more flowers, chipmunks, and Gothic turrets

 A busy week in Artlandia!

I hadn't realized it, but I "needed" another chipmunk. While a lovely new creature block is generally a positive thing, it wasn't exactly on my radar to be doing this this week. I was planning to continue work on the turret (which I did)...however, the turret has been going soooooo slowly that I started to wonder if maybe I'd just become an awful carver or wasn't working as hard on it as I thought. So I decided to take a break and quickly make something fun (chipmunk!).

Jr. assisting with scale

Then I went back to the turret, and I really am almost finished (the initial round) of carving.  I'm so close that I was tempted to work on it all morning and try to finish it for this post, but after so many hours, I don't want to rush the last bit (and also, since it's been slower than estimated all along, if I thought it might be done today, that probably means more like Wednesday :p ).

I was lucky to have lots of feline assistance with this in a pose I think of as "double-decker kitties" where my Princess sits in her bed and Jr. sprawls on the desk right next to my carving spot - it's like being on stage with an attentive audience both at orchestra level and in the mezzanine. 

Look at that face!  This was her right before the test - not nervous at all.

Speaking of the creature-family...big news!  Honey passed her therapy dog test!(!!) I am so, so, soooo proud.  She did great (I think I was the nervous one). 

 a selfie of us to commemorate, haha

In para-art news, we did more flower research.  

look at that Giant! mushroom
- it's broader than a tree! Now
where is the Cheshire Cat?

Flowers

A busy week in Artlandia...

Let's start with the mouse block...Ahhh the mouse block, which (* I thought)  was 90% finished last week. Well...I printed them, and I thought they were fine...but not quite capturing all the detail in the face and paws... and then I compared the background to one of the proofs and definitely not getting all the detail.

By that point, it was like 3 in the morning, so I gave up for the night and decided to think about it.  I thought the pressure was right, the ink was right, the paper was right, the block was right, so what changed between the proof and the final printing?  The brayer. The top one is with the soft brayer and the bottom one is with a hard brayer (Doh). So I ended up reprinted them.

When I say "it took an embarrassing
 number of proofs to get it right,"
I'm (sadly) not joking. 

At least I was right about it looking fantastic
 in the pseudo-tapestry. O:)

The mouse wasn't the only cranky-making block this week...carving the turret is dragging on. It's taking a long time because it's like a miniature...that just happens to be big. While that's hard to explain in words, the pictures sort of show what I mean - here's a close up showing how a lot of these cuts are smaller than the date on a quarter...and there are a lot of them.                                                                                                                                                                        On the one hand, I think it will be beautiful when it's done and the idea of applying the aesthetics of a miniature on large scale is appropriate for Gothic architecture...on the other hand, I could definitely have made a beautiful version of this less laboriously using larger tools. At this point, more than half way through, it's too late to make that sort of change, and I feel like I just need to see it through. 

Other blocks this week - I made "intermediate sized" rocks for the pseudo-tapestry and the other block for "Luxuria" (Lust) to go in the landscape. (While it's very "not subtle" on the block, I printed it on translucent paper both to mimic latex and to help integrate it into the landscape.) 

In addition to making new things, I also framed and delivered completed pieces to the Albany Institute of History & Art for the upcoming Mohawk-Hudson Regional exhibition (!)



































I'm not quite happy with the flowers in the pseudo tapestry yet so I did a lot of "research" - flowers in the yard, flowers in the woods, flowers on the street, flowers in the nursery.    

  I tried to capture a good example
of the horizontal bands in the landscape

and, of course, just outside the frame,
 I had excellent canine assistance :). 

And last, but not least, an un-color corrected photo of the sunset from
earlier in the week, because one can never have too many
beautiful sunsets. 

pseudo-tapestry update

A visual update on the pseudo-tapestry:

Progress, sloooooooow progress.

In part, it's going slowly because I carved new blocks.  Despite having many flower blocks, I decided none of them were quiiiiite right.  So I picked flowers, drew them directly on the block, and carved them. Then I marbled paper and printed.  Grumble though I may, I think these are a better fit.

Other reasons progress is slow - I cut out the flowers, printed additional plant blocks, and attached them with adhesive and then sewing.

I also started cutting the interior edges of the ground (Eep! About half way there) and shaped the edge and sewed together the tree trunk,

Another block I carved and proofed (*though I may do a little more carving - still thinking :) ) is a mouse...because the chipmunk turned out to be too big (sigh).

Work also continues on the turret. 

Outside the studio, I was excited to attend the opening of Becoming: 30 Hotchkiss Artists at the Tremaine Gallery and see the squirrel and carousel diptych framed on the wall for the first time :). The show looks great and will be up until June 18th. I enjoyed seeing a variety of work, meeting the curators and other artists, and catching up with my former teachers.

In creature news - we had our first extremely hot days. Even though temperatures have returned to seasonable levels, I put the air conditioning unit in...and within mere seconds, my Princess, she of the luxuriously long fur, had rotated her primary napping location to be right in front of the air conditioner (smart kitty). Junior brought her favorite toy and plopped down on the floor...right in front of the air conditioner (second smart kitty). Honey is enjoying the outdoors - playing ball and getting belly rubs in the grass.