A Little of This, A Little of That

A roofer came this morning to fix the damage done to Second Seating's roof during Hurricane Ike. Irma had a blue tarp over it, but it didn't do much for the leak. Today, they took care of it. I love the outside of this building and it will be such a surprise to see the installation. It is so going to work in that space.
Modelle and I are meeting tomorrow morning with a theater lighting person who'll advise on extra lighting we'll need for Second Seating. I know that with good lights playing on the tables and chandeliers, the whole place will become magic. This will be the first time I've worked with lights and I know that they will create the aura, the atmosphere. Will also meet with music and sound folks to create a tape that we can play, probably over and over, while Second Seating is open.
I went over to the Harrisburg studio mid-afternoon and stayed longer than I intended. Planned to be there just minutes in order to pick up one of the 'French' side chairs that I need to recover in some metallic faded, very messed up velvet from the cache of Hurricane Ike damaged fabrics.
I decided to set up the banquet table. The painted drop cloth and patchwork have been there on the floor for a week, so I gathered them up, pinned in a vertical and horizontal pleat on the drop cloth so it wouldn't be hanging all over the floor. Then put boxes on the table and covered the whole thing.
Added some of the stuff that will actually go on the table. I need to do something with the edges of the patchwork. In some places it looks unfinished. I may make some fabric knots or ruffles and tack on here and there.
Back at home, I decided to write and paint on the twenty pieces of beveled glass that make up a small chandelier. Gonzo247 is painting the base a bright sassy color. I wrote phrases and words on each piece of glass and drew floral sorts of things - all in metallic gold and pewter. They need to dry for 24 hours and then I'll bake and reassemble. I want to hang it in proximity to the big banquet chandelier that is covered with wrapped fabrics, ruffles and birds. I have got to finish that thing and get it off my dining room table. It needs a few more ruffles and two more light bulbs and then I'll take it over to Harrisburg and hang it up next to the Houston Dynamo soccer ball chandelier, the Clorox chandelier and the two smaller Valero chandeliers. The finished pieces are adding up, thank heaven.

All of a Piece, What's Happening Now

Sometimes it's good to go back to the start of something, to remember how it was near the beginning. The second post on this blog ties in with the very things I am working on now. It's been slow and steady progress from day one.
Those oysters that my daughter Jeanne and her husband Dan and my grandchildren Kelan and Lauren and my sister and brother-in-law Denny picked up along a stretch of beach in the Pacific Northwest have been grilled and eaten. I boxed up the empty shells and sent them to Houston. Now they sit on a tabletop with dozens of silver plated scallop shells for Seating Seating.
Every day I take a giant Rubbermaid tub to a seafood restaurant and trade it for one full of oyster shells. The smell in my car is awful and the pile of shells by the side of my studio is growing. when those shells have been eaten clean and bleached in this hellish Houston summer sun, they'll surround the table as will these chairs which will be covered in more of my Hurricane Ike flood salvaged fabrics.
It is all of a piece, what's happening now.

Oyster Shells on Saturday

Two photos. One 'before' and one 'after.' The before is the oyster shells when we first dump them fresh from the tub and the flies feast for a day or two. There are hundreds of flies at this feast. Fortunately, all this takes place away from anyone's house and the flies and whomever else comes at night sure are efficient.
The 'after' photo shows the shells that we dumped four days ago - clean and just needing a good rain and more sun.
I pick up a tub of shells every 36 hours or so and will continue for as long as this seafood place is willing to fill and exchange the tubs. All these shells will make a heck of a Second Seating tableau in September.
Tomorrow I should probably take my scale outside and weigh a colander of shells and then calculate how many pounds I have and the number of days it's taken to collect them. This is from one restaurant. I can compare these numbers with other numbers of oysters harvested and eaten. I've read that 100 years ago, folks sat down and ate dozens and dozens before soup , stew or salad. The dozen we order seems tame in comparison.

Nine Women

Partnerships, collaborations and sharing are the things that make a project work. I don't think there is anyone who creates anything without lots of help and encouragement and the skills and talents of others. So it is with Second Seating. There are dozens of people who've gone out of their way to move this project forward. The list grows longer every single day.
I think of all the women who sewed on the very large 10 x 14 foot patchwork banquet tablecloth.
It's made from fabrics salvaged from Hurricane Ike flood waters. First, there was the lady who owned these fabrics and stored them in her garage where they flooded last fall during the hurricane. She hauled these sodden, mildewed fabrics out to the driveway and I walked past one day and asked about the mounds of velvets and brocades. "Take as much as you want," she said. "I can't look at them any more."

