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| my installation at YVC |
Over spring break I installed some of my work at YVC. This work is in the hall of the faculty office area in the art building. I also have some sculptures in the front office area and plan to put up another wall installation elsewhere in the office area when I have the time.
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| Chris Otten's photography in the office area in our building |
The
Yakima art faculty requested this permission from YVC's new interim president earlier this year. The main halls in the building have built in display cabinets and temporary display walls for student work, as well as a large permanent mural painting and the etched glass and cement of the front entryway, but the halls of the faculty area have always been very plain. We wanted an opportunity to have the visual arts faculty have our work up (and somewhat protected) as both a pedagogical tool, and just to make the space more interesting.
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| Our office hallway waiting for more work from Kayo |
Chris and I installed work over break and Kayo plans to install hers in the summer, which may be when I put up my other work. It's nice to be able to show the students what we do in our own work, since during class that's not our focus, nor do we usually have the time or setup to do so. However, I already know that I can use some of my pieces as reference for students who are asking about more complicated or just less routine techniques or surfaces.
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| these paper templates help me "quickly" apply the grid to the wall |
I've done this format of installation before:
10 rows and 10 columns of bulbs in a grid. I already had the grid planning paper ready to go, so I used that, but later learned that the lowest part of the installation might be in the way for the carpet cleaner, so I have an email in to facilities asking whether they'd like me to adjust the installation to be
higher and shorter (but longer).
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| My bulbs and other stuff on the wall at home |
When I went to install the work I was surprised to discover that I didn't really have a lot of extra pieces. I grabbed several boxes of bulbs from storage in my house, but when I got to school, I realized that some of my
resist or
politics bulbs were perhaps a little
too political to install at work. I ended up pulling work from the wall install at home to use at school.
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| close up of the bulbs at YVC |
The wall installation at school now has
abstract bulbs,
chemo port bulbs, and some of the bulbs from the resist series that consisted simply of the
text of the first ammendment and the constitution. When I got back home, I put up the too-political bulbs, as well as some that I don't like as much, but the home installation has had to be filled out with other hanging work that wasn't originally conceived of as part of this install.
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| new bulbs in the kiln before firing |
With a bunch of ideas bouncing around my head, not a ton of uninterrupted time to spend in the studio during the quarter, and with knowledge that 100 of my best bulbs are at school now, I've been spending the bulk of my home studio time making news.
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| new spiky bulb with sesame seed texture |
I've entirely lost track of how many bulbs I've made this year. I have about 8 on the shelf in my studio and a handful more in progress, but I've been loading work into a bisqe kiln at home for at least a month. I was originally thinking I had enough to fire, but when I loaded, I realized I had more space and some work drying in the studio, so I decided to wait for that. Once those pieces were dry, I had a few more nearly ready, so I wanted for those. I repeated this cycle an least 5 times, until I'd used all my kiln shelves.
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| new bulb waiting to be fired |
I fired the work yesterday and I know from the view from the top that there are at least 15 pieces in the kiln (because I can see them), but it will be a big surprise this evening or tomorrow when I unload at discover how many pieces I need to glaze and finish. In fact, yesterday I boxed up a bunch of functional work to put in storage where the bulbs had been because I know I'm going to need more shelf space for storing these pieces while I glaze them.
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| new bulb made from extruded cylinders |
