Friday and Counting

Slow start today. Not out of bed until nearly 9:00. What a surprise. Then spent time catching up with emails and putting something really nice in motion with the Houston Dynamos and their terrific chandelier. More on that later. So I didn't get to the Second Seating space until nearly 11:00 a.m. Met Moises and Mark there and we began on too many projects at once. An exercise in futility and disorganization.Finally hit our stride late afternoon after a clarifying trip to Bohemeo's over on Telephone Rd. for lattes, espresso and fish and veggie tacos. Well caffeinated and having taken many photos (They asked, "Are you always photographing what you eat and who you're with?" The answer is "Yes.") we returned to the space and began to hang stuff on the walls.We hung Aggie's things first and then my three photo montage pieces. Her work is beautiful. Folks are going to go crazy for it. The tables, the wall pieces. Can hardly wait for them to see it all. Jesse came by and took two of his batiks to get them ready for hanging.
We came back to the house for some of that green corrugated sheet metal Mike Garver let me have last year for my studio walls and screen porch. I still have some pieces left and we strapped them on the top of my car with bungees and drove them down to Chenevert. The guys inserted them piece by piece in between the rebar and all of a sudden the corner took on a whole new atmosphere. It became a 'space.'
They went back to the house for more and I stayed and painted on the Wall of Plates shelves. Added some of Aggie's colorful cut out metal from aluminum cans. We'll see how it looks in daylight tomorrow.Then we looked at how we'd hang things on the green wall. Mark and Moises took that fabric wall piece I made and instead of holding it out as a big square, one of them hung it by a corner and - wow, it looks great and we'll hang it that way. And there is plenty of space for my collages. The real trick is to get the Plexi on them - still not done. May go out to the studio in a few minutes and drill some holes and try to get at least one done...or go to bed and get up early in the morning. Nathan is coming at 10:00 to check on the big stage lights. They are not turning on yet. Hope it's not a big deal to find what the problem is.
So, all is well and there is still a ton of work to be done. More than a ton. What am I doing adding all these photos to this post? When I should be out putting Plexi on painted wood frames.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

This has been another Second Seating day. What 's new? It's now 7:00 p.m. and a few minutes ago, I poured myself a goblet of chilled white wine. Think I'm through for the day which began at 6:00 a.m.
Worked on the gallery guide and sent the first draft with all of its blank space to each of the artists so they can fill in titles and dimensions and prices. I need a short bio of each artist. You know, I am really excited about this group of artists. Each is so talented and their work for Second Seating is really going to surprise folks. When we meet tomorrow at the space, I'll gather some information from Jose and Ted and get it in draft form for them to take a look. And then I'll call everyone else and get theirs in draft form for review, rewrite, whatever.
Also got closer to the final draft of a very 'short story' about the East End and shot it off to Mary Vargo for read. There is nothing she doesn't know about the East End and she says she'll take a look.

Also tightened the several paragraphs I've been working on about Doris Bain Thompson. My mom is 92 and several weeks ago I experienced an epiphany. I have her genes after all and with Second Seating, I may well be doing what she did with her choirs in Aruba. We are both able to think something up from scratch and make it work. After I made this startling connection, I decided to dedicate Second Seating to my mother and though I called Seattle and told her, it will bear retelling again and again. My mom has increasing dementia and it has taken its bitter toll on her ability to retain information or to articulate her own thoughts. But back in her prime time? Well, that's another thing altogether. She had guts and vision.
Here's a photo of her taken last Christmas. She'd broken her arm and was in the hospital for awhile. But she's looking pretty good in this picture. I wish she could see this show. Makes me think I should find someone who can take a video of the opening. Now that, she and Dad would enjoy.
Break time after writing about Mom. I walked out to the oyster shell pile which is something I do often now. That oyster shell pile simply calls me these days.
I've just realized why. Granted, I need to check on them and turn them so they get clean with rain and sun for Second Seating. But every time, I go out there, I also select at least a dozen or two and bring them back into the kitchen sink to scrub and dry. My kitchen counter is covered with oyster shells. There may be 100 shells drying there and I plan to write gold words on each and bake them. Point is, I really like 'choosing' things and the oyster pile is as good as a resale shop. And today, I occurred to me that maybe folks at the opening might like to buy a shell with a word like 'love' or 'longing' or 'yes' or 'maybe' on it.
Sort of a little present to take home? Or give someone?
After the shelling expedition, I glued more collage pieces together and they are now weighted down with big books. The collages are just about done. On Tuesday, I'll buy sheets of plexi and begin drilling holes for the little brass carpet nails that I use to affix plexi to frame.
Took another break to read parts of the NYT, ate a couple of bowls of pecan praline ice cream with sliced bananas. Really. The last thing I need.
Mid-afternoon, I cut and sewed another vesty garment made from my stash of fabrics salvaged from Hurricane Ike. The first vest I made with some of these fabrics, I took to Turkey and to Seattle and I like it very much. Here's a photo of it taken in Discovery Park, where by the way there's been a real live cougar on the loose. Which they caught last night and will take to 'the wild.'
But the garment I put together this afternoon leaves a lot to be desired. It's not what I want to wear for the opening, though that was the intention when I began.
I began to search my closet and now my bed is piled with stuff. All fashion disasters. I need to wear a 'piece of work' basically. After I tried about 15 different approaches, I took a patchwork wall hanging I made for the show and wrapped it around my waist and then above my waist, Empire style.
It was the first thing that made sense. And looked like Second Seating. I wish I had a dress form my size so I could drape the thing. More and more I think about that draping class I took my junior year in college. It was as useful as an Algebra class. Or physics 101. One doesn't always realize how often we call upon the information we learn in basic classes. I may take the wall hanging to the alternation shop and hope they take mercy on me. Maybe they can drape it on me and put elastic through the top. Or I'll find harem pants - wish I'd bought them in Turkey when I saw them at that roadside stand by an ancient aqueduct. But it was either look at the aqueduct or shop. Actually, I think I did some of both, but not as much shopping as I might have liked.
So, late in the day, I made another trip out to the oyster shell pile. And then took a look at the clock and poured a glass of wine.
Tomorrow, I meet Ted and Jose in the space. We'll unpack their work and imagine where it will be installed. And the carpenter should be there with his helper and we'll build shelves for the Wall of Plates. Then I'll be busy with house paint and a 100 plates.
Talk soon again.