After washing and drying load after load, and ruining my dryer in the process, I arranged the fabrics on a big drop cloth in the Harrisburg studio, mixing and matching until it all looked like 'something'. Then we must have used a 1000 pins to hold it together.
Irina sewed with Catarina for several afternoons and then suggested that we move our work from drop cloth on the floor to a big table which made sense. we could sit in chairs.

Next, we scheduled sewing bees. Virginia came and so did Evelyn Pat joined us. Hedy took a turn in the early spring too. Each of these women arrived at a warehouse studio and together we pushed needles strung with embroidery floss through layers of velvet, brocade, silk and linen. It wasn't always easy going. We needed thimbles, so Evelyn brought a thimble or two with her. We ate strawberries and cookies too.

Catarina has given more hours to this sewing project than we can count. She spent almost every afternoon of her spring break sewing. She spent every afternoon last week working to complete this patchwork. Catarina was joined by Evelyn one afternoon, Irina another. Roanne was with us the last hour of the last afternoon. There were three of us sewing when the piece was finally finished. Roanne, Catarina and I put those final stitches in place. Perhaps a toast was in order?
Nine women stitched away until there we had one giant banquet table cloth. Thank you all for every single stitch.

Patchwork Done, 1000 More Things To Do

I sat down with my lap top this morning and resolved to update the Second Seating inventory of 'things to be done' for each dinner table and chandelier. Found that my original list made less than a month ago did not even include every table or chandelier. Opps! I now have five pages of notes that itemize each task that must be completed before a table or chandelier is ready for installation. I am sure there are things I've forgotten, even though my mind is very focused. Also wrote an email to all the artist participants, giving dates when things should be wrapping up, dates for photographing their work, invitation mailing times, on and on. At least, we will all be in the same loop. Note that these five pages do not include tasks to get the space ready, to catch up with media, to raise more funds, to keep up with correspondence. More lists to make and begin to check off and delegate.
Rewarded myself with a trip to Brothers Tacos for their Thursday special which is my absolute favorite rendition of green chicken enchiladas with Mexican creama and crumbled white cheese, mixed with their green salsa and refried beans and rice. It is a lunch special to savor and remember.
This afternoon I met Catarina over at the district board room where we've been sewing every afternoon this week. Yesterday she began at 11:30 a.m. and about 4:00 in the afternoon, she fell sound asleep right on the table where we sewed.

Every day someone comes to join us. Irina was there yesterday and Evelyn the day before that. We cover so much more ground with two or three sewers.

This afternoon Roanne came by and she put in some of the last stitches on this gigantic piece of patchwork. It is done. Unbelievable. And about time. I first pinned it all together on the floor of the Harrisburg studio on a large paint drop cloth in February. I think. I'd have to reread this blog to know just when. Then Catarina spent her spring break sewing on it. We had several sewing bees in early spring. Virginia came and Pat and Evelyn all came to sew. Irina came several times. I can tell where she sewed. The stitches are so evenly spaced. I remember the big piece of patchwork that Pat sewed. It's fun to see the different styles and ways of doing things.I'll tell you, I like managing the project more than some of the actual work. Those collages I'm assembling? I have always liked assembling them better than gluing the pieces down. I am not a great gluer and truly mess up many times and must cover one thing with another.
I don't mind sewing. And there is plenty of sewing in Second Seating. However, once I've thought something through, like the tablecloth, I'm ready to plan the next thing. It's more fun for me to imagine things, to gather ideas and to work things through in my head, to make the calls that move the project forward .
Actually, Irina and I had a really nice time last weekend sewing ruffles and scrunched silk fabrics on to the metal circles of that new chandelier that now needs drop crystals. We had a good visit that I wouldn't have missed. Perhaps Catarina can sew the crystals on while I write more commentary and text? So it goes, from day to day.

What Inspires?

Well, very simply, quite a lot inspires. Each day, every moment there seems to be a surfeit of receptors inside of me that gather colors and shapes and objects - images, images coming from all directions - and continuously juxtapose them side by side, layer after layer. It's quite a show.

