Brown Hurts My Head

What a crazy busy week that’s winding up for a crazy busy month. Customers are thinking garden art, Gus tests for his Purple Belt tomorrow (if he’s feeling better…), family arrives the first part of May for Kristen’s graduation, the Market opens May 21 and the Gallery is busy, busy, busy with tourists hitting Alaska early. All good, just time to pace myself and balance work, family and fun –never a problem for the FUN part! My volunteer, Vendor Coordinator duties are in full swing

for the Market and though FUNdraising can be tough we choose to tie a great big concert party to it! The Spenard Farmers Market celebrated our first birthday party last night at Tap Root with great tunes from Amy Lou, Emily Kurn and Hot Dish. In keeping with the theme of Brown (the predominant color still here in Anchorage), my beverage of choice last night was a yummy Kenai Nut Brown –ooooweeee! It was fun to have our core group of Market Volunteers cut loose, enjoy our friendship and not be sitting around conference tables with our laptops, giant calendars and planning books in front of us!

The e-mail requests have been coming in for what customers want at the opening Market day for my Garden Art

Show. My “Steel Wool” sheep are at the top of the “must-haves” good thing they are fun to make. I’m also making up a few topiary style sheep, sans steel wool for customers. I’m moving a bit slow this morning due to all of the Brown(!) but I’ve got a full day of production planned, a trip down to SteelFab, and even a little (or a lot) of mommying –both Derek and Gus are home sick with wicked sore throats and colds. To shield the germs, I’m gong to keep my welding helmet on with the shield pulled DOWN!

New York Has Nothing On Us

Sunday morning we overslept. I had wanted us to catch the 7:00 a.m. installation of Anchorage’s first real monumental sculpture being “seated” in front of the Anchorage Museum. Thankfully we are just 2 minutes from downtown and arrived just in time to see “Habitat” being lifted off the transport bed. We did miss out on the commemorative lanyards that were given to the first 100 spectators BUT it was a good thing we arrived when we did because as it was we froze our azz's (that's a Gary word) off while the highly skilled crane operators negotiated 36,000 pounds through the closed 6th Avenue and all the spectators. “Habitat” was designed by British sculptor Antony Gormley and fabricated at SteelFab. In February when I was at SteelFab working on another project I got to see "Habitat" in one of the huge bays waiting for some finishing touches. Here are a couple of media links; KTUU and the Anchorage Daily News story link on the statue. I think the real artists were the steel workers and engineers who spent over 1,700 hours to create 57 giant box forms fabricated from 342 plates of stainless steel. What prompted us to attend the installation was not only to show

support for SteelFab but I

read that this could be one of those “I was there when” moments for Gus. Of course the critics have already started

squawking and graffiti and sculpture climbers are probably not far behind but I think Gus put it best after watching the enormous sculpture being gently set in place when he said “after all Mom, Anchorage needs a statue because even New York has one!”

After our day at the Museum we wanted to celebrate with the season’s first grilling. I looked out the window and overheard Daddy-O tell the flock “don’t worry fellas, we’re not having lamb chops tonight!” Now that the snow has cleared from the deck, Tauzer was keeping watch not only on my mini sculptures but I think the yummy pin-wheels and ribs. Spring MUST be just around the corner –isn’t the aroma of BBQ supposed to bring on the good weather??

Grazing Steel Wool

My growing flock of “Steel Wool” has had to be content with grazing on our deck as the garden area still has snow in it. Thanks for the name of my new sculptures Jim! I am a bit nervous though –judging by the phone calls and e-mails just from friends and neighbors, these sculptures will all find homes as soon as the Show opens at Half Moon Creek Gallery. The most common question is “how

much will they be?” Since I’m still in love with them they are still a million dollars each…at this rate, I’d be O.K. with them staying in my yard because I like them even more as their flock grows. I so wish there was a large, open grassy area to do a good photo shoot before delivering them, but in traditional Alaskan fashion, things are a dead, dingy “break-up brown.” I’d better get making some other fun stuff so I can part with my flock. I decided to make another set of three sheep because of their popularity and made the little baby 25% larger than the original baby. Terry at SteelFab now calls the original size “Baby Sheep” and the new size the “Toddler Sheep!” I talked with the girls at Half Moon Creek to confirm the show details and opening date. They are busily finishing construction on the new Palmer Gallery and it’s looking like it will be a mad dash to the grand

opening target date of Saturday, May 8 but it will be HAPPENING! Christian dropped off some more duct work that they took out and I’ll be spinnin’ it (plasma cutting it) into steel wool probably next week! The Virgo’s in Daddy-O and I are dying to get rid of the metal recycle pile that has accumulated along side of the house. It looks just terrible –but not too bad considering how other areas in 99503 currently look... Spring break-up is an aesthetically difficult time of year for Alaska! Even harder for those of us who crave Nature's beauty blooming, sunshine and all things growing green!

Production work for the first Raven order of the season also started this last weekend. Jana at Cabin Fever and The Quilted Raven (when Kristen is in town this is her favorite quilt store!) ordered all things Raven from me for her downtown Anchorage shops. Normally it’s hard for me to do ANY repetitive task but my reward is I get to bead, wire and finish tag the Garden Ravens and Ornaments in my jammies while having my coffee and listening to NPR in the Studio. The Weekend Edition Saturday was fundraising time in "You Call Us, Or We'll Call YOU" and friends had friends “outing” each other in who had never donated to Public Radio, yet had listened for years! It was really funny to hear their "reasons" for never donating -from being too "young" to donate to needing the extra cash for Happy Hour! –Also catch the “Babysitting” series on This American Life. A big brother who was tasked with babysitting his younger siblings had "bravery tests" while their parents were out for the evening! All great listening for happy artmaking.