Gathering Branches

A Shift in the Season

2012-02-26T13:06:00.000-08:00

As I get farther into this "being an artist" thing, I am constantly surprised by how this job is so much more about the Journey, than the results. The final product does matter, and I have become completely addicted to finishing stuff, but it's the knowledge that I gain and the self control that comes from following something through all the way to the bitter end that makes me more than I was before, not so much the piece itself.

That said, this week I hope to package up and deliver a piece I have worked on over the course of the two years of my professional career. It started as something completely different than it ended up being, and that was part of the fun. About 3 falls ago, I got really obsessed with recreating the colors and patterns of the fall leaves. For those of you in the West, take your sunsets in all their glory and variety, and squish them into little bits of tree lying all over the ground below you and all in the trees above you. That's kinda what a good fall out here in Virginia is like. Magic.

Anyway, leaves. I started drawing leaves. And I was thinking about trying my hand at art as a career, so I thought "What can I do with leaves?" I was doing a lot of scrapbooking at the time, so I thought, "hmmm, can scrapbooking be art?"

and produced this lovely little gem. Even I had to admit, "Um.....scrapbooking and art? Not so much....."

Undaunted, I tried a few other things. I pulled out my pastels and started fooling around, trying to see if I could make something that captured the beauty of these leaves. And suceeded.....But that's another story.

I kept going back to the idea of a multi panelled piece that captured the full range of beauty during the fall. Somehow I came up with the idea of doing a tryptic; three large pieces, showing the same tree at three different stages of the fall. It was going to be all about time passing, three different times of the day, (morning, noon and sunset), a close-up leaf aging while the full tree's leaves brightened, aged, and blew away, finishing with the peace of early November. I'd tell people about it, and their first comment would always be "Where are you going to put it?" Rather deflating to a newly minted artist.

In late October, 2009, I started the first section, "Morning, mid-October", and immediately realized how much harder this was going to be than originally planned. I had planned on using scrapbook paper to do the leaves with. But there was one problem.....None if it was bright enough. Not even close. So I had to paint the paper to make the leaves with myself. I used acrylic craft paint, because I had it and just gently swirled the oranges and reds and greens and golds together, without really blending them. Then I used a leaf shaped punch to make the leaf shapes. The size of the punched leaves set the scale for the rest of the elements in the picture.

Then there was the issue of what the tree should be made of. I found the perfect thing in hand made paper at Plaza Art Supplies. A nice, chunky, grey brown paper with lots of plant bits in it. The grass proved a bit more challenging. I couldn't find the right green. So I bought a bunch of not right greens to see if I could make it work. By now the piece looked something like this:

Notice the large leaf, on the left. At this point, I had made templates of both the tree and the larger leaf, so I could use the same form in all three pieces. Here is another pic once I had added the grass "hill":

The long weird thing that looks like a giant root is actually a piece of another green I was playing around with using. I can't even remember what I was thinking with that one. The sky is done in soft pastel with soft blues, yellows and some red, and I actually wrote down the formula, a move that proved completely prophetic when I had to recreate the color and texture exactly 2 years later. It was about this point, I think, when I realized that 3 panels was never going to happen. I also realized that I hated the color of the grass. And that the large leaf looked weirdly out of scale with the rest of the piece. This was about 3 months after starting the piece.

So I scrapped the idea of the tryptic and went with a single piece depicting that moment when the wind comes and sweeps the better part of the leaves off the tree in one mighty gust. (Well, it's really a mighty night of gusting, but I didn't have that kind of time or range yet) I changed the dark green grass to light green and then made about 10 million more leaves. At some point it dawned on me that I needed to visually represent the wind. I had this great plan to use glass beads and went out to buy them. I can home all excited, sat down, stared at the picture and realized that I had no idea what the wind looked like. This problem actually stumped me for an entire year. There was nothing for it, so I packed up the tree and went about my regularly scheduled life.

