Glass mosaic, 1.25 inches by Margaret Almon, $59. SOLD.
I have been experimenting with photographing my pendants on a white background to help the colors shine. I love my old windowsill, but sometimes the patterning in the wood competes with something small like a pendant. One of my favorite aspects of mosaic is that it changes with the light, and yet it makes for photographing challenges. I am always so happy that people say the work is even better in person. For the shop, I also tried out the FotoFuze app which makes the background practically a lightbox in its intensity.
New Day Mandala(Early Bird and the Night Owl) by Nutmeg Designs. Glass on wood, 10 inches, $258.
I love how Stratoz describes our collaboration on this New Day Mandala(Early Bird and the Night Owl):
Orange and Blue are opposites that complement each other in this mandala to greet a new day. As refreshing as a night of rest this glass mosaic is a circle of hope for being renewed with the rising sun. Designed and started by a blue early bird and detailed by an orange night owl. . . “I like the sunrise ’cause it brings a new day, I like a new day, it brings new hope …”(Duke Ellington/Mitchell Parish) A sign that announces to the world that gravity will not weigh you down, hope is perched on your soul.
I am not a morning person, but the sunrise brings this Kurt Elling version of the jazz standard into my head and heart. Elling interweaves a Rumi poem in Mitchell Parish’s lyrics. Take a moment to read the poem and listen to this beautiful tune.
“Where Everything Is Music” (trans. Coleman Barks)
“Don’t worry about saving this music / or be scared
if the singing ends
or the piano breaks a string / for we have fallen to a place
where everything is music and singing /
everything is recovered and new / ever new and musical
and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up /
there would still be hidden there
the spirit of song there to linger on /
and even if a candle’s blown out by wind
the fire smolders on in an ember and then sparks again /
the singing is a drop / just a drop in oceans of seas /
grace keeps it moving through bodies like these
and the sound of a life sends an echoing out /
the poem sings willingly in each newborn’s crying shout /
but it’s growing slowly / and keeps many secrets /
stop the words and listen / feel the echo of it starting /
open a space in the center of your beating heart
and let spirits fly in and out . . .”
Chihuly-Steinway Concert “D” Piano(2002) at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Photo by Wayne Stratz(2009).
September is National Piano Month. This piano immediately caught my eye when Stratoz and I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show in 2009. The theme was jazz, and featured this amazing Steinway with orange keys and an art glass top created by Dale Chihuly. Witnessing glass art was one of the reasons I became an artist.
Chihuly-Steinway Concert “D” Piano(2002) at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Photo by Wayne Stratz(2009).
On a whim I searched for “orange piano” and the Orange Piano Tour appeared. German musician Stefan Aaron takes an orange upright piano to a different country each year, from the Great Wall of China, the Swiss Alps, the Munich airport in Germany, and the top of the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan in 2015. Check out the Munich Airport Soca and the Magic Carpet.
James Siena, Heliopolis, 2004, Woodcut engraving Paper size: 12″ x 10″ Image size: 5″ x 4″ Labyrinthian Structures, Johnson Gallery, Cornell University. Photo by Wayne Stratz (2015).
Stratoz and I went on an excursion to Ithaca, NY, and one of our stops was the Johnson Museum at Cornell University. I was smitten with the James Siena: Labyrinthian Structures exhibit, and the intricate patterns of Siena’s prints. I have walked labyrinths, and the convolutions calm my mind. Siena says he hopes to take the viewer’s eye on a walk with his patterning, and it is a fine walk indeed.
It troubled my librarian heart that I couldn’t find gallery labels for the art, and it didn’t look promising online either, probably because the exhibit wasn’t officially open yet! I didn’t realize this fact until writing this post and saw the start date was September 5th, 2015, and we were there August 25th. I’d like to give a shout-out to Troy McHenry and his James Siena Print List, his wonderful “unofficial online print catalogue raisonné in-progress” (as he terms it). McHenry is a collector of Siena’s work, and any artist would love to have such a labor of love. Go explore it to see many more of Siena’s works.
Cherry Tomatoes from the Lansdale Farmers Market. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Previous Orange Tuesday subject Cathy Vaughn mentioned she was watching Chef’s Table on Netflix, and she was blown away by Chef Niki Nakayama. Stratoz and I added Chef’s Table to the queue, and witnessed the artistry of Niki Nakayama’s food, and learned a new word, kaiseki. Kaiseki is a 13 course meal that originated in Buddhist Monasteries of 16th Century Japan. It was an accompaniment to the tea ceremony, and originally vegetarian, but has become a banquet of richness over the years.
Seasonality is a key to kaiseki, and respecting the integrity of the food, letting its nature shine through. These cherry tomatoes from the Lansdale Farmers Market remind me of the season of summer, of sweet yellow-orangeness. Stratoz is inspired by what we buy at the market, and it makes him happy to create with the palette of vegetables we choose.
The staff of n/naka have meetings to go through the reservation list, and look at what people have had in the past, what they like. Niki Nakayama doesn’t serve the same meal twice to someone. She keeps the element of surprise. Kaiseki reminds me of poetic forms, from my days of writing poetry. There is a sequence of cooking techniques, the ordering of raw, steamed, braised or grilled, and sequence of light and heavy, sweet and salty. Playing within this form inspires further creativity.
