Deidre Adams

Opening reception at Katherine E. Nash Gallery, June 9, 2011

The Katherine E. Nash Gallery, on the University of Minnesota campus, is a large, beautiful space where several SDA featured exhibitions were installed. Here’s a small sampling.

Apparitions – Tim Harding

Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Univ. of Minn., Minneapolis, Minn.
Through June 30

Works in this exhibition are “concerned with the juxtaposition of body and soul.” Harding was inspired by his “growing recognition of his own mortality, the Shroud of Turin*, and the 9/11 tragedy in New York.”

Reflections on Water: Recent Works by Mary Edna Fraser, Linda Gass, and Barbara Lee Smith

Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Univ. of Minn., Minneapolis, Minn.
Through June 30

The theme of water – “whether viewed aerially, from a distance or close enough to feel the spray of a wave” – is the common thread of the work of these three artists, whose processes are quite different. Show coordinator Barbara Lee Smith uses industrial-grade polyester combined with paint and stitching to create dreamy, atmospheric landscapes. The works in her exhibition “serve as reminders of the power of nature and the power of humankind to create and destroy.” Linda Gass paints and stitches on silk; her aerial-perspective landscapes are an expression of her environmental activism, encouraging people to consider water-use issues and feel inspired to take action. Mary Edna Fraser is also motivated by environmental concerns, seeking to convey “a sense of place often employing conservation science. Her work is inspired by Japanese “floating world” woodblock prints from the Edo period (1615-1868).

The WindFallMaps – India Flint

Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Univ. of Minn., Minneapolis, Minn.
Through June 30

A beautiful solo show of the work of India Flint, an artist known for her work with the ecoprint, an ecologically sustainable plant-based dyeing process. This exhibition includes wall pieces as well as long, flowing garments hung from branches, making for an immersive, forest-like experience. From the artist’s statement:

Some pieces are intended for walls, others to enfold the human body, which in turn marks its own kind of map upon the work as a garment molds to the wearer. Discarded clothes are encoded maps of bodies as well as maps of places the bodies have been. Cut open a well-worn garment and it will reveal clues of wandering, wear and shape; just as the Shroud of Turin* revealed clues about the form it once wrapped.

The maps in this exhibition aren’t intended to function as guides, rather as a series of travel notes in a personal code that remind me of places I’ve been. The processes are slow and mindful, a kind of immersion in intimate knowledge of the land as much as quiet concentrated work on stitching and piecing.

(See more about her process in my posts about her workshop here and here.)

*What are the odds that two of the artists in these concurrent exhibitions would mention the Shroud of Turin?

Promise of Calmer Seas, detail, ©Jason Pollen

Sentinels – Jason Pollen

The Christensen Center Art Gallery, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minn.
Through July 29

It would be difficult to overestimate the contribution and influence Jason Pollen has had in the world of textile art over the last few decades. As a long-time president of the Surface Design Association and recently retired chair of the fiber department at Kansas City Art Institute, his artwork and his teaching have inspired countless numbers of students and working artists alike. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to take a workshop with him in the Denver area several years ago, and some of the things I learned are integral to the work I’m making now.

The Winter 2011 issue of Surface Design Journal features an article on his work. “A Safe Place to Play,” by Geraldine Craig, provides a brief history of Jason and his work along with several beautiful photographs. I had been familiar with his textile work up until this point, but his latest work includes a series of tall wood sculptures with complex surface textures and varied colors. Reminiscent of human figures, these articulated structures simultaneously stand on the floor and lean against the wall in a relaxed yet watchful manner. According to the article, “Pollen views them as sentinels, protectors who distinguish between the protected and unknown potential prey.” These sculptures, along with 2 textile pieces, comprise the Sentinels exhibition.

The wall label for the exhibition says:

The inspiration for this exhibition stems from a prolonged experience of physical and emotional wounds, scars and mercifully, an ongoing significant recovery. Witnessing the stages of illness and vulnerability compelled me to create works that reflect on the universality of our fragility and strengths. Cloth, wood, stitching, color and mark-making are the tools I require in my passionate attempt to bring inanimate objects to life. My wish is that they might inspire those who connect with them.

–Jason Pollen

I would say he has succeeded admirably in his wish.