Fast forward to the end of fall 2010: I am driving towards the stop sign at the top of my street, and boom! I see it! The wind showed me what it looks like. I had been watching the entire fall and had figured out that it blew in spirals. What this gust showed me was it was lots of little spirals, all happening simultaneously, yet independently. Now I knew exactly what to do. I pulled out "the tree", as I had started to call it, got out my disposal-chewed baby food spoon, my tweezers, and my acrylic gel medium, and got to work. 1 hour at a time is all the time someone should ever spend holding a single glass seed bead in their tweezers, diping it in a spoonful of gel adhesive, and then placing it oh, so carefully on a piece of pastel covered watercolor paper. My husband came into the studio one day while I was working on the wind and said, "That just looks painstaking!" I assured him it was, but I liked doing it...for an hour. The results were exactly what I had hoped:

Implied motion. I almost wept, I was so happy. Oh and in this picture you can see another happy accident, the texture in the glass. I had gotten blue pastel on the "grass" with the side of my hand, so I tried to erase it. All it did was wad up the paper. I got really upset for a second, then I stopped and just looked at it. It had the look of grass in the wind. I yelled out happily and proceeded to "erase" the entire hill. I love the results. So much more motion. I think I "finished" the piece in January of 2011. Here is the piece at that point:

I truly thought I was done and had started wishing I had the money to have it framed. This was going to be a rather expensive venture as I had to use a frame deep enough to accomodate the the beads and the leaves that stood off that paper. (I had figured out along the way how to bend them to give as sense of even more motion):

As 18 x 24 in custom shadowboxes run in the $300 range, it was in my best interest to find another solution. So the finished piece, now called "A Shift in the Season," courtesy of my clever mother, went back up on the wall to wait.

Serendipity found me one day when I was at a local thrift shop. I turned over a large, promising-looking wooden frame, so see that it was the perfect size. On the back was written "18 x 24." I almost passed out. It was the right color and nicely rustic. Solid wood lends itself nicely the being made into a shadowbox. I tentatively looked at the price tag....Surely Fate couldn't have favored me this much.......and it was marked at $12, and then marked down 50% from there. $6? Are you kidding me? SOLD!

I knew it was meant to be when I set it on the picture. The brown of the frame is identical to the bark of the tree. I am totally not kidding.

I had to wait until Feb 2012 to figure out how to bring it all together. My "simple" (cough, cough) solution was to put spacer bars along the inner edges of the frame, thus creating the distance from the glass required to not squish the beads and leaves. I bought the spacers and layed everything out. It looked pretty, but a little flat. Then I got a vision of What It Could Be. Beware of these visions. They do lead to beautiful things, but there is ALWAYS a cost. (Usually in the neighborhood of blood, sweat and tears.) My vision involved extending the image up onto the spacers, the leaves, grass, tree, everything. So I merrily got to work. I sanded and pasteled and papered. It was going great. Then I realized what adding the leaves was going to entail. It had to be exactly centered. I had to cut the leaves off with an exacto knife to put them on the spacer and .......Well, let's just say I made it about 10 mintues until I was sobbing with the difficulty of it all.

It was not my favorite week.The side bars were too thin and had to be redone and then resized. Every minute "leafing" was tense until I finished the spacers. But I did it. And it's lovely. In fact it's so lovely that when I finished it and layed everything out together in the frame, I cried uncontrollably for a while. Two years......and it WORKED!

As much trouble as it caused me, "the vision" was right. Having the image extend onto the spacers gives it a sense of three dimensional motion that was lacking before, It is easy to see the leaves coming off the page, which was previously hard to see. You can almost hear the wind whipping through the branches. The difference is amazing, truly amazing.

Here are a few photos from the studio. I can't pick it up and move it into natural light yet, because nothing is attached to each other, so sorry about the flourescent light:

So there you have it. 2 years later. Not what I thought, but something cool just the same.

