Summer in the City

After six weeks in the city, with an entirely new life and lifestyle (nearly everything that can change has changed!), I am finally beginning to settle into something that may resemble a routine. I am getting the hang of my new job as a sculpture conservator, which is both crazy awesome and crazy tedious, the hour long commute there and back, the bike ride to studio, my new neighborhood of Bushwick, and all those little things like new bank accounts, po boxes, library cards, grocery shopping and cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. I’ve managed to gather a lot of my stuff that has been scattered throughout New England, though I still owe Boston and Providence a trip in order to pick up a few more things stored there. The studio is as organized as it can get for now (still need to find some sturdy industrial shelving to get some of my crap off the floor) and I’ve launched into a new set of drawing experiments. Wayfarers will have our first group show opening September 2, so I’m hoping to resolve some of the work I started at VCCA in time for that show, though I have a long way to go! The work is heading in a new direction, which I am very excited about, but will require a lot of time learning and experimenting to complete. I’m going to try and get back into the habit of writing updates fairly consistently, but for now getting an entry every couple weeks seems to be about as much as I can manage. So until then, here are some images of the studio…

the studio...

stuff growing, two dimensionally and three dimensionally...

references and other stuff...

Calm Before the Storm

After much nervousness and many anxiety dreams, I have arrived in Brooklyn! My residency at VCCA ended yesterday, June 5th, and I drove straight from there to Bushwick to unload all of the new work into my new studio at Wayfarers Brooklyn. I haven’t unpacked anything yet… there isn’t much point until I have some functional surfaces to set the tanks up on so until then I am just kind of hanging out in here. I start my new job at Wilson Conservation tomorrow, then will spend the evening building sawhorses for my first piece of studio furniture, and hopefully will be able to set the tanks up no later than Wednesday evening. They definitely have to be up and running before I leave the city for the weekend so… if I have to bust some ass to make it happen, so be it! Since I didn’t have to go in to work today as planned, and the wood for my sawhorses doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, today has been an unexpected day off to wander the neighborhood, buy a few supplies, and generally rest up and chill out before the real hustling begins. It definitely feels like the calm before the storm… And since I don’t move into my apartment until the 15th, the couch surfing makes it feel like I am still a visitor, even though I have a studio. Guess the fact that I’ve just moved to the city won’t sink in for another couple of weeks…

my beautiful new studio, filled with all the crap I could fit in my tiny car

soon to be my first piece of furniture

Tangents

One nice thing about residencies is having the time and space to let yourself do anything–play if you will. Not that I normally ignore the urge to go off on tangents, but here you don’t have to feel as guilty about it when you do… So here’s some recent tangents:

built a funny little experimental diorama in a thrift store pitcher

though I'm not a big fan of clever art, I just thought this miniature 50 lb. bag of sugar was too funny--here it is submerged in crystal solution

this place is filled with giant bugs--constantly flying overhead and getting underfoot

every other day I come into the studio to find a new bug "trapped" in one of the pieces

these started out as technical experiments, but I realized I was thinking of them as my little pets

so now I think of them as bugs, influenced by early summer in Southwest Virginia

Progress

Southwest Virginia is entering full fledged summer mode–80 degree weather every day, brilliant sunshine interrupted by the occasional brief but powerful thunderstorm. I love it! Thankfully the studios and housing all have air conditioning so it’s easy to escape the sometimes thick humidity. But I digress. I loaded up the next tank full of new work this weekend–a waist piece and a head piece. Here’s some images of the waist piece in progress:

it sort of runs from underneath the breast, up to the armpit

a detail of a new technique, sewing parts together, that I'm really liking... even though it's incredibly tedious to do...

the new piece, off the form and into the tank

the same piece, now suspended in solution

Focus…

I returned late last night (or early this morning depending on how you look at it) from a blitzkrieg trip to NYC. Am totally exhausted, but happy that I went because it confirmed pretty much everything about my move up there in just a few weeks–studio, apartment, and at least a temp job if not a full time one. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to set most of my worries aside and finally really focus on what I’m doing here in the studio, which includes:

sewing

cooking

crafting

patterning

knitting