Would Frankenstein Be Art or Craft?

Anchorage is Hopping! Daddy-O needed to be on the Mountain for ski clinics this weekend and Gus and I decided to stay in Anchorage and be townies. Daddy-O just called us from Girdwood and said it DUMPED snow last night and he’s getting ready to take some freshies in the POW! A winter storm last week dropped a record setting blanket of snow just in time for everyone. Friday kicked off the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous Festival through March 6. Organizers were smart to time Fur Rondy

with the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race coming this Saturday, March 6 at 10:00 am. These Rondy pictures are of The Running of the Reindeer and the Sprint Dog Sled Races downtown. Lots of folks are in town for both, big events and Anchorage is hopping! From our house we could catch a glimpse of the Fur Rondy fire works that went off last night in downtown Anchorage. Gus is all about anything classic monster so he really, really, really wanted to see the original Frankenstein movie on the big screen at Bear Tooth Theatre Pub Saturday afternoon. His big brother Will, and Will’s girlfriend Kim came too and all of us shared a large booth. The black & white movie was fun and the Nachos, Cheese pizza, Gyro’s, Hard Apple Ale and Wild Country Raspberry Wheat Beer (Gus had Sprite) even better!

Gus and I were going to head downtown to catch some of the Rondy events before the movie but the temperature dropped a bit and we opted to go to Barnes & Noble instead (I know, we were weather wimps!) I did pick up the March issue of Art Calendar and the February/March issue of American Craft. Art Calendar has a special section on "Landing Grants," which may prove handy for my upcoming deadline tomorrow. American Craft has a good essay in the Critic’s Corner, “Further Notes on the Art/Craft Debate"

that has me rethinking my thoughts on Art vs. Craft. On my grant application I needed to check a box that described my discipline and I automatically checked “Crafts” until I read how the Foundation (on page 5) described each discipline and found my discipline fit better under “Visual Arts.” Interestingly, metal works and ceramics fall under “Visual Arts.” I can really get going on this debate and tend to probably try and simplify it a bit too much. Functionality and non-functionality aside, my simplified thought has always been Art is predominately created by using one hand and Craft predominately created by two hands. Probably a bit too simplified. Much to my chagrin, after reading the essay my brain has been spinning this debate again. I also think the category of “Visual Arts” tends to negate the debate between Art vs. Craft. Your thoughts on Art vs. Craft? Does the debate even matter?

Here are some of the images I had professional photographer Chris Arend take of my clay and steel pieces. The images were wonderful and a bit tricky to shoot because of their size. Though I felt that since these were some of my first mixed medium pieces I’ve really progressed with the clay in the last few months. The “Humboldt Squid” piece is large and heavy, about 55” wide and the companion piece “Nautilus” is about 38” wide. The "Tree Spirit" is 23" tall and all three use plasma cut and welded steel with hand formed ^04-05 clay components.

Inspired Assignment

Taking Michael Kline’s 12 x 12 challenge was a good exercise to get my pods made. His assignment was to make 12 things by 12 noon. Well, I got 6 pods made, and as the hour closed in my pods were becoming smaller and smaller! They were a bit more time consuming than I had anticipated, especially considering that these are really TEST pods… you know how I feel about testing anything. This test is really important though, because I need to see how my kiln fires ^6 temps. The clay I’m using is that Seattle Pottery Alpine White SP655 I bought ($16 /25#) from the local ceramics lady. It’s a ^04-6 clay that “handles like a stoneware (which it is) but fires with the smooth look of porcelain.” Not really that great for hand building but it’s all she had in mid range clay for me to fire at ^6. I had collected some Iris seed pods from the garden and was surprised to find they have withstood the snow, wind, rain and moose.

I loved Nature's shape and her 4-season's design, inspiring me to create them in clay. My idea is to hand shape the pods in clay and weld steel stems and leaves in a vertical free standing sculpture. For texture I used some sturdy art paper I had in my “textures bin” and rollered the leather-like paper over my individual pod leaves. To keep the pod forms full, I stuffed newsprint in their bases and draped the larger completed

pods over soap bottles. The idea is the pods will be attached with copper and steel wire and incorporated into the 6’ tall welded steel sculpture. The pods as well as my second batch of sgraffito trays/tiles are on the drying racks now. With my “assignment” completed I cleaned up my mess like a good student should so the studio is ready for this week's metal. Check out the other results from Michael's 12 x 12 challenge here. While the clay is drying, I’m switching over to welding this week making a couple of Valentine special orders that came in. I’ll need to clear the studio main work table of clay dust so the steel sculptures I’m welding up can

get finish painted with enamel. Today it's back to wearing leather, armoring up, plugging in and letting the sparks fly!