Adventures in Arcosanti

2012-02-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

So I have to admit I have been a completely lame blogger lately. Something about post-Barn Sale depletion followed by Holiday merriment and much reorganizing of children's rooms. In any case, I did find a bit of time in there to sneak off on a little adventure to Arizona, by myself!, the first week of January.

Now my own little personal escape home wouldn't necessarily suit the purpose of this blog, except for the fact that this particular adventure included a trip to Arcosanti, an artist commune/sustainable city designed by Paolo Soleri and built right into the mountains and gorge walls outside of Prescott. (for more detailed and accurate info check out http://www.arcosanti.org/ ) The people who live here all contribute to the sustaining and building of the complex, as well as trying to help further the mission of Arcosanti. (The central idea Soleri focused on was arcology-a blend of sustainable architecture with a focus on preserving the natural beauty and environment of the building site.) They make the bells that are sold and participate in various construction projects to further expand the structure of the complex. They work in the cafeteria or the library of the foundry or the potting studio to make the art pieces that pay for everything that goes on there. You can sign up for workshops and go live there and contribute yourself, if you like. I am so there once my kids are all busy with their own lives.

Wanna see what it was like?

If your first thought was "huh?," then that makes two of us.

When you drive up, all you see is this dead looking moonscape. You keep wondering if you are in the right place. In fact, you can't really see anything until you are right in front of the complex, as in, you are about to fall in the gorge. But when you get there, it looks like this:

And what about that view? Most of the windows in the entire complex face that view in fact that last shot is taken from the Foundry, where they make the bells. Nothing like pouring hot metal with a view like that. And yes, it is a bit like a fusion of the Jetsons and the Flintstones, just 3D, and way cooler than anything Hanna Barbera could have ever drawn.

Here's a couple more of the grand view from the top ledge of the complex:

Arcosanti is it's own little microcosm. They have common areas, a library, art studios, a performing arts center, greenhouses, a cafeteria, a pool and all kinds of other amenities. There is a ceramics center, as well as a fully functioning foundry where the famous Soleri bells are made by hand. The process Soleri used to make the bells, casting them in sand molds right in the ground, led him to the central principles for the technique he refined into his building construction technique.

Here's the Ceramics Apse:

This is how they cast the ceramic bells. They pour the slip and clay right into holes in the sand. That is what makes the unique and beautiful shapes the bells are famous for.

This is what the bells look like once cast and fired. They will be combined with metal elements and then be made into a mobile-like work of art.

Here is the foundry, where they make the metal parts of the bells. It was so cool here, and I am still mad at myself for not taking a picture with the really hot guy with the dreadlocks and prolific tattoos that was working the forge that day. What was I thinking? Maybe that I am too old for that kind of nonsense. Oh wait, he's there in the bottom corner.....well, I'll just leave all that to your imagination.

See the bells hanging on the rack here? That's what they look like once they've all been strung. Below is the finished product. I think they are so gorgeous!

Here I am with the finished bells. I think the ones next to me were about $300. Out of my budget, but not too bad if you consider that the bells and the workshops are the only source of income for Arcosanti and that they are hand made, one of a kind sculptures. I will always be grateful to my mother's friend who gave me one as a wedding gift. It's not hung up right now, but I pull it out and look at it all the time. Maybe there's space in the studio....

Can't Even Process It Success

2011-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to post ever since Nov 13th (the day after the barn sale closed) but I was just so overwhelmed with the response to the show, that language kinda failed me. I just haven't been able to find the right expression to describe how I feel. Volcanically successful? Insanely successful? Exceeded my wildest dreams successful? In any case, I realized that all I needed to say about the show was "WOW!" and "Thanks so much for coming!"

I am beyond grateful to all the people who were willing to come to someone's house to check out a new little business. And people did come. And they bought many things with delighted looks on their faces. They hung out and ate the samples from our fantastic caterer, Amy Palmer and brought their friends back to show, They enjoyed the environment and appreciated all the work that went into putting the show on. So thanks so much!

