The Mother and Also the Queen

The Mother and Also the Queen
salvaged wood, paint, vinyl, tea bag papers
15 x 19 inches (diptych)

Diptychs are harder to hang, but I don't care.  I painted this and sanded it so many times, including the layers of paper and vinyl...

Living Here, Living There

Living Here, Living There
salvaged wood, vinyl, paint
12 x 30 inches

Oh, hello, monochrome!  I put so many pieces of vinyl on this my eyes almost crossed.

There's a metal push pin showing through from when the shelf was being leveled in its closet (I presume) and plenty of background peeking out because I painted and sanded the top after completing the vinyl layer.  This was a big turning point for me, allowing the vinyl to lay on top of itself and keeping it monochromatic.  

Big Smoke

Big Smoke
salvaged wood, paint, paper, vinyl
23 x 37 inches

This is two of the shelves put together.  This is one of the largest pieces I've done in any series, and next to some others' work, it's still pretty small.  

The paper (painted and sanded on the right section) is from Kansas Farmer magazine, 1975.

I'm still iffy on the title.  Maybe something like "Burning the Fields" or something.  I feel like I need to keep it in the farmy realm, but not so literal.

Hardy Stock

Hardy Stock
salvaged wood, vinyl, paint
33.5 x 11 inches

The background here is actually the first attempt.  I didn't like it, painted over it, and incorporated it into the much improved final version.  

Broad are thy Skies

Broad Are Thy Skies
salvaged wood, paint, vinyl
12 x 35 inches

More shelving from the apartment find.  I was reading a book of Kansas poems, and many of the titles in the series came from lines or phrases pulled from those old poems.  (The book was published in the 1920s.)

Blue Helmet

Blue Helmet
salvaged wood, tea bag papers, paint, vinyl
11.5 x 17 inches

I love tea.  Might as well use every part of my obsession in my work, right?  I glued nine tea bag papers to the salvaged wood before painting and sanding.  After I added the vinyl I sanded that, too.  You can see the edges of the papers making a squarish design, ghosting through the top material.

Crashing Wheat

Crashing Wheat
salvaged wood, paint, vinyl
11.5 x 17 inches

This is one of the first I made in this series.  The wood came from shelving pulled from an apartment complex on the Plaza that was being demolished.  I painted the background and sanded it before the paint had set, so it pilled up and showed the original paint underneath.  You can also see the layers of paint added by the original inhabitants of the building along the edge where it met the shelving support.  Another time-traveling collaboration!

Prairie Wind

Prairie Wind
salvaged wood, vinyl, paint, 1970s pattern paper
11 x 17 inches

Welcome to a series I worked on last year that I haven't shared here on the blog...or in real life too many places, either.  I went on a collecting frenzy of found wood and wanted to go abstract, like some of my larger clocks, but...not clocks.  Lately I've been thinking about this technique (hand cut vinyl, individually placed) and wanting to revisit it.  The most common advice I get from artists is to GO BIGGER.  It's scary, because you use up time and material and what if it doesn't sell?  (Likely.)  Well, you made art, you big baby, be grateful!

Not Watching

Not Watching
found wood, wallpaper, paint, vinyl
20 x 26 inches

Is she really not watching?  Or maybe she wants you to think that.

Dumpster Delights

It probably doesn't surprise anyone that if I see a Dumpster (or just a pile of stuff on a curb) I rubber-neck to a dangerous degree.  If I'm biking, I'll stand up on my pedals or just jump right in with my helmet still on.  Generally, if there's anything good in there, I huff it home, grab the truck, and bee-line it back to the honey hole...with gloves, if I remember.

This summer and fall proved quite fruitful for all things Dumpster and curbside.  My shed is already really packed, but that doesn't stop me!  I took some booty pics of my adventures, but not all of them.

After hitting two INCREDIBLE Dumpsters on Holmes.  One was full of clean pieces of
MDF, the other had lots of dirty pieces of wood from a bathroom tear-out and porch demo,
along with adorable picket fence posts and even a boardgame.

Look at this beautiful chippy porch ceiling!

Cut down pieces of the picket fence for small lady faces

From an alley near 31st and Cherry...more clean lumber and plywood!

From 33rd and Troost.  A brick building was getting demolished and there was lots
of loose, wrecked lumber everywhere.  These pieces had the best story with
nicks and paint, so home they came.

And tonight in Mission, Kansas, I took an early turn  on my way to my cousin's house
and found a Dumpster FULL OF PERFECTLY GOOD STERILITE BOXES.  WITH LIDS!!

They're a little grimey but I can deal with that.

I didn't get pictures of the great group of stuff I found in a Dumpster in Janssen Place (the super fancy sub division in the middle of my 'hood with $1M+ mansions), but it included 500 Kodak slides from the 1960s, interesting household things and planters, and some homemade drawers/boxes that I was able to break down and use in my art as backgrounds.  The neighbors walking by were happy I was recycling and thought someone was cleaning out a basement.  Fine by me!

I also got a truckload of lumber from a rehab near 36th and Cherry that included super long-ass boards and pieces of a burned garage.

Square One studio at 31st and Holmes occasionally puts out free wood and MDF panels under a big sign that says "FREE WOOD" and I hit the mother lode this summer.  I could barely get all the 4 x 8 foot pieces in the truck, especially since I now have the camper shell.  I only took what I could lift myself, but that was about 8 whole panels that I had to break down into four pieces each before I could fit them in my shed.  This is what my desk clocks are made of and I have enough material to last a lifetime now!

