Farewell to Kansas City

Wednesday, June 3, 2009; Goodbye to Kansas City
Today my workshop ended, and I am off to Albuquerque now. I was so caught up in my work that I didn't take any pictures during the last three days. I also realized on Sunday that as I was blogging about the conference, I had not given any comments on the speakers or the ideas they were addressing in their talks. I'll have to deal with that later.
The Free Form Crochet workshop was great. Tracy Krumm is a wonderful artist and she gave a good workshop. I realized some things about how I like to work. I like to make things, I like structure. I don't want to paint and I don’t want to dye. I'm not interested in mixing chemicals and liquids. With the crochet I have been most interested in learning how to use the stitches to make sculptural forms. I stuck with the surplus materials I brought; I didn't sample Tracy’s materials. She had some wonderful and interesting things, but in my gut I knew I’m not interested in new materials. I’m not going to buy new materials for my work. I am interested in going to the electronics surplus yard in Sun Valley when I get home to stock up on wire.
I became enamored with the crochet stitches, and the building of a form and that's all I wanted to do. Some people feel they must try a little of everything in a workshop, but I go with what attracts me most on the day. I also didn't sample the stiffeners or Patinas. But I saw the process, I have the supply list, I can return to it in the future. I just wanted to keep crocheting, making the stitches. This workshop was a chance for me to take some time to try something that's been on my mind. For a while now I haven’t wanted to deviate from my weaving and basketry work, I wanted to focus and not be all over the map. But its summer now, I’m not working on anything specific; it might be a good time for a little deviation.
And then something shifted. I picked a net produce bag out of my stash today and started a coil with it, thinking I would experiment with crocheting onto a coiled form. And I had no patience with it. All day I was working on a copper wire tube, gradually increasing to make of wider, and I was loving it. As I walked away from the design building, headed back to the hotel to catch my shuttle, I felt something had shifted. Crochet is faster than coiling. There are other things about it that make it a great method to work in. Will I still want to coil?
One of the best things I learned this week is to wear compression gloves to work. Tracy opened the workshop on Monday with a discussion on safety in which she talked about preventing hand & wrist problems. Her message was practice prevention and it was an a-ha! moment. My view of those gloves was always that you wear them after you already have problems, or when a doctor tells you to. I asked Smadar to stop at a drug store on the way to dinner and I got two gloves. The benefits of wearing them were immediate. My hands were not as sore as usual when I finished working that evening, and they weren't as stiff as usual when I got up in the morning. But I may have overdone it on the plane to Albuquerque. I was working on the copper tube and my hands were hurting. I pushed through one last row, and now my hands are quite sore.
The shuttle from the hotel drove straight down Main Street, through the Crossroads Arts District and downtown Kansas City on the way to the airport. I was a little sad to be leaving knowing I won’t be back any time soon. The people of Kansas City are wonderful, and have been wonderful every time I’ve been there. But its time for a change. KCAI has hosted the conference something like five times, and we owe them a huge thanks. We owe Jason Pollen a huge thanks, as well as everyone in the SDA who makes it happen.
So, goodbye for now to Kansas City, I hope to be back again someday.

SDA Day One & Two

the view from our hotel room looking south toward Country Club Plaza

On Thursday there were concurrent sessions, a featured speaker, the Keynote address; and the vendor fair opened.

In the evening we had dinner under the big tent on the lawn. It had been cloudy all morning, the sun came out but the temperature stayed nice and cool. There was no meeting agenda, it was open seating, and the wine was free. We sat with old friends and met new people. It was a great set up for the vendors fair. The vendors fair is in the 2nd floor conference rooms across the hall from the grand ballroom. The featured speakers, member meeting and trunk show are in the grand ballroom. This has been a great set up. It is like the village market place with people going from booth to booth, oohing and ahhing over the beautiful textiles and other things. At one point, Smadar found me in line for the dessert crepes and pulled me out to look at a piece of shibori that had just come from Japan. We ended up buying the whole nine yard piece together.

