Barbara Smith + Blog

I spent the entirety of last night watching the debut of PBS’ Craft in America; a three part series that uses the topics of memory, landscape, and community to discuss the many facets of craft.

Overall, it was a lovely 3 hours. The show(s) did an excellent job of showing a variety of crafts as well as a variety of people. There were moments when I thought some “cowboy” dude was a bit of an ass, moments when I wondered why most of the women shown didn’t mention significant others while men did, and moments when I was in awe. Perhaps a bit of reminiscing when they talked about the history and impact of Penland…

See the promo for the series here.

I have been working on a few pieces (goal was 20, but I’m at 17…) for the Second Annual Ladies Night Out at the Wiessman Gallery in Chicago.

Images of the pieces I have completed are on my flickr, but here is a taste:

Cameos are:

miniature sculptural art
intended as statements
storyboards
metaphors for human emotions and experiences (ding ding)
short sentences carved into stone (shell, what have you..)
largely anonymous women’s profiles as subject matter
easy to reproduce
stone literature

Perhaps my favorite quotables:

In reference to the genre of anonymous female profiles:

“If the original model ever had a known identity, it was lost in the repetition and reinterpretations from workman to workman.”
Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse were favorite modles for cameos and were also role models for liberated women.

The Fates:
“Clotho is a young woman, spinning man’s thread of life. Lachesis is a woman in the prime of life, measuring the length of man’s life. Atropos is an aged woman, ready with shears in hand to cut the thread of life.” (what a video that would be!)

“A carnelian showing a man seated and a woman standing before him with her hair hanging down to the thighs, casting her eyes upward, makes all who touch it obedient to the will of the wearer in all things.”

Zeus and goddess Themis with their three daughters, known in Greek mythology as the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.

As crazy as this sounds, I have 2 (yes 2) shows lined up for 2008. Both of these shows asked me (yes, they asked me) to put my work in their space. I am giddy with excitement over this, but on top of that, both shows look to be absolutely wonderful.

The first exhibition I found out about will be part of the SNAG conference in Savannah, Georgia in 2008. The working title of the exhibition is “Lineage and Legacy”, and is curated by Gail Brown (who is incredibly nice!). As she explained the premise to me:

I have invited mid career artists to participate in an exhibition, LINEAGE & LEGACY (working title), which asks a group of 20 outstanding jewelers and metalsmiths, whose unique ideas and imagery reflect the diversity of contemporary visual vocabularies, those who are also highly regarded educators, to exhibit one stellar work reflecting current exploration in the studio and at the bench and also, to engage their experience in the continuum as an educator and an audience member.

Robin has identified you as that exceptional emerging artist.

I am, incredibly flattered that Robin chose me to show with her and really excited to be part of what I think will be an incredible exhibition.

As if that wasn’t good enough, I got an email tonight from the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland inviting me to participate in an exhibition that is going on in conjunction with the release of the 2007 Metalsmith Exhibition in Print. As stated in the email:

Framing · The Art of Jewelry will center on the theme that art jewelry is made in relation to the body, yet is often presented in formats that remove the work from the viewer. We are interested in the relationship between these two formats for the presentation of art jewelry: the graphically designed page and the museum-style display. Specifically, we want to probe how the distance between the viewer and art objects is negotiated. This exhibition will recognize the exemplary work of Metalsmith magazine, as well as link design, art and craft within a museum context.

In addition, they will have an exhibition called “Touching Warms the Art” that also has an interesting premise.

call-to-artists_twa.pdf

Maybe this is the right time to start tatting hair again? Anyone?

I spent another day in the lab yesterday making my final prints (or so I thought). I had gotten my extra #3 solution in the mail, set up everything the same as before, coated my paper, and wahhhlaaaa dark purple specs everywhere (which translate into light specs in the prints)!

All of the prints I made yesterday are useless, but I went back through all of the prints I had made in the past couple of weeks and found a usable set. A couple of them need to be retouched, and from my research it looks like I can use diluted india ink or a mixture of lampblack and burnt umber watercolors. God knows I have plenty of prints to practice this on.

I have emailed the tech person at Bostick and Sullivan about what I think might be some sort of chemical contamination in my solution.

The prints are not really perfect, but at this point its too late to get more solution and try to print again. I’d love to try again, but I really don’t want to throw more $ down the drain nor will I have access to the photo lab after Friday.

