Fastest American You Don't Know

 Tommie Smith won a Gold medal for sprinting in the 1968 Olympics.  But what he is famous for is raising his fist on the Medal Podium in Mexico City.  The gesture was meant to show solidarity with  the Civil Rights Struggle as well as to protest human rights abuses around the world.  

But the press painted him as a radical black panther ungrateful to his country.  There was no Wheaties Box portrait for Tommie Smith.  There was no career as a commentator on Wide World of Sports.  

Almost 50 years later when artist Glenn Kaino met him, he felt that Tommie was stuck in that bubble of controversy from 1968.  Kaino spent several years collaborating with him on art projects: photographs were altered, sculpture was cast, prints were made.  

The resulting work is this exhibit at the High Museum With Drawn Arms.  The Healing power of art on display.

  

Dark Star Park Day

Arlington County in Virginia is lucky to have a site specific sculpture by Nancy Holt.  It sits on a traffic triangle and a tiny pocket park in Roslyn, the section of Arlington closest to Key Bridge.  It consists of a tunnel, giant concrete spheres, pools and metal poles and metal plates. This is a very urban area and mostly the sculpture is viewed on a drive by basis.

View from traffic island to pocket park

Once a year on August 1, at 9:32 am the sun aligns with the sculpture to cast shadows that perfectly match the metal plates that project out from the spheres and the poles. It is Arlington's little Stonehenge. 

I had admired the sculpture for years before learning about the shadow connection.  And once I knew, I wanted to see the phenomenon.  For years I have tried to show up for it, but I am either out of town, or busy, or I just forget.  For the past two years I have had it on my electronic calendar in the hopes that it would get me there.  This year I had a contractor showing up at 8:00,  but that wouldn't really interfere.  The heavy rains took a break and the sun was shining.  I had no choice but to hop on a bike and go.

Tunnel from park to sidewalk

This is where the shadow magic happens

My phone told me the event was at 9:00, but I didn't arrive until 9:06. A few people were hanging around the sculptures.  I parked my bike and walked over to someone. "So I missed it?" "No" she smiled, "it's at 9:32." Thank god I had entered the time wrong, or I probably would have missed it.  I am always overly optimistic about travel time.

The shadow is almost aligned with the steel plates on the ground

Anyway, people gathered, it was an interesting mix of office people, art people, tourists and a group on a walking tour.  Cars at the traffic light asked what we were doing; the sun occasionally popped out from behind the clouds and showed us how close we were getting to alignment. I saw at least one person I know. 

The moment arrived: people snapped pictures, people clapped. The funny thing is, taking a picture is kind of pointless: you are photographing a shadow that has disappeared. The picture looks the same as an overcast day photo.  We are all so attuned to photographing events, even the ones that we only need to experience, that we just can't help ourselves.

Okay now it's aligned

The walking tour guide spoke a few words, my two favorites being Radical Pedestrianism.  His idea of people daring to explore the world on foot.   Then he handed the megaphone to a representative from the Nancy Holt Foundation.  She talked about how pleased Nancy was with the sculpture. Her favorite part being when she saw children using their hands to paint water from the pool onto the spheres and touching the art. 

It wasn't exactly a druid moment, but I feel happy that I went.  It cost me about 45 minutes of time and a sweaty bicycle ride.  I have photographs that show nothing, but that's not the point. It's a moment in time to experience, it doesn't need to be recorded on a camera. The sculpture does that itself. It is a record of time - August 1st, 9:32 AM - in the physical world.

Small Domestic Miracles

The Reach

This weekend I had my first solo show since my Masters thesis show.  That show was not a very positive experience for a number of reasons.  This weekend was a whole different story.

Crushed by the Wheel, Eliza (the best title in the show)

The venue was a gallery in a concert hall at the local community college.  The curator, Mary Higgins, was supporting and helpful.  The format is three people having solo shows within the same venue, so that takes a little bit of the pressure off.   We hung the show about two weeks before the opening.  Ongoing renovations to the building delayed the opening, but it made it less stressful, because there was some space in between the hanging and the opening.  It did not feel rushed.

