I’m not very happy with it but I’m not very happy with much.
7 March, 2010
6 March, 2010
Business expenses
SVA had a day trip down to Columbus today, and as a result I spent a potentially-reckless amount of money at the Wexner Center bookstore. My rationale is that, dividing my time as I do between Windsor and Winnipeg, I’m not usually presented with the opportunity to buy art books (at least in person) more than once or twice a year.
That only goes partway toward explaining why these Miranda July pillowcases seemed necessary.
The books themselves are a bit more easily explained. I’m hoping that both Art and Artistic Research and Contemporary African Art since 1980 will be directly useful for one if not both of my courses. The Katharina Grosse book and the gargantuan Wolfgang Tillmans monograph? Well, I’m writing them off as professional expenditures on my taxes, anyway.
20 November, 2009
Making Things
Give Thanks (2005). See, everything about this seems inevitable to me. Like of course someone needed to take a display box from Value Village, line it with fluorescent stretch-velvet, fill it with neon aquarium gravel, and mount a ten-dollar black light from Spencer’s Gifts overtop of it. And of course it would be a piece “about” Thanksgiving 2005. It all seems so obvious.
Commemorate.
Untitled (Big Sur).
I don’t know what the title for the windows is going to be, yet, but can I just say that lead came stained glass is exceedingly difficult? Like, I want to apologize to all of the other finnicky, medieval processes I’ve used, because this one is the finnickiest and most medieval so far.
And just for the hell of it I crocheted a snowflake and used it as a substrate for growing salt crystals.
12 November, 2009
Untitled (Big Sur) (in progress)
Yeah, yeah. I know. First the CUPE signs and now this. Because you just know these are going to get defaced somehow.
Blah blah blah “Is nothing sacred to you?” blah blah. In a word: No. Nothing is sacred to me, and memorializing war and the people who make it is pretty far down on my list of hypothetical candidates. THAT SAID: all of these were either (a) taken in exchange for a [voluntary] donation to the Legion or (b) found discarded or dropped. And I didn’t even take any from the WWI memorial at the Legislature grounds, even though they were just sitting there and nobody was looking*. Because I know how people in this country get about these things (which, P.S., is super-weird to me still).
Anyway. I’m going to cover them all in lead white oil ground and paint them orange.
—
* Around the memorial is maybe another story, but whatever. They would have been vacuumed up by the groundskeepers in about 37 seconds if I hadn’t interceded.
31 October, 2009
8 October, 2009
Cempasúchil (Marigold) Garland
I started crocheting this last year, and I’m determined to finish it in time for Halloween, this year (I obviously haven’t been working on it continuously). It’s a garland of Mexican marigolds (cempasúchil), a traditional Day of the Dead decoration. Crocheted, it works as a garland or a particularly ridiculous scarf.
I’ve included a pattern of sorts below; I figure that someone on the Internet, somewhere, might appreciate it. Bear in mind, though, that I freehand everything I crochet (with the exception of, like, granny squares or whatever), so the pattern is really just a rough guide. I think the garland looks quite a bit better for having variation not only in the number of petals on each flower (the pattern has a total of 20 petals, starting with a row of six, but I’ve made some with twice that many, some with fewer) but also with regard to the color and weight of yarn used, hook size, etc.
For the main stem, I started by crocheted a narrow tube (see second photo), but this year decided that a spool-knit tube would look nicer (top photo, lefthand side) (it does) (no, I’m not going to replace the crocheted length I’ve already finished). Some of the flowers are sewn directly to that tube, but for most of them I crocheted a short stem directly into the back of the flower.
Anyway, I’ve never attempted to write out a pattern before, so here goes nothing.
Round 1: (can be worked in stem [green] or main [yellow-orange] color) Work 6 single crochet stitches into a “magic ring” (Googling it, if need be), join.
Roud 2: Chain eight. Starting in the third chain from the hook, work 2 double crochet stitches, then 2 half-double crochet stitches, then 2 single crochet stitches (one in each chain). Slip stitch into next single crochet stitch and repeat.
Subsequent rounds: Refer to top right of the diagram. Work into the stitches between the petals made in Round 2. You may work either in a spiral, continuously, or you can join with a slip stitch after each round before continuing. If joining, make sure to skip one space to account for the decreased number of petals. After a few rounds, you’ll probably have a bit of a jumbled mess; this isn’t, in and of itself, a problem. Just keep adding shorter and shorter petals until you have what seems like enough.
Final round: After completing the last of the petals, break the yarn and either slip stitch or weave the end through the remaining spaces between the petals. Pull the yarn end tightly through to the back and tie to the original tail.
The leaves should be pretty self-explanatory (they’re long and pointy). You can play around with working them in multiple rows, making them longer or shorter, etc.
Scarf?
16 September, 2009
7 September, 2009
Books and books and books
And there’s the whole thing.
And this was the catalog/yearbook that I helped throw together for the residency at Plug In that just ended. In case anyone wants to know how that all shook out.
“Dream * that * was still alive”
Since I likely won’t be moving into a studio-proper until October, I’m trying to get some print-on-demand things out of the gate, just to keep momentum. These are some spreads from a new book piece that I just sent off to the printer. The text is all culled from a Google search for “dream * that * was still alive,” and the photos are all random pictures from my iPhoto albums, where I’d taken two near-identical shots a few seconds apart.
The premise is a bit cringe-worthy, but the material is banal enough (the Billy Mays bit, culled from a Yahoo! Answers post, is particularly choice) that hopefully it won’t make anyone barf in his or her mouth a little bit.
