This Saturday is the grand opening of a show I’m in at the Andromeda Gallery in Boston. The show is called “We <3 Monsters“, and will be showing the work of a whole group of people, including Jason Freeny. It should be pretty great!
NCECA is coming to Seattle! NCECA, the National Council for Education on the Ceramic Arts, is the largest ceramics conference in States and every year is in a different city. This year, Seattle is playing host to this grand event. I’m extremely excited about it. The conference consists of three days of panels, lectures, and discussions and draws in about five thousand people every year. However, even more exciting to me is the fact that there will be approximately 190 ceramic art shows going on in the Puget Sound area. (A pdf of all the exhibitions can be found here.) My artwork will proudly be displayed in five of these shows. This should be a month of fun, a month of opening receptions, and a month of eating small cubes of cheese and pita chips.
The first of these shows to go up is “Through the Clouds”, a multi-piece installation featuring my largest beast yet. It’s in the front window of Gallery 110 in the Pioneer square area of Seattle. While the opening reception has already occurred, there’s going to be an additional reception during NCECA, on March 17th from 6 to 8pm. I’m also sharing the gallery with Becky Frehse, Jane Kelsey- Mapel, and Monika Dalkin. I’m very excited to be showing off this piece, which has been in progress since December. Also, this part of Pioneer Square is a positive warren of art galleries, many of which share the same building at Gallery 110. I’d recommended taking some extra time to explore the area, if you can!
Next up on my schedule of shows is Chimeras, a show I curated up at my old stomping ground, Twilight Artist Collective in West Seattle. This show is pretty exciting, since it’s given me a chance to collect some of my favorite sculptors in one place. It’s going to be featuring Rachel Van Wagoner, Sandra Farmer, Simone Clunie, and Cheryl Robinson. It will also be a chance to show off some of my best work from my most recent firing. The opening reception is this Thursday, March 8th, from 6 to 9pm. There’s also going to be an extra reception during NCECA, on March 30th from 6 to 9pm, so we can celebrate with all the out of town ceramics folks.
In addition to that, this week I have a second opening, this one for a show that isn’t related to NCECA at all. I’ve been invited by Ryan Henry Ward, better known simply as “Henry” due to his mural fame, to take part in his show “Who’s Hoo” at the Urban Lights Studio in the Greenwood neighborhood. This show is pulling together a wide and non-conventional selection of the hippest part of the Seattle art world, all on the theme of owls! It’s hard to think of a better show set up than that. We’ll be living it up at Urban Light Studio, this Friday, March 9th, from 6 to 9pm
Switching from North Seattle to South Puget Sound, I’m also in a show in Tacoma. This year, the Washington Clay Arts Association’s annual show was juried by Josh DeWeese and Beth Cavener Stichter, of whom I’m a very big fan. This makes it even more of an honor that three of my sculptures were selected to be included in the show. The show is at The Art Stop on 940 Broadway and will have an opening reception on Thursday, March 15th from 5 to 8pm. It’s also going to have a NCECA reception on the evening of the 27th.
The final show that I’m going to be in during NCECA is a shorter affair and is only open the week of the conference, from Monday, March 26th through Saturday, March 31st. It’s called “12 Wood Fire Kilns of the Northwest”. I’m extremely excited about it, and while I realize I’ve been saying that about all my shows, it’s the truth. In this case, the show will feature wood kilns from around the Pacific Northwest, with each group of wood firers having their own little area to show of the style of work and results from the kiln. I’ll be there, helping to represent the two anagama-style kilns “Santatsugama” (Three Dragon Kiln) and “Ochawangama” (Teabowl Kiln). These two kilns basically siblings, being built and fired by mostly the same group of people. I’ve been firing with this group of compatriots since 2006, and it’s a wonderful group of friends and artists. It will also be fun to compare and to contrast the work from the different kilns in the area. The show will be at 3509 Fremont ave N, Seattle WA, and will have an opening reception from 6 to 9pm on the 29th.