Chetna, holding a piece of shibori she bought, and Smadar

Crossroads Arts District

Interior of the phenominal Lidia's

Friday was gallery day in the Crossroads art district. Six of us from California headed down there after the membership meeting. We had lunch at the phenomenal Lidia’s, and went gallery crawling. There are four galleries with SDA related exhibitions on the street leading away from Lidia’s. at Leedy Voulkos Art Center we ran into and met Jerry Bleem, one of my favorite artists. I first saw his work at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art gallery on that same street, at another conference.

Jerry Bleem's work

At the membership meeting on Friday Morning we learned for sure that the conference won't be in Kansas City next time. The folks at KCAI have done a wonderful job hosting it five times in the last 10 years. They're tired, its time for a change. We found out the conference will be in Minneapolis in 2011. They're excited, and it sounds like it will be a great setting.

So I've decided part of my puropse here is to document some of my favorite things about how great Kansas City was for the SDA conference.

Cafe Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum

SDA Travel Day

Country Club Plaza

I got up early and my husband took me to the Flyaway bus, which goes from Van Nuys to LAX. If I’m traveling alone, its become my favorite way to get to the airport. I decided to fly out of LAX because Southwest has a direct flight to Kansas City from there, and no direct flights from Burbank. I’ve gotten tired of changing planes in the middle of what would otherwise be a three hour flight. I’ve gotten tired of changing planes in Phoenix.

Bee had a ticket on the same flight, so I expected to see her at the gate. After I got through the obstacle course that is the security screening in LAX’s Terminal 1, I went to Starbucks to get my first coffee of the day. Coming out of Starbucks, I ran into Bee. The flight was smooth and uneventful. We took off under cloudy skies in LA and landed under cloudy skies in Kansas City.

After we checked in to the hotel and got settled in our room, we walked over to KCAI to check in to the conference. From our room we called Smadar and Chetna, and got a hold of them at the rental car agency, ready to pick up their car. By the time We found the on-campus coffee house and sat down to go over the schedule, Smadar and Chetna called from their hotel room. We all went out for dinner at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbeque in Country Club plaza. I had one of my favorite foods in the world, baby back ribs. Bee had some lamb ribs - a dish none of us had ever heard of before -and they were amazingly wonderful. I had french fries and baked beans as my sides and they were both excellent also.

After dinner there we just went back to the room. There were some talks in the campus auditorium by the workshop instructors, but we skepped those. We were all very tired from a long travel day, and just tried to stay up past 8:00 pm Pacific time before going to sleep.

Getting Ready for SDA

Its Memorial Day weekend. I'm getting ready to go to the biannual conference of the Surface Design Association in Kansas City. I'll be staying for a post-conference workshop, then going to Alguquerque for the opening of Times of Taransfomation at ArtHaus66 Gallery. The image above is the piece I did for the SDA Member Show, which will be on exhibit there.

I'm really getting excited about this trip. First off, I love the SDA conference; and because of it, I've come to really enjoy Kansas City. Second, I'm participating in this wonderful show in Albuquerque.


I first went to the SDA conference in 2000 with Bee Colman and Chetna Mehta. The conference has been held in KC for almost 10 years now; where it is hosted by Kansas City Art Institute. KCAI sits in between the magnificant WPA-era Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.


This is Vanderslice Hall at sundown in 2007. Its the oldest building on the campus, and I think at one time, it housed the entire Art Istitute.



Here is the Marriott where we're staying, along with some public art sculptures; again from 2007.
This fountain is near Country Club Plaza - a shopping & dining area at the south end of a park who's name I can't remember. Its walking distance from the Marriott. It was a beautiful Saturday evening when I arrived for my pre-conference workshop in 2007. Among the people gathered to enjoy the evening were a wedding party taking pictures: a woman in her graduation cap and gown taking pictures with her kids, sister and mom; and people from six continents.

Look in the background, and look in the foreground.
Anyway, I really have come to like Kansas City. The SDA conference is my favorite conference to attend. I'm rooming With Bee, and several other fiber friends will be there. I'll see people I've met at conferences, and only see at conferences, some of whom I ran into at Convergence in Tampa last year. Its a good fiber art time. I can't wait.

