Most productive hours between 10-3.

It's been a busy couple of weeks.  

Recent & upcoming shows:

Boys&Girls clubs of DE had a silent action on 5/23 with a few drawings of mine.

"Hamsteak" 9"x12" Ink on Paper with Shellac

"Aerials" 9"x12" Ink on Paper with Shellac

Boys & Girls Clubs of Delaware

500 Darley RoadClaymont DE, 19703

Hours: Mon, Tue, Thur, Friday 10am-5pm

Visit our collection by appointment.

(closed Wednesday )

Wilmington friends, there's an Alumni show 

@ the Delaware College of Art and Design 

on Friday, June 7th from 5-8pm

in which I have two pieces

"Snackies" and "Surface Treatments"

Attempt at framing "Snackies" with feline assistant help

My room during "Surface Treatments" construction

"Surface Treatments" is my first attempt at soldering paper armatures and wrapping them in the pulp I made a few months ago from flax and overbeaten abaca and then embroidering on top.

These were started as a proposal for the Roos Arts Gallery's in Rosendale Call for Entries about the environment.  I just found out that it was accepted so after the sculptures show in Wilmington for the month of June, they will move to NY for the month of July!

Here's the proposal:

When I think of the earth, our backyard, I think of our habitat. However, when I think of our environment, the first thing that comes to mind are the conditions in which we make for ourselves to exist, our personal environments, our bodies, and our skin. The ways in which we negatively affect our environment is not just physical harm to the planet.  Our actions have effects on the micro-biotic level of existence which propels evolution.  Specifically, bacterial evolution. There is an invisible war happening. We combat nature with chemical baths and supplements while bacteria struggles to exist the only way it knows how, adaptation and evolution, on the battleground of our skin.

What I propose for this show is an installation of paper sculptures representing staphylococcus aureus bacteria cells constructed with armatures of wire wrapped in hand made paper of over-beaten abaca and flax. I have chosen this combination of fibers because of it's skin like qualities in texture and color.  The bacteria cells, ridged plateaus about 10" x 7", will be embroidered with either ethanol molecules or amoxicillin formulas with thread very close in color and value to the paper. The collection of cells will climb up a corner of the Roos gallery from the floor to about waist high.  

Framing Fail

So "Snackies" will appear with T-pins on DCAD's wall.  

Whatevs, deckled edges are nice.

Sorry this post is a bit redundant. 

Recharging needs to happen. 

As soon as I have dates for the Roos show I'll post them.

Ok! Back to work, I mean sleep.  

Everyone and their mom has a blog

SO.

It's been a month. 

I wish I could tell you that March was a whirlwind of productivity.

I'll tell you what it was instead.

PLACES I VISITED: PHILLY, POCONOS, BOSTON.

Philadelphia: Showed my first finished encaustic painting at Brutus, Be The Death of Me, an experimental art show at The Circle of Hope in South Philly.  From what I heard the show went well.  On a personal TMI note, I was in bed all weekend with return of the stomach ulcer.  Unfortunate.

"Snackies" Graphite and Encaustic on BFK 22x30 2012-13

Poconos: What can I say?  I visited my Delaware friends and spent most of the weekend playing Munchkin, drinking, and having great conversation.  I did attempt to solder some wire armatures for a paper sculpture I am working on but was largely unsuccessful.  Since returning to NY I met a Bard sculpture grad who has given me some good advice.  Round 5(?) of soldering will commence tomorrow or later tonight.  No pictures of those disastrous attempts, sorry.

Boston:  Practiced embroidery while my brother and sister cross-stitched, walked miles around downtown with my sister and took pictures,  and wrote a proposal for a local show.  More importantly, learned a new card game called Innovation which is loads of fun.  (This isn't relevant at all to art making but I guess this is now a half-assed journal?)

