Power Tools

Yes, a girl's best friend - power tools. Today I was in the studio ripping boards into 1 1/2" widths to make cradled panels for painting. I finally used the table saw that spent three years in a box unassembled because I was too timid to put it together. (In fact I still didn't put it together - I got Bonnie to do it.)

The table saw is still a bit scary but I took a course with Kim Bernard that explained and demonstrated how to use three kinds of power saws to make painting panels. I was already familiar with (and owned) a chop saw and jig saw, but the table saw was a whole new ballgame. Once Kim showed us how it operated and the safety precautions to use, it became a lot more manageable to me. All I had to do then was to get Bonnie into the studio to put it together. (She's in charge of all assemblage in our house - and studio.)

The first thing I did today was to make a push stick for the table saw using my jig saw. The push stick looks like a product of unskilled labor, but it gets the job done of saving my fingers and pushing the wood through the saw to the other side.

I actually made three panels today using the lumber I ripped along with some birch plywood that I had the lumberyard cut a while back. I'm going to continue using the lumberyard to cut the plywood because they have giant saws and can make much better cuts than I can.

My table saw looks something like this except mine is a Craftsman from Sears. It was very inexpensive and came with the attached stand. I think it will do just fine for my purposes, but it does put out a hell of a lot of sawdust. It has a giant black sawdust bag under the saw (unlike this photo) that hangs all the way to the floor. I know I have it set up correctly, but maybe 20 percent of the sawdust is going into the bag and the rest is all over the floor, the saw and me. Not too efficient.

So after I ripped the lumber, I chopped it into lengths using my chop saw and then got out my trusty Makita sander - probably the most expensive power tool I've bought for the studio at around $225. It did wonders for me with the panels today - not only in smoothing out the rough edges of the panels but in erasing the errors I made at the edges where the cradle met the plywood. Sometimes either the plywood or the cradle stuck out a little too much and the sander just whisked that protrusion right out of there. OK, I'm not the world's greatest carpenter.

By the way, another arty use for the sander I've found is sanding the acrylic surface off a (heavy) piece of paper painted with thinned acrylic. The sander just leaves the stained paper behind - although it can take off too much of the surface if you're not careful. I used this sanding treatment when I wanted to paint over old acrylic paintings with encaustic but needed to remove the plasticky finish and make the surface more absorbent.

Power tools are the great gender leveler as far as I'm concerned. (I guess sculptors already know this, but it came kinda late to this painter.) No real strength is needed to use them - just skill and knowledge - something that women can easily acquire. So don't let those boys keep the tools for themselves. If they won't share, go out and get your own.

Scenic Driving

Today Bonnie dragged me off the couch and into the car for a scenic tour of some of our old haunts in the hilltowns of the Pioneer Valley (western Massachusetts). The weather was warm, sunny and springlike - perfect for taking photos. I shot some iconic views that I would like to share - mainly in Hawley.

When we lived in Ashfield (next town over) we had friends in Hawley and drove around there quite a bit. It's a very small town in Franklin County, MA with a population in the 300s (as in 336 or so people). It was settled in 1760 and incorporated in 1792. It's amazing to me that people would settle so far from civilization (and I'm not just talking about Colonial times). There are no gas stations, convenience stores or liquor stores in Hawley and not many remaining farms. It has an elevation of almost 1800 feet and so is one of the highest hilltowns. Some of the views are spectacular.

On our way through Ashfield, we passed by South Face Farm. It's that red building (or dot) at the left of the picture. They are a big producer of maple syrup and serve pancakes during this season. I always admired the view of this white farmhouse in the center of the picture at the top of a long, steep hill. It used to have a wonderful huge barn but it decayed and fell over in a storm.

The powerline cuts through up there between Ashfield and Hawley. Power is important in this area because of electric wells and heat, but it's not really dependable. In one of the fierce ice storms this winter, power was out for up to 10 days around there.

That farm in the distance with the big, red barn was owned by the Lilly family. They had a big dairy herd that had to be sold off after the farm owner died and the property was divvied up. It was very sad because the family really wanted to keep the place intact. We loved seeing all those black and white cows heading for the barn in the late afternoon. It seemed like hundreds of them slowly walking single file.

This house sits at the edge of a high open area that feels like the top of the world when you are in the middle of it.

The view of a giant field is blocked by snowpiles.

The boys got out for a whiz up there. (This is the other side of the road.)

Some of the gnarled old maple trees that were badly damaged this winter.