Watching Niki Nakayama in her kitchen is watching an artist at work in the studio with focus and expressiveness. She closes the rice paper windows of her restaurant n/naka while she is cooking so that she can simply cook and not deal with customers who can’t believe a woman is the chef, and also lets the customers focus on their food. As an introvert, I love the motion of her closing those sliding windows. As a woman, I feel anger that narratives are such rigid implements, like the customer who said her work was “cute” after he found out Nakayama’s gender. As a woman, I feel encouraged by Niki Nakayama’s process of choosing a restaurant that expresses her vision.
Jae Ko: JK 437 Red and Orange, 2013; rolled paper, colored ink(Close View). Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ. Photo by Wayne Stratz(2015).Jae Ko: JK 437 Red and Orange, 2013; rolled paper, colored ink(Detail). Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ. Photo by Wayne Stratz (2015).Jae Ko: JK 437 Red and Orange, 2013; rolled paper, colored ink. Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ. Photo by Wayne Stratz (2015).
To make her mark she was searching for a material never before used. In grad school she had worked on rice paper, and made installations and books. “I didn’t want to use something you could get in an art supply store. I was experimenting. I would try and try until I could get a conversation going with the material. I would talk with the paper and it would talk back to me.”
That was when she started working with rolls of adding machine paper and cash register tape. She began with small spools, working flat, trying new things. Putting the paper in water, she discovered, expands it and creates new shapes. She added sumi ink to the pool of water, and the results looked like car tires. She was drawing not on paper, but with paper. WHYY Newsworks.
I love what sculptor Jae Ko did next ~ when the amount of water she was using became too much for her studio, she went to the ocean to see what the tides would do with paper. Stratoz and I saw her exhibition at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton NJ, which will be there until February 7, 2016.
JK 437 Red and Orange was several feet tall, and bursting with ombre. Color gradation is one of my passions in the studio. I found Jae Ko’s use of the tightly wound rolls of adding machine paper resonant with the closet of arcane office supplies I inherited when I took a job as a hospital librarian in the late 1990’s, and admire her transformation that goes beyond the “I should do something with that.” Art as an alchemical process.
The individual pieces that make up a mosaic are called tesserae, and making a topography of tesserae is restorative to my soul. Especially in orange. Sometimes I get this longing to make something without knowing how it will turn out. My artist self can be very astute and wise in the studio, in ways that are much more difficult for me when out of the studio.
Out of the studio, I expect myself to know how things will turn out, in advance, in omniscience, in complete certainty. Then I notice the impossibility of this, and often have sharp words for myself about being perfectionistic, and then if I am paying attention, I will notice this as well, and grant myself a moment of grace.
There are ways in which this patchwork trivet is imperfect. It is bumpy, with crooked edges, and scratches, gaps in the grout, and unevenness of color in the finish of the frame. Perhaps you catch yourself thinking, “But I like that it looks like it was made by hand instead of a machine” or maybe you see the whole rather than the individual tesserae. This is when my wise artist self says, “You like this and if it has to meet some imaginary idea of perfect, you won’t make any art at all. So what shall you choose?”
What of the pleasures of doing craft shows is meeting new artists. Cathy Vaughn of Tracery 157 introduced herself, as we have Phoenix Handcraft as a friend in common. She came up from Richmond, VA with her copper art. Her booth caught my eye right away. Copper is a vehicle for orange in its most earthy beautiful forms. As additional pleasure, I learned a new word, Tracery:
Tracery – In architecture, bars, or ribs, used decoratively in windows or other openings; the term also applies to similar forms used in relief as wall decoration (sometimes called blind tracery), and hence, figuratively, to any intricate line pattern.*
*excerpted from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/601424/tracery
The copper panels are a new direction, with botanical imprints leaving layered color and texture. The process can be guided, but there are surprises and happy accidents that motivate more experimentation.
Cathy Vaughn had purchased a 10×3 foot sheet of copper to divide up and test out, but she kept a bigger piece, 6×3 feet. She planned to cut up for a woven panel, but the botanical print revealed when she lifted the tarp was complete in itself. In person, the panels have a lovely glossy sheen from a coat of resin that protects the surface.
On July 25 & 26th, 2015, I will have my work at the Pennsylvania Guild Fine Craft Fair at the Chase Center in Wilmington, DE. I am shepherding my mosaics out of the studio and down the stairs for staging on the dining room table. I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s book on habits, Better than Before, and she describes people as tending to be “openers” or “finishers.” Usually, I am an opener. I like to check out large piles of library books, buy new art supplies, start new projects. I used to feel obligated to finish every book I checked out, but after discovering the Reader’s Bill of Rights in Library School, (what Rubin would call a Secret of Adulthood), I now leave a book undone on occasion.
Stratoz gently advised that I not start any new mosaics the week before the show. He is wise, though I did find a way to remake a commissioned project, under the guise that it wasn’t “new.” Otherwise, I do enjoy a burst of finishing the week before a craft show ~ a reminder of the wonder of creation.