New Tools and Ancient Techniques – Teresa Paschke

Gage Family Art Gallery, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minn.
Through July 29

Iowa State University associate professor Teresa Paschke is “intrigued by the expressive possibilities that exist by merging sophisticated technology such as digital printing with the most modest ones–needle and thread.” The work in this exhibition is based on her experiences in Prague in 2008. It combines her photographs of street scenes, architecture, and graffiti, digitally manipulated and printed on fabric, with hand printing and hand stitching. She wants the viewer to consider how ornament and pattern express cultural and social ideals, and to consider how historical and contemporary forms of visual expression might be related – in this case, historical needlework and contemporary graffiti. The addition of the tactile stitching to the beautifully printed photographs was an unexpected and delightful surprise, bringing me in for closer inspection and consideration.

Whisper: Jiyoung Chung’s Joomchi

Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, Minneapolis, Minn.
Through June 24

Jiyoung Chung is a painter, mixed media artist, and freelance writer. This is an exhibition of her work using an “innovative method for utilizing a traditional Korean method of papermaking called Joomchi.” She also taught a pre-conference workshop at SDA, but it was held at the same time as the one I did take. If I ever get another opportunity to take a class from her, I’ll certainly do it, because I was very impressed with the work in this exhibition. The layering of the sheets, creating intricate interactions within the holes, made me think about the concept of “negative space” in a new way that’s giving some ideas for my own work. Several of the pieces also included stitching and threadwork. I especially loved how the work was hung, with the lighting adding an important contribution of shadows that brought it to life.

The Jiyoung Chung work is being shown at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts – a must-see if you are interested in paper, printmaking, or any form of book arts. Be sure to go downstairs and see their fantastic studios for letterpress and papermaking.

Henny Penny (detail), cast handmade paper, wax, and dye. Hand sewn. ©2011 Ann Hall Richards.

Thursday at the Surface Design Association conference was gallery day. We spent the afternoon being shuttled from one great exhibition to another. There were so many, I didn’t get to see all of them, but here are some highlights of the ones I did see.

Esperanza – Carolyn Kallenborn

Gordon Parks Gallery, Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, Minn.
Through July 28, 2011

The works in Esperanza (“hope” in Spanish) come from a melding of prior exhibitions that share a common thread, all based on concepts Kallenborn became familiar with throughout her extensive time spent in Oaxaca, Mexico. Deseos comes from a desire to respond to feelings of hopelessness and fear with a message of healing. Cascada is an interactive installation piece in which viewers are invited to write on a silk rose petal a single word describing an admired characteristic of a person who has passed on, and exchange it for a painted stone from the installation. Ofrendas includes works inspired by the public ofrenda (“offering”), a kind of altar, and the milagro (“miracle”), a small charm left as a prayer for healing. The long banner-like pieces are made from handwoven cloth from the markets in Oaxaca, to which Kallenborn meticulously hand stitches beads, shells, silk flower petals, and other found objects. She says each object “is chosen and placed to reflect the specific emotion or desire expressed within the piece. The time and the attention in deliberately attaching each individual object is itself a meditative process. The finished pieces become the physical visual reminders of my intention.”

Flotsam and Jetsam – Erica Spitzer Rasmussen
Repetition Meditation Revelation – Ann Hall Richards

Concordia Gallery, Concordia University, St. Paul, Minn.
Through July 1, 2011

These two shows, exhibited concurrently in two different rooms of the gallery, were very different in concept but worked beautifully together due to symbiosis achieved through visually similar materials and process.

Ann Hall Richards uses “techniques that transform common objects into contemporary and contemplative works that invite and even challenge the viewer to consider not only the content, but also the process and choice of materials.” The aptly-named exhibition features works in which the artist takes a common object or an unrecognizable yet oddly familiar form, and repeats it until the units together create a new form compelling further consideration and contemplation.

Erica Spitzer Rasmussen’s works also use repetition and familiar objects, but her themes are more personal, based on childhood memories, experiences of family and motherhood, and cultural references. She says, “I sometimes find body-stories or body-experiences to be simultaneously comical and horrifying.  It is often these extremes in emotional reactions that drive me to produce the work, in an attempt to better comprehend each situation.”

In the Garden of Earthquakes – Vernal Bogren Swift

AAW Gallery of Wood Art, Landmark Center, St. Paul, Minn.
Through June 26, 2011

Vernal Bogren Swift says she regards making art as a form of questioning. “I think of myself as much as a scientist as an artist. I suppose I would like to replace the word ‘artist’ with another term such as ‘visual thinker.’” Her exhibition consists of 9 batik panels depicting a narrative inspired by the ongoing tectonic plate movements between sea and land. The meticulously rendered drawings are whimsical yet beautiful, fascinating in detail. My only complaint about the installation was that most of the work was hung too high to get a good look at all of it. I would have liked to be able to get a better sense of the story within.