Approaching the old schoolhouse on Forget Road. One of our memorable evenings in Hawley was on this road in the pitch black night during a spectacular Leonid meteor shower in 2002 (I think). Five or six of us laid down in the road to watch the shooting stars. There was no danger of being run over.

The old schoolhouse on the Donovan potato farm. It must have been a cold experience to go to school here.

The old cemetery on Forget Road showing headstones and trees damaged this winter.

A close-up of some headstones: Josiah Hunt, died March 1, 1827, age 99 and Ruth, wife of Josiah, died February 6, 1815, age 85.

The road toward home. In the distance we could even see Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire.

Night and Day

Taking photos to exchange with my Swedish partners for the weather blog has driven me to experiment with my camera as never before. I even went outside last night IN THE ACTUAL DARK and shot some photos. That was fun and I experimented with flash/no flash/slow flash, etc. with surprising results (at least surprising to me). I was unprepared for the drama that night photography gave to mundane scenes.

Night Shadows (taken last night, March 6th, in the backyard)

Day shadows - taken today - same view

Night Reflections

Day Reflections - same shot

Last night - trees with pinprick moon

Today - same trees but with celestial blue sky

Today was a beautiful day - the first really warm day that promised not to be a singular aberation. The ground is soggy with snowmelt and tonight it's started raining with three more days of rain to come. But green things are happening. This long, miserable winter is finally starting to lift. Relief is in sight accompanied by The First crocus.





Buds are swelling, birds are making spring calls and activity is beginning all around. But before it all that breaks into full-bloom spring, we have to get through Mud Season:

and worse is yet to come

Working Paper

"What's happening in the studio?" you may ask. And here's my answer: I'm still working on those paper pieces that I'd like to sell to the "corporate" market. Is there any market left? You never know until you try is what I'm thinking. So, my goal is to get 15 or 20 pieces done and send the images out to a couple of consultants to see what happens. Then I'll switch back to encaustic and/or oil while I'm waiting for those big sales to roll in.

I'm going to show you three pieces that I revised and one new one.

New Version/New Name: "Final Count", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version (basic color hasn't changed, but color in New Version above is truer. I thought the upper right was too dark .)

New Version: "Number of Days", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version - I thought the color needed tweaking and the top needed definition.

New Version: "Back Track", 34"x34", acrylic, pencil and crayon on ricepaper

Old Version - I thought the bottom right needed more color.

And here's the new one. I was able to reuse some fairly large sections from a couple of older pieces that I took back from a consultant.

This is "Growth Pattern", 34"x34", acrylic and pencil on ricepaper.

So this is life in the studio - or at least life in my studio. If you're following Joanne Mattera's "Marketing Mondays", you're reading about how to move the work out into the world. This post is about making and remaking the work, getting it ready to move out of the studio and into the world.

So You Think You Can Write?

I know, I know. This blog is supposed to be about art - and it is - but it's also about thinking. So here's what I'm thinking...

Forget it, Daphne. I've found someone who can really write about lesbians - and about anything else. Her name is Ariel Levy and she caught my attention with her funny, informative and nostalgic piece: Lesbian Nation: When gay women took to the road, in the March 2nd issue of The New Yorker. (It's about a small tribe of lesbian separatists known as the Van Dykes who travelled around the U.S. in the 1970s seeking radical empowerment and escape from society's "testosterone poisoning" in womyn's lands. It brought me back to my one excursion to the New England Women's Music Retreat - a festive occasion, to say the least.)

My new writing idol is a staff writer for The New Yorker, formerly a contributing editor at New York Magazine (my other standby) and has written for other publications such as Vogue and Slate (about glamour and good looks on The L Word). She has authored two books, most recently Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture about pornography, feminism, sex and female behavior in the 21st century. (See Ariel on youtube talking about how pornography has influenced women's body image.)

Sorry to say, Daphne, but she's also a looker - one might even say glamorous - and yes, she's married, to Amy Norquist. You can read about their wedding or, as she termed it, "a party about love," as described by the "bride" (her quotes) in NY Magazine.

Ariel Levy, right, and Amy Norquist on their wedding day in Bluemont, Virginia.
(Photo: Thad Russell)

I do remember reading a great article by Ariel last September in the New Yorker about Cindy McCain, not that I remembered the name of the author, but this was the only place I had ever read all those facts about Cindy's background, interests, etc. that the campaign was certainly not putting forward. I loved it and now I understand why I enjoyed it so much.

So, there you go, Daphne. If the NY Times had any sense, they would give you the boot and beg Ariel to pen a few lines whenever they felt the need to expound on any aspect of lesbian sensibility, fashion or intellectual perspicacity.

