Discussing the work with my art-savvy granddaughters
50+ artists, each producing 50 small works (6×6 inches) in 50 days
As the wall signage announcesDramatic angle of 49 of the 50
I’m still processing the experience, unfolding in successive waves. So much goodness and delight. The show runs for a month, and I’m signed up for weekly gallery sitting shifts, which means getting to study/enjoy all the works in depth, and meet and talk with artists and gallery goers (and assist them with their purchases). If you’re in the SF Bay Area, come by! (Sanchez Art Center welcomes visitors at no charge; galleries are open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1–5 pm, through October 5. )
Memory of a Grid. Posca dots and punch-cut asterisks, painted tissue paper, found paper, 10×10 inches
I’m learning to come back to a piece and listen.
These are offcuts from a later collage, and proved to be missing parts for the Grid Memory composition. See if you can spot them in the finished piece! Also beautiful in their own right.This one, made in early October, was a surprise winter holiday card, 4.5 x 6 inches
I was getting frustrated with my results and overwhelmed with choices working at larger sizes. I found freedom in smaller sizes and more rapid iteration.
Snippet. Screen-printed/painted tissue papers, 5 x 7 inches
And I also found freedom and joy in slicing up the larger unsuccessful pieces for the smaller compositions, like this snippet. It’s empowering to deconstruct a work that’s just not. Or just throwing! it! away!
Crazy, beautiful collage cat Maxine (actual photograph, not a collage, real cat)
(Just realized there’s not nearly enough cat pictures in this post)
Cheers to you all, and best of vision in all your endeavors
Thanks for reading along and feeling my pain in adult learning and artistic expression. May your winter holidays be loving and bright, full of good coffee and rational and/or goofy conversation and companionship. 2025 coming right up!
The entrance to the Sea House Leadlights office is up a few stairs and across the deck to the left of the fireplace. A set of leaded glass doors opens into a snug but functional design studio.
Details: Terra cotta pot by Braxton Payne. Basswood deck and siding stained with Minwax Classic Gray. Pumpkins made from tissue paper and thread. Boulders sculpted from air dry clay painted with acrylic washes and sealed with ultra matte varnish. All succulents, yucca and other plants hand colored with W&N Promarkers. Many are prototypes; some available as kits at Modern Miniature Succulents + Sundries.)
Desk and bulletin board
Beneath the half-loft a large tabletop desk has plenty of room to roll out plans and inspiration. Low built-in cabinets with black leather cushions provide more seating, storage and level surfaces for tea trays.
Details: The ceiling lights are 12V modified for warm white LEDs. Bulletin board is made from cork sheet framed with basswood stained to match. Sketchbooks made from my kits at MMS+S. Various meaningful artifacts including original leaded glass designs for other Sea House buildings, and a drawing of a cat by my then 4-year old daughter. Fèves, prized vintage Monopoly shoe, and an anodized earring from the 1980s.
The white-washed brick loft stores window frames, tools, Sea House memorabilia and miscellaneous treasure — as well as the switch (lift the black basket) and battery pack (hidden in a custom box) for the LED lights.
A gazebo-style roof welcomes natural light. (I’ll detail more of that happy construction in another post.) I made the 1:144 scale basswood model of the source kit for the original Sea House Pavilion, built some years ago. The Egyptian cat is a porcelain fève. Best of all is the vibrant painting by Jim Tracey that commands the studio — also another post.
Finally, of course, Scarlett. Here she has somehow managed to fluidly infiltrate an impossibly small entrance to the Sea House Sea Rise Pavilion loft (my ongoing remodel of the original 2013 build.) I swear she does these things just to remind me she can.
Part of the back wall of the Sea House Leadlights design studio
The back wall of the Sea House Leadlights design studio is about utility and remembrance. There’s a water spigot and old brick patio remnant for transplanting yucca and succulents. A faded advertising poster from nearby attractions survives on the wall, as does a longhorn cow skull from ranch days.
(Details: Brick wall grouted with tinted spackling paste and aged with muddy gray acrylic wash. Garden tools by Sir Thomas Thumb. Terra cotta pot by Braxton Payne. Basswood siding stained with Minwax Classic Gray. Foundation made from styrofoam, detailed here. Cow skull is resin, aged with Winsor & Newton Promarkers. Boulders sculpted from air dry clay painted in several acrylic washes and sealed with ultra matte varnish. All succulents, yucca and other plants hand colored with W&N Promarkers. Many are prototypes; some available as kits at Modern Miniature Succulents + Sundries.)
