Building Men

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Lee’s hands used to help me build so many things that were part of my art work. While having company here this week, I talked her into helping clean out the storage room so I could search for some things I wanted to donate to the folk school archives.

We found what I was looking for. These cloth, clay and pine bark small sculptures of the men of Brasstown. Here is Jake and Harold.

When we moved here in 1993 I would watch tall old Jake come into the corner store with his crooked neck and lean in toward whoever he was talking to….in this case Harold. They all had to look up to Jake.

I could not figure out at the time how to make separate legs so went with just this lower body from the bark a recently downed pine tree. Antique men’s underwear buttons were perfect. The shirts I made from some striped fabric from my stash of cloth.

Then I got better at manipulating the bark in 1994 and made The Home Boys. Happy dancers.

The shirts here were from fabric I wove on a dish towel exchange. I had to mount them on slabs to keep them from toppling over in their exuberance.  Lee would do all the cutting of logs for me.

Now they have all been delivered to the archives office as well as some black and white photos taken during a photography class in 1996 and later. They were pictures of things of interest to me and the men of Brasstown who were the subject of both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

In sorting through the pictures I found these of an installation I made in undergraduate art class. It is about men leaving, just going away. My interest was peaked by the study of hobos and why so many left and did not come back home.  I was always intrigued by those who leave and don’t look back.

So I made a threshold doorway, cut down some trees to invert and then clothed them with cloth and nails. Each has his bindle tied to his walking stick (just like the hobos used to). The walking stick kept them upright as they left.

And the reason all of those men left home was a lack of nourishment in some form or another so I made this and placed it just the other side of the doorway….on the inside.

I still have this empty bowl that was an accident piece from Lee’s wood turning days. The bowl could hold nothing and the basket materials I wove around the edges could not contain anything. Even the ladle had to be carved out so as to give these men nothing….no reason to stay. I loved this installation. I loved gaining the confidence of strangers who were happy to have someone care as to why they were gone from home. This bowl will be one of the last things I part with. Just holding it can make a person weep….weep and then smile at the memories I filled it with.

Anyway, Lee is no longer turning bowls but I have found several that our kids will take home. Our shelves are full of other ones and so are the cupboards.

I am about to go upstairs and have a bit of red and popcorn in one of his bowls….turned apple wood. It holds just the right amount.

Til next week or a few days….whenever something comes up that is worth sharing. It might just be my cod skinned stone and cane toad book spine. Tomorrow they will be dry enough to see if the experiments worked.

Til later.

 

A Final Workshop for the Folk School

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Like this natural contact print on the ramp up to the Book Arts Studio, I have left my mark on the Folk School here in Brasstown. Yesterday I finished my final class and it was a lovely easy ending after thirty years and six months. Five students taking a class called, “Books All About The Stitch”. Here is some of the work done.

Pat’s shifu book about her losing dialogue with an ill husband.

Jenn’s coptic and toji binding lessons.

And her charming little family felt books.

Kent’s stitched books, fronts, insides, and backs. Plus a detail of a small sewing book he did.

And his work in progress.

Beverly’s small books outside view.

And inside views.

Sarah’s mother’s tapestry box, closed and open.

Here Sarah works on just one more during closing ceremonies.

Our little display of work.

I worked on this recycled idea that Kent showed me in a class a couple of years ago. He had peeled the cloth off old books and glued the pieces together. I stitched mine. The green one was a book written by Joan Biaz during her early days in our anti war period. The cover had this small design that I made into an attached book mark for the patched book. It will be my sketchbook for Australia.

It was a quiet class. Each one lost in their own work and not in need of my attention very often. So I read from my poetry book when not stitching on the book above or helping out, or cleaning up. It was such a pleasant experience to just be in the book arts studio with them.

It was a perfect good-bye to teaching there

Now I will donate some pieces to the archive center there….sculpture works and books about the community.

I might even be able to take a class there sometime…..but not now. Now I am simply letting go.

Cut myself loose you might say.

This next week I will get back to that pesky cane toad with rocks and other leathers.

A little time back in my own studio and showing Marla how to use my presses while she takes a break from looking after Lee and joining in a printmaking class at the folk school.

Til next week with something else.