I did have a chance to talk with the artist briefly. She told me that with this work, she has only about a 40% success rate. I asked her what she does with the “failures” (the term would have to be relative, in my opinion), and she says she destroys them. As a quilter who challenges myself to use up everything and try to waste nothing, I was both very surprised and frankly somewhat horrified to hear this. I thought of all the lovely quilts that could be made from what I envision to be piles of lovely fabric. But I certainly respect her integrity in not wishing her work to be used in such a way.

Rose petals, onion skins, various leaves and flowers used for dyeing in class

Near the end of Day 2 of the Traveler’s Notebook workshop, we prepared and simmered more bundles. The difference this time was that the pot was richer in mordanting compounds – both through the accumulation of plant materials from prior dyeing as well as through the addition of odd hunks of scrap iron and other metal.  We also left the bundles wrapped overnight so that the dyes could have more time to set. The first thing next morning, we opened our bundles with as much anticipation and excitement as children on Christmas morning. I was a lot happier with my results this time.

While waiting for bundles to come out of the dyepot, we continued to make more sheets collaged with fabrics, papers, and special mementos, held together with stitch. We also did a writing exercise to create a page covered with a texture made of our own handwritten marks. (More on this later.)

With all these raw materials now in progress for our finished books, the next thing to do would be to create a binding structure for the finished books. This was to be based on the Blizzard Book, a structure created by Hedi Kyle during a blizzard.

The folds of the Blizzard Book are called “mountains” (outer folds) and “valleys” (inner folds). Because we would be stitching all of our pages to folds of the Blizzard Book, we added support to the paper by hand-stitching a length of fabric to the center portion. Then we accordion-folded these large sheets of paper and prepared them for dyeing by the same processes as used before.

While waiting for the real binding structures to dry after dyeing, we practiced the Blizzard book folding technique with a dummy sheet. The process is rather paradoxical – it seems simple when you see it demonstrated, but then when you try it, you realize how complex it can be when you can’t remember what to do next. Instructions for making your own Blizzard Book can be found in the Penland Book of Handmade Books. You can also find a PDF with instructions here.

The last step of the bookmaking process was to attach the materials made during the last few days to the folds of the Blizzard Book structure. I didn’t get mine finished, but several people did, and the results were spectacular.

I had one more goal I wanted to accomplish in class. Many artists are packrats, and I’m no exception. I’ve been holding onto a large stack of Rives BFK printmaking paper in thin strips, the remnants of trimming large sheets to a specific size for intaglio prints when I was in school. When the supply list said to bring scraps of paper, I threw these in with my materials. I used the class time to dye these strips. I don’t know yet what I’ll use them for, but I do think they’re quite beautiful.

Rives BFK paper dyed with leaves, rose & iris petals, and onion skins. Peony petals acted as a resist. Drawn lines were made by painting with milk prior to dyeing.

Silk fabric eco-dyed and hand-stitched by India Flint

This week I’m in Minneapolis, Minn. for the Surface Design Association Conference. This is my second time at SDA, and this time, I decided to give myself a gift: a workshop with an artist whose work I admire greatly. India Flint calls herself a “maker of marks, forest wanderer & tumbleweed, stargazer & stitcher, botanical alchemist & string twiner, working traveller, dreamer, sax player and occasional poet.” She is the author of Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles, which is a guide to coloring cloth using locally sourced plant materials.

I don’t remember now where I first heard of India, but somehow I found her blog and web site and fell in love with the extraordinary yet delicate beauty of the plant-dyed fabrics she creates. I bought her book last year, not only to find out the details of how to make these magical marks on cloth, but also because the book is just plain beautiful. It contains a wealth of information on the different plants that can be used as well as types of mordants that can be employed to improve the strength of the dye bonds produced. The most compelling thing about the process is that it doesn’t involve harmful chemicals and can be done fairly easily without the need for buying expensive equipment or materials.

India lives on her own farm in Southern Australia, but she travels the world and teaches extensively. This particular workshop is called “Enfoldments – A Traveler’s Notebook.” We’re combining the dyeing techniques with hand stitching and simple bookmaking techniques to “explore ways of recording and describing responses to place and country as a means of making sense of wherever [we] are in the world.”