Oh!  Almost forgot the pile of wood and metal rods at Armour and Holmes that I walked back to my house on top of my head (don't do that, even a few blocks will mess you UP!) and the neighbor who gave me his entire 100+ year old staircase (with risers!).  

Right place, right time.  I do regret that I couldn't get back to an apartment building that my friend used to live in at McGee and 41st that was getting razed, but you have to triage your time, and I was on my way to Omaha.

A Sterilite box saved is a Sterilite box earned!

Big Things Are Happening...

I've been making BIG CLOCKS.

30 inch diameter; weighs 5 lbs.

All hand-cut salvaged vinyl, naturally!  And sanded aluminum behind.

24 x 24 inches; probably weighs about 5 lbs., too...

PAINTED aluminum (and sanded twice) with hand-cut vinyl scrap!
I love the look and will be making more with this technique.

I've been making BIG ART.

Close Your Eyes 'Til You're Blue in the Face
Salvaged 100+ year wood flooring, paint, 1960's
Prevention magazine paper dots, vinyl
16 x 35 inches

There are still some nails in the wood, too.

Big Smoke
Two panels salvaged wood shelving, paint, hand-cut vinyl, hand-cut paper
23 x 37 inches

I've been preparing for a BIG SHOW.

Oklahoma City Festival of the Arts!!
Sixth year running, crossing fingers for zero storms/high winds/clouds of locusts.

I have a million different ideas and have been discovering new ways of making art, fumbling my way through, as usual.  I'll be showing both types of mixed media (abstract and imagery) as well as clocks at my season opener in OKC starting April 21st.  Pushing my scale has been fun and scary, and hopefully it won't literally push away the kind of customers I usually enjoy while there.  The smaller versions will be with me as well, so there's something for everyone!

How Long Does it Take?

First thing's first--here's what those two pieces from last time turned into:

This one had the green base.  I added blue vinyl and pink paint,
sanded it to perfection, and here we are.
18" x 7ish" (it's not square, so one end is a bit bigger than the other)
"Blue Hills"

Here's the one with the blue base.  I liked the color and
vinyl combination without an additional layer or paint and sanding.
7" x 17.5"
"Spring Skies"

Now...it's Time time.

At the OKC Festival of the Arts, we are swarmed with school kids visiting the show who talk to artists, eat food, and remind me that being a teenager was the worst.  But lots of the kiddos have a list of questions (same every year--let's update that, teachers!) they're supposed to ask the participants in each category of the show.  I fall firmly into 2D Mixed Media, aka "What IS it?" (Trying to explain vinyl to anyone, young or old, isn't the most clear-cut exercise.)

Anyway, one of the questions is, "How long does it take to complete a project?"

Well...I began by saying something like, "It depends, but....(example of a particular piece and how long it took)..."  This means nothing to them, because they think an hour is a long time if they have to wait for their dad to finish his whatever before they can whatever.  An hour can be nothing when you've monetized it.  Like, LITERALLY NOTHING.  Or a  really long-ass time if you're trying to find your measuring tape.  WHY IS IT ALWAYS MISSING?

So I'm going to start saying 200 years for the new work on wood--which is probably not long enough because that tree had to grow large enough to get milled down, be used in construction of a house in 1900, hang there for a while, then be salvaged by me, who has spent 30+ years living an artful life and learning techniques to make that thing they see.  Not to mention the sanding, de-nailing, cutting, painting, thinking, applying vinyl, cutting vinyl, photographing, uploading, packing, and hanging involved.

For the clocks I don't really have a snarky thing to base my time on, because what does it take to smelt aluminum after it's mined (or whatever?) and turn oil into plastic into vinyl I salvaged?  Fifty million years or something?

I'm looking forward to it!

Back to Art

After a few weeks of working on clocks and padding my inventory for the first show of the season (Oklahoma City--one of my favorites!!), I'm back to working on "non-functional" art.  The lumber here is salvaged from a home in my neighborhood.  I put out a call on our 'hood's Facebook page for wood from the old homes around here.  A neighbor said I could come and get his staircase...I literally took almost all the 100+ year old wood that the contractor left, plus some new lumber the guy was just going to burn to get out of the way.  MAJOR SCORE!

Add some paint, take away some paint with a sander, and here's what I have to work with today.  I've been cutting my orzo slices (I don't know what to call them...crescents? fronds?) and we'll see what the muses whisper in my ear.

Old Fence, New Art

This summer I purchased a Tuff Shed.  It's a dream--just wish it was bigger!  (Show and tell about that in a future post.) I now have a place to put my art inventory and tent set up stuff that is only three steps from my truck.  Before, I was going up and down the basement stairs 25 times (literally--I counted) every time I had to load or unload for a show.

I took this opportunity to salvage the fence that had to come down in order to construct the shed...at least, what was left after ALL THE TERMITES OMG IT WAS HORRIFYING!

Anyway, I cut the slats down to 7" lengths, and then did some sanding and painting magic before adding some paper and vinyl in the popular anatomical heart design.  Multiples are fun!

Buh-bye, sucka!

I managed to get 90 pieces measuring 5 x 7 inches

Add some paint!

Sand it and add more paint!

"Fabric paper" with vinyl on painted wood

I like leaving the back rough to help tell the story.

I'm working on more of these for my spring shows and will have them in my booth regardless of if I'm showing clocks or "fine art."  People like 'em and I like making them.

After I deliver some to Essential Goods in Lawrence, I'll add the remaining piece up on my Etsy shop.