New York!:  Back home in Rosendale and applied to two shows just in time for the April 1st deadline.  One of them is the THIRD ALUMNI BIENNIAL EXHIBITION from my first alma mater, the Delaware College of Art and Design.  You're welcome for all caps, it provides emphasis.  The second is for the Roos Gallery's upcoming exhibition, Our Backyard.  I should hear back from both sometime in May.  

I started a new drawing which will be encaustified, and have several ideas for more drawings.  There is also a show at the Beacon Artist's Union featuring, (I think) 100 local artists, that goes up in May which I am participating in.  Not sure what I'm submitting for that, though, possible collaboration with Ms. Gleason.  Things are still crappenin' even if it took me a month to write about them.

Bee eating an apple or some shit.

KTHXBYE

It's All Around

When you've been hiding in the same, dirty hoodie for the past few months.

When too many of your meals consisted of pickles and almonds.

When you're stuck, go into your closet, look through pictures, remember who you are and what you're capable of doing.

But mostly, get out of the house and go to a gallery opening.

Pamela Wallace, y'all.  Made a bunch of paper at WSW and had an incredible show.

 Check it out at the John Davis Gallery in Hudson until March 24th.

Still Going

No time to talk.

First attempt at paper armatures.

Stacks of pulled sheets with embroidery.

Cased in a sketchbook.

First encaustic painting almost complete.

Ceramics: A Horrible Guessing Game?

Why, yes! 

Yes. 

It is.

The gallery opening at Roos Arts in Rosendale happened last night. This event was in conjunction with the Women's Studio Workshop's annual Chilibowl fundraiser.  Local ceramists worked with volunteers at WSW to create donations.  All proceeds will go directly to the studio!  Exciting.

Anyway, I made a contribution.  Here's the thing... I decided to work a surface I don't usually work on using two processes brand new to me and one in which I had dabbled.  Also I don't know anything about clay bodies, slips, or glaze colors.  So just so we're straight, I'm making excuses as to why it looks ugly.  Or why I'm not happy with its existance.

Anyways.

Greenware: before first firing

Process 1:  Glaze silkscreen transfer.  I had a hexagonal pattern representing a beehive.  It was an earthy reddish brown before firing.  I silkscreened my image onto some tissue paper and then immediately pressed it into my piece.   For the most part it was successful.  Small parts of the image I had to fill in with a brush.

Process 2: Sgrffito!  (I'm not 100% on this spelling, sorry to all my clay people)  Sgrffito is a process with two layers of clay. You start with a base (your bowl or object) and apply a colored slip (liquid clay) When the slip is dryish using a variety of clay tools you remove the top layer. The process is similar in effect to wood cut or etching. What I sgrffito-ed was eggs in my beehive glazed image.  This is when the piece became much more abstract/ambiguous than originally planned.

Process 3: Wax in-lay.  Similar to sgrffito but you are adding a layer of wax to the equation. You carve through the wax and then lay colored underglaze into the lines. The wax resists the underglaze and burns off in the kiln.  Wax is not as clean as sgrffito.  Wax sticks to itself.  I had to layer wax very thick to fill in my previous sgfrfito-ed parts so they wouldn't fill with the yellow slip I was using for bees.  

Waxed bees.  

It was kind of a mess.  

The longer I worked with it the more I appreciated what you could do with it.  

However, I achieved none of its potential with this first attempt.

End product

We can see here how the silkscreen underglaze got lost in my black slip.   Which, to me, looks better.  I feel like at some point I teetered on a line between representational or not and a stronger push in either direction would have created a stronger piece.  Also I think the composition is kind of whack.  The yellow slip for the bees was much brighter than anticipated.  

LUCKILY, 

because ceramics is  

(title reference) 

a horrible guessing game

my piece cracked in the kiln!  

In two places! 

It's not show worthy.

Ha.

Ha ha.

Bwahahahahahaha.

