The question everyone asks themselves before they embark on a trip, right?

What am I forgetting…

Over the past few months, I’ve really been focused on two major things going on in and out of the studio. One is my solo show at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in Oregon and the other is planning an epic month long trip to Bhutan, India and Nepal. Both are projects steeped in details, research and time. So right now with about 2 weeks to go and just a few things still to cross off my to-do list, I’m asking myself ‘What am I forgetting?’

My eight foot square studio table is piled with all the art, photos, tools, hardware and pedestals that will make up my show. Somehow all of that will fit into my van and make the journey up to Grants Pass where it will magically turn into an exhibition of six installations in just 4 days. I keep looking at this pile on the table and doubting myself that I’ve planned the space well, or that I’ve measured wrong or forgotten something and there will be a glaring hole in my exhibit where art should be. Not to mention the chance of breakage in transit or installation. At this point, I’m trying to trust that I’ve done this before, that my lists are long and thorough and I’m reminding myself that drywall screws can be bought in Grants Pass too if I run out.

The show will open on the First Friday in April and just two short days later, I’ll be on a plane on the way to Bhutan. It’s obviously not an ideal amount of turnaround time between these two major events, but it is what it is. So with 4 Visas issued, 6 different flights booked, and miles of training hikes under my boots already, fingers crossed that I’m ready for whatever I’ve forgotten.

Since many of you will not see the exhibit in person, I wanted to share a few of my plans for my upcoming solo show at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in Oregon this April. I also think it’s fun to get a behind the scenes look at what it takes to make an idea come to fruition. It’s been a lot of planning to get to this point, but I think I’ve got it fairly organized and ready to go. The title of the show is ‘where art & nature meet’ and I’ll be showcasing 6 large installations from my Rock Candy, Relic, Hive, Bone, Lichen and Umbel Series. The installations will be shown alongside photos of the work as it was installed in nature. For this show, I wanted to highlight the works as they look in their ‘natural habitat’ while also creating engaging installations in the gallery setting.

Above is a selection of photos of the Rock Candy Series Installation in progress. Nearly 200 rocks were made and glazed, they have holes in the backside so that they can hang on the wall. Then I created a paper template and laid out the rocks to create a Rock Candy Ribbon that will wrap around 3 walls of the gallery, a total of about 18′. In the third photo above, you see blank areas in the paper template, this is where the 12″ x 12″ photos printed on metal of the Rock Candy Series as they were installed in a rock crack at Joshua Tree will hang interspersed with the actual rocks.
Fingers crossed it looks as good as I think it will!!

I want to leave some of these installations as surprises but I will share one more from the Umbel Series. I have 60 out of the original 230 of the Umbel flowers left and I wanted to recreate a path of them in the gallery as I had done for the Art at the Arboretum exhibit. The museum wasn’t keen on the idea of drilling holes in their floors to put the Umbel stems into the floor (surprise surprise!). So, I had square metal bases cut and welded onto 60 of the metal rods- this photo is them piled up in the back of my Subaru hatchback! Now I can position them on the gallery floor to create my path with no holes required – win!win! There will be three large photos printed on metal that will hang on a wall towards the end of the path showing what the installation looked like when it was installed at the UCSC Arboretum.
Ok, that’s all the teasers for now… let me know what you think!

I’ve posted all of the photos from my recent photoshoot of the Relic Series up on the website in the In the Field portfolio! Please check them out and let me know what you think! Click here to view…

We’ve been spending a lot of weekends camping in an area of Los Padres National Forest commonly called ‘The Indians’. I was really attracted to the rock formations here; some are eroded Swiss cheese-like caves and some are smooth sloping monstrous boulders covered in sprawling radial lichen formations but what also got my attention is the numerous mortar holes all over the rocks from native tribes who ground acorns in them. I loved coming across these deep circles ground into the rock, usually a 3 or 4 holes together and I imagined seeing women gathered on the rocks grinding their acorns. There’s something that connects the past to the present so directly when you can touch a space where someone else’s hands have worked. While working in the studio, these ideas kept stewing around and these are the results.

This past weekend, I brought about 40 pieces from this new series out to a large rock outcropping in this area of the forest for an In the Field photoshoot of them. I had an idea of what I wanted to compose, but I wasn’t sure if it would work with the curvature of the rock and the strength of the wind, especially since I’d only tested this composition on a flat table in my studio but luckily with a little patience it did work!

Conceptually, I’m still figuring out what these pieces are about and as I was building them, I was struggling to name them for that same reason. Aesthetically, their textures and shape tell me they definitely belong in this natural space. The symbology of circles are about wholeness, cyclical rhythms, and these shapes are ingrained in every fiber of our being. There is also a tension in this installation where each piece is balanced on the next but a security is found in that balance too. I realize that these are not complete thoughts but a work in progress as I get to know these new pieces. 

I’ve decided to name this new series the Relic Series, which deviates from most of my series titles, but Relic seems right. Their concept will formulate into comprehensible sentences eventually and I’ll share my thoughts with you when that happens, but I hope in the meantime, you enjoy the installation images of the pieces. I’d love to hear what you think about this new series and stay tuned for more photos to come soon!