Show at Georgia Blue Gallery

Cindy Shake objets trouvés 

GEORGIA BLUE GALLERY  ▫  April 5 - April 30, 2019

Opening Reception April 5, 2019 ▫ 5 p.m. - 7 p.m.

georgiabluegallery.com

“Handmade”

23” x 27” Mixed Media Assemblage by Cindy Shake

All images © 2019 Cindy Shake

Just Gelling

My poor finger tips are rubbed completely raw and I probably don’t have any finger prints left! The Gel Medium Transfer worked fine on the steel after a couple of test prints but the

rubbing became a bit tedious. I tried to use some overhead transparency film onto the Gel Medium as in the video but the image didn’t transfer at all. Maybe my film was old? It even rinsed clean! I did like the effect of one of my powerline images on the film though…that can be another project in the near future. There are several methods you can use in transferring images. For the Gel Medium Transfer process I did, I painted a thick coat of Golden’s Gel Medium onto the steel and placed a fresh, full color laser print image down

onto the gel. the images I used were both digital images I have taken myself of Ravens and Nature as well as a few Royalty-free images I have on CD's. I usually digitally enhance the images in Photoshop to bump up the saturation and sharpen the overall photo for better contrast. Next, I Burnished the paper smooth to remove any air bubbles, making sure that the laser image was in full contact with the gel and steel substraight. After about 2-3 hours of drying time, I moistened the paper and began to rub the paper off of the now “acrylic” image. I also needed to apply a clear coat of spray enamel to further enhance the images. To give the wall sculptures a more artful look, I hammered words onto pieces of copper and cold riveted the copper to the steel. I used a set of leather punch alphabet tools and my anvil to hammer the words. Overall I like the effect but want to experiment further with the idea of transferring a clearer, graphic image onto steel. And I have not given up on finding a straight

pass through ink jet printer. There were a couple of used units on Amazon but I’m leary of buying any used computer equipment let alone over the internet. We’ll see, I still have a whole roll of aluminum flashing just waiting for that art making project!

Sunshine Makes All the Difference

What a relief to wake to somewhat sunny skies early Saturday morning. At the Market, weather is everything. Last year Anchorage saw one of the rainiest summer's on record and the Market attendance reflected it. Saturday's kickoff was FANTASTIC! Customers and vendors were all smiles. There were no glitches with the check-in and set-up of 40 plus vendors. I was a bit harried checking everyone in, collecting the booth fees, while cars filled the Market unloading their wares. Daddy-O, Will and Gus has my booth set-up just as I checked the final vendor in. It was definitely a team effort. My new wireless credit card machine even WORKED flawlessly! whew. I didn't have a chance to take more pictures but KTVA Channel 11 Photo Journalist, Ken Fankhauser was at the Market and created this wonderful segment for the weekend news! CHECK IT OUT HERE!

Watch the KTVA news segment by Photo Journalist Ken Fankhauser.

Just for fun...

A friend and customer who purchased one of my large, outdoor sculptures of a Sandhill Crane sent us these pictures. Look at the Pheasant in the lower left of the photo. Pheasants are not indigenous to Alaska although they are seen from time to time. The Pheasant has apparently become quite smitten with the sculpture and has been a constant companion of the steel Crane!

Crock Potting

Customers often ask me “how long did it take you to make that?” I never really have a good answer after all these years of art making and I still get flustered when I’m asked that question. My first response is to give them only the hands-on, production finish time which is usually the shortest amount of time it took to work on a piece. That isn’t the best answer to give because most of the time the customer is equating production time to price. In their minds, if I don’t take long enough to make a piece then the work shouldn’t cost as much. In addition, I’ve always been a fast worker, also not good for when customers are looking to justify a price! I’ve been thinking about how I spend my time and the actual time I put into my art. This stems from my winter work style vs. my summer work style and feeling guilty when I don’t have a lot of “hands-on” welding or structural work time clocked. I tend not to “count” all of the hours that I should including exploring production options,

meeting with the clients, necessary work errands for supplies or creative drifting looking for that inspirational spark that helps me rock the day. Most important I rarely consider the time I “crock pot” an idea. I’m quite the multi-tasker and due to the various mediums I like to work in, a 9 to 5 schedule is out of the question and keeping track of actual time I have into a piece is difficult and all the while I’m crock potting. Working on various pieces means works are usually in various stages of production. I have clean days when I meet with clients, finish painting, sewing, designing and wearing comfy clothes, dirty hot days when sparks are flying and the steel is being thrown around and I’m fully geared up. Evening’s I enjoy doing beadwork embellishments for my steel sculptures or finish work on the art quilts. My crock pot is pretty full right now. The Quilted Raven has a new art quilt challenge out (Iditarod Quilt Challenge, Mush On -12" x 10" deadline is Feb. 25th)

and I’m working on several new pattern designs that I’ve been totally inspired to create. There are some new fabric designs that I’ve been asked to design and with these freezin’-azz cold temperatures I’ve been liking all the computer and fiber work in the warm studio. In the evenings I finally finished the strands of beads for a table full of seal sculptures that are awaiting embellishments. I’ve been thinking about all of these projects and it is satisfying when a piece pops to the top to do the hands-on, art making part. What’s floated to the top of the crock pot is working on my sculpture for Katie Sevigny’s Gallery First Friday Artful Instrument show next week. I was able to pick up a couple of trumpets this week (thank you John!) to use in my sculpture and thankfully, the temps are decent to plasma cut and weld in the shop, though I still have no idea how long it will take me to make the piece!

