:Dept42:

Warts and all

This past week I was pleased to have taken a great class at the Centro del Bel Libro in Ascona Switzerland with the ebullient Suzanne Schmollgruber. The subject: part 2 of books using the techniques of Hedi Kyle. I had at least six models on the go at once, and managed to finish at least three of them. Yes, I was the least swift, able and prepared member of the group, if you must know. My cross-stitch spine book followed me home trailing three threads to which three needles must soon be re-attached. Suffice it say that using a single needle gives me the colly wobbles (sp?). Also on the worktable, in the back right corner, is a half-eaten concertina/flag that some roof-dwelling rodent decided to make off with one night when we left the studio window open. At least he/she appreciated my concept, though abandoned it on the window ledge outside. Maybe it was the brown orange combination that would have clashed with the nest?

 

 

Not much better at home, sadly, but more layers of accretions. Due to Seth Apter's highlighting of the seamy underside of creative pursuits and the slobs who pursue them on his Altered Page blog, I felt the need to share my shame with that of many others. Behold my flat file work-surface:

 

 

And the formerly clear dining table piled with things. Make no mistake: I have no idea where anything is, but I love rediscovering the delights the boxes, piles and containers can reveal when pried open or upended on the floor by the cat:

 

 

What do you think? Are scraps, rags, mess, and mounds necessary or just the outward display of mental murkiness? I'd dearly like to think the muck breeds creation or at least puttering in the vicinity of a state of concentration and play.

 

Hard to believe we manage to produce in these spots, isn't it? Here's what I've been doing in mine in recent years: on my flickr photostream.

 

It's summer, and I am feeling so lazy.....

....that all I am going to say is that I have just been a guest blogger at Rhonda Miller's bookbinding blog.

Here it is, all about Tim Ely's fabulous class at PBI (Paper and Book Intensive) 2013 at Ox-Bow.

Enjoy and please feel free to leave a comment or ten. :-)

 

 

 



Paper and Book Intensive, Ox-bow 2013

Thrilled to say that I am going to be attending PBI in just a short couple of weeks. It's like summer camp for people who love paper and books, and I can barely wait to start the long and complicted journey that will result in being there and PLAYING hard for ten blissful days. Both suitcases are stuffed with bits of paper and ephemera and the supplies requested for the three different courses I'm signed up for. Other than supplies I have room for some clean underwear, sacrificial clothing (it might all need to be burned by the end of my stay at Ox-bow), obligatory bug spray, and a toothbrush. Lots of stuff I would ordinarily pack is being sent on ahead courtesy of Amazon.com. More supplies too.

My three classes are the following: 

Pres­sure Print­ing: A Painterly Approach to the Press with Sarah Bryant

Page Design – It’s an Open Book with Paula Jull

Ideas and Actions in Con­text and Con­struc­tion with Tim Ely

I have no idea what any of them entail, and I want to discover the details only when I arrive and settle in. I am eager to meet my fellow attendees and teachers and a little nervous.

Who else will be going? I wish there were a discussion page on the PBI site so those attending could interact a bit before we arrive, but no matter. 

 

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Produced by the Exhibit Supply Company in 1935, these postcard-sized fortune predictors were dispensed at fairgrounds from arcade machines for a small sum. I hope they were intended to be comical or interpreted comically like the Chinese fortune cookie fortunes of today. Heck of a way to anticipate how your children might be.

Here are some more links to images of things that prove our modern faith in astrology and "mediums" is not a new thing:

http://pinterest.com/corrinekenner/vintage-fortune-tellers/

http://pinterest.com/texasdiva74/fortune-telling-and-such/

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New life for an old quarry?

A local friend and architect, Romano Adolini, has a passion for all types of caves. In his design process his love of cave-like homes shines through. Weekends he often takes long hikes along our region's rivers. For millenia, these rivers carved pathways between steep tufa cliffs, and a regular intervals along the cliffs there were caves. These caves served the ancient Faliscans as burial spaces, centuries of shepherds as shelters, and even as temporary wartime homes for local families during WWII.

The caves of Northern Lazio are as much a part of the local landscape as cave-dwellings were in Matera where significant investment has fashioned a chic and popular hotel among the formerly-ruined dwellings there. This current speculative project grew out of his love for cave structures and out of his desire to see environments like this abandoned quarry find new life. Often such sites become garbage dumps and eyesores as they return to their wild state and are abandoned for new sources of stone to extract.