I think my favorite part about the show was being able to sell things for budding artists that have no other venue. My reluctant but fabulously talented photographer, Carol Edgell, sold everything. So exciting! My Twigs (the show is called Branches, so I refer to my youth artists as Twigs) also did extremely well. All three of them sold almost everything. I was particularly pleased that the 12 year old who made the hair bows and plans on donating everything she makes to Heifer International (http://www.heifer.com/) gave me 24 bows and sold all but three. She will be able to make an $88 donation. Not too shabby!

Overall, the show's artists donated close to $250, enough to buy a water buffalo in Thailand or the Phillipines. That's super exciting, as that was the little mental goal I had set for the donation level for this show. And who wouldn't want to buy a water buffalo, given the chance?

I know this post is getting kinda long and you want to see the pictures, but I have to give a HUGE shout out to the one person who made the show possible, my admin assistant, Liisa Erickson. This girl worked her tail off behind the scenes. She's a recent college grad who is currently substitute teaching for Fairfax County Schools. She came over once a week for a while and kept me from freaking out- I mean came and did all the data entry and designed all the merchandise tags and did anything else I asked her to, without complaining no matter how boring or onerous the task was. Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to hire someone and just have them come in and do the job right, every single time, no matter what the job is? Liisa's future employer, if you are reading this YOU WANT THIS GIRL TO WORK FOR YOU. Anyway, there is no way I would have been successful pulling things together without her. And she cashiered both days as well. Liisa, you are my hero, girl! Thank you, thank you, thank you, a thousand times, thank you.

And thank you all for coming. For believing in me and my friends. For being curious and asking questions and being excited about our little creations. It really is a scary thing to make something and put it out there at the mercy of the world. So your smiles and warm compliments did us all a mountain of good. And yes......we WILL be doing this again next year. But I won't think about that until March.

And last, but not least, I'd like to thank Zoe for being our unoffical mascot.

Wanna Meet Some of the Other Artists?

2011-10-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

While I am capable of doing many things, putting on a show this size by myself is not one of them. It just takes way too much product to fill a house. Even I don't have that many ideas. Well maybe I do, but I certainly don't have enough hours in the day to bring them all from my imagination and into existence.

There are 20 other artists participating this year. They represent a huge range of mediums and styles, not to mention personalities. We have three young artists, 11 and 12yrs old, two making jewelry, and one making hair accessories. Looking at their products, you'd never guess they were made by people so young. On the other side of the spectrum, we have a life-long artist in her 80's. We have a master quilter making table runners and cloth bowls. We have a single mom who does stained glass and watercolor. Another artist is completely focused on "up-cycling" old items and giving them a completely new life and purpose. We have an engineer who turns wood to relax from the stress of his "real" job, and a landscape designer who also happens to weave beads in her "spare" time. A retired dentist, a labor and delivery nurse, an HR manager for AT&T, a Great Harvest baker.....The diversity is mind boggling. The one thing they all have in common is they have been working their tails off getting a bunch really cool stuff ready for the sale.

A few of them were kind enough to write up a Bio for me. These are their words, not mine. I thought you all might like to hear from someone for a while, kind of like having guest speakers:

Lisanne Milford -Fiber Artist - Primeau

Having spent 25 years working full time and trying to raise 3 sons, I decided to stop pulling my hair and opted out of a "Career". Years have passed, and my boys now prefer not to see me all of the time.....and I grasped that this was a junction where I could pursue activities that make me come alive in a very different way.

Working with my hands and playing with fibers-whether in the form of fabric, yarn, roving, thread, reed, or wood-allow me to create something different, unique, unusual and/or fun. I continue to learn new techniques, try unfamiliar approaches, and use contemporary colors ways. Whether I am knitting, sewing, weaving, or doing needlework, my time is spent creating objects that bring me joy.

As I read before and feel now, "I just want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares. It's a peaceful place to be in life."

