Studio Corners

My studio. Ordered chaos.

At the start of my freshman year at URI in 1972, I was assigned a room with a young woman named Dawn Paul whom I had not yet met. When I first entered the room, I saw that Dawn had arrived earlier and made up her bed with a simple patchwork quilt. There might have been one poster. That was it. Immediately I began to unpack my "gypsy" trunks and proceeded to paint and glue and collage all sorts of images to the wall above my bed. Later that day Dawn returned with a friend. After we had all introduced ourselves, her friend walked over to my side of the room to study my "installation." He was quiet for a moment, then turned to Dawn and stated flatly, "I believe you've been out-freaked."

Ha ha.

Imagery abounds in my home, but it does not look like my studio. Sometimes I think that I will clear my studio all out and have just one or two pictures on the wall, but who am I kidding?

What does your workspace look like??

Back in Print

A Pickwick Independent Press member (and friend) at work.

My work station - using Lisbeth's snowflakes as stencils, I'm etching a copper plate and a zinc plate with sugarlift...

This sugarlift recipe is sugar, Ivory Snow, and India Ink. Yesterday a couple of people in the print shop told me that you can use straight condensed milk! I have to try that...

Lisa Pixley at work.

Lisa's exquisite new bird prints.

Bulletin board paper doll lovers from a local gallery.

Those of us in The Artist Studio who have been pining to print are incredibly lucky! Lisa Pixley spearheaded the creation of a spanking new print shop in our building that is now in full operation, Pickwick Independent Press. I haven't done any intaglio since my senior year at MECA in 2006, and I am very excited to have access to a press again! I have started to experiment with transferring Lisbeth's cut paper designs to copper and zinc. There are several ways to do this, and I believe I will eventually attempt them all, but I'm starting with the very direct sugarlift process. This afternoon I will be putting the hard ground on these plates and putting them in the acid bath. I heard yesterday that you can put your plates in the ocean, and it will etch like an acid bath! I think you'd have to leave them in a long time, maybe several days...I really like this idea...

Hearth and Home

photo by my husband Garry

Indoor and outdoor, hard at work, asleep on the floor. Some opposing views from my weekend. My next door neighbor, my son Andrew, at work on his house, and me (and my cats) enjoying our hearth, and home. Back to work today!

Many More Mandalas...

Nine new framed mandalas are for sale in Lisbeth's Etsy shop: Frog Queen, Glad Giants, Lobster Moon, Flaming Oak, Bat Song, Four of Acorns, Fish and Wishbones, Beach Rose and Bleeding Hearts, and Candlelight. All on soft shades of earth toned archival colored paper.

The 10th one is not for sale....

Mother and Daughter
This one's mine! Happy weekend, everyone!

It's No Poop Dream! Fame Grabs Greta!

My studio neighbor, artist and mother of two: the hilarious, multi-talented, and spectacularly theatrical Greta Bank!

NOW PLAYING at the deCordova!!!

In costume for a friend's Halloween wedding...

Spring '09 Peep Hole performance at The Artist Studio in Portland...

This is me and Mick Jagger at my summer home.

collage model, 2009

This is me and Britney Spears peeing in the woods.

collage model, 2009

I love how Greta laughs in the face of and reveals the farce of artifice! She is the girl who farts loudly at the Mary Kay party. A true trickster.

Greta and fellow poop polisher, architect, Christopher Campbell...

Works in progress...

Studio as Shrine.

Groovy Greta at the deCordova opening.

My sister Susan and I coined the phrase it's a take it away! when we were little girls. Our mother had a jewelry drawer that was within our reach, and we loved to rake through it, looking at all her necklaces and earrings. But there was one pair of earrings that we found both fascinating and repelling: they were made of ivory and had deep intricate carvings, somewhat like the trails that bugs leave as they eat away at dead branches on the forest floor. Susan and I would stare at these and get an icky feeling in our stomachs, and say, oooh, take it away! Yet this didn't keep us from going back for another look. Every so often we'd say to each other, Let's go find those earrings! There was a delight in being creeped out...

Greta Bank's new sculpture falls into this take it away category - oooh, it makes me feel so icky, yet I want to keep looking! It speaks of the attraction/repulsion capacity of the human form. Greta describes the pieces in her Wallflower project as super gross-out and very pretty.

Indeed.

Read this great interview with Greta, Everybody Poops.

And be sure to visit her fabulous new website, My Secret Studio!

Two!

My blog's birthday is today! Happy FebrUary!