New Artwork
I finally finished a couple of new artworks, had them photographed professionally and posted them on my website. The first, which I've shown here before, is called Unmatched. The matchbook cover is a very stiff quilt and the match "stems" are made of wood. The matchheads are constructed of cotton batting and paint. Like real matches, the heads are bigger than the width of the rows, causing the two rows to stagger and appear as if they are really four rows. After I had completed the project, I broke off the one black-headed match which is, of course, supposed to appear burned.
You may not be able to see it in the small picture, but Misti dots her letter i's with little hearts. After I'd already written the name inside of the matchbook, my friend Vicky said that I should have used her name instead and another friend said I should have used the name Bambi. I'm sure there are other names that are just as good, but I guess I'll have to settle for Misti this time. I wonder if she ever hooked up with the guy who got her phone number in that bar?
The second project is called Splashed. I've worked on this piece for several years and it was a lot more work than it looks. The water is constructed by sandwiching hand dyed cotton batting in between two layers of gold mesh fabric. I stitched it all together, trimmed it to size and sewed a satin stitch around the edge. Afterwards, it was backed with black wool felt and stitched again. I probably have about $100 worth of black cotton thread in this.
The water is actually two separate pieces that sit on a two-piece base that is hidden underneath, but which lifts them up from the table.
The spout is made from PVC pipe sections that were modified, glued together and painted with metallic paint from the model train store. The handle that turns the water on and off is a modified Allen wrench. Pull it out and the upper water section separates from the rest of the spout, with just a small section of pipe attached permanently to it. The part that hangs on the wall was originally a floor drain, so it conveniently already had holes in it for hanging purposes. The local hardware store is a wealth of art materials, if you keep your mind open to the possibilities!
Solo Exhibit
My solo show is coming up here pretty quickly. It officially opens on August 29th during Wichita's Final Friday Gallery Crawl, but several days ago, the gallery director asked me to move the installation date forward by 10 days to August 15th. I agreed to do it, but I still need to finish two more artworks that will be displayed, called Collapsed and Posted. Obviously, I can't ship them off to Boston to have them photographed beforehand, but it'll probably happen after the show is taken down in September.