Add ideas for 'Second Seating' that zing in from god knows where - I filled six notebook pages with them on my trip to Portland a day ago. And they are good ideas too, many of which I'll incorporate into the whole. Maybe I was inspired because I was upgraded to first class and was served an omelet, decent coffee, yogurt and fresh fruit on real plates and bowls? As the plane landed, I agreed with the man who sat beside me (and who looked like Kevin Bacon, maybe), that the trip was good and as he added, uneventful. But was it really NOT uneventful for me. Instead, I sat in that first class seat brimming with ideas and possibilities, covering pages and pages of my old fashioned school notebook.


Two afternoons ago, I was inspired when I looked out my dining room windows and saw my screen porch and studio awash in that golden low late afternoon autumn sunlight. What a glorious place to work, listen to urban sounds and to contemplate.

Actually, I had a wonderful week, each day moved the production of this new exhibition forward. I found a second large studio space in the East End where I can put all the tables and accoutrements for this show and be able to develop each in relationship to all the rest. What a gift. A huge thank you to the person who made this space available. Having it feels like a green light to go. Next week, I'll have another friend with a truck and trailer help me move all the stuff I've collected thus far into the space. I can hardly wait to have it all in one place - and out where I can see it all - because it will really help move the design process forward. And I'll probably have a horrible sinking spell because it may look as if it makes no sense and I'll just have to keep adding until it does make sense.

I continue to take 'food photos' that I'll project on those billowing scrims. Have no idea what order they'll all take. Mary says I should put a series on You Tube or flickr and I think we'll try to do that this Thanksgiving weekend. Here is some of the food that's made its way to a table where I've eaten.

We ate sushi in the neighborhood just after I arrived, kind of an afternoon lunch of yellow tail and albacore tuna, unagi or eel and Sunny Special #1 Salmon. I think my favorite was the eel. Am remembering the eel at the Stockholm Restaurant next to the Abbey Hotel in New York where we always stayed as we travelled to and from Aruba. The restaurant had a Swedish smorgasbord and there was hardly a fish on the table that I didn't try. I was a very adventurous child when it came to eating and look where it's taking me now.

This morning we three at a late breakfast at the The Little Red Bike Cafe. I am not remembering the name of the egg sandwiches that we enjoyed, but they were good. Loved the patterns on the lattes.


We decided to visit Portland's new Museum of Contemporary Craft which has a show titled "Manuf®actured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects" that is very similar to the exhibition at the new Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle in New York. Artists are using everyday packaging and recycled materials in fascinating ways. After the museum visit, we went to The Meadow on Mississippi Street for black Turkish salt. How about those blocks of quarried pink salt in their window? The afternoon light just lit them up.


Later, we landed at Flutter, recommended by Caroline, where we pondered well edited vintage satiny clothes, toys, books, feathered glass bird ornaments and chandeliers. Flutter was fairly wonderful. The owner really has a nice touch and edits well.

Earlier, we'd stopped at a tea shop where I ordered powdered green tea and was served what looked like a soup bowl of wheat grass. I have the feeling it was so loaded with goodness that I'll be alert and awake until well after Thanksgiving dinner, a full day and a half from now.


And what, you ask, has all of this activity today to do with developing 'Second Seating'? Everything. Because everything I see these days seems to relate to this emerging series of dining tables. I see 'Second Seating' everywhere. The 'seeing' inspires and when combined with this ever flowing river of ideas, the making 'Second Seating' is propelled forward. Someday other folks will 'see' what's in my head and on my mind.
Take a look at these images again. Perhaps they'll appear in some form or fashion on a strange and wonderful dinner table or as a scrap in a collage or as part of a fantasy chandelier. I even bought a LED light bulb today at Sunland, a more-than-amazing store on Mississippi Street, that changes colors from moment to moment. How would a dozen of such lights behave when paired with a bevy of tin cans encrusted with marbles?

What a week. Inspiration is good.

Gift from Hurricane Ike: Reclaim and Recycle

A few wondrous things happened after Hurricane Ike. The felled trees and flooded homes have already changed our neighborhood in sad ways. But sometimes, gifts appear amidst debris and chaos.

One wondrous gift came during a walk in that part of our neighborhood where homes had flooded with several feet of water. One such house that I'd admired for years had its driveway filled with soggy and water damaged belongings waiting to be carted off.

Among the belongings were piles of sodden fabrics. Velvets, brocades, plaids, silks, needlepoint, bolts, samples and trims.

I found the owner who said she was an interior decorator and had stowed the fabrics away for a garage sale, but now, she said, 'I'm just throwing them away. I don't want them.'

