Time Lapsed

After a week and a half at VCCA, I have to report that I haven’t had much time to work in the studio! Since it is my first time back in Virginia for more than a few days in… oh… 8 years? I’ve spent my first couple weeks splitting my time between visiting with old friends I haven’t seen in years and preparing for the move to Brooklyn. After my Monday arrival, I had just enough time to unpack and set up my room and studio before leaving on Thursday to see Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria in Roanoke with my family. Friday a friend visited me here, Saturday I met another friend in Lynchburg for drinks and Sunday my parents visited me so we could spend some quality Mother’s Day time together. Monday was relatively uninterrupted, then Tuesday I headed to Richmond to visit VCU’s Material Studies & Sculpture departments, crashed with a friend in Church Hill, then spent Wednesday with another friend I hadn’t seen in 7 years. Now that I’m back at VCCA, I have a couple days to do some more NYC job hunting (I told myself I would do it once a week, but missed last week because I just couldn’t make myself do it the few hours I was actually in studio!) and then I head to NYC this weekend to confirm my studio at Wayfarer’s Brooklyn, my apartment sublet in Bushwick, and to meet with a couple of job possibilities. THEN, I will finally have some uninterrupted studio time.

In between everything, I have managed to fill my first 10 gal tank with new work and fresh solution. AND set up a time-lapse video of the crystals growing in this new tank, so that’s something at least. Here’s some pics:

knit hardened on top of fabric armatures

knit without armature, almost ready to go in the tank

the first new piece, in the tank after 3 days of growth--the halo around all the strands are the first tiny crystals

a close-up of the crystals after 3 days in the tank

the camera setup for what will be a time lapse video

Week 15 of 48

I haven’t shared much of the rock candy yet except for a few early set up photos, so maybe it is time to touch on that work a little. These were the very first round of rock candy experiments, all in slightly different solutions and staged to grow on different media (wool yarn vs. cotton rope vs. twine vs. thread, etc.). I have begun a new, more controlled set since the completion of these in order to really find out which variables work better than others, but this first set at least gave me a glimpse of what is possible…

rock candy growing on twine before (tied around a chunk of “starter crystals“) and after—this took 4 weeks and is kind of wimpy...

dyed with red food coloring, rock candy on cotton string at 2 weeks and again at 5 weeks

a clear solution growing on blue/black Japanese wool at 2 weeks and 5 weeks

this is the real goal of all this—to grow candy on swatches of fabric or knit forms. This was grown on cotton cheese cloth over 5 weeks and is truly beautiful. The pictures don't do any of these much justice.

Sneak Peak

I’m still waiting on the photos of the de-installation to show up.  I will probably stop by the Arsenal this weekend with my laptop to see if I can grab the pictures from their camera directly so they don’t have to worry about trying to e-mail or hunt me down in some other fashion.  In the meantime, I thought I’d post a couple photos of some of the other things I’ve been working on over the last year.  These darling little pieces are tests for a future project.  I’ve been working on them off and on inbetween other things, drawing the pattern, sewing, adjusting, redrawing, sewing, etc.  Funnily enough, I actually started with a mini pattern for a pair of pants and tweaked from there to end up with these forms.

Tests for Plush Teeth

The first ever (mini one with safety pin) and the most recent (giant one in pink giraffe print)

The blue fabric is some scrap I had hanging around, the pink giraffe print is an old sheet I found at a thrift store

My next big spring project will be mostly ceramic again, with a mix of hand sewn fabric, so these guys will continue to wait in the window sill until I have some more downtime to pick them up again.