Friday, December 26, 2008

Felting Frenzy and MORE

It's been damn cold recently, which has prompted a knitting and felting frenzy.
And here is the knitting machine, all set to go. All those yarns are ones that I inherited when Thomas's school relocated and the art teacher, whose specialities include ceramics, photography and sculpture but NOT fiber arts, gave me hundreds and hundreds of pounds of yarn. I couldn't bear to give them up but I also couldn't figure out what to so with them. My mother in law came to visit and the felting bug has bitten her and she suggested that I make up a big sheet of fabric to felt.
Here is the first attempt. I used a dark blue and a medium blue and for reasons I don't quite understand the colors alternated sides so that there are random stripes of the two colors.

And here is something that I didn't know was possible: plating. You can load two yarns into the knitting machine, one in the middle feeder and one on the side, and it would knit them so that one always stayed in the front (and knitted it) and the other would be on the back (purled). And it worked! And here it is! I have felted it since and will supply photos as soon as I get the energy.
And here is my eldest, Thomas, modeling my latest production. He requested a 1 up mushroom and I managed to do intarsia IN THE ROUND!!!!!! I was very pleased to have invented a system that worked and then, of course, I discovered that a varient of MY SYSTEM has existed forever and I could have saved myself a LOT of bother if I had done a bit more research. Oh well, you can't beat the pleasure that comes from inventing something that works well.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

It Is Finished (Almost)

Tonight (last night, really) is the night. Here is the Rose Thing (I really should think of a name for it--"Still Life In Front of Blobby Swirls and Bathroom Tile" doesn't really sound nice) complete, but not yet grouted. It's tempting to not grout, since it's always a mystery what the grout will do to change the picture but I had scribbled and sketched so much on the surface board, that I could see millions of lines (pencil and pen as well as purple, blue, red and green colored pencil) between the pieces. It had to be done.

And here, almost three hours later, is the piece grouted:

Smooshing the grout into the cracks is really satisfying but wiping ten thousand pieces clean is not. And it isn't really clean yet, anyway. I need to let it set for a few days, let the grout really cure, and then take a damp cloth and really get the glass clean. They should be as shiny as before I grouted which, you can see by comparing the two pictures, they aren't. So it will really be done in about a week...but then I have to seal it....So it will really be done in about two weeks. So I started this in June--six months ago. Spending six months of one's life (how many hours?) seems about right for creating one wall hanging, doesn't it? And the big question is: Where am I going to hang it? (But the even bigger, and more interesting question is: What next?)

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Hulky Pants

Finally, I have the hands, feet and pants done. The pants were quite fun to do. I wanted to have the glass look like fabric stretching across muscles. So I cut the pieces into little trapezoids which made it possible to line them up in a gentle arc. That way, they had a clean line across each leg like woven fabric but they were curving, so now it looks like the leg is thick and rounded, not flat.

I've been putting off the face for as long as possible but feeling confident yesterday (listening to Flight of the Conchords, "Bret, You've Got It Going On" and "If You're Into It" was a big help) I decided to get serious and get it started. It's a real pisser, because not only are the spaces very, very small, but if they line up wrong, then once it is grouted it will not look like muscles being flexed but a 2-D solid that has been shattered. I don't like going to the dentist (am 5 months overdue for the 6 month cleaning) and am saving the teeth for last.

Once I finish the teeth, I can get to work on The Thing. Right now, all he has is a pair of tiny underpants. I think it's time he got some dignity.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Summer Art Walk

Last June sometime, there was an art walk through downtown Flint one Friday evening. Tracy (of The Lunch Studio) asked me to display "something knitted" as art on the walls of her restaurant. I have been toying with a lot of ideas for really big knitted pieces (using the knitting machine) but I hadn't really had time to think anything through. I had made a felt heart last Valentine's Day but it wasn't very detailed. So I made another, this one has more valves as well as floods of blood coming out. These are two long pieces of red wool, both knitted up from 4 stitches and gradually increasing to 100 stitches. I attached one to the aorta and the other to the major vein going into the heart. Here it is on the left side of the photo:
On the right, and pooling onto the floor, is another piece I did on the knitting machine. It is about 30 feet long, 100 stiches across. It has an unfinished end and is hanging from two knitting needles, and the yarn being worked goes right to the 1 pound blue spool on the floor under the piece. I had originally hoped to write out the script of my thoughts while I knitted this thing (which took me about 4 hours without stopping) because my thoughts were so repetitious, inane and unproductive. The idea would be that, while one end is being knit, the other end is unraveling, ultimately leaving nothing accomplished therefore mirroring the repetative and unproductive (and slightly insane) thoughts I have as I go through most of my daily activities. Unfortunately, I was so rushed making this (knitting it up at midnight the night before) that I didn't get to write up the script. There's something very telling in being too rushed with the mundane to have time to transcribe one's thoughts about the mundane.