A couple weeks ago I got an chance at an excellent opportunity – putting up an art installation in an empty storefront of the Ballard Neighborhood of Seattle. Now, after three weeks of work battling 240 square feet of chicken wire into 17 sculptures, the piece is finally fully complete! We’ll be having an art opening to celebrate at 5607 20th ave NW this Saturday, September 10th, from 6 to 9pm.
My work with chicken wire as a foam armature had led me to realize that chicken wire itself is a surprisingly nice sculpture material. It’s great for making rapid, expressive beasts. You can tweak it repeatedly without weakening it, changing your beast’s stance as much as you want. In addition to this, the end beast looks surprisingly good as straight chicken wire. The effect is ghostly and striking.
When this opportunity in Ballard showed up, I sprung for it. I’ve long been thinking about an installation of large running beasts, but had nowhere to display such a thing. I decided to create a version of this idea, choosing chicken wire over a more conventional material for its speed and unusual appearance. I gave myself two weeks to create as many running beasts as I could, and took another week fine tuning the final piece. In the end, I even made a time lapse video of the final beast.
In the end, I finished up 17 beasts, using around 240 square feet of chicken wire. Karol, the manager of the U-Frame-It was nice enough to donate black paper to go under the beasts, which allowed gave the chicken wire more contrast. We’re actually working together to help set up a pop up art show for this Saturday, the 10th. If you’re in the area, please come on by the storefront at from 6 to 9pm for art, fun, and refreshments.
The only downside of the beasts is that they’re very hard to photograph. I’m planning on doing another photo shoot later, which will hopefully give me some more photos to post here.
This summer I’ve been pretty absent from my studio. The reason behind this hasn’t been the nice weather, or anything so simple. The reason is that I’ve decided to push myself beyond what I’m comfortable with, beyond clay. I’ve spent the last month turning my basement and backyard into a mad scientist’s lab while trying all sorts of new materials. I figured it would be a good idea to sum up my experiments so far. I started with a vague idea that I should carve stuff out of Styrofoam. Here’s where things have developed from there.
-Styrofoam-
Styrofoam is a specific brand of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, that white crumbly stuff. It carves extremely nicely, and apparently most theme park decorations or large advertising objects are EPS coated with urethane and fiberglass. Anyway, the professional way to do it is to use hot wire tools. I tried that, but found it far too fumey for anywhere inside. However, regular saws and rasps go through it like a breeze, if you don’t mind vacuuming ever 20 minutes. Straight Pins or flower arranging pins are also very useful, for holding on parts before you’ve glued them. There’s a number of different ways of getting large blocks, but I stuck with scrap pieces while experimenting. I cut apart some old packing materials, gluing them into solid blocks.
-Glues-
I ended up seeing several recommendations for glues to use on Styrofoam, so I just decided to test everything I could find. Here’s my conclusions.
Wood glue/ Elmer’s: Seems to work ok, but the middle sections of your block will never dry. It’s usable, but not ideal.
Gorilla glue: This will dry well, but it’s so much harder than the Styrofoam that it will make carving difficult.
3M 77 spray adhesive: This specifically says not to use it on Styrofoam/ expanded polystyrene. This is because it has acetone in it, which could dissolve the foam. However, if you use as directed (Spray from 12″ away, and wait at least 30seconds before attaching the pieces), the acetone *appears* to evaporate away with out damaging the foam. A test piece created with this hasn’t shown any ill effects after a few weeks, but I wouldn’t use it on anything you want to be archival. That said, it attaches perfectly well, has some flexibility, and the seam carves just like the rest of the foam.
3M Styrofoam spray adhesive: I never had a chance to find this, but I suspect it’s similar to 3M77 but without the acetone. If I was going to be focusing more on Styrofoam in the future, I’d take them time to track it down.