I'm pretty stoked about this because I ended up showing a piece I was proud of, created for last year's chilibowl but not fired in time. Scraffito all the way baby.  I'm very sorry to whoever threw this piece because I can't link to your work since I don't know who you are.  Hopefully some sleuthing will result in me updating this with credit to you.

Roos submission complete!

That'll be the end of this one.  

And just for funsies, I'd like to introduce my editor:

She hasn't figured out the password yet.

Waterlogged

Dear god.

It's been like 2 weeks.

 Ok go!

I was hoping to update with some kinda finished projects BUT I don't have any yet so this one's gonna be quick and dirty.  After making encaustic paint for the past 6 months, I finally got the stones to paint with some.  In progress:

Figured I might as well try and make that drawing look like a finished piece.

For the first time in way too long, I spent the entire weekend in the studio!  I should have taken more pictures so this could be a photo laden post without tired brain babbles.  Oh well.  

What I did was turn this:

Into this:

Since I wanted a longer fiber in the paper I didn't adequately cut down my flax before loading the beater.  After a 9 hour beating time on Saturday, I gave the machine a rest and finished it up on Sunday morning.  Even after waiting until the beater was down to add the abaca, the flax still needed a few more hours which resulted in slightly shorter flax fibers and over beaten abaca.  All sheets pulled today are in the dry stack so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see how they turned out.  The beginning of pulling sheets was rough.  It had been awhile.  Only about half of the pulp was used so there are plenty of second chances in a vat just waiting.

For reals next time, before and after pictures of the Roos Art ceramic piece.  The second firing took place yesterday.  

Still trying to take myself seriously.

Seriously.

50% of the time, it works EVERYTIME.

Hey hey! It's been a week(ish) so I'm back.  The super bowl happened.  The commercials were .... pathetic.  C'mon guys, how much are you paying for this prime airtime?  Damn you for making my super bowl a less enjoyable experience.  Luckily for both of us, (the commercials or whoever was responsible for them and me) I was passed out from overeating for most of them.  Oh, to be an American.

WOAH, deviated from what I'm supposed to be talking about.  This week I worked on a graduation present for my best-friends-foreva-hetero-life-partner-blah (BFFHLB) Tina! 

This is my first attempt at a top whorl drop spindle.  Turns out research really is key for most things.  My design certainly leaves a few things to be desired.  Fortunately, the present accidentally remained hanging in my kitchen while I drove the 210 minutes south to Wilmington, DE., THUS giving me more time to make a new one since my first was so subpar. 

I shaped a 1/2 in wooden dowel on a belt sander to snugly fit (not quite snug enough, I had to fudge it with some PVA) my top whorl which was a piece of alabaster that was shaped, sanded, carved, and polished into a 3 in diameter disk with a notch for the yarn to rest. 

If anyone is unfamiliar with the term "top whorl drop spindle"  its a tool that you can use to spin yarn from carted wool.  My BFFHLPB Tina! is an excellent crotchet-(er) person so I usually try and give her a yarn themed present.

Problems with my design:
-Top whorl too heavy
-Top whorl not wide enough, doesn't provide optimum spin
-Top whorl not attached in a snug, central way

Geez, when I list it that way it sounds like I made it 100% incorrectly.  Look, it works, I promise, it just doesn't work WELL.  I'd like to try again, flattening and widening my disk and drilling a hole for the dowel that's much closer to the actual size.  Although I love the feel of finished stone, I think attempt number 2 will be all wood all the time.  Maybe this time I will play with stains as well since time is on my side.

Other news:  first attempt at paper marbling hilariously terrible.  Thanks to some coworkers, friends, and a little bit of patience, optimism is restored for round two of paper vs. ink.

Again.
Research would have been helpful.
It'll be ok.

Looks like this coming week is a do over.

Next time:  details about the upcoming ceramics show at Roos Gallery in Rosendale, NY with progress pictures of my collaboration with the WSW  Ceramics Coordinator Ruth McKinney Burket.

Cha know, Steph Bell.
Same name.