India began the class with the opening of a “bundle” she had created the previous day. A bundle is a length of fabric which is rolled up together with leaves and flower petals and other assorted bits and tied tightly around a stick, then submerged into a pot of water and given a gentle simmer for a prescribed amount of time. We would be making many bundles throughout the course of the week, and the the opening of one’s bundles after dyeing to see the lovely gifts granted from nature is a greatly anticipated event.

Fabric eco-dyed by India Flint

We then went outside for a “windfall walk,” the purpose of which is to gather leaves and flower petals that have fallen to the ground. Small bits of rusted metal and odd scraps of paper are also treasures to bring back for our books. Once back to the workshop, we used our harvest to create our own first bundles.

After learning the basic process, the next step was to start making the pages of our book. To that end, we were each given a sheet of heavy drawing/wash paper and given instructions to collage fabric and paper using thread and stitch – no glue. I got rather caught up in doing the stitching – I even took my piece back to my room that night to work on it some more. I do love to stitch on fabric, but I found it to be a lot more difficult on paper. If I’m going to be doing much more of this in future, I’m going to need more protection for my needle-grabbing fingers. My thumb was very sore after a couple of hours of doing this.

The second day, we started to make the books. India showed us a simple way to make a very basic artist’s book from a single sheet of paper with folding and cutting. Then we used the same dyeing principles with our folded books to get color on the pages. Although mine turned out rather pale, some of the others were quite spectacular.

Quilt National 2011 opened this past Friday. I am very proud to be a part of this most excellent show, and I was glad I had the opportunity to attend the opening reception and associated activities at the Dairy Barn Arts Center.

Along with 2 of the 3 jurors, an unprecedented 66 of 88 artists traveled to Athens, Ohio, for the opening. It was great to be able to meet so many artists whose work I’ve long admired, and to see others again whom I’d met before. There’s something really invigorating about being in the midst of so many creative minds all at once. I tried to get photos of as many of these artists with their work as I could. (A few of them escaped my efforts.)

If you haven’t already, you should get a copy of this year’s book, available directly from the Dairy Barn. (I know you can get it for less on Amazon, but it’s important to support the organizations who are so instrumental in providing exhibition venues for art quilts.)

Congratulations to all the exhibitors who participated in this exhibition, and especially to the award winners. I would like to extend my grateful thanks and appreciation to Quilt National Director Kathleen Dawson and to all the staff and volunteers at the Dairy Barn Arts Center, for all their incredibly hard work in making this exhibition a fantastic success and for planning the wonderful events for the artists. Thanks also to everyone who enters the show year after year, myself among them, making the exhibition a possibility!

Façade VII, acrylic on stitched textile, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Today I’m in Ohio for the opening festivities of Quilt National. Since the exhibition opens tonight, I figure it’s now safe to post a photo of my piece. As I noted here, their rules are very strict about the work being shown anywhere, including on the web, prior to the show. I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than being kicked out of the show, so I didn’t even want to post it here too early – it seems there was a prior incident where someone was removed from the show because someone copied her photo from her own web site and posted it on their own. Anyway, being included in this exhibition is a great honor, and I would not want to take any chances.

Façade VII, detail, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Hope to be back here soon with some photos from the reception.

Someone thinks my work is so awesome, it should be included in an exhibit in Beijing? Cool!

Wait – it’s gonna cost me $950 for the publicity? Hmm, then look at this: My work will not be returned; it becomes the property of NY Arts Beijing space in China?

Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s quite possible I just fell off the turnip truck and I’m so desperate for exposure that I might still agree to all of this. However, we now have this thing called the Internet, and we can now do our homework and find out that these people have been scamming artists for a very long time. What’s amazing to me is that not enough artists must do this, and so they just keep on going, under the same names, not even bothering to make an effort to cover their tracks. A 10-second Google search reveals:

Casey Shannon knows about this

Heidi Allen knows about this

Art Bistro forum members know about this

Helen Ansell knows about this

And, my personal favorite:

The Caramel Award

Artists, please be careful; it’s a jungle out there! In the interest of helping anyone out there who might get an email like this and wonder if it’s legit, here’s the entire pitch I received yesterday:

Dear Deidre Adams,

My name is Abraham Lubelski, the publisher of NY Arts Magazine, and owner
of The Broadway Gallery NYC and Beijing Arts Space in China. Recently my
staff came across your works while researching for upcoming projects, and
with their recommendation I would like to invite you to exhibit your works
in Beijing, in May – October 31,  2011*. We will hang your work as soon as
we receive it.