-Coatings-
Styrofoam has its downsides, including the fact that it dissolves when exposed to anything with a solvent, such as epoxy or fiberglass. It also won’t be that durable until you can apply some type of coating to it. So, like with the glue, I went about testing different stuff.
Foamcoat: I feel pretty certain that this is something I’ve worked with before, just re-purposed. Heavy duty spackle? Some sort of instant plaster? Regardless, it’s extremely heavy, goes on goopy, and is a bit brittle after it sets. To get a durable coat on, you’d have to apply a lot, maybe 3/8″ coating over everything. I’m not that impressed. At least it’s sand-able. Might be useful when making theater backdrops or something.
Styropoxy 7045: There’s several different varieties of styropoxy. All are designed to go on Styrofoam/EPS, extending its life and making it safe from epoxy and solvents. I bought the 7045, which goes on extra thick and is designed to be sanded afterwords. They also have a Syropoxy 7015 and a 7060, which are thinner and are painted on. The numbers refer to working time. The 7045 handles a bit like a cross between those and bondo (Auto body filler). If I were buy more, I’d go with the 7015 or 7060. Better to get the thinner version, and then supplement it with bondo where needed.
Bondo (after the Styrofoam has been sealed): It’s my first time using Bondo and it appear to be very useful, if very nasty, stuff. It’s made for autobody repair. You apply it, then should sand it right away before it hardens all the way. You can sand it afterwords as well – though a power sander will help. It hardens rock hard and very durable.
Apoxie Sculpt (After the Styrofoam has been sealed): This stuff is like the love child of epoxy and sculpy. It’s a two part clay that will harden rock hard within 24 hours. I’m undecided as to where I stand on it. It’s useful, but I’m not fond of it. I hate sculpting in rubber gloves. It’s close enough to clay I want it to act exactly like clay, and I’m disappointed when it doesn’t. I had more luck carving fine details in after the fact with a dremel, though like everything I’ve been talking about, don’t sand or carve it without a respirator mask.
Acrylic Hard Molding Paste: I’d heard a suggestion online that acrylic molding paste might be a useful top coat, since it’s hard, sandable, and is basically marble dust secured in a polymer. I wasn’t that impressed with it. It clearly would take several coats, and it seem like it’s too flexible to add much in terms of structural integrity to the piece. It would be useful to add texture to go under paint, which is its intended purpose, but not as permanent hard coat for a foam creature. You might be able to put this straight on Styrofoam, but I didn’t try it.
-Other Materials-
Chicken Wire: Chicken wire is actually the reason I don’t see myself doing any more Styrofoam sculptures. I started experimenting with chicken wire to see if it could be used for an armature, only to discover the wire armatures had so much more life and movement than my trial foam pieces. Evidently, I need to sculpt in a material I can bend. I immediately started researching what I could do starting with a base of chicken wire.
Spray Insulation in a Can (Great Stuff/ Hilti): My first experiment was coating the chicken wire in spray foam. I first tried spraying it on the outside of a chicken wire. The foam was a bit hard to control and led to a messy coat about an inch or two thick. I then tried loosely covering the outside of the chicken wire in plastic, and spraying the foam along the inside. While that looked promising at first, the foam fascinatingly shrank back as it cured, sucking the plastic in with it. I ended up giving up on both methods regardless, because the end foam is too squishy, and I’ve heard some people online claiming it can shrink over time. In short, not archival quality.
AB polyurethane foam: AB foam is pretty cool stuff, and actually the present focus of my experiments. You mix to parts together for 30second, and then it rapidly expands between 10 and 18 times its original volume, setting carvably hard within five minutes. I’ve been experiment with coating chicken wire forms in plastic, and then pouring the foam into the form. It expands, pushing out the plastic, creating a carveable coating around the chicken wire form. I’m still experimenting with various plastics, but I think this is a promising line of experimentation. You can apply bondo or fiberglass directly to polyurethane foam, unlike Styrofoam/polystyrene..
