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

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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

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

Kickstarter Success

Thank you so much to everyone who made a pledge and now a donation–the campaign was successfully funded on Monday night! I could not have hoped for such a strong response–the support of my friends is really astounding! This weekend I’ll be purchasing the first 200-300 pounds of sugar and deliver it, along with the rest of my tools and supplies, to the residency on Monday morning. I cannot wait to get started on this new body of work and to get my studio at VCCA up and running. In the last two weeks since leaving Vermont, I have done some preliminary work, but much of my time has been consumed with job and sublet searching for my arrival in New York after the residency. In the end, I decided to get a lot of the NYC prep work done now so that I can set those concerns aside and concentrate on the artwork. There will still be a lot of following up with contacts and opportunities, and probably a visit to the city to confirm those, but hopefully it won’t consume my next five weeks.

These “growths” are a first set of sketches, working out some ideas for forms that I may want to work with moving forward. None of these represent a final armature–they are literally just preliminary sketches. Once I’m at VCCA, I’ll be able to focus on pushing these and finding what they’re really capable of.

My make-shift guest-room studio

fabric sketches

a few barnacles