I am interested in your work “Composition IX” and would like to know more
about it. I believe it would be an important addition to our program. By
paying close attention to the intuitive works of each artist, we are hoping
to construct an exhibitions of works that truly speak to the viewer. The
exhibitions also offers an international publicity program for a fee (see
details below). This promotion/publicity is a media driven event and offers
both emerging and established artists the broadest media coverage possible.

All the best,

Abraham Lubelski
Publisher
NY Arts Magazine
473 Broadway, 7th floor, NY NY 10013 | 212-274-8993

 

_________________________________________________________________________________

Exhibition & Publicity Agreement

EXHIBITION DATE AND SPONSORS

Exhibition:    Beijing Collection 2011
Location:      Beijing Artists Space
Dates:          May 3 – October 31, 2011*
*Your work remains hanging in the gallery for a minimum of 3 months.
We will hang your work as soon as we receive it.

Sponsor: NY Arts Magazine & Art Fairs International

Promotion & Publicity:

***The fee for the publicity program is $950.00

- “Beijing Collection 2011” will be featured among the “Artists of the
Month” banner on the homepage of www.nyartsmagazine.com,
www.nyartsbeijingcollection.com  and www.nyartsbeijing.com, as well as
within postings on these sites.

- Images of the artist’s works will be displayed
on www.artfairsinternational.com, www.nyartsmagazine.com,
and www.nyartsbeijing.com for the duration of the month.

- Each artist participating in the project will be represented, with an
image of his or her work (which may or may not be the work on view in
China) on our website, with a hyperlink going directly to the artist’s
personal web site.

- A special webpage will be created exclusively for “Beijing Collection
2011” at www.globalartprojects.com, www.nyartsmagazine.com,
and www.nyartsbeijing.com. This page will be online for a minimum of one
year, with each participating artist’s hyperlink and image.

- Artist to be featured in the print edition, NY Arts Annual Top Websites
Directory (Spring 2011 issue) within our magazine:
a) Artist Name
b) Website address
c) One image of the artist’s work (hi res 300 dpi and 4 x 6 inches)
d) Up to 70 words of text that best describes the nature of the work, and
their website

- This feature will also be posted online at the NY Arts Annual Top
Websites Directory.

- This feature will also be posted on the NY Arts Magazine’s Artist
Directory online for one year with a direct hyperlink to the artist’s
website.

CATALOG, PUBLICATION & DISTRIBUTION: “BEIJING COLLECTION 2011″.

- Size: 8.5” X 11”

- Each artist will have one full page in the catalog. The page will
include  one image and a submitted text on their work.

- Thousands of copies printed for sale & distribution.

- The annual catalog will be a special section of NY Arts Magazine to be
published in Fall 2011, and distributed in the United States, Europe, and
China.

- The section/catalog, “BEIJING COLLECTION 2011” will feature its own
cover inside NY Arts Magazine. As part of NY Arts Magazine, it will be
distributed nationally and internationally through our distribution
system(available at a variety of locations including galleries, museums and
popular bookstores, such as Barnes and Noble), as well as to our
subscribers.

*Deadline for submitting all data is one week after finalizing exhibition
agreement.

Schedule & Payments:

***Total publicity cost is $950.00
includes the publicity program and printed catalogs

Shipping Work, & Sales:

- Each artist will show one selected work in the group exhibition,
“Beijing Collection 2011.” Maximum allotted wall space will be 55” x 30”
per artist.
All work must be shipped rolled and cannot be more than 5 pounds total
shipping weight. We will stretch and frame work when necessary.

- Each participating artist is responsible for arranging the shipment of
work to Beijing. Works are to arrive 7-10 days prior to the first day of
the exhibition.

- No work will be returned. All work remains the property of NY Arts
Beijing Space in China.

* NY Arts Beijing Space has the right to lend works from its permanent
collection to any museums, galleries or non-profit arts organization for
exhibition purposes only.

- On the back of each work there must be: Artist’s Name, Title of the
Work, Date created, Medium, and Artist’s website address.

-*Your work remains hanging in the gallery for a minimum of 3 months. We
will hang your work as soon as we receive it.