I enjoying making these things and get a kick out of having them on display, but I don't really think they are art. (I can't think of myself as an artist. I'm not sure why. Is "artist" too noble a term? Would it be hubris to refer to oneself as an artist?) Nonetheless I have gotten positive comments (one person from the Flint Institute of Arts calling the blue thing "powerful"--that was nice but weird) which leave me bemused.

Flint Craft Fair Coming Up

The annual December Flint City Craft Fair is coming up and I am thinking about going to it. I have an annoying compulsion for felting old unwearable sweaters and turning them into little bags, coin purses, ipod or phone holders, or whatever. Which is weird, considering that I would never use such a thing. Here are a few. (On top of glass.) The Craft Fair itself is quite a strange experience. Last year, the doors (of The Lunch Studio, in downtown Flint) opened at 10 am and there was a CRUSH of people waiting to get in--the fact that it was 20 below outside MAY have had something to do with it but they did gather in downtown Flint on a Saturday which is not normally something that ANYONE does. I really don't like having people stare at or comment on things I have made. But I do like getting rid of these things (otherwise what the hell else would I do with them?) and making a healthy profit is always nice.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Hulk Feet

Here are the feet thus far. It was very strange filling in the toenail area. Sort of like doing a pedicure. I have been putting off doing the face because it is so detailed and bitty. I keep waiting for that day when I am craving frustrating and fiddly work, but so far that day hasn't arrived.

Yea! I giant box arrived in the mail, stuffed with more styrofoam peanuts than anyone could want in their house and...two kinds of purple glass! Here they are:

To look at one its own, I prefer the bluey-purple on the left but am going to use the reddish, concord grapey color on the right because I think it will give a better contrast with the blues in the other part of the picture. It also reminds me of grape popsicles. Mmmm, yumm...grapey glass....

Monday, October 20, 2008

Rainy Days and Mondays

It's rainy today. And it's a Monday. Blegh. Nonetheless, I bravely trudge on with my Hulk, slowly working my way across his giant green muscles. His hands were not as difficult as I imagined they would be. I tried to keep the glass piece lines following the lines of the arms, hands and fingers. So, in theory, when this is grouted, the grout lines will take the viewer's eye from the central part of the figure, right to the end of the extended arms, therefore giving the image movement and perpetual flow. We'll see. The hardest part of designing a mosaic is keeping in mind that the real art of it is not fitting the tiny pieces into any particular space, or even choosing the colors, but thinking about what it is going to look like once the grout is in place and the dominating image isn't anything make of glass, but is made of the millions of fractured cement lines. (And what color to use for the grout? I can't even think about that yet.)
Here are the feet thus far with a bit of the pants done. These were not fun. I thought they would be, but they weren't. In general, the Hulk is annoying me and I will be very, very glad when I am done. Which reminds me, I haven't gotten that purple glass in the mail yet. If you look long and hard at this poor guy's left leg, it looks like it has been broken in half just below the knee. I didn't notice it when I was looking at the comic page, but now that it is enlarged to almost 6 inches across, it is hard to ignore. In fact, I get quite nauseous if I look at it too much. I thought about changing it, to make it the way it should have been drawn, but that somehow seems sacriligious...or something.

That little red spot just below the image is blood I dripped after I cut myself on the glass. I do actually forget most the time that I am working with glass and that I am supposed to be a bit more careful. This time, I put my elbow on top of the plexiglass while I leaned up and across it to reach the running pliers. Yes, there were thousands of shards of glass on the plexiglass but, really, who would have thought they would all grind into my elbow just because I put all my weight on them? I'd like to think I learned a lesson of some sort, but I am sure I haven't. (Do I wear the safety goggles I am supposed to be wearing? Of course not.)

