well, I was off the grid and missed getting this post out to you all last week, but I was still busy being creative…
enjoy!
Just a reminder, that I am not leaving any of these pieces out in nature. I’m not littering or impacting the environment, in fact all the above pieces were made with the same piece of clay I reclaimed each day. Hope you’re enjoying these fleeting installations and remember to pack your trash too!
well, back to the obsession with rocks! enjoy!!
Click the link to start from the beginning and understand what my thoughts are behind starting this project…
Just a reminder, that I am not leaving any of these pieces out in nature. I’m not littering or impacting the environment, in fact all the above pieces were made with the same piece of clay I reclaimed each day. Hope you’re enjoying these fleeting installations and remember to pack your trash too!
you’ll notice as the landscape changes, I kind of got obsessed with a trees instead of rocks this week… enjoy!
Click the link to start from the beginning and understand what my thoughts are behind starting this project…
Just a reminder, that I am not leaving any of these pieces out in nature. I’m not littering or impacting the environment, in fact all the above pieces were made with the same piece of clay I reclaimed each day. Hope you’re enjoying these fleeting installations and remember to pack your trash too!
Here we go with week two…
Click the link to start from the beginning and understand what my thoughts are behind starting this project…
Just a reminder, that I am not leaving any of these pieces out in nature. I’m not littering or impacting the environment, in fact all the above pieces were made with the same piece of clay I reclaimed each day. Hope you’re enjoying these fleeting installations and remember to pack your trash too!
Ok! Here we go with week one of ephemeral art installations… ENJOY!
Wondering where day one is?
Click the link to start from the beginning and understand what my thoughts are behind starting this project…
Since I’ve been asked by quite a few people (including a park ranger), I just want to clarify that I am not leaving any of these pieces out in nature. I’m not littering or impacting the environment, in fact all the above pieces were made with the same piece of clay I reclaimed each day. Hope you’re enjoying these fleeting installations and remember to pack your trash too!
Well, these are definitely weird and perplexing times. As everyone around the world is trying to reinvent the way that they do their jobs, care for their families and go about their day, we are doing the same by reworking all of our plans for this year.
Right now we should be driving through the desert of Baja, eating fish tacos on fresh made tortillas and swimming in warm waters, but we’re not. I had hoped to create some works at the Taller de Terreno studio as we camped out on our adjacent property in Todos Santos, but that’s not happening either. Our multi-month North America road trip has been rerouted to only include the US, not Mexico or Canada and rather than go see art and cultural events in cities while visiting with friends, we plan to stay out in nature instead. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a lesson in how to make flexibility the key to our planning these days.
Please note: Before you say ‘Why are they traveling at all?’, if you don’t know this already, we live full time in our converted, self-contained van, so technically we are staying home, our home just happens to be wherever we park it. That said, we are being responsible in our travel, only getting groceries as needed, no campgrounds, hotels, restaurants and we’re staying away from crowds. Luckily we are set up to stay out in nature like this for a long time.
Ok, so with that note out of the way, what exactly IS my plan to create art in the time of Coronavirus? Before we left the studio, I loaded up the van with a few bags of clay and some tools to make some art on the go. Taking inspiration from nature and really connecting to a sense of place, I plan to create small, ephemeral, site-specific works in nature. I’ll be documenting them and then removing them (no littering in nature!). I’m intrigued to see how these installations will simultaneously document where we go in our travels and how i respond to those places from a creative perspective. Maybe all of the images will all end up in a book in the end – we’ll see! I’ll post the photos on my Instagram feed and here on the ‘the dirt’ in weekly posts. Hope you enjoy this process and hope you are all staying healthy out there!
Here’s the first one to get you started…
FINAL WEEK IN TAIWAN!
This residency has really been an amazing experience, spending three months in a foreign country and culture gave me such a challenging and rewarding opportunity. It’s so hard to believe that it’s over and that in a few days I’ll be flying off to another adventure.
I spent my last week here multitasking. Starting with unloading my final kiln firing, cleaning out my studio, shipping my tools and some of the resin pieces I made back home. I packed up my finished art for a local gallery to take and met with the museum to choose a few pieces for their permanent collection. I also assembled the final layout for the ART+SCIENCE collaborative installation. And of course I had to squeeze in a few final adventures with my husband Nate since he arrived on the scene here. Basically, wrapping up lots of little details while still trying to do everything I wanted to do too.
