Getting Into the Holiday Spirit

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is the center piece on the dining room table. Put there for Art Group last Sunday. Just some twigs of white pine from the yard and stems of rosemary to add a nice aroma. Australian carved wooden pieces add to this bird’s nest. The large wooden bowl was carved from a downed tree by my father and Lee before we were married. They were likely taking the “measure” of each other.

I have used this bowl several times. Even served a potato salad in it on July 16, 1969 at an office party picnic while the moon landing was happening. It was only two years old at that time.

Here is the tree this year. We went a bit minimal after last years 19 Crimes.

Another view.

And Ted Cooley’s crow at the base.

The glass pears are stuffed with dead Japanese maple spidery leaves near the front door.

It is enough.

I baked cookies from the John C Campbell Folk School cookbook last week. Molasses Crinkle.

Mine came out more holey than crinkly. Someone told me to take the pan out half way through the baking and slam it down to get them to crack. I like that idea.

So thinking of the friend from Australia who made that suggestion and thinking that we were eating these cookies up rather quickly, I decided to go on the hunt for ingredients to make something malt flavored. A friend down under parted with her most prized recipe on malted cookies earlier this year and I carefully put it somewhere so as to not share it with anyone. Some place so good I could not find it. But I went ahead and bought golden syrup and the only malt I could find in the grocery store….Carnation malted milk powder.

I altered the molasses recipe just enough to accommodate my new ingredients. Gave them a good slam half way through and ended up with this.

The darker ones were simply left in the oven longer. There is very little malt flavor.

But the window washers who showed up this morning to do the windows even though there were mild snow flurries outside, thought they were very good. They have the crispiness that I want in a cookie….so much so that some would take dunking in a bit of liquid to bite into…and I do like banging them onto the stove and watching them open up. So thank you, Jeltke for that suggestion. From now on all cookies will be baked with a bang.

But since the flavor was not quite what I was looking for, I went online and found just what I needed. A non-diastatic malt extract. If you use diastatic malt in your baking, it will tend to help the rise….opposite of what I want. I found it on Amazon and on close inspection of the back of the can of Malt Extract were the words, “Made in Australia”. So in a few days I will be making these again.

And before one of the young window washers even tasted the cookies he offered to come any time that Lee and I were afraid to go out due to weather conditions. He would go to the store for us and the liquor shop whenever needed and left us his contact number. We do not even get offers from friends and neighbors to do that.

So lovely day all around.

Til next time.

 

Quiet Time in the Studio

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Today I finished five loads of wash and put it all away, wrapped some Christmas gifts, made chili for lunch, saw a bit of news and had my 10,000 steps in by 9:30 this morning.  When I finish here and turn off Lyle Lovett, I will head back upstairs, check on Lee, finish a beer I started for lunch and make tomato basil soup for dinner. It is a very cold day here in North Carolina. A day for things cooked in pots over flames. But earlier this week……..

I finished the right hand of new responsibilities….the things Lee can no longer do or remember to do. Now I have another outline of the left hand again to start to fill that one in…next week maybe I will do some drawing into it.

I also finished the cane toad spine small journal.

It took a lot of fussing to get the hide to adhere to the already waxed covers, but I like how it feels in the hand. It is about 3.5″ x 5″ x 1″. It is a good fit in the hand. The inside end papers are a paper I “marbled” using the soils from home.

I made a thick pool of corn starch paste to float the pigments that had been mixed with linseed oil and then thinned with mineral spirits to be flicked onto the paste surface with turkey feathers. I did not mix the colors very much before draping the paper over the top and pulling it off to dry. The smell stayed for a while but eventually disappeared. I like how the paper looks and it seems more relevant to my work than fancier marbled papers. Those papers always look like the end papers to something by Shakespeare or a blank journal that will likely never be used.

Then I got back to the shawl that is a very tactile representation of dementia. It is so soft to work on.

I am almost through covering the piece with these embroidery thread kantha stitches. Just six more inches on one end. Then I am going to use a finer thread and go into the patches of silks and contact printed light weight wools.

The green earth pigment I used on the linen shawl ate right through to give me some lovely holes to work with. After placing the silk and wool scraps to fill the holes, I backed it with another linen shawl the same size.

Here it is from many months ago.

It was at the point where most people would have just thrown it out. But something about it holding parts of the land Lee and I invested in and the unexpected turns that happen in art making and life was simply too appealing. So now when I have some time, I take it out, put on my glasses to see the thread and eye of the needle come together in not too many attempts, pull it through and tie a knot at one end that looks more like a snarl of loops, pick a direction and try to keep the stitching somewhat straight.

All sounds rather pitiful when I read that paragraph over but I do like doing it.

Til next time.

Something Old and Something New

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I found it! Packed in with basket “stuff” was this hand towel that I wove many, many years ago when I was learning to weave on the loom and make baskets. It occurred to me that when we dry our hands we only use the front half of the hanging towel. So why not conserve yarn and only weave half a towel, hem it and hang it on a cleverly woven rug beater knot? I remember how ingenious I thought this was. Only three were made after it was roundly put down by both my basket makers guild and weaving guild. A very nice friend bought one, I gave one to my mother and here is the one I kept hoping more than two would think it a good idea. I was sincerely ready to go into production. Late 70s thinking with yarns bought at a Ben Franklin dime store. Funny stuff.

But more success in the studio with those leather bits and smooth rocks.

A cane toad spined book with earth pigments embedded into covers.

The upper smooth one on the right is covered with Icelandic cod skin. One side tan and the other grey. Upper left is kangaroo straps woven together on the top over a pretty patterned rock. Bottom left is cane toad woven into kangaroo on square 2″ stone. And another cane toad strapped rock with a piece of white rawhide woven through.

Here are the under sides.

Here is the small cane toad stone that I started with after the parchment looking rawhide ones from a couple of weeks ago.

Using the parrot fish skins did not work. The skin was too fluffy and easily separated but here is the failure in red on one side and black on the other. It has since been taken off.

And then I wanted the one stone with one strap weaving through the other to show up the weaving and added the perfect bit of bamboo root.

All of these rocks feel good in the hand and will be put to service on my work table in the studio.

Here are all of them in their new home.

Keeping them company in the center is a gift from one of my favorite students, now deceased, Lin Parker. It was a tumbling rock placed into the paint mixing at a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is like holding a piece of shiny glass and is a good weight to do duty with the others.

There are a few stones left to cover but I tucked them out of sight in the bottom of this box. The only other ones that could be used are already weighting down the fish outside the studio to prevent them from banging into each other.

And now all I need to do is sew the text block for this book and make end papers with the marbled paper I made from the soils here at home.

Then I need to get onto designing and printing those Christmas cards. Small etchings would be nice in a simple design is what I am aiming for.

Til next time.

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.