Energy Study, 16 x 16 inches, acrylic on panel, ©2010 Deidre Adams

Just noticed that it’s been almost a month since the last post, so I thought I should do a quick update. Here’s a painting in spring/summer colors to introduce a tangentially-related topic.

I have a big birthday coming up this year, and I decided what I wanted was a new house. Since that was completely out of the question, the next best thing would be to finish up some long-dormant home improvement projects and also to paint. Several years ago, I painted the family room and the dining room with some rather bright colors inspired by Mexico and a particular restaurant color scheme. This was a triumph of wills for me, as my husband would much rather see colors that have “resale value.” Once it’s done, though, he no longer notices.

We also have a “living” room – that seldom-used room that designers of modern suburban houses always seem to think we need, although I’d much rather have a bigger family room and do away with that complete waste of space. The room spans the two stories of the house, so I wanted to make it look less cavernous by dividing it vertically with different colors of paint. I did several very large patches with test colors but didn’t like any of them, and there they stayed as utter paralysis set in, probably for about 5 or 6 years, I don’t even know for sure. I stopped noticing, but I’m sure all my friends thought I was about the laziest person on the planet.

So I don’t know if it was the advent of spring, the start of a new phase of life, or just the fact that I was maybe a little tired of explaining to people just what the heck was going on with that crazy wall, but I finally got a fire lit under me to change it. And I couldn’t do just that room, I had to keep going and attack every white wall in the house. (I just do not like white walls, even though they do make it easy to coordinate artwork.) So for pretty much every day for the last three weeks, I’ve been house painting. Not as much fun as art, but satisfying in its own way.

Informal Analogy, 48 x 48 inches, acrylic on panel, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Before I say anything else, in case people don’t care to read all the way through this, I would just like to point out that I’ve added a lot of new work to my website. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Now, on to the story.

While working on a 12×12 series (see here and here), I got the idea that it would be fun to work even smaller, so I bought a dozen 8×8 panels. So far, this hasn’t turned out as expected; it’s been a struggle trying to get these tiny paintings to a satisfying state. I don’t know why this is, but it’s the same with textile works. (At least a painting on a wood panel doesn’t have the placemat problem.) But I can’t force it, and so those have been placed aside for the moment.

So when small doesn’t work, what’s the answer? Go big, of course!

Now, I must work within certain limitations, the most obvious of which is that since my studio is a room in my house, working large is a challenge. The largest possible painting I can do is 48 inches (the width of my work table). Since it was the dead of winter and we were having a series of frigid days at 10° F and below, that was the determining factor.

I had 3 panels made at this size – the most I could afford at the time. And since my studio room isn’t big enough to accommodate working on these flat all at once, the obvious solution is to take over the entire house. My mostly unused living room became the site of panel prep. Here’s the first stage, after a complete dust removal with a vacuum cleaner and a damp rag, a filling of teeny-tiny nail holes, and two coats of Golden GAC100. Right now it looks so beautiful, I would almost rather make a nice table out of it than use it to paint on.

I’ve found a great local source of panels: Space Gallery in Denver. These are beautifully made, furniture quality. Much better than anything I could do myself, and reasonably priced. They also seem to have a source for the raw materials that’s far superior to what I was able to get from Home Depot. So, if it’s within the budget, why not pay for a professional-quality product and use the time and energy saved for what you really want to do, which is make art? And yes, if I never have to see that scary table saw in action again, it won’t bother me too much.

Bonus: I get a chance to check out the latest show at Space Gallery, one of my favorites, and experience the unexpectedly wry humor of the director, artist Michael Burnett. Michael also gave me a great tip the last time I was there, which is to give the back of your panels a coating of your prep medium. This helps to equalize the stress between front and back and hopefully eliminate the chance of warping.

Well, since I needed painting substrates more urgently than I needed furniture, I eventually went on to the next phase of prep, gesso.

I like to put it on in thin coats with a roller, and I do three coats, letting each dry completely before going on to the next. This gives me a very nice even surface. I’m not completely sure why that’s important, since I will henceforth do a lot of things that will make it very UNeven, but that is now my ritual, for what it’s worth. To do three at a time, I also need to use the front entryway.

Now that warmer weather is on the way, I’m excited at the prospect of being able to work outside. I have a fantastic deck on the back of my house, and I just need to get set up out there. I plan to do some larger works out there when I figure out all the logistics.