Sad to be saying goodbye to everyone here who has been so supportive in helping me accomplish my goals and so kind to show me around. I’m sure it will take a while to really process this whole experience but I’m so grateful for it all and everyone I met in the process. Big thank yous to everyone!!!
Next up, Nate and I start his sabbatical from work year, so in a few days we leave Taiwan for Singapore. Stay tuned for the adventures to come…and I promise I’ll eventually get back to California!
“…such a long, long time to be gone and such a short time to be there.” – grateful dead
Week 11 was the beginning of the end…
As part of my residency obligations, I gave an artist talk and hands-on workshop at the Yingge Ceramics Museum for the community this week. I had nearly 30 participants come for the all day event. The hands-on workshop challenged them to work in multiples and create 100 simple shapes based on their interests in nature. They then had to experiment with intriguing compositions of all their shapes. They were apprehensive at first but ultimately they really got into the idea and appreciated the process of playing with their clay, valuing process over product.
I gave two more hands-on workshops at the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung this week too. Since the museum kindly took the time to share a behind-the-scenes experience with me a few weeks prior, I wanted to return the favor sharing a clay experience with them. The participants were staff and volunteers, most of whom had never played with clay, but who love science and nature. They even brought some bits from nature with them to use as inspiration. We created small bowls that they carved into to create natural patterns and designs. All of the bowls will be fired and glazed at the ceramics museum and then assembled to create a group installation that will be displayed at the science museum. The results celebrate the collaboration of ART + SCIENCE.
In other studio news, I’ve officially stopped building with wet clay in my studio now. I’m letting everything dry so it’s ready for a final firing. While clay pieces are drying and firing, I’m continuing to experiment with pouring resin. I’m learning a lot as I go and I’m very excited about this new path.
AND, as an added bonus this week, my husband Nate arrived! I’m so thrilled to see him after two and a half months apart! He’ll get to share the tail end of this experience with me and see some of Taiwan too. Hard to believe that I only have one more week here before we travel onward…
This week has really been all work and no play. I’ve been feeling the pressure of my my time here coming to an end. But, it’s been a successful journey of learning and exploration.
Figuring out how to get the Bone Series: Medusa pieces to survive the building and firing process while exploring more complex forms has been challenging but a great success in the end. I’m also excited to announce that a collection of these pieces will be going to CC Gallery here in New Taipei City to be sold and a few will be selected for the Yingge Ceramic museum’s permanent collection.
The other exciting experiment is embedding some of my works in resin. It’s always a challenge working with a new material, but with the help of the studio staff at the museum, I was able to make the resin piece above (detail in right side photo), I’m really thrilled with the results. The idea is that the Bone Series pieces are inspired by the skeletal structures of radiolarians or single cell planktons and I wanted these pieces to feel like you were looking at a drop of ocean water under a microscope. I’m loving the little air bubbles that are trapped in the resin too… it really feels like it’s underwater. I have a few more of these in the works – excited to see how they turn out!
Two weeks to go! Yikes!
Week NINE! What?! Now the pressure is really on to get everything I’ve wanted to do done.
Had some great results out of the kiln (a few flops too, but that’s ok!) Getting all the parts out of the kiln meant that I could start playing with resin. The first result wasn’t perfect, you can see big cracks in the resin in the image above, but I learned a lot, like how not to get those big cracks! I’m loving how the pieces already have a specimen in a petri dish feel about them and that the translucency of the clay is working with the translucency of the resin. Now that the initial learning curve is over with, I’m excited to really get going on these pieces and I feel really good about working with this new medium.
In an effort to create a community project based around art + science while I’m here in Taiwan, the ceramics museum arranged a meeting with the science museum for me and I was able to get a day behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung. Their lead mycology scientist shared their extensive fungi specimens in the herbarium and how they grow fungi from spores in petri dishes. She also shared the process of identifying mushrooms by looking at a tiny section of the gills at a microscopic level. It was absolutely fascinating! I also met with their education department who was thrilled with the idea of doing a clay workshop for some of their staff and volunteers. So I’ll be going back there in a few weeks to lead them in a art + science project. The pieces created will eventually become an installation at the science museum. I’m excited to get clay into the hands of these scientists in a few weeks and seeing what inspires them!
