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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.

 

In The Studio This Week

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This morning at the dam….just missed getting a blue heron in this picture.

Still working on the Responsibility Hands. One finished and another about half way.

The reason those fingers on the right hand are a bit crooked is a lifetime of abuse. Another thing I did these past few days was cover rocks with rawhide and kangaroo hide.

My friend, Gian, is a brilliant book binder and when I showed him the two rocks I bought from Shanna Leino he told me if I had a smooth rock he had the rawhide and could show me how to do it.

Here is our first attempt.

I drilled the holes for stitching too close in and when trying to close up the end I could not make the two pieces meet. So this happened and a bit of PVA and clamps helped seal the seam before sanding.

It was a great experience and very hard on the hands. Since Gian is leaving this weekend to go home to Canada I thought I would try again with the scrap of leather he left here in the studio.

And the back.

And this one.

These last two are still wet. But the one above had puckers in the back, the slits I made did not open and it was way too lose on the rock. I was over-correcting for the mistakes on the first one done with Gian’s supervision.

I was just about ready to cut the parchment-type leather off when it occurred to me that I would lose nothing if I put it in a boiling water with more of the corn paste that it takes to make the leather pliable. It shrunk down in no time and my slits opened into the elongated holes.

Here are the three of the rawhide covered rocks.

The two on the left will dry out as white as the one on the right. They feel wonderful in the hand.

Then I had a larger flat rock from a stream near here. I used up a couple of dremel tools making the pattern and then decided to use my last scrap of kangaroo hide to do one like Shanna Leino’s etched stone.

Here it is after being put in the pot, trimmed, sanded, waxed and buffed.

And the back.

My hands are very sore from doing this. The leather needs to be massaged forever with corn paste until it stretches. Holes have to be drilled…luckily I have a drill press in my studio. Sewing the pieces together halfway and then shoving the rock into place and trying to stitch the rest of the seam together. All of this has to be back stitched and the needle sometimes just does not want to go through. All the time the rock and leather must be kept damp and stretched.

It takes more than overnight to dry completely and then the seam excess has to be trimmed with very sharp scissors and then those seams sanded on the small belt sander next to the drill press, being careful not to get too close to the stitches.

And it all makes a big mess in the studio which has yet to be cleaned up.

I can’t wait to show these to Gian later today when we go over for a farewell scotch.

But this is hard work. My advice is to buy Shanna’s. Hers are so beautiful, I had to buy both of the ones she had left on her site a few months ago.

Her rocks are from Lake Michigan and her cover parchment is much thinner than the one I had, but aren’t they just lovely?

Til next time.

Wildflowers and Dictionaries

Posted on by Sandy Webster

A young woman came to my door this week and before she entered the foyer, she handed me these. A bouquet of wildflowers that as soon as she was gone had to be placed outside as the goldenrod makes Lee sneeze. I can not remember the last time someone gave me a bunch of wildflowers all tied up. They are so much more magical than flowers from a florist. It might be the sense of urgency they project. And a bouquet like this can’t help but be received with a sudden smile of thankfulness.

She had called a few days before from Nashville, Tennessee to ask if she could come by to see me and talk about my art practice. How could I say no to that. An interest in combining art with what the natural world has to offer is her passion for now as she sorts out what to do next in her very young life. I showed her my work using earth pigments and constructions of altered plant materials. Then gave her a copy of my book after getting her contact information. There will be other things I can think to share with her somewhere down the line.

Something else I came across this past week was a letter to and from the Merriam-Webster dictionary offices.

I keep it in the back of my dictionary.

The background story is that in 2004 I had finished reading The Life of Pi. In the conclusion of the story it seemed that the evidence of a meerkat was in question. I was quite sure at the time that I knew what one was…but I must add right here that even now spellcheck is questioning me. Anyway, I went to my dictionary to look the word up and found it was not there….nowhere was the word “meerkat”.

I wrote to Merriam-Webster and unfortunately did not keep a copy of that original inquiry as to why the word was not there.

Here is their response:

April 5, 2004

Dear Ms. Webster

You did not mention which Merriam-Webster dictionary you are referring to, but I assume it must be Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary since meerkat was not included in the ninth edition (the one you apparently own). I can’t say for sure why it wasn’t included, but I can tell you that meerkat was entered in the tenth edition of the Collegiate published in 1993 and is still there for the eleventh edition published last year.

Since the English language is constantly changing, you might want to consider purchasing a more recently published dictionary at some point. For the Collegiate Dictionary, for instance, we typically add 10,000 new words and senses for each new edition. Thank you for writing. Feel free to write again.

Sincerely

Joan Narmontas

My response back to Joan on April 9, 2004

Dear Joan,

Thank you for your prompt reply. The dictionary I own that lays open covering the top of the “Information Center” and where the word meerkat is absent is a 1989 Webster’s Enclycopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the Enblish Language.

Surrounded with these books in all their permutations, you may not fully appreciate the value of a dictionary just sitting open at the height of a bent elbow. It is a 1,854-page invitation to learn and reaffirm what knowledge we have regarding meaning, pronunciation and spelling, not to mention the location of places and names in history. The pleasing pattern of a notched fore edge that seduces the fingertips into moving from one set of paired letters to another if for no other reason than to feel that place and flip whole sections of fluttering pages forward and backward.

And the Illustrations! On pages 278-279 there are drawings of a Clipper ship, Clipper bow, Cloister, and Close helmet with its Visor, Ventail and Beaver carefully labeled. How can anyone resist these small, well-placed visual definitions? Just the other day my husband (the same delightful man who built the “Information Center”) brought me an old hand forged iron piece to use in my artwork. “I think it is a clevis or something like that”, he said. We immediately turned to the dictionary and found a picture of a clevis, which clarified that what we had, was the hook that a clevis was constructed for in the first place.

When our children were growing up, every Sunday morning at breakfast we had to all come to the table with a new word. Pronounce it, spell it, define it and use it in a sentence — then you could eat. Our dictionaries have always been used and loved for what they bring into our lives.

So far I have had to add a piece of paper with the formula to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and I see no reason why I can’t simply place the definition for meerkat in the same way….tucked in at page 891 where the word megajoule sits in upper right, just begging to be read about at the bottom of the page and insisting I moisten my finger to turn the page and view a megathere. I love this book. Keep making them.

Best regards,

Sandy Webster

 

I put these letters about our use and love of a dictionary in this blog with the bouquet of wildflowers because I wonder if these are things of the past.

It would be a shame if they were.

To rely on “spellcheck” all the time can be a mistake, especially when they question “meerkat” and want to turn it into “marketeer”. To use an app that is supposed to identify plants is also not such a good idea. Recently mine could not even recognize a Japanese maple. I still turn to my Audubon and Peterson books for identifications so I can turn actual pages, see a variety of illustrations and read.

Enough.

Til next time when there seems to be something to say or show.