Who is this?
A vintage collection of gnomic being fèves populates the succulent understory. I tried to match their colors with the foliage, as they prefer to blend in. This guy is far more camouflaged in the final build, rest assured.
And, no. Never say never, and never ever compromise your instincts. This is my younger granddaughter Ruby, when somebody told her NO. She is two years old, approaching three. Know your truth.
I am not going to meet the HBS bloggers build deadline for September 26, 2016, and I am using cute kitten photos to distract from my mingled sense of failure, regret and self loathing.
I *have* met all my work and all most of my volunteer deadlines.
Feel free to judge me, but look at my belly first :)
Though I will continue — and finish — the build, I’m more than a bit scattered and distracted with other projects.
I’ve been exploring a system of geometric patterns in both my professional and personal work for a little while now. This is the background, composed in Illustrator at one-quarter scale, for a new piece.
After penciling in the three-inch grid on a 36 by 24-inch (61 x 94 cm) stretched canvas, I used a compass and straight edge to transfer the background design. Then it was a happy trip down old-school graphic design production memory lane as I wielded eighth-inch (3 mm) black crepe line tape to sketch out the shapes.
I used shades of white, warm gray, brown and green acrylic for the underpainting.
After adding a thin ivory wash and letting that dry, I pulled off the black tape. I’ll now add… other background stuff, and paints, and determine what final hue and value of gray to re-stripe (by brush) the outlines. Although I have some definite intentions, as usual, I’m making it up as I go along.
Work is underway on a new mixed media piece, large (for me) at 24 by 36 inches (61 x 91 cm). These letters are about 2.5 inches tall (64 mm) and being cut from foamcore.
Poppy the Fairy is being kept busy with her correspondence. These are two accordion books, meant for Ava and Aria to embellish, made from watercolor paper and simple punched shapes. That’s Poppy’s new sigil.
… As well as Ava’s name rendered in triangles, and another tiny sketchbook for Lynnie (at proper 1:12 scale). Her’s from last week was, um, appropriated by her associates :)
This week, Poppy made a two-inch square book to answer some of the girls’ questions: Can you do ballet, like me? Do you eat snacks? Tucked into the reply scroll are California poppy seed pods, because one of the things fairies do is gather seeds.
Inside the book are quick ink and watercolor illustrations with text. Here are a few of the pages, listing some of the things fairies do:
I can perhaps see a series, as my understanding of the fay way grows :)
Maddie Lou spent the weekend with us as her parents enjoyed a night in the City to celebrate their anniversary. Here’s Maddie working on a surprising and spontaneous new deployment of her beloved magnetic blocks in the sun room.
The final arrangement. Can you tell her favorite color is blue?
We had house guests for the weekend. Here you see a SW Ep.VII Stormtrooper encounter a San Francisco summer, much to the delight of her more acclimated traveling companion. The reflection in the giant TV is our foggy Pacifica sunset, with powerlines.
Poppy the Fairy was welcomed back from her nine-sleep vacay with drawings and correspondence from Ava and Aria (and Lynnie). In this drawing we see Ava and Aria and her parents, as well as the Fairy Mail box, with Poppy peeking out. I believe the green squiggles represent the recent landscaping, and a purple heart encircles them all.
Poppy is collecting her/his thoughts for response. (Ava is convinced Poppy is a boy.)
I signed the back of the plastics collage with these, um, economical but not un-fabulous “unfinished wood letters & numbers” from Creatology™, which I think is a brand from the Michael’s crapstores.
Some of the drillings and and nail insertions into the quarter-inch frame for the Plastic Litter Collage were regrettably less than expert, so I am embracing the concept of fuckedup recycled materials, and will further intentionally distress — but not too much! — the frame, as I sand and paint, sand and paint, sand and paint.
I added quarter- by half-inch pine to the back edge of the thin plywood base to stabilize it and add more surface area to attach the frame to. The plywood itself is salvaged from the crates I built to ship my builds when I moved three years ago :)
After painting the inside frame pieces with two coats of semigloss latex, I cut the two-inch ply lengths to fit and glued them on the base, butting the corners. I used binder clips to hold the frame to the pine strips and a flexible strap corner clamp thingie to hold the frame square while the glue dried. A first coat of paint dries with Albie’s supervision. Tomorrow I’ll tap in tiny nails to secure it all, then fill the holes, sand and paint, sand and paint, sand and paint. And hopefully this weekend I’ll have collected more plastic to call it done.
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