Thursday

2:00 pm

Today I am exiled from the house. I spent some time in Starbucks yesterday, (free WiFi!) and the head of the plumbing crew told me the water would be off most of the day today. I'm back at Starbucks and I'm freezing.

It was 102 degrees on Monday and Tuesday, yesterday it was in the 80's, and today its cloudy and cool. I could've used a sweater, but I didn't get one before the plumbers moved in and covered my bedroom with plastic. And of course the AC is on inside Starbucks.

I had breakfast out, ran some errands. My feet were cold, so I bought some socks at Target. I was thinking of going to Chico's to buy a sweater - life is so tough, I know. I've been nursing a cappuccino for a couple of hours now.

I guess its time to go home and see how big the holes in the walls are. The one above the couch in the family room is much bigger than I imagined. I now have the motivation to finally remove the wallpaper in the family room and kitchen, and get it repainted. It is the only room we still haven't repainted after 15 years in the house. . .

4:00 pm

the answer is: the holes are quite large. They cut a rectangle out of the drywall large enough to give them access to the shower heads in the bathrooms, then they screw the cut piece back into the wall with drywall screws. One bathroom backs on the family room, above the couch, and the other one backs on the corner of our bedroom. What needs to be done now is to patch the seam, sand it, and repaint the wall. I don't think we still have the paint from our bedroom, and, as I said, the family room is probably 30 year old wallpaper.

I can't think about repainting our bedroom, or the kid's bathroom; although I now see I've been in denial about the need to do these things after a re-piping. I think I'll stay there - denial - for another couple hours until Irv gets home.

Here's what I have to tell myself: with the sewer line and the re-piping done, we shouldn't need any major plumbing work for the rest of our lives, provided we stay in this house till they cart us away. Once we get these rooms repainted, we won't have to paint for another several years.

"But then," a little voice says in my head, "it will soon be time to paint the outside again, and we're still planning to re-do the front yard this year; and the carpets are ALL getting old. . ." What's that screaming I hear?

Oh, it's me.

Re-piping and Earth Day

Wednesday

Today is one of those days when the title of this blog is a misnomer. I'm not weaving daily, or at all for the past few days. We are having the house re-piped with copper. We had the sewer line replaced earlier this year. The house is 50 years old, these things must be done.

And its also Earth Day, so as an ecoartist, I'm supposed to be celebrating the life giving diversity in all nature. But there has been entirely too much natural diversity in our house recently. By my way of thinking, there are only three species allowed to live here: human, fish, and canine (and the canine we have is going to be the last of his kind in my house).

First there are the ants. They are repeat visitors, they come in a couple times a year and I have to try to make them go away. This week it got hot, and that's one of the times they like to come inside looking for water. Yesterday I was wrangling ants. This means moving everything on the counter behind the sink, cleaning the tile, and spraying raid as sparingly as I can get away with. We have a wide swath of counter under the window behind the kitchen sink, and we have an elephant cookie jar, a ceramic dog water pitcher, a beaded giraffe, various dishes and bowls, and a jade plant. The ants like to come in through cracks in the grout at the corner of the counter and the back splash. I also have some little pellets I sprinkle outside along their trails that are supposed to be carried back and destroy the nest. I don't really like all this poisoning, but I don't know any effective, eco-friendly ways to get rid of them.

Second, we've been having little visitors in the night. And they're invisible, you can not see them. Only their droppings are visible. One night I heard an awful ruckus in the kitchen. I got up and tip-toed out to the kitchen. Tip-toeing did not render my movements silent. The floor creaks, even under the carpet. I didn't find the intruders, only a box of cookies with a hole chewed in the side. A friend lent us some traps, and we caught four of the little devils. Last week I went looking for how they're getting in. I found some holes above the suspended light panels and covered them up with hardware cloth. I looked behind the couch in the family room, and I can't even describe the horror I found there among a very thick carpet of dust.

Now the plumbers are under the house, and they're going to make sure all the foundation vents are covered with hardware cloth by the time they're done. Then if the furry mammalian