Trapped in this house

I was nervous the day of the show.  It was pouring rain, but not too cold.  Would anyone show up?  Would anyone care?  What if people were overly polite and obviously did not like the work?  Anyway, as the time for the opening neared, I put out snacks and blew my nose.  The guitarist arrived, as did student volunteers.  Finally people started to arrive.  My friend Hiromi, who had told me she would come early, was the second person up the stairs.  As I talked with her, more people arrived and before I knew it, we had a crowd.  People who I knew, and didn't know were complimentary and nice.  I sold a bunch of work.

Hurricane

  After packing up and tallying the sales, we went and had dinner and drinks with friends.  What a great day.  As Bill said, "My people showed up for me."

Clare Winslow, the other exhibiting artist-who made beautiful monoprints- and myself.

A Nice review by my friend Gary:

https://apothecaryshed.com/2018/02/11/small-domestic-miracles-emily-shepardsons-art/

The show runs from January 20 to March 4, 2018 at the Margaret &Joseph Fisher Art Gallery at the Rachel Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center.

Sketchbooks on a Budget

When I first started teaching, I had a pretty tight budget.  My students were supposed to keep a sketchbook, but buying them for everyone ate up a lot of the money I had.  So I asked the students to supply their own, and I bought a case of sketchbooks with my own money that I sold to the students.  This kind of worked, but I wasn't very happy with the solution.

Then one day a truck pulled up to our school loading dock full of office furniture and supplies that a government agency was donating to our school.  There was a lot of copy paper, and the school took the regular sized paper, and asked me if I would like the legal and oversized  (17 1/2" x 11") paper. Why of course I did.

The  legal size paper made a good size book when folded in half. And the larger size made a really generous book. I have always been fond of bookmaking, and it makes a nice way to start the year or the semester. Plus I am a big believer in keeping a sketchbook myself and using it on a daily basis.  I use my own sketchbook to inspire the students and create sketchbook prompts from my own examples.

Once you establish the sketchbook habit with your students, it makes for great substitute lesson plans.  I'll often leave an assortment of materials for them to use such as watercolors, stencils,  and rubber stamps  as well as some prompts which I like to mix up among drawing, doodling and writing.

These are the instructions on how to make the smaller sketchbooks:
Simple Book with a Three Hole Binding

These are for the multi-section book.
Accordion Binding Book with Five Holes

I only do wrapped covers with my eighth grade students.  If you want to paint paper to wrap around your covers, view this slide show:

 Paste Paper

Also here is a video on how to sew a three hole binding:


Here are my Golden Rules for bookmaking with students:

1. Let the paper dictate the size of the book. What I mean is, don't end up cutting hundreds of sheets of paper to make books a particular size or shape. You'll cut a lot less mat board for covers.

2. Establish a relationship with a frame shop so that you have a steady supply of mat board.

3. Use good thread. I recommend 3 ply waxed linen thread from Royal Wood, Ltd.

Have Fun!

Not a student sketchbook, but a giant lead book by Anselm Kiefer at Mass MOCA

Utopia in Miniature

The Large House for Humanity proposed for Washington, DC

a model of a monument to women

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is currently exhibiting The Utopian Projects,  a display of models of sculptures by Ilya and Emilia Kabokov.  Some of them have been built, some exist only as concepts and models.  This exhibit has not been getting much attention, because it sits in the inner ring of the museum outside of the Ai Wei Wei exhibit of Lego portraits.  The less said about that exhibit, the better.  I love scale models and found the Kabakov's show quite charming.

Themes of angels, toilets and ladders repeat throughout the exhibit, but you don't have to like any of those things to appreciate the humor and wistfulness of the art.

How can One Change Oneself? from 1998 instructs one to wear this set of angel wings for two hours of forced solitude and silence every day. Repeating this for two or three weeks will bring one closer to the person they wish to become.