Friday, October 17, 2008

Hulk 'n' More

It's Friday, which means it's my chance to head to the FIA to work on my flower mosaic (featured a few weeks ago). Here is the studio (or, more accurately, the southeast corner of the room with all my stuff spread about).

I was completely at a loss as to how I should finish the background. I was intending to do a simple blue fade to green background. When I mentioned that to Amy, my mosaic teacher, she had a hard time masking her derisive snorts. She suggested something with "wild colors" and with "lots of motion." What the hell? So I came up with this octopus-type blob. She loves it; I feel the verge of an anxiety attack coming on when I think about it too much. I have no idea where I am going with this, and I have no idea how I am going to finish it. It should look like roses in front of a funky, but discreet, wallpaper, but I fear it looks more like a space creature about to devour the roses.

And here's how far I got today. It really is a wonderful space in which to work. I had to whole room to myself, which isn't unusual, since any classmates that do show up for studio time tend to work (or live lives) during the weekdays and go in on the weekends. As I work I can look out over the FIA parking lot and just beyond it to Central High school. I didn't enjoy my highschool experiences in the least, but I do enjoy watching other people enduring it. I wish I had made the fruit platter much, much bigger.

Meanwhile, the Hulk gets filled in. I worked on his hair today. (That was a pisser; how do you make glass shards look like locks of hair? You don't.) He looks a bit like a tiny guy in a giant, green, padded muscle shirt. I am dreading making the face. It's one thing to do a chop job on a fist or shoulder, but if the face looks blocky or bitty, it will be really bad. I did want to do the pants first, but I had a sudden panic that the purple glass I got was too drab. I ordered two pieces of other purples online and can then decide once and for all after they arrive. Why is good purple glass so hard to find? Another one of life's little mysteries.


Monday, October 13, 2008

The Beginnings of The Hulk

Here is The Hulk just starting to get "fleshed out." This is really a pain, as the glass does not want to look like muscle. Oh, well, I have to remind myself that this is an interpretation of a comic, not real life.
The chest and abs are done, and the arm is started. The plan is to finish outlining the left hand tomorrow, and then complete the arms and hands next. All right, enough for today.


Monday, October 6, 2008

Biggest Glass Underpants Ever

Again, because The Thing's underpants are in the middle of the picture, it seemed like a good thing to get them done early in the project. I expected that it would take me days and days to complete the outlining because I expected it to be very fiddly, but I finished it in under and hour. Maybe the trick is listening to Blondie. Would Debbie Harry permit the outlining of underpants to drag on for days and days? I think not.

In an underpants fever, I decide to cut the blue fill in glass and begin.

And here, late in the evening are the complete Undies. Total time, including cutting the darker blue glass, 2 1/2 hours.

I think The Hulk's purple pants will be next.

BUH-WHOOM! I begin...

I decided to work on the words first because (1) they are in the (relative) middle of the picture and that way I wouldn't be leaning across what I had worked on (it isn't nice to lean on many hundreds of bits of cut glass) and (2) I thought that it would be hard to mess up words and that that would be a good way to get comfortable with the picture. So here is the outlined WHOOM!
After letting it set for a day, I got right into filling in the blue of the letters. Since the letters have a "shaky" font, I broke up the blue pieces unevenly so each lettter would look a bit like a smashed windscreen glass.

Here's the whole WHOOM!

And here is the finished BUH. I only noticed after getting ready to outline the BUH that the WHOOM and BUH have completely different font styles. So I tried to keep the pieces in keeping with this font and cut the pieces as regularly as I could, so the BUH would be more even and tidy.

I'm surprised how really nice the black glass looks. I didn't think creating the outlines would make it look so much better, but it really does. The black glass is completely opaque and really shiny. (It is also a pisser to cut and, since there is SO MUCH BLACK in this piece, since everything has thick outlines, this is going to get tedious--very, very tedious.)