-The next step!-
I have an chicken wire armature ready to turn into my first full size foam beastie, one about 4 foot tall. I’m planing on building a structural system of metal rods and PVC pipe inside the armature. I’ll coat it with AB foam using my plastic wrapping method. After that, I’ll sand it smooth and coat it all with a thin coating of bondo to give it more structural integrity. I think I might finish it with autobody paints. I feel pretty good about this plan, though I do have more finishing methods still lined up to test. There’s a chance this all might have to wait a bit, since I’ve heard talk of another woodfiring, but I can’t wait to turn this research into a finished piece!
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– www.evafunderburgh.com –
My studio is having a our annual holiday sale tonight, tomorrow and Sunday. If you’re in the Seattle area, I recommend stopping by! I have my work from the most recent woodfiring on display, and have set up “Swarm” ,the installation I made in Denmark. It will be especially cool to see Swarm, since this will be it’s last flight. As the evening goes on, I’ll let people take home individual bits of it, continuing it’s dispersal through the world. Also, I share my studio with seven other wonderful artist, who all will have fun work on display as well!
I realized that I missed my week 2 update, but there were two reasons for that. The first is that a power surge killed my laptop’s power supply. The laptop is fine, but out of juice. A new power brick is on it’s way, but until it gets here, I’m stuck with just my iPhone. I’ll probably be skimpy on blog updates until the replacement power supply gets here.
The other and more exciting reason is that I’m going to be firing a wood soda kiln tomorrow!! I’ve been working incredibly hard to finish every single piece I possibly can. The past 4 days or so I’ve spent most of 10am to 12am in the studio. (Not counting delicious suppers and fascinating slide presentations by the other artists). How ever, I’ve managed to finish exactly 90 fliers, in addition to some other forms playing with shape and texture! Not bad for a bit more than two weeks.
The only downside is having the firing in the middle of my time here, instead of the end. However, I could never fire the kiln by myself, and the girl I’m firing it with leaves on October 6th. We’re firing now so there will be time to cool and unload everything before she leaves. I’ll also have plenty of time to hang all of my flying beasts in their installation.
I’ve been considering a number of different things to work on in my remaining time here, after the soda firing. I keep changing my mind every 5 minutes. I’d like to play with color on white porcelain some, and see where that goes. Or I could spend some time making quick rough monsters, brainstorming with new forms on a larger scale. I’d use the cheapest clay, and scrap them all at the end, just making as many new forms as fast as I could. There’s just so many possibilities!!
I recently had a chance to do a pit firing with Hilary Chan. He’s a great guy with a fairly fascinating ceramics blog. One of the most exciting things about doing the pit firing with him is the way he approaches it so scientifically. He’s from a tech background, and has made a scientific approach a key part of his artist process. While I try and take the occasional note (seldom referring back to them), this man is as thorough and as consistent as I could ever dream to be . He photographs every piece during ever stage of preparation and firing. He works to build theories from his notes, striving to prove or disprove them every firing. As someone from a scientific background myself, I found it awesome and inspiring. The whole experience has impressed in me the idea of pit firing as a petri dish, a small scale arena to experiment and explore, as I wait for the fall wood firing. Anyway, scientific musing aside, I figured it would be fun to explain exactly what a pit firing entails.
Pit firing is a very primative firing method. By primitive, I don’t mean unsophisticated, but rather ancient. Basically, as most cultures developed ceramics, some sort of pit firing was first way that folks figured out how fire their pots. It’s pretty low temperature, which means the finished pieces aren’t super sturdy and can’t be covered in glaze, like you can with higher temperature firings. However, it’s hot enough the pot isn’t going to dissolve back into mud if you put water in it, which is pretty darn useful for an emerging civilization. While most cultures figure out how to build kilns, and to heat their pottery to higher temperatures, some stuck with pit firing, developing the method to create incredibly beautiful work. The example that always comes to my mind is the pueblo potters of the southwest united states, including the beautiful black on black work by Maria Martinez.