Guess I’ll just go with it.

Today, Michelle and I went shopping…mostly around to antique stores downtown and to the Leaping Leopard Antique store (which I keep calling the “flying cat” for whatever reason).

Due to my dedicated sun screen application I did not get a sunburn, and also managed to find these lovelies:

Here you can see a brooch, earrings, a mini metal abacus (ahhh!) and some military badges with targets (ahhh again!)

Buttons! (sculptural, of course)

Some game pieces that I think will make great jewelry one day:

Mother’s Day gifts for my grandmother and my mom (who I’m hoping doesn’t see this). The birds are from Mexico and are ceramic; my grandmother already has several of these so I was excited to find her more of them. The little sewing machines are actually salt and pepper shakers that I found, which will serve as a good 1st gift….

And, my most exciting find was this walnut Art Deco sewing table, which is in really good shape. My mother recently acquired my grandmother’s first sewing machine (a treddle that was converted into an electric) and was talking about getting a table for it one day. I was super excited to find this today and get it for her!

The drawers are amazing:

Ah, Murphy’s Law.

So, I have been working on Platinum/Palladium prints for my book project through the IAC for the past 2 weeks. First, I ran out of Platinum solution #3 and had to order more…Not to be deterred, I spent all day Friday, yesterday and today in the photo lab working on my prints. Every day I was getting closer…

When I got to work this morning, I had decided that 3 of my 6 prints were pretty much perfect. Good tone, good contrast, good everything. So, I set to work figuring out how to tweak the other 3, which consisted of adding one drop of solution #2 (which controls contrast) to make the image pop a little bit more. Initially, I was very excited to see that by adding this one drop of solution all 3 prints were really looking nice. So, I set to work coating paper for platinum printing, which should require the same drop #’s and exposure time as its palladium counterpart.

As I am working, I start to notice that 2 of my digital negatives have been scratched! Well, crap. I would have just printed out new ones, but for that I would need a lab monitor to print them and also to pay for them…and this week there aren’t any lab monitors to be found anywhere. So, I used a trick I’ve heard Tim talked about before to fix said scratches: nose grease. Yep, thats right. For just today, I was wishing that my skin was more oily than it had ever been before. (that might be the only time I ever say that) I was skeptical, but after wiping my facial oils on the scratches and doing a test strip, the scratches were no more. Disaster (#1) averted.

So, I go ahead and start my platinum prints…boy am I nervous since I just dropped $150 on this solution. I expose them and stick them in the developer only to see something that did not look anything like my palladium print. Crap, again. Apparently, even though in theory the drop #’s and exposure times should be the same, they aren’t!! The platinum prints came out incredibly contrasty even though I had done nothing different. So, because I do not have time to try to figure this out AGAIN for platinum printing, I decided that it would be best to just go with palladium and try to use the platinum with some smaller negatives. Only one catch: I’m out of palladium.

So, I frantically call Bostich and Sullivan and order 25 ml more of palladium solution #3 and drop about $75. I think in all I’ve spent about $300 trying to make 6 prints, which is pretty close to a month’s salary from Ivy Tech. (sad, but true) I can’t say that I haven’t learned quite a bit doing this and that I could probably get a job as a professional paper coater, but please Murphy, give me a break! Nothing like being creatively frustrated and technically challenged at all times.

I won’t get my chemicals until Friday, so I drug myself out to ask Joe (photo technician) if I could possibly come in on Monday to do my final prints. I must have had an excellent mix of exaspiration and neediness in my voice, since he did agree to let me come back in as long as I helped him with his year end clean up of the lab I’ve been using. Fair enough. I just have to get this done!

I can’t say I’m abnormally frustrated with this because after all, I did promise myself that this summer would be devoted to making new work and dang it, I’ve been putting in the hours. Being frustrated with something you like to do is a bit different than just being frustrated over some random event or your lovely, low paying job.

So, Monday is it for me. Hopefully all goes well, I make 2 sets of final prints, and then clean. The trifecta, right there.

I just found out that I have been accepted into a group exhibition entitled “The Edge of Excess” at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, MO.

I will be exhibiting my Dress video. No word on whether they want the full installation or if I’m going to have to supply projector(s)/DVD player(s)/tv or if I’m going to need to go install the piece in person. I would actually really like to install the whole piece…:-)