This is NOT a Test

Clay is a fickle lover. Popped the top on the SECOND glaze firing… yes, I tried refiring my sgraffito trays/wall tiles thinking I could smooth out the milky-splotchyness of the matt glaze. I had a bit of varied results on the whole load. Couldn’t pinpoint what exactly the issue may be but I was disappointed in most of the pieces. I was hoping for better results considering I used the utmost patience –for me anyways! I THOUGHT, I mixed enough, brushed on enough and let dry enough, even had the kiln controller set to the correct schedule and cone temp of ^05 and even waited beyond the cool down to open the lid. I’m learning (the hard way) that working with clay, you can’t test enough. I’ve admired all the testing Judy Shreve, of Mountain House Studios, has been doing on her Terra Sig journey. Tracey Broome has taught me a lot with her glazing pinhole issues and I admired her for continuing to forge ahead. Reading each post and seeing her photos I could totally identify with the building frustration with each exhaustive round of troubleshooting. It doesn't seem

fair to have a perfectly beautiful piece be ruined at a final stage of firing on a technicality. Clay artists should be able to have a do-over, or some sort of warning flag or digital message that gets sent to us WAY before you open the kiln to disappointment. I know, I know, then we wouldn’t be working in C L A Y –ha!

Above, the Heart tray/tile (used the Amaco Matte glaze) did come out pleasing enough, as well as the small Leaf w/handle tray (used the Coloramics Soft Matte glaze) but the others were not uniform, and on a couple of pieces the black underglaze was altered (the sunflower and Raven Moon pieces being the worse -below). I used two different glazes, the

most successful glaze used was the Coloramics NM-450 Clear Soft Matte, made by Mayco, the other glaze was a Transparent Matte LM-10 by Amaco. The Coloramics only needed two coats and brushed on much nicer than the Amaco. Really none of the pieces using the Amaco Matt Liquid Matte glaze turned out well. A positive was the brightness and true colors (red, yellow, blue and black) of the Duncan E-Z Strokes Underglazes, I love those. Trust me, I’m not totally blaming the material, this seems to be more artist-operator error.

Either the kiln temp/schedule not being quite right (it did fire quick and under 5 hours), glaze too thick, not thick enough or not properly mixed. The good news is I have more sgraffito trays/wall tiles on the drying rack and the Coloramics glaze that I had success with, I have more of. I used up all of the Amaco Mate, so this next batch I’ll use all Coloramics, Clear Soft Matte. I will admit that even with a bit of disappointment, I still don’t think I’m EVER going to be one of those artists that will make tons of tiny test tiles and fire load after load of test firings. Especially since I have a STACK of those smallish tiles, I made over a year ago sitting on the bisque shelf... I’m one of those artists that will just be giving friends and family all my seconds (and thirds) for every conceivable Holiday. Spoiler Alert; Mom, your birthday is this month!!

Feeling Like A Bad Girl!

Good thing too, the 2009 Bad Girls of the North Show opens today at 4:00 p.m. and I’m READY! My hands are scratched up from wire and puffy, caffeine has never tasted so good and I was wide awake at 4:30 a.m. unable to get back to sleep. This is one of my favorite art events to do. Vicki and Carol, the show’s organizers strive for a first class event for both the artists and customers. The venue historically has been held in a major hotel ballroom creating a professional, festive atmosphere and which enables customers to enjoy FREE appetizers and a no host bar. So to say the least, tomorrow morning, I normally don’t have a voice left and I’m moving a little slow –but all in the good spirit of bringing ART to the people. Willie boy is on line again to help me load in and set up. With both of our trucks we should do it in one trip. The weather is totally cooperating being balmy and above freezing. I can hardly believe our weather luck –last year it was so cold the steel grid wall racks froze to Willie and my hands and I lost my load of racks on 9^th Avenue on the icy road! Gus has been wishing for snow but no luck yet here in the Anchorage bowl. Gus says our weather must be  “stuck!” Fine by me, at least until we tear down tomorrow night.

Above are a couple of pictures of another steel/clay work that will be at the Show. It’s called “Sedna, the Inuit Goddess of the Sea.” I used metal kelp and starfish to hold the ^04 fired clay work in place. I really like the direction of the work and hopefully will work on some more pieces in other types of clay, soon... I have been inspired for years of the Inuit legend of Sedna and would like to experiment with her form as soon as I can get more clay and glazes ordered.  OK, I’m ready to start my long day, send your positive energy and thoughts to the Universe's Creative Spirit Guardians, blessing all of the Bad Girl Artists to have kind customers, approved credit cards, good company and renewed friendships, oh and tasty Alaskan Amber & Ales on tap!