There seems to be nearly infinite ways of setting up and doing a pit firing, so I’m going to stick to describing the pit firing I did with Hilary. We did the largest bit of preparation before hand. Each piece was wrapped in copped wire (specifically, a choreboy, those copper things made for scrubbing pans.), followed by steel wool, followed by salt water soaked burlap or straw. All of the salt, the copper, and the iron all fume at high temperature, leaving an assortment of colors on the clay. Once that initial prep was done, we placed each one in a labeled brown paper bag, ready for the fire pit. For my pieces, we had to experiment some, putting protective grills above the pieces, to avoid snapping of wings and beaks. I feel like figuring out how to protect my delicate beasts is going to be the biggest issue for my exploration of pit firing. As we loaded the pit itself, we put down layers of sawdust, copper carbonate, horse manure, paper, and wood. I actually made a timelapse of the whole loading process that sums up the set up pretty well.
The whole firing, once we lit it up, took maybe an hour. We had campfire sized flames for even far less than that. The only time issue was the cooling of the pieces. We let everything cool for an hour or two, before my impatience got the better of me and I started digging out pieces. The results were great, but the rapid cooling just proved too much for pieces, leaving several with cracks. Apparently, the number one way to avoid this is to let the pieces cool in the ashes over night, which brings me back to the idea of my very own mini-firepit, in my very own backyard. I have some plans as far as that, but that’s for another time.
Another Passion is an excellent Seattle art blog. It features local artists, musicians, and general creative types, along with musings on creativity in general. Also, this week it features an interview with me! I’m pretty excited to be on there. It was also a real treat to meet the guy behind it, Rasmus Rasmussen!
I just got around to setting up an Etsy shop. I’d been playing with the idea for a while, and finally took the plunge! Here it is. I’ll be tweaking it and incorporating it more into my site over the next few weeks.
I had some very odd news this week.
One of my pieces, Cuckoos #3: Unexpected Twist, just finished being displayed in the 3rd Biennial Concordia Continental Ceramics Competition in St. Paul, MN. I’d been stressing about the piece being shipped back, since it’s both large and delicate. When I got a call on Monday from the organizer, I immediately started worrying, only to be utterly surprised. The piece had been stolen.
While the gallery was open for local artists to pick up their work, someone had walked in and left with four piece that did not belong to them. The university didn’t realize the problem until they were preparing to pack up the out-of-town pieces. A vase by Leopold Foulem, a wonderful teapot-ish sculpture by Gerald Ferrari, and a piece by Kevin Snipes were also taken. (Gerald has a very insightful blog post about the theft.) The total listed value for the work was over $12,000, most of that was due to Foulem’s vase. All the same, a life of crime stealing ceramics sculptures is hardly a way to get rich quick. Heck, if there’s a way to get rich in ceramics, there’s lots of ceramics artists who’d love to know about it.
Overall, my response has mostly been confusion. I am a bit worried about my piece, as to whether or not its safe. My biggest fear if that some scofflaws just grabbed it on a whim, and it’s been trashed somewhere. That would break my heart. The university has said that they’ll deal with the insurance, so at least I’m not worrying about that. They could have handled the show taken down better, but no sense in being angry about that – they didn’t want this to happen either. I guess it’s a bit flattering that someone likes the piece so much, but really, it would have been better to for them to just buy it. It’s been so weird seeing pictures of it on the local news, and having my relatives emailing each other about it. Add to all that, it’s not a small piece! It’s large enough it needs to be carried in both arms, and the surface is delicate enough that it could be scratched by snaps or zippers. While I guess do feel strangely honored to be on a list that includes everyone from Miro and Van Gogh to the other 3 artists from this show, I would really rather people just didn’t do stuff like this. It’s so disrespectful to the artists, the work, and the institution that it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it.
Not cool, random thief, not cool.