Second Seating On Facebook and Other Good Stuff

If I were truly good at this social networking, I'd have a link right HERE so you could see the new Second Seating Houston presence on Facebook. I'll need to get with Q to solve that one and to create a live link to Facebook on the right hand side of this blog page. Suffice it to say that I've had another busy and, it turns out, a very good day, plus allergies run amok. Two running eyes and two running nostrils required that I carry a roll of soft paper towels under my arm all day. I used most of the roll. Actifed and Claritan failed miserably.

Even with this temporary disability, I managed to make a Second Seating Houston Facebook Group and added photos and a pretty good new description of the project. Already have responses. Rushed off to lunch at Irma's with a packet of Second Seating materials and made a friendly request for $2500 of underwriting. Incredibly, the request was granted without a pause in the conversation. Except that I paused, amazed. Little discussion. Just a yes over tacos and mole enchiladas. I consider myself lucky indeed, especially during these economic times. You just never know until you know.

After lunch, I headed off to the Harrisburg studio where I met Irina and we set about a developing a system for stitching portions of what is an ever growing table cloth made from those fabric samples salvaged from a garage flooded during Hurricane Ike.


We stitched and visited and drank coffee and decided that 'sewing bees' can be scheduled on the screen porch at home and then we can visit with a whole group of friends and make this cloth ever larger. Sort of works in with the spirit of this installation too.

Now, late in the evening, after I've added more Second Seating photos to Facebook and am ready to publish this post, I know very well that all this uploading stuff eats away a terrific amount of time. I could have stitched all evening. Or read a good book. Or figured out how to put a photo image on a ceramic plate. Any number of things. Yet here I am typing away. Where is the right balance?














Good thing about photographing some of the fabrics is that I am liking these fragments as wall pieces and so have a new idea to follow. I liked looked down on the whole 'pinned together' table cloth and imagined it on a wall, well embellished. It could turn into that later on. I suppose it could float from the ceiling too.

Table Cloth for Banquets In situ

Just came in from the studio after an hour or more of work assembling a layout of the Hurricane Ike fabrics for the fabled 'Banquets In Situ' table cloth. I say 'fabled' because it's been so much on my mind lately and when I go to the studio over on Harrisburg and see the potential size of the thing, I turn up the anxiety meter. Then I have to tell myself to 'trust in the universe' and just get busy with it.

A friend is coming to the Harrisburg studio mid-week and I'm making this visit a reason to have a section of this immense cloth stitched or at the very least pinned together, so that perhaps we can both envision how a finished crazy quilt of silks, brocades, chenilles and velvets look all torn and layered and encrusted with bias strips of ruffles and random pieces of silver plate flatwear.By the way, I keep siphoning off pieces of these Ike fabrics so I can make myself some floppy vests. I've already draped one and cut a lining on which to piece it together. I love it already. And I have to say, I'm liking some of these fabrics with my crochet work. So it's onward on two fronts with these salvaged fabrics that just got better after the storm and a stint in my washer and dryer.

I am remembering just how it is when I work on a collage or an sort of arrangement. I can stay with it for just over an hour and then I have to take a break. This morning, I've had an extended break, frying three breakfast sausages for a snack and then giving a call to my dad in Seattle who is celebrating his 92d birthday today. Will wonders ever cease? He says they tied a balloon on his walker and he'll have birthday cake at lunch. I said, "Dad, your birthday is a miracle." Last fall, he was on hospice and then as we were all holding our breaths and fearing the worst, he got stronger and stronger and called last night to ask me if I'd send him the tape of his tenor rendition of "Shine on Harvest Moon" which he sang in Aruba back in the 1950s.

OK, back to the mixing and matching of bits of fabric. We'll see how many square feet I can piece together today in one way or another.

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?