Here is Romano's own description of this fanciful architectural project:

Project: NEW CLIFFSIDE RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX

Place: ABANDONED STONE QUARRY in Civita Castellana

Year: 2013

Designer: architect Romano Adolini in collaboration with architect Chiara Ercolini

"A new residential complex, carved into the vertical face of an abandoned tufa stone quarry in Civita Castellana, near Viterbo, is located in a landscape characterized by steep natural gorges, where there are extensive remains of both religious and residential ancient cave structures and settlements.

 A settlement for "cosmic era cavemen" as expressed by the author Ermanno Rea, whose purpose is to reinstate the cave as an archetypal dwelling that has cultural and anthropological significance in the relationship between man and nature.  

This scheme is a modern reinterpretation of a manner of living and behaving which responds to the need to distance oneself from outside, a new dimension of hidden isolation, of seeking silence and meditation. It is also a new solution to the rehabilitation of quarry sites, currently abandoned and forgotten industrial by-products, located in wonderful landscapes and destined otherwise to become illegal dumping grounds. 

It represents an intervention in the negative, of subtraction, the enormous south-facing tufa wall perforated with geometric openings that filter natural light into the large double-height spaces, that are characterized by niches and rooms carved into the rock.

A perimeter body of water reflects the rising walls that still bear the signs of cutting tools used to quarry, accentuating the sense of isolation and defense, equipped with wooden bridges that function as links to a system of stairways, inspired by Piranesi, a passageway of transition between exterior and interior."

The quarry walls in their current state - figures for scale (monumental!)

Current state

The new facade: wall pierced by windows with entry doors at ground level, accessed by footbridges over the reflecting pools in front of them. The reflecting pool is a modern take on the castle moat.

Facade view with section showing double-height spaces behind, and indications of service corridors.

Section of internal space.

Section of interior showing stairways that connect the interior spaces to the entrances, exits and other dwellings.

Here's Romano's site in English: http://www.romano-adolini.it/en/architecture/. He designs public and private buildings and also acts as a "designer for hire" for manufacturers of sanitary wares and stylish high-end bathroom accessories (faucets, flush mechanisms etc).

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"Mahjongg" tiles to "Ordinary Decorations"

Local junk shop strikes again - mine for under 3 euros:

The box has definitely seen better days, but the contents were abundant, complete, and very transformable. The set must dae to the 1930s or 40s and no instructions were enclosed. The tiles are cardboard rather than wood or bamboo, and they are of a good size, weight and solidity. The pins were envisioned as the equivalent of military medals for non-military ("ordinary") commemorations - so they are not all practical to wear. Each one was paired with a small card that had been monoprinted or collaged by me in some way. I punched holes in the small display scards to allow the pin-back to sit more comfortably.

I have been applying small images from vintage comic books, antique illustrated dictionaries and encyclopedias, and other ephemera sources and making pins and brooches out of them. Sadly, I will soon have exhausted all of them and new sets are hard to find, and expensive. Needless to say, if you have one I would happily buy it from you at the right price - as long as it's equivalent of what my junk store would charge.

Top left is an original game tile, the others are covered though awaiting a glossy surface treatment and "ribbons".

Some more paper jewelry and brooches to explore:

http://blog.paper-source.com/ideas/lovely-paper-jewelry/ 

http://www.marthastewart.com/856349/handmade-paper-jewelry/@center/381713/handmade-jewelry#237525

http://tiakramerjewelry.com/artwork/1809509_Palpitation_Series_Brooch_I.html

http://blog.paper-source.com/ideas/lovely-paper-jewelry/

http://pinterest.com/search/?q=paper%20jewelry

http://pinterest.com/hiphiphoran/jewelry-brooches-pins/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ex Voto - thanks for the Miracle! ;-)

Who hasn't sat on a plane before take-off making a karmic bargain with some supreme being in exchange for not dying a fiery death? Even atheists indulge in this sort of atavistic behavior. Please please please let me land safely and I'll have a local artist friend paint you a picture to celebrate and give thanks for that miracle. Ex voto paintings are proof that some bad things have been avoided and that people are grateful for them, even if they credit the avoidance of bad things to miraculous intervention.