Buh-bye!

It's All Connected

Man, I didn't know what I was getting into when I started untangling that ball of wax containing Madoff and Merkin. I don't claim to be cutting edge, but this stuff has even reached me, way out here on the periphery. What brought it all together for me was the New York Magazine March 2nd issue with Bernie Madoff on the cover made up like a cross between the Joker and Grandpa Munster.

I became quite interested in Madoff because a family I had known for decades lost a sizeable fortune that had all been invested with him. Since I had been receiving a small retainer from the family for doing some work at home, I indirectly was affected by Bernie's ponzi scheme. My retainer stopped when everything went up in smoke. See how wide the ripples spread? Who would think that what Madoff did would affect me since I never saved or invested anything in my life?

Then there was Daphne Merkin, whom I wrote about last week. Daphne thought she understood lesbian "glamour" because she spotted Rachel Maddow wearing makeup. Well, Daphne's brother, J. Ezra Merkin, and Bernie were "like this" because J. Ezra had been turning over huge amounts to Bernie to "invest" on behalf of several charities. Of course, J. Ezra cut a nice slice off the top of the money going over to Bernie as his share for directing the flow Bernie's way.

Now that Bernie has come clean about the giant FU he's been giving his "investors" since maybe even the '60s, J. Ezra has not only lost $billions on his clients' behalf, but on his own. What makes it even more interesting to me is that there's an art connection: J. Ezra is believed to be THE biggest private collector of Mark Rothko's work according to Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg News. Reportedly, the dozen or so giant Rothko's (such as 9x15 feet) that he owns are worth $150-200 million and Merkin is getting calls from collectors worldwide who want to buy the pieces that are undoubtedly going on the block sooner or later. *

*Another piece of the Madoff trivia puzzle that I couldn't figure was also answered when I read that Merkin's art advisor, Ben Heller, is the stepfather of Kyra Sedgwick, wife of Kevin Bacon. I couldn't understand how Kevin, a nice Boston Irish Catholic boy, got mixed up with Uncle Bernie and lost plenty of money, but now it all makes sense - Kevin took investment advice from Heller.

This Rothko is owned by the National Gallery, "White Center", 1950

Another Rothko owned by the National Gallery, Untitled, 1949.

Isn't it odd that in all the time Bernie Madoff's been doing "business", the SEC didn't catch on that he never made any trades and that his "investments" were a complete sham? Sunday night 60 Minutes had an interview with Harry Markopolos, a financial analyst and fraud investigator from Boston, who provided the SEC with information about Madoff's fraudulent activities several times dating back to 2000. That interview was powerful stuff and if I had lost money with Madoff, I'd be suing the SEC not only for negligence but for potential cronyism. What a stink! (It's probably just as well that I had no money with Madoff because now I'd be throwing away legal expenses too.)

The latest that I heard this a.m. is that Madoff claims he should retain his penthouse plus $62 million. NY Magazine was right. He is the Joker.

Weather Diptychs

The weather blog is an "international photo project about weather, emotion and communicating through photography" that was conceived by two artists as part of the Transcultural Exchange 2009 project. Miriam Songster of New York and Hege Dons Samset of Berlin designed a three-part project consisting of the weather photos blog (also known as "We Are Having Weather"), a video exhibition in Shanghai Zendai MoMA in November 2008 and participation in "Here, There and Everywhere", part of the Transcultural Exchange conference to be held in Boston in April 2009.

I learned about the weather blog from Alicia Hunsicker, who participated in it online and also in the exhibition in China. Beginning later today, between 4 and 5 pm, I will start posting photos to the weather blog along with my partner, the Raketa crew of Stockholm, Sweden. Raketa describes themselves as: "a network of people running interdisciplinary, collaborative projects and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media." Sounds exciting!

The idea is that the weather blog partners communicate with each other through their photos about the weather and their emotional response to the weather. Each partner is supposed to post at least one photo a day, and the idea is to respond to each other, not just keep posting from your own perspective.

So I've been taking photos documenting the weather, but I don't know if I'll post all of them to the blog because I will wait to see what my partners do. But the contrast between yesterday's weather and today's is pretty extreme. I shot some comparison views and am posting them below as diptychs. The first picture in a set was taken yesterday, March 1st, and the second image was today, March 2nd. They are all taken in my yard or looking out the window.

I won't show you the image I am first going to post to the weather blog. You'll have to go there to look tonight. We will be in the sidebar list under: Nancy (Massachusetts, USA) + Raketa (Sweden).