I asked if I could look through them. "Be my guest," she said, "Take anything you want."

And within minutes she'd found a stool for herself and was helping me go through the stacks of wet fabrics.

'I think I'm getting an idea of what you like," she said. After an hour of throwing my selections up on her lawn, I went home for trash bags and my car.

It was well after nightfall when I'd spread this mildewed bounty out over my back garden to dry. There was so much that the fabrics wound around the corner of the house all the way to the kitchen door.

Dry they did the next day in the sunshine. But then for three nights, it rained. Perhaps the rain was good for these fabrics. Perhaps it drove the mildew into the ground and left the satins, brocades, checks and floral prints all better off than they'd been.

However, the 'mildew thing' began worry me so I put load after load of these marvelous fabrics through a cycle in the clothes washer and dryer. There were so many loads that I stopped counting and I have never cleaned out the lint catcher so many times. I could have stuffed a pillow.

When I left for New York, there were still several bolts of damp red velveteen spread out across the monkey grass A few more swathes hung from tree branches. Surely, they must be dry by now. Certainly they'll have a vintage weathered look.

What a gift these fabrics are. And you can guess where I'll use many of the silks and brocades. 'Second Seating' will have an oversize banquet table with a table cloth that fans out across the floor in all directions, perhaps endlessly. I am now looking for a work space big enough to spread all of these fabrics out in a pattern so that I can begin to piece this grand table cloth together. I am thinking appliques of silver plate flatware and random objects.

Hurricane Ike, you sure messed things up. But this is one mess that's been reclaimed for recycling. This mess will become a piece of great beauty. Is this the message here?

Reflections on Second Seating, The Blog

What was I thinking as I wrote yesterday’s post? The words seem formal, giving information, yet holding back the names of the artists that I’ll be working with as well as the East End companies that will, with luck, support the making of fantasy table dinner tables that incorporate their brand, be it coffee, milk or cake. As I said, in time all will unfold. The first post was an attempt to give a ‘word picture’ of what is essentially, at this moment, a concept. There is so much more inside my head - images and bits of text, potential donors, promotional ideas, contact lists.

There is a whole lot outside of my head too that includes a growing cache of random dinner plates from garage sales, tables and funky chairs from resale shops, blue wine bottles, coffee mugs, a stack of twenty white tablecloths from a friend in Minnesota, candelabra, varied vases and bowls and an expanding trove of photographs that hint of things to come. I am seeing great swaths of tablecloths hung across the ceiling, reflecting projected images of dinner past. I see enormous chandeliers made from dozens of tin and aluminum cans, shells and broken pottery.

I’ve been mulling ideas for this installation for almost a year now. I am no longer sure of just how or when the original spark of an idea occurred, though my original word document on the subject is dated November 30, 2007 and is overrun with stream of consciousness verbiage that, upon rereading, now simply adds more ideas to my mental file cabinet.

Suffice it to say that on this bright morning that calls to me, “Go walk before it is too muggy and ozone-y,” that my autumn days will be well filled with preparations for ‘Second Seating.’ I consider the process to be similar to preparations for a great feast, a visual feast and with any luck, a thought provoking feast. For the last week or so I’ve focused on oyster shells and for good reason.

The McGrady’s and I gathered fresh oysters in Lilliwaup little over then days ago. And a big box of oyster shells and styrofoam popcorn is somewhere in the mail between Seattle and Houston. I couldn’t leave the shells behind. No, I see those oyster shells piled high on a heavy laden dinner table. The oysters themselves have been consumed. They are gone.

The table is beautiful, overrun with silver scallop shells, empty too and resting among the spent oyster shells. Silver candelabra no longer cast light on iced and quivering oysters or on the diners who enjoyed them. The dinner is over, for real and metaphorically. The message of the empty oyster shells? Well, the fate of our oceans. Tuna is tainted, species near lost and seas are rotting with poison run off. The table is beautiful, but at what cost?

The message of this dinner table is a long way from Lilliwaup, WA, where we shared a warm family time and the oysters were gathered by three generations. That pleasant afternoon encourages a call to action for our oceans. I’ll be visiting with the Galveston Bay Foundation and other groups so that this ‘Second Seating’ dining table will be not only beautiful, but will offer us responsible and perhaps uncomfortable answers to our dilemma with the oceans.

This is the table I am thinking about today.