Escape to Create Residency #1 – Falling in Love with Paper

January found me in mostly sunny Florida, in the community that spawned the architectural genre of “New Urbanism” and in the presence of beaches that can compete with any in the world (really). However, I was not on vacation. I was there to work and research and develop and yes, okay, then take a walk along the beach to mull things over. I was taking part in my first artist residency at Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida.

My residency project was founded on the research and development of casting lace techniques that I had begun in the summer at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. My research began not in fabric, but in paper. Working towards complex forms, I started from the beginning, learning how to fold lengths, widths and any angle into equal divisions without measuring or marking. This image is from the first week.

The table eventually became so layered with mounds of folded paper to the point it became hard to find what I was looking for!

I also worked with exercises to design folded structures using the principles of symmetry. Here is an early and simple example of linear reflection symmetry.

And here are samples using rotational symmetry and their inverted forms.

And then came the more complicated glide reflection, which can result in what I like to call “the sexy paper.” Oh yeah.


Super fun and flexible, but not necessarily something achievable in the type of lace I make currently. Something to think about though…

If you are interested in paper folding forms, I basically used Folding Techniques for Designers – From Sheet to Form by artist and teacher Paul Jackson like a textbook. It looks like he’s coming out with a new publication this month as well! Paul Jackson was also one of the featured origami artists in Between the Folds (available on Netflix), a beautiful and fascinating documentary on paper folding. Watch it. I promise you, you will not be disappointed. I’ve watched it multiple times. Really, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there!

In the next post, I’ll share some my first attempts of casting lace fabric at the residency. Oh, and after our blizzards here in the Midwest, you can sure bet I miss that Florida weather (not to mention the great folks I met down there)!

Wait, Rewind! Artist Interview for The Frontier Project

Earlier this year, I participated in an email interview as part of a project for The Frontier, one of many mini-projects for the 15 year anniversary project for The Charolotte Street Foundation, one of KC’s powerhouse arts organizations. The multi-faceted celebration considered the history and future of artist-driven pioneering in Kansas City and the changing nature of the city’s “frontiers” by asking artists to submit all kinds of projects. One project selected, Frontier: Momentum and Trajectory, was a retrospective of artists who had been through the Urban Culture Project (UCP) studio residency program.

                _________________________________________________Studio Resident Blog

But after my interview, I didn’t hear anything. I looked a few times on the website, but didn’t see anything. I apparently didn’t look well enough and totally missed it!

While my residency was a few years ago, I looked at it from the perspective of how it informs my work today.  Here’s the interview.

Here’s the project, Frontier: Momentum and Trajectory, with video slideshow and more artist interviews.

Better late than never. Enjoy.

Shining the Spotlight – Work Featured in Online Magazine

Hot off the e-presses, I am happy to share this online magazine titled Progress…

My work is featured on pages 5, 16, & 17. Also included is work by artist Amanda Kiesling, a feature article on Ayla Rexroth’s Subterranean Gallery, and a brief history of Pitch Magazine, a KC staple for local arts and culture.

View Progress… Magazine

I enjoyed the call for submissions image, because, well, resistance is futile…

Enjoy.

Showing the Goods: The Kauffman Lecture

The day before the election, I was giving my own version of a stump speech, detailing my origins as an artist, from my early to present work, and touched on my upcoming projects.

 Muchos thanks to fellow artist and Inspiration Grant winner Angelica Sandoval for letting me use the awesome Kickstarter Shout-Out she made for me as the title slide of my presentation (Her Kickster was successful too! You can see her installation now in the windows of BNIM in downtown KC). Sooo much better than plain ol’ text. I love it.

I was able to cover my early work, including this piece In the Eye of the Beholder.

Of course, I went over the process of making my current work and my studies at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

I aim to please, so I also brought finished work as well as many random samples and experiments from the studio.

Thanks to Leslie at the Kauffman Foundation for hosting me and to the Metro Arts Council for running the Now Showing Program! I enjoy sharing my work and hope to do so again. Yay for public speaking!

The Fresh Goods: New Cast Lace Work

Putting my Anderson Ranch Studies to the test, I have been busy making the first new lace works and I want to share them with you! These are the first mid-sized works on the way to working larger in scale.

These works use three main techniques. This first vessel uses what I call gravity casting, which allows for free form shaping.

Gravity Vessel #1
12 x 10.75 x 7.75″

In the Memory Records below, I cast resin in a highly detailed mold, which was made at Anderson Ranch. Learning a technique used by my teacher, Lynn Richardson, I carefully remove the piece before it has finished curing, allowing it to deviate from its initially flat existence (I do leave some flat though). While from the same mold, no one piece is exactly alike.

each 8 x 8 x variable depth (1/8 – 1 7/8″)

For an installation, they would hang in concert, but be available individually. This is the one examples where physical lace or thread is not used, but represented as subject matter.

For the following works, I’m working with two casting techniques. The lace is initially cast over a form and then I use gravity casting to build additional layers and texture. Mm, mm, MMM. I do love texture.

Pillar of… (#1)
23.5 x 6.5 x 2.5″
  

Pillar of… (#2)
24 x 6.5 x 2.5″
  

Parabolic Triptych
each approx 11 3/4 x 11 7/8 x 3/8″; overall 11 3/4 x 40 x 2 1/2″

Image Fun Time – Random Resin Lace Details

With the election finally over, here’s some candy. No over-analyzing, no conceptual explanation, just impromptu shots from around the studio. Enjoy.

It’s Alive! Superclusters Artboards Unveiled

A year in the making, the Superclusters are now on display at the Missouri Bank Crossroads Artboards at the intersection of Wyandotte and Southwest Blvd. Google Map. The images face west.

I am an amatuer space nerd, with the appropriate nerd crushes on the likes of Carl Sagan and Neal deGrasse Tyson. It is also immensely difficult to step back from the never-ending bombardment of minutue in our daily lives and bask in the knowledge that we are a part of a mind-boggling universe, so vast, mysterious and amazing that our jaws should be perpetually dropped. It is not a separate thing. It is us. We are in and of it. We are vast.

These images are dedicated to that wonder. They are representations of galactic superclusters, the largest known structure in the observable universe. Matter does not evenly disperse. Galaxies cluster together in sheets and filaments. The galaxy clusters then also cluster into a larger structure, hence a supercluster. Our Milky Way is in the Local Group of galaxies, which is a part of the Local, or Virgo, Supercluster.

Photo by NASA

This commission was awarded in 2011, which is also when the US dismantled it’s space shuttle program. In the same year, the Tevatron, once the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, was shut down. Many of the advances in technology and in our daily lives originated in space exploration research and development, so I am saddened by the loss of interest and funding in these areas on a national level. So I thought science needed a bit of advertising!

These should be up through January, so I hope you get a chance to take a look when you’re downtown!