couple laundry baskets.