nearly ready

the studio is nearly ready to go.  i've got to bring in and set up the kiln and fix the wheel that got its foot pedal flooded, which are 2 rather important components to the clay studio, but hopefully we can get all that accomplished this weekend.  i've already gessoed 9 new assemblage canvases to paint and organized the majority of my linoblock stamps.  with the indiana artisan show a month away, time is short and the workload is large, but we'll get it all completed.  the other half of the back of foam city now houses another studio where a silkscreen printer and a video/tech artist will house their space, and the front space is beginning to clear out some of the junk and open up into an incredible alternative gallery space with amazing natural lighting from a sky light and a glass and framing garage door.  foam city seems to be taking some kind of form.

i put my wheel up on stilts.  i've never had back problems beyond simple fatigue, but for the sake of not bending over all the time, i felt like it was time to switch to standing at the wheel.  i think this will work for me better.  i stand to work for everything else i make.  in fact, i find it nearly impossible to make something other than a pot from a seated position.  so hopefully by raising my wheel, i can save my back a bit and also work in a more comfortable, but dynamic, way.

yesterday, i met with my first class for the mural project.  we discussed a lot of options for our mural and the kids worked very well together, bouncing ideas and discussing aesthetics.  there will be some challenges with this project, and because we will be using an historical building there are a lot of rules that we have to consider.  we cannot paint directly on the brick (the main hurdle), but because we're working on panel, that allows me to encourage using an assemblage surface.  we walked down to the wall to check out where our mural will be installed, then came back to begin the brainstorm.  we developed (with some serious prodding from me) a muted color palette, came up with several images that we thought were important to include, and some interactive components and included pieces and parts to tell the story we want to tell.  we will be creating a huge version of one of my assemblage paintings.  the kids will be making all of the imagery and using stencils to make it repeatable.  we talked about graffiti and decided to include some other graffiti techniques like paste-ups to create a very eclectic and mashed together work.  i think the key word for our mural is going to be 'mash.'  the challenge is trying to fit all these ideas, images, items, and themes together to tell one consistent story.  i'm quite excited about what we can accomplish in a couple of short months.