Monday, September 29, 2008

Almost Ready to Start

Here it is as of right now: the xeroxed sections taped together, lovingly placed under plexiglass. (What a mess this work space is. I try very hard to get it organized, but the fundamental problem isn't disorder, it is excess and gluttony. I simply need to throw out/give away/fob off a lot of stuff. But every time I pick up an object I think, "Maybe I'll need that some day." When would I possibly need an entire tub of old wooden spools? I don't know but imagine I do and then how will I feel when they are long gone? Pretty ridiculous, right? So there they stay, along with a thousand pounds of other things I have squirrelled away in here and never use. [See those blue spools? Fifteen 1 pound spools of 100% extemely itchy wool in "grenadier" from the 1950s. Why? What could I possibly do with such things? I have no idea but there they are.])

Here's a closer look. It's a pretty cool image, even in b/w. Stan Lee sure had a gift for drafting a dramatic, action-packed image. (I'm not so impressed with the dialogue but I suppose Oscar Wildesque wit--or even P. G. Wodehouse ["I say steady on there, old chap, what?"]--would not be quite The Thing.)

And here is the glass (purchased today NOT at Delphi but at nearby and utterly ordinary Stallings Glass--oh, Stallings is ok but it doesn't leave one breathless, unless from the smell of the mildewy carpet) which will soon be cut into teeny tiny pieces. But not tonight.


Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Thing Update

So: I cut off the broken edge of the plexiglass, so now I have a (roughly) 45.5" x 48" piece of plexiglass. (My resentment over that whole event is fading, but still present.) And now the question is: How do you go about creating a giant , fairly accurate, reproduction of the page from the comic? Simon suggested using a Smartcart from school and projecting the image up onto a giant piece of paper, and then sketching it out. That would work if I had good drafting skills (which I don't) and had the patience to do a good job (which I don't). So I xeroxed several copies of the page, cut one of the xeroxed sheets into small (about 1.5" x 1.5") pieces, and then enlarged each one 400%. Here are the pieces:

I did the math and still the enlargements were too big, so I tried again, this time with only a 375% enlargement. Here are those pieces:

Now I will cut off the excess, tape them together, place them under the plexiglass and BEGIN! But before I can do that I have to make a run to Delphi Glass (EEE! Everyone I know who has been there says it is UNBELIEVABLE--the selection, the options, the hugeness of it all.) in Lansing sometime this week. The comic uses only 8 colors but I want to make sure (1) that I have enough of each color to finish the whole thing (like yarn, glass sheets have a very specific color run and a batch using exactly the same chemicals but made at another time won't be exactly the same) and (2) that I get colors that really POP. What is the point of doing a comic book page in dull colors?

Monday, September 22, 2008

Meanwhile, The Thing

Yee haw! The package (from U.S. Plastics) arrived, along with a complementary catalog of plastic devices, gadgets and containers all in various plasticated colors. I had no idea one could buy plastic buckets in so many shapes, sizes and colors. (It also contained a small religious pamphlet reassuring me that, if I were to give my life over to Christ right now, I could die in peace, knowing that I will soon be living as Jesus' wife. Move over Simon, you've got competition!)

Here it is, all ready to be turned into a replication of an original Jack Kirby version of The Thing. (No, the plastic isn't blue; it is clear. It comes coated with a thin sheet to prevent it from getting scratched.)

What's this? I didn't order a nearly $100 sheet of plexiglass with a busted out corner. But apparently that is what I got. Sigh. Yes, the comic page isn't exactly square and so this can be cut down to match the exact proportions of the page. But that isn't what I had in mind for the start of this project. Argh. Why do I get the feeling this is the first--and far from the last-- moment of disappointment I will have with this Thing?


The Plaid is Done!

Here is the plaid with both yellows all done and half the cream patches done. By this point, I was thoroughly sick of this and really looking forward to finishing the background of the upper half of the piece.


Ta Da! The Plaid Is Done! Of course, now I have to decide once and for all how to design the background behind the roses, get the glass, cut it, and get to it. Now, rather than very exciting, it seems like a lot of work.