Anne Brannam - Jewelry Designer -Casual Penguin Jewelry

Anne Brannam, founder of Casual Penguin Jewelry, has been designing jewelry for more than 5 years. She specializes in semiprecious stones, and likes using Czech glass and Swarovski crystals. Anne lives in Burke, VA and takes care of her boys, two sons and one husband.

Tyler A Kulenguski - Jewelry Designer - Gem Fusion Jewelry

I grew up in a family of artists. My mom was a stained glass artist and my grandmother and great grandmother were painters. My grandfather was a wood worker.

My grandmother gave me a rock tumbler when I was ten. I loved nature and all kinds of rocks that I would put in my tumbler. Early on I became a stained glass artist like my mother, but after children, my love came back to gemstones and working with silver and gold. (Besides, there is no room in my house for a stained glass studio.)

I love creating a unique look to fit a stone or bead, or just to playing with the colors to make something more contemporary. I definitely feel at home with a torch in one hand and pliers in the other.

KC Grey Siebert - Jewelry Designer, Basket Weaver- The Woven Warp

KC Gray Siebert of The Woven Warp has been beading since 2005. The latest craze is her “Not Your Granny’s Eye Catchers” and badge holders. Catch them at Branches and Reunions.

Bob Kahane- Wood Turner - Turnings By Bob

I have been an active member of both the Capital Area Woodturners (CAW) and the American Association of Woodworkers (AAW) for several years. I am a juried artisan at the Artisans United Gallery in Annandale, VA. In addition my works are on display and sale at a number of cigar establishments and retail stores throughout the Northern Virginia and DC area.

I first started turning over twenty years ago. My first project was a cocobolo mallet. I started making pens in 2006. Since then I have made over 400 pens, pencils and other turned projects. My work has received many letters of appreciation from across the country from many satisfied customers and gift recipients.

I started pen making initially to make unique gifts for family and friends. I quickly realized the enjoyment and pleasure of being a pen maker, working with my hands and heart, to create artistic and useful objects out of some of the most beautiful materials in the world. Every pen is a unique design, handcrafted in my studio. Each pen, either of wood or resin, is given over ten progressively finer sanding steps eliminating all scratches and sanding imperfections. Then, a 2-step wax finish is applied that provides protection and a deep glow and pleasurable feel to the pen. The work is finally completed when placed into the gift box and delivered to the customer for their final approval.

I take great care and pride in each pen striving to meet exacting standards of excellence in design, implementation and finish creating a pen that provides great enjoyment and pleasure to its owner for years to come.

OK, see what I mean about a huge variety in personality? They gave me five completely different answers to the same question, "Will you please write a Bio for the show?"

Wow! What a shoot! (Pictures for the 2011 Barn Sale)

2011-10-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

We shot the promotional pictures for the barn sale last Tuesday. It was SO INTENSE! And the pictures turned out AMAZINGLY WELL. But I'll just show you that part later.

So if you know my art, you know that I have a background in photography. It might surprise you then, to learn that I hired Kodi Wright, of Kodi Wright Photography (check out her blog and gallery here: http://kodiwrightphotography.com/ ), to shoot the barn sale pics. In fact, she looked at one of my shadowboxes and said "Why exactly am I here?" Well, frankly folks, there are two answers to that. First, I am WAAAAY to close to this to take my own pictures. And I'm too stressed out and over-arted right now to have the mental space to take good pictures. The second reason is the point of "Gathering" Branches is to promote the artistic growth of artists who working on a professional level, but don't have the space in their life to have art be their primary focus. See? Hiring Kodi suited both purposes. It took stress off me and allowed me in turn to help promote her career. Besides, she put up with me as a roommate in college, back when I was still learning how to be a decent human being. You gotta love anyone who will still talk to you after that, right?

So you wanna see some pictures?

So you guys totally want to come to the sale now, right?