The Strike of Inspiration

Most often when inspiration strikes, I’m searching for it because I need to get to work. There are also, the times I like best, when I least expect the strike of “I’ve got to create!” That is what happened when I was wandering through the Blog-o-sphere, transfixed by other artists talent and saw the banner on Judy Coates Perez Blog. Her banner is richly illustrated, beautiful and completely inspired me.

Sometimes, I think that inspiration is a combination of our subconscious, current state of mind/emotion and that artistic gift working in a symbiotic rhythm, looking for a spark to fan the flame of artmaking. Today, I choose to believe that because in combination with the beautiful banner from Painted Threads, I was recently ordering a new pottery stamp of my Nautilus shell icon, and my daughter lent me the current book I’m reading, “A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth” by Samantha Weinberg (BTW I love Coelacanths).

Everything just fell into place and time stood still as I was shaping these new clay sculptures of a Humboldt Squid and a Nautilus Shell. The latest clay I’m trying out is a White Tile ^06 -1 from Seattle Pottery. I’m going to make both sets of tentacles from cold rolled steel, hand bend and weld together, and spot weld some “suckers.” I’ll probably make one wall sculpture and wire mount the finished clay bodies of the Squid and Shell, fitting the bodies around the steel tentacles. For the Nautilus Shell I want to try out some new Majolica glazes I have coming and the Squid will probably get this bright orange-red, velvety matt glaze...if all goes well!

New mittens for this kitten

Time that I treated myself to two new pairs of gloves! One pair is heavier duty for welding and are insulated, the other pair are fine, light weight leather with high cuffs that I use for plasma cutting. The lighter weight leather is so I can better feel the trigger. Since I’m right handed, my right hand gloves are usually in pretty good shape because I’m always holding some sort of tool. But the left hand glove is usually cooked into a claw shape from all the high heated steel I grab and move!

The temperature finally bumped up above zero today. At 12 degrees ABOVE it felt downright balmy! The shop is now tolerable, just in time for me to finish up the piece I am donating to the KAKM Art Auction. I decided to donate a Sea Otter titled “Treasures From The Sea” because the Otter will be holding cut steel sea stars, kelp, oysters and an original, beautiful, vintage Japanese glass float I got in Homer. I’m attaching the glass float by wrapping the glass ball in reclaimed copper wire. The details will be hand painted in bright enamel paint. I was also able to weld up the cool octopus I was working on. He is getting a rust patina finish and will also have enamel painted sea stars, kelp and a glass float wired on the framework. The pieces are pictured in the studio on the work table getting ready to be painted and have the embellishments wired on. I will probably add some glass beading strung on fine copper wire as well. I like how the light catches the glass beads and shimmers like water when the sculptures are on the wall.

Making sparks fly in the deep freeze

Back to work, no excuses, even if it is 10 below outside. Had I been better prepared this would have been a great kiln firing day, to warm things up a bit but instead I had a metal cutting day planned.

Brrrrrrrr, I was thinking that this deep freeze we are currently in, serves me right for all those epic ski days when I didn’t set foot in the studio and did not get any work done! This may sound a little “Northern Exposure” like, but for the first time ever, I had to put long underwear on under my Carhartt’s to work in the heated shop! Even though it was freezing cold outside, the black iron cut like butter. My Plasma cutter loves the dry air, and I love using way fewer consumables while getting much cleaner cuts. The smooth, quick, cut-once approach suits my freehand style perfectly. I laid out a 4 x 8 sheet of steel and used a Sharpie (which was too cold to work fluidly) to draw out a very cool octopus, Gallery pieces that included several sea life elements, a sea otter, ravens and some other individual artsy works to compliment my new clay work. I only got one sheet cut though, my feet were getting too cold on the concrete slab (even in my favorite pair of SmartWool's).

Some hardy souls are choosing to salute the deep freeze with a celebration of Alaska and life in the North. FREEZE is a bold series of large-scale outdoor installations in downtown Anchorage organized by The Alaska Design Forum in association with the International Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Anchorage Museum. So far, Mother Nature has been the perfect hostess.

The sun doesn’t rise very high in the winter sky and by mid afternoon it was time to call it a day. Even my “Chicken-vane” on our shed roof was cold, must be time for a Hot Toddy…