Vacation

I just returned from a weeks vacation in Minnesota with my family, my parents and my sister and her family. It had all of the components that seem to be typical of our vacations since having kids; playing on the beach, swimming in the pool, playground fun and vomitting. Oh the joys of vacationing with small children. Why is it that the kids will go for a whole year without stomach upset, but shortly after we leave the comforts of home they begin to throw up?

The other 90% of vacation really was fun thankfully. We went fishing, built sandcastles, swam in the pool every single day and even walked across the Mississippi River.

Now, it's back to work . . .

Hidatsa Shield Figure Pair

Hidatsa Shield Figure Bean Pair

27 7/8 x 12 1/2 x 1 5/8"

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Since I use recycled wood for the mounts I expect a certain number of flaws or deformities in the wood. In fact I often really like them as features in my work and I try not to alter them. Sometimes however, there is a certain imperfection that is too distracting to the painting. In this case there were two old nail holes that lined up with the beans in a way that I felt drew one's eye away from the subject. So I made an exception and filled the two holes with wood filler and inpainted them and once again enjoyed the intersection of my objects conservation training and the creation of my own artwork. 

With fills, before inpainting

After inpainting 

Before inpainting

After inpainting

Brewed Awakenings

http://www.brewedcr.com/

Early this morning I hung four paintings at Brewed Awakenings (1271 First Ave SE), my favorite locally owned coffee house. I believe that my artwork fits in well there because it's all about food really and recycled materials. Brewed Awakenings tries to serve food that is homemade, was procured locally and is often organic, and some of it is actually grown in local gardens. It can't get much better than that. In addition, their coffee is fantastic!

So go enjoy some delicious coffee, or my favorite, a chai tea latte (iced or hot) and check them out.

Sprouted Sweet Corn 2

Sprouted Sweet Corn 2

10 9/16 x 9 7/8 x 1 1/4"
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This painting is oil pastel on gessoed steel siding. The back of the mount is made from a random board that I recovered from our property with the crumbling house on it. The frame is made from the painted wood siding on the house. 

To ensure that the aged, cracked yellow paint would stay on the wood through the mounting process and beyond I consolidated it with a dilute solution of fish glue. I love using conservation techniques on art that I am actually creating and consolidating flaking paint is among my favorite techniques that I learned as an objects conservator. It is so satisfying to take something that is fragile and cannot be moved around without fear of losing material and then stabilize it, making it worthy of use or display again. That also happens to be what I love about this series of paintings as well. It feels wonderful to take materials that would otherwise be disposed of and then make something that I really enjoy looking at. 

Our house and garden

When we were looking for a house in Iowa I had two hopes. One was space for a studio in case I should have a chance to do some private objects conservation work or time to work on my own paintings. The other was that it have a big enough yard with lots of sunlight so that my kids could run and I could plant a garden. We looked at a handful of houses in one weekend and picked one to move into as soon as we could. We didn't expect it to be perfect, but it has wound up being perfect for me and my family. I love it.

It is an old house on an old side of town in a neighborhood that is full of very tall, old trees. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but inside it feels warm, and cozy on cold winter's night next to the roaring fire or breezy and cool on a midsummer's day. The front of the house faces west and when there are no leaves on the trees and the sun is about to slip below the horizon line the sunlight streams in, lighting up our living room and dining room and making spectacular patterns on the walls.

 In this house I am fortunate enough to have a small studio on the second floor with a lot of windows that overlook the garden we put in in the backyard. Pictures of the studio will have to wait until it is clean one day. For the time being it is full of stacks of materials that I plan to use in some way, books and interesting papers and the random kid items that migrate into any open space in the house. 

My garden in the backyard isn't as big as I would like, but it is large enough to grow several tall tomato plants each year, lettuces, peas, beans, sweet corn and one of my favorite summer vegetables, zucchini. This year I'm also going to try for cucumbers and sweet peppers. So far I only have sweet peas and lettuces started and a few tomato plants are being hardened off right now, but I'll post a few of my favorite close up pics from previous years. My garden fuels my creativity all year round these days since I am always working with seeds in some capacity and dreaming about fresh, delicious fruits and vegetables as a result. 

Bush Bean

Sweet Pea

Tomato Blossoms

Zucchini

Blue Lake Bush Bean

Hidatsa Shield Figure Bean 1

Hidatsa Shield Figure Bean 1

11 9/16 x 12 3/8 x 1 3/8"
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I love the Hidatsa Shield Figure Bean. It gets its name from the Hidatsa American Indians of the Missouri River Valley of North Dakota. It is a very productive dry bean that was traditionally planted with corn and squash. I stumbled upon it last year and planted a few with my sweet corn, but they were unfortunately devoured by rabbits before they could grow very big. I plan on trying another crop this year with a sturdy fence in place. I love this planting technique that lets each plant support the next in line. The roots of the beans fix nitrogen in the soil which the roots of the corn consume, the corn provides the beans with a stalk to climb and the squash shades out the weeds, allowing the corn and beans to grow with less competition. 

This bean was drawn with oil pastel on gessoed steel siding and mounted on a frame made from lath boards recovered from our dining room ceiling. This photo really shows off the texture of the siding. The mount was made with the help of a portable planar that was pure heaven to work with. 

Sprouted Sweet Pea 1

Sprouted Sweet Pea 1

(The Dancer)

13 3/4 x 13 1/2 x 1 7/8"
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This sweet pea was drawn with oil pastels on steel siding. I mounted the steel siding to a frame made from recycled wood. The back of the mount was made with three boards from a pallet, the "matte" is lath board that I saved five years ago when took down the old ceiling in our dining room and put in dry wall, and the side of the mount is wood from an old thrown out crate. Sanding it down to the appropriate finish took hours and hours and was definitely a labor of love. Thankfully, we have recently acquired a planar on long term loan and using it is like working magic after having completed this mount entirely by hand.

I call this painting "The Dancer" because every time I look at it I think of a dancer doing an arabesque - a ballet position in which the dancer stands on one leg and extends the other leg behind while holding one arm up and one to the side. I envision the root and stem twisting and turning as they journey toward their destination.