Almost everything we used in the pictures is the actual item for sale.There are a few things shown that may or may not make it into the sale, but that is at the discretion of the individual artist. (For example, the antique pillar and aqua door shown in one of the pics will not be there. They live in my bedroom.) But for the most part, if you see it, it's for sale. Even the cool tea pots and wooden boxes and spools and chairs and tables. Yup folks, it's all for your shopping pleasure.

What the heck is a Barn Sale?

2011-10-17T06:57:00.000-07:00

So I bet a few of you are sitting there, scratching your head thinking "What is a barn sale?" A barn sale usually held in a barn. They happen in the exurbs here- farther out from the city, where there are actually barns. People refinish furniture, sell antiques and vintage house hold items, repurpose or "upcycle" things to have a new purpose. Think Restoration Hardware meets garage sale meets thrift store. Add in a bit of Paris antiques market and a really nice arts and crafts show and you can kinda see what barn sales are all about.

In the barn sales I have been to, each stall usually has a different look, vendor, or color pallet. They're really fun. I have been to two in the DC region. Check out www.chartrueseandco.com . They are in Buckeystown, MD and they wrote the book on throwing a fantastic barn sale. Well there really isn't a book, but you get where I was going with that. (Maybe I should write a book......Nah, more fun barn sale-ing and making art.) OK stop number two for me in actual barn saling was also in MD, but the other direction, towards Annapolis. Check out http://www.thebarnshow.com/ for that one. They aren't as big, but it was just as fun. Both the websites are great for info about when and where the sales are, so go check them out. Oh, I should probably mention that most barn sales are only open every once in a while, like 3 times a year or once a month, so you totally want to check the websites to be sure you don't drive all the way out there on the wrong weekend. That'd be a bummer.

I found out about all these sale through a great article the Washington Post wrote in February about all the barn sales in the DC region. It's a great article and it tells you where all of the true barn sales are around here. Check the article out here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2011/02/09/GA2011020905520.html .

If you are closer to the Aldie/ Leesburg Virginia area, you are in luck because there are a couple of shops there open everyday. Belle Villa is a beautiful store full of refinished vintage furniture and cool architectural salvage. If you are into the french flea market look or the shabby chic thing, you will want to move in. Check them out here: http://bellavilla.nova-antiques.com/ . Another great place nearby is Lucketts Antiques. They have inside shopping and outside shopping. If you are looking for salvage, it is awesome! The website looks pretty lame, but trust me, this one is worth the drive. Here's the link, just so you have the address: http://oldluckettstoreantiques.nova-antiques.com/ And I have heard awesome things about the festivals out there in Aldie and Lucketts. I think they do spring and fall festivals.

So those places were all my inspiration. Actually my adventure buddy Sharon and I were standing in line with bumper to bumper women at the Barn Show in MD and two things occurred to me. First, that this was the perfect type of venue to sell my leaf collages. And second, that I knew how to make EVERYTHING they were selling. On the way home, I looked at her and said "We should do this!" And the idea for Branches: the barn sale without a barn was born.

Getting Started

2011-10-12T18:42:00.001-07:00

I have had several people tell me that I need to start a blog about my art. I have resisted for 2 years, but out of necessity I am caving to peer pressure. So here it is. Now all you people who keeping pestering me to know what I am doing with all the weird stuff I keep telling you about on Facebook, have a place to go and read about all my creations and shows and adventures. Speaking of shows, the reason I am never on Facebook anymore is I am going crazy preparing for my Branches Barn sale. You'll hear me talk about it a lot, as it's all I ever think about right now.

So as far as being an artist goes, I should probably tell you about myself. The best place to read about me as an artist is in an article recently published on Patch.com . They interviewed me in August and came to my basement studio and asked all kinds of questions and let me ramble on about my art-based experiences and philosophies. And they wanted to see everything, absolutely everything I had ever made (at least in recent history) Do you have any idea how awesome it is to able to spend an hour telling a complete stranger everything you can think of about yourself as an artist? It was heaven. Here's the link: http://annandale.patch.com/articles/capturing-the-moment-with-cm-shaw