Moving day: transporting art to NAAM
It's real and it's happening and it's really real...
The first two works for my solo show are loaded and almost ready to go to the Northwest African American Museum! Lots more to come -- twenty more, in fact. (More than that if I count the triptychs as nine separate works.)
Although the collector was happy to loan out the pieces, she says she already misses them. I can see why: they're fully part of her home now. [happy sigh]
I know that bittersweet feeling myself... but soon I'll be too busy to mope over it. I've got a show to install!
Collage in progress: the little prince
You know about The Little Prince, right? (Not that one. This one.)
Credit: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (U.S. public domain, copyrighted in France until 2045)
I'm working on a collage homage to the little prince, so to speak. This summer, I noticed NASA celebrated the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing by uploading photos from all the missions to Flickr. I'm now remixing a few of those images with my family photos, on watercolor paper.
The book's watercolor illustrations pulled me into that other universe so long ago I don't even remember the first time I saw them. But even as a kid, I understood the themes of alienation and connection perfectly. Not that I could have told you this back then, but I knew alienation isn't just loneliness, or even being alone by choice.
Museum of the Little Prince, Hakone, Japan. Credit: arieM1FLERéunion/ Wikimedia Commons
It's also about the parallel experience of not quite living in the same reality as the person next to you. Even when the other person is your friend, that connection is always tenuous and changing. You might remember I also explored those ideas in my most recently completed piece. So as I continue to work on the Great Mystery Project, I find that head space melancholy but also full of potential and anticipation. More to come.
(And if you haven't read The Little Prince, what are you waiting for? It's less than 100 pages. I know -- I've read it in both French and English.)
Art not happening? Dig deeper
I was making headway on four big collages, but my production has stalled out. It makes me feel a little stabby.
I sealed the rust onto these old railroad spikes, while it was still dry and sunny outside.
I got the aged maps attached to the boards, even got holes drilled at angle (which is hard!) in the smaller panels. But I'm having trouble on the mom front: TwoBoo's on a waitlist for after-school day care at his new school, among other issues. Very little studio time. I've been anxious and frustrated most of the week.
But I had a fantastic time observing an actual archaeological dig last month!
Students from Evergreen State College, led by Dr. Ulrike Krotscheck, have discovered thousands of artifacts from the Bush Prairie Farm.
The most exciting thing to me: the original homesteaders in 1845, George and Isabella Bush, were an African American/Irish man and his white wife. But people of African descent weren't allowed to own property then: remember, this was before the American Civil War. It took their white friends in the territorial legislature and a literal act of Congress to grant the Bushes their own property title.
I was going to finish the big collage panels, and then make smaller collages using the archaeology photos. But it might be better to switch up those plans. Huh. Funny: I'd be using a literal dig to help me dig deeper into my art practice.