Week one!

I have now officially been in Minneapolis at the Northern Clay Center for 12 days. So far (other than Bill leaving on Tuesday) everything is going really well. I was able to get some work started after Bill and I moved everything into the studio last week, he did some work on his computer while I did some work in the studio, and he had meetings all day on Monday. One of his meetings was with the McKnight foundation, the same foundation that is funding my stay at NCC, they have invited the panel to submit a grant proposal for some environmental work in Arkansas which is great news!

Now that Bill is back in Arkansas I seem to be falling into a simple schedule, wake up at 7am, breakfast at "home", walk to the studio, on the way stop at the food co-op and pick up lunch and dinner, arrive at the studio by 8/8:30, work until lunch, eat, work until 3, break for 1 hour (reading or lying in the park), work until 6/7pm eat dinner, 8/8:30 walk home, video call (skype) with Bill for an hour, 10/11 bed...next day same thing. It is amazing how much more time there is in a day when you don't have to cook meals or worry about house/garden chores! I think I will probably stick with no cooking, the food co-op has lots of organic salads and meals that they make there and if I'm careful they aren't too expensive. Meals only take about 15 minutes to get out and eat so virtually all of my time is spent making work! This morning I went to a yoga class, so that will be added to my daily schedule. There is a great place here called One Yoga, it is a non-profit yoga studio that is committed to making yoga affordable to everyone. they have a sliding fee that is based on your income and a reasonable three month membership that allows you to go to as many classes as you want seven days a week, if I were to go everyday that I am here (which is my plan) it comes to about $3 per class. It is a beautiful space, the classes are an hour and a half long, and at the beginning and end of class this morning when people were setting up and leaving one of the yoga students played guitar! It was really great.

Last week I prepared my casting slip, I tried to turn my usual throwing body into a pourable slip but it definately did not work, fortunately I had anticipated this as a possibility and had pre-ordered a dry mixed slip from Continental Clay here in Minneapolis, when I mixed that one up it worked like a charm, the question now is whether my glazes will "fit" the claybody...I really hope they do because I don't have time to re-formulate glazes. I also made a mold of a twig (fall) but I decided I needed to get going on the grasshoppers as I assumed they would be the most dificult.

So I started on Monday, I made a basic form out of soft plasticene (an oil based "clay" that will never dry out, wrapped it in thin paper and started to cover it with medium/hard plasticene. The harder plasticene holds detail better and in less fragile in the mold than the softer kind.

Below:Inner soft plasticene and harder outer shell

Below: Largest grasshopper positive, I decided on all of the others to get rid of the textured details. I got so wrapped up in trying to make the real grasshopper that I forgot I wanted to add non-grasshopper texture and pattern on the final pieces.

Below: Clay bed that I will carve out (see the outline) in order to bury the plasticene model to its mid point

Below: Building up (or "blocking in") the model. The clay has to come to the exact middle of the piece all the way around and then come out in a flat plane perpendicular to the model. I am blocking off the head which will be a third part of the mold.

Below: The first side has been cast in plaster, now to pour the second side

Below: I pour the plaster through a sieve which removes any dry plaster particles and diminishes the chance of having bubbles in the mold

Below: Grasshopper sandwich...the two halves are poured, now for the third part. If you can see the "cheeks" of the grasshoppers face on the top and bottom...those would be undercuts if this were made as a two part mold, the clay would pull apart as you tried to lift the top of the mold off because it would hook onto the "cheeks". This third part will be pulled off of the clay mold first straight towards you, then the top half will be lifted off and the grasshopper will be removed (hopefully intact).

I am heating the plasticene under a lamp so it is easy to work with and then shaping it like clay with my hands and some rubber tipped tools. The first grasshopper is a little over 12 inches long (it will shrink about 10%-15% once fired) After getting the form done (which took two days) I spent a half a day trying to be sure there were no undercuts on the piece (these would not allow the clay positive to be removed from the mold without tearing) then I made the mold. It is a three part mold with the seam running down the middle of the body on top and bottom, and the third piece for the front of the "face". The first mold took me all day to make and it weigh 50 pounds!, I made another so I can hopefully be sure that at least one if not both of them work, for the second I diminished a bit of the grasshoppers wing texture so they will be a little different from one another. That mold weighed 50 pounds too! I need to start lifting weights as well as taking yoga if I want to keep this up!

I have made two molds of a second grasshopper, smaller than the first and am working on the third even smaller one. It is my plan to have at least three grasshoppers of varying sizes. You may notice that the grasshopper is missing its legs, I have to make those seperately as they would be impossible to create attached to the body in a single mold, so each leg/or set of legs will have its own mold and will be attached after they are caste in clay. I hope to complete the second body at caste it tomorrow and to build some more legs.

Below: The hoppers (aka legs)

It is my hope that I will have all of the molds completed in about two weeks so I will be done with plaster and can begin casting all of the molds in clay. Once this happens I will be casting all of the molds at least once a day so production will be quick. The tricky thing is you can't know that a mold "works" until you have made a clay caste, and you can't make that caste until the mold is dry (plaster is a mixture of about 1 part water to 3 parts plaster so a 50ish pound mold has about 16 quarts of water in it that needs to evaporate). I am (of course) hoping the large grasshoppers work, especially since I have deconstructed the plasticene model and would have to completely re-make it if the molds didn't work which would be a real pain.

I haven't really met a lot of folks at the studio, I tend to be shy in these circumstances, not very good at initiating conversations and most of the other artists who are there a lot are either working or don't really talk to me when I am working. There have been a few visitors though, mostly when classes are toured through the spaces, or sometimes larger outside groups, I am introduced (as are the other artists if they are around) and there is a bit of conversation. Yesterday(I should be careful what I wish for) a fellow came in to talk who was very nice but after more than an hour I started to wonder when he would finish talking...it cut a bunch of time out of my morning and got me off schedule with my mold making. Which was okay in the end but I did have to stay until 9:45 pm to get done what I had planned for the day which was a little later than I wanted to stay. I hope that I will be able to have a little more interaction with the other studio members but we will see...I also have a lot of work to get done (as do they).

The woman who owns the house where I am renting a room is very nice, her name is Josie and she is also an artist, who used to work in clay and is now writing a childrens book. At the moment her son (Otto) and daughter in law (Olive) are here too; they are also artists, dancers, but I believe they may be more like performance artists rather than traditional dancers like ballet or jazz. The have done performances around the world and are currently curating a performance for the Walker Art Center which is a really big deal...a fantastic museum dedicated to very contemporary art, so when I get a chance to learn more about what they do I will report back on the blog. I don't see any of them too much as I am out of the house for a majority of the day. Josie also has a very sweet dog named Maple who is a little basset hound I think, she was a rescue dog and is as cute as can be. I will try to include neighborhood, people and general non-studio images in the next blog.

Skypeing with Bill is fun, he walks around with his laptop and shows me the dogs and the garden, it makes me feel better to be able to see him and home when we talk. I went for my first bike ride this evening after leaving the studio early...about 6pm, walked home changed and rode until about 8pm, they have great paths all through Minneapolis, no real hills and a nice rails to trails greenway where a lot of people ride. I think because warm(ish) weather only lasts three months everybody gets out all at once! It is the same way with the plants, in Arkansas they come at a slow but steady rate from March through October, here they all shoot up at once and are glorious for the short time they are out!

I will update again next Sunday!