And for the big question: Does it look like a plaid tablecloth or just so much nonsense? I can't go there.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Getting the Plaid Done

Here I am just getting started on the plaid pattern that will be in the foreground of the piece. I decided to start on the middle color, the light yellow and get all those done first. The diagonal line was to indicate a fold in the fabric and I thought at the time that a light orange would go well with the darker yellow.
Here I am almost done with the mid-yellows. This is really tedious, much less pleasant than doing the flowers or the fruit. (The fruit was the most fun--perhaps because it is food related or because the vivid red and green are so nice to look at.)
This is where I am as of last night--the mid-yellows are done, the orange lines are gone (see pile of rejected orange bits at top right of photo) and have been replaced with very dark yellow. I'm almost done with the dark yellow--only one patch remains to be finished, just to the left of the fruit platter. I am going to complete the remaining patches with a soft/ivory white. The dark yellow glass was "crap glass" (a term that someone in my art class came up with to describe glass that doesn't cut cleanly, but shatters instead) so I will be very glad to be done with it. The ivory glass is great--it cuts cleanly and effortlessly.


MEANWHILE the plexiglass for The Thing still has not arrived, and Simon is getting restless.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Thing

After grumbling about my affair with glass for almost a year, a few weeks ago Simon announced (relevant to nothing we were talking about), "You know, if you mosaicked something GOOD, I would like it a lot more." Well, what IS good? What EXACTLY would you like to see done with glass mosaics? After a brief pitter-pattering of him scurrying up to one of his secret spaces (a box in out our closet) back he came with a midewy, tattered, comic. "THIS!" he declared, opening the page to this:


What the hell is that? So, after some long hours of Marvel-lore explanation (who knew?) I was given my instructions: spare no expenses making a super-fabulous, super-sized replication of this picture. After stewing this over for some days, I have decided to go with a 48" x 48" sheet of plexiglass (I had no idea how expensive large sheets of plaxiglass are), I'll frame it, and then backlight it so the light shines through the glass. Yeah, it will weigh a LOT. Here is my inspiration:

Latest Project

Again, I wanted to do something really big--this is a 2' x 4' wall hanging. (What the hell will I do with these things? I have not a clue.) I liked the idea of doing a traditional still life (our mosaic art class was sharing a room with beginning drawing, and they were doing the standard fruit/vases thing I remember doing in 8th grade art). In retrospect I don't know why I wanted to do this, but I'm seeing it through. Here is the fruit bowl part:


And here is a closeup of some of the roses in the vase (which isn't pictured here).

I've decided to to a modified check table cloth in the foreground and a bluey/turquoise/citrony green background--which, I am guessing, will take quite a bit of time since the pieces I am using for this are about 2 mm x 2mm each. (On the table, they were about 3/4" x 1/2".)

It's Been a Long Time

I feel like I am about to confess to having an adulterous affair--worse still, one that has been going on for over a year, is still great and that I have no intention of ending. It's not that I don't still love knitting and yarn, because I do, but it just doesn't thrill me right now. Maybe it will again sometime--after all, I have been with my knitting needles for over twenty years. You just don't throw away that kind of history. But for right now, I am really have a great time making mosaics with glass. It started innocently enough when I took a night class at the FIA (Flint Institute of Arts). I really didn't know what I was doing. I was just curious. But once I tried it, it was great. The glass is just so amazing--similar to yarn in that you can really make anything you want, any size or shape you want, to any design that you want. And the colors are equally vivid, brilliant and rich. But, unlike the coziness and nestiness of yarn, glass is brittle, fragile, and dangerous--a little thrilling. Here is a bit of my supply so far:

This is my first project--which doesn't photograph so well because the hundreds (thousands, maybe?) of pieces all reflect the light at a slightly different angle. It's impossible to get all the pieces looking their best all at the same time. This is a table top about 48" x 30". I made the design up as I went along because I had no idea what I was doing.


Here is a closer look:
Here again.

That table took up the entire fall class (8 weeks) and I took another class in Winter (again 8 weeks), during which I did this window. The stained glass is on a storm window (thank you, Wandmachers, for donating this to the cause). It is bigger (and therefore heavier) than the table, I would guess about 56" x 36". I wanted to do something entirely different so I would learn how to cut larger, curved shapes. And I did.
This fish isn't what I wanted him (her? it?) to be. I would do it very differently if I could do it again, but isn't that the way of things.