Monument to Icarus

 

How to Meet an Angel directs the participant to climb an extremely high ladder projecting out into the stratosphere, placing themselves in mortal danger. They will ask for assistance, and an angel will come to their rescue. 

A piece of fallen sky

World War I Artists

Off Duty, Harvey Thomas Dunn, Oil and watercolor on paper, 1918

I have long had a minor obsession with World War I.  And being the 100th anniversary of the US entry into the war, there are a lot of exhibits about it.  I went to see Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I had thought it would be the work of ordinary soldiers who sketched and drew in the trenches. But it was the work of a group of men who were professional artists and illustrators who were commissioned by the army to document what they saw of the war.

On the Wire by Harvey Thomas Dunn, oil on canvas, 1918

American Artillery and Machine Guns, George Mathews Harding, charcoal and crayon on paper, 1918

Two Six-Ton Tanks Climbing a Hill, Harry Everette Townsend, watercolor on pastel on paper, 1918

The Morning Washup, Neufmaison, Wallace Morgan, Charcoal on paper, 1918

The one exception is a contemporary man, Jeff Gusky, a doctor and an artist, who while in France was shown a series of caverns underneath the properties of some farmers.  They have been carefully guarding and preserving these subterranean tunnels that are full of abandoned canteens and furniture which were left behind when the war ended. Even more interesting are the carvings in the limestone walls of the tunnels. In this case, ordinary men carved anti-German caricatures, slogans, sexy woman and hometown totems. His mission was to figure out how to photograph these areas which rest in total darkness.  Mine was to photograph the photos without my reflection.  I was not that successful.

 

Slow Dyeing in Kansas City

That is not slowly dying in Kansas City; that would be something altogether different.

During my week at the Educators Art Lab at Kansas City Art Institute my focus was fiber and the theme was Slow Cloth. Taught by the awesome Kim Eichler-Messmer, this particular class emphasized  natural dye techniques and the Japanese art of Shibori.

Shibori is Japanese for resist dyeing, so what we consider tie dying is Shibori, but the Japanese have a way of making everything more elegant and beautiful. Shibori is not splotchy colored blobs; it is more carefully considered than that. What follow are examples of different Shibori techniques.

Arashi

This is what I always thought of when I heard the word Shibori, but it is only one type. Fabric is folded and attached to a pole with tape. Thread or twine is wrapped somewhat widely around the fabric and pole then fabric is scrunched down, forcing some fabric to pooch out over the string. Once all fabric is wrapped and scrunched, it is moistened and then dipped in dye. (Look: here are my notes, not very readable, but the pictures help.)

It really goes pretty fast once you know what you are doing.

Oronui

Fabric is folded and stitched in a running stitch that is knotted at one end. Designs can be deliberate or random, sections of fabric can pinched and sewn. When stitching is finished, you grab the end tail of your thread and pull it tight, which bunches up the fabric, then it is made wet and dipped in the dye.

I tried to make a bird shape with this technique with some success, but not much.

Mokume which means wood grain is a variation this. In this instance threads are sewn in paired rows so that they can be pulled together for a wavy line effect.

Machine stitching

I am not sure what the Japanese term is for this.  Fabric is accordion folded and then stitched on a sewing machine. The trick is that the bobbin thread is cheap and flimsy so that after the stitched fabric is dyed, the sewn packet is ripped open. I played around with ideas of reflection when I "drew" them. I really enjoyed playing around with this process and if I possessed a sewing machine, would do lots more.

Itajime 

If you don't like sewing, this is the Shibori technique for you. Fabric is folded accordion style, either in squares or triangles, then matching wooden blocks are placed on either side of the fabric bundle and clamped into place. The fabric is then dipped in the dye, although it can be partially dipped in one dye, then rinsed and then dipped in a different dye bath. You could also clamp and dye in one color, then let it dry and then refold and clamp another set of shapes in place and dip in a different dye bath to build up pattern. 

This one was folded, clamped and dipped in ferrous sulfate then dried and refolded and re-clamped with a different shape and then dipped in Indigo. 

It was a great experience, and the only side effect is that your hands turn blue.