A few weeks ago a large group of ex voto paintings appeared at my local junk shop. They initially looked pretty convincingly old, or at least vintage. Each had a hand-numbered label affixed to the back on top of 1950s-era Italian newpaper pages that held the small, painted panels firmly in place. They looked good, but I think they are modern fakes. The paintings are all on thin composite board (compensato). The frames are re-used and simple or cobbled together from older things and the paintings are adapted to fit into them as well as possible. However, the hand is assured and the compositions are pleasing. The subjects are wonderful - although I may be reading extreme irony and humor into them that the artist never felt or intended to express. Priced from 30 to 70 euros each I had to make a small selection from the many available. My choices were: passengers saved from a bus that has careened off a road into a ditch; a little girl ("our daughter Gemma") saved from death by electric shock as the result of what appears to be using a live wire as a jump rope as her almost equally shocked family looks on; and a fortune-teller who regrets snookering her credulous customers and is moved to refund their money. Details below. All I can do now is envision truly modern re-imaginings by a skilled painter of motifs and scenarios that might appeal to modern thanksgivers. The only copy of a first novel miraculously salvaged despite hard disk failure. Discovery of young acting genius by Hollywood agent at the child's 3rd grade Christmas pageant. Wedding not ruined by the early arrival of first child but its miraculously quick delivery becomes the centerpiece of the wedding reception as baby arrives during first dance etc etc....

Here's a sociological analysis of similar panels in modern Mexico which is interesting, but misses the irony that appealed to me about these small images.

 

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Industrial Design textbooks - too nice to throw away

In my local junk store (I am protecting its name and location to protect my precious resource - out of pure selfishness) I found a freshly arrived bag of books that had not even been priced yet. Bless those folks who only get the bug to dispose of their grown children's school books the week I revisit my favorite junk store. Most people would have thrown these texts away. In thanks, I offer up my good wishes to their previous owner, Marcello: I hope you learned much from them and have put that knowledge to good use since school, if indeed, you still are among us (and I very much hope that you are!). Secondary school always seems much more appealing at a great distance, doesn't it? These Italian workbooks date to 1960 or so.

What gems! The example drawings and diagrams are so lovely and so inspiring. When the weather warms I'll be using them for photocopy lithography and collage. 

Truth in Advertising

This small hotel is conveniently located across from to the Magliano Sabina on-ramp from the main A1 highway. They renovated not to long ago and people tell me you can eat pretty well in the newly refurbed restaurant. They don't have a bar, though, so no stopping in for a quick espresso before zipping off to Florence. What you can do, however, is check in for a few blissful hours of afternoon/evening/weekend delight. In case you couldn't tell just by looking at the place, or its location, they put a big old sign at the entrance that informs you that inside it is possible to conduct both business and romance. Or maybe the business of romance.

 

 

 

Big and Brown

I am cursed with an inability to resist buying pieces of seemingly irredeemable furniture, as long as they seem like bargains. Re-doing them often appeals to me more in the abstract than in the concrete. The concrete entails groundsheets, painter's tape, sand-paper, primers, brushes, rollers and lashings of elbow grease. An absence of cat hair would also be a bonus. Normally such a project would also require another person to help get me motivated to start or finish the renewal process, as well as to help me move the big lump around during work, and when work is (miraculously) done. My garage, literally one of the dampest places on the planet, is full of junk store side tables, mirrors and brown objects that no one else seems to see potential in. 

Inspired by reading Chris' Just a Girl blog about her methods of refinishing similar big brown pieces, I have decided to have a serious go at it myself. While in the U.S. I can find some of the Benjamin Moore Low Lustre Metal and Wood Enamel and a small roller (indispensible for a great finish) to take back to Italy with me.

A few weeks ago I found this sideboard in my local junk store and figured I could chop off its legs and use it as a repository for some of my ephemera collection. I think I have decided that matt black will work well for its intended location. This baby is 96 inches long and about 41 inches tall with its soon-to-be-ex feet. How those two poor guys sweated and grunted delivering it to me at home. If I ever move again, it could literally, with a more sensible top, be fully half of a kitchen.

Is black too much? How would you propose I improve it? Can this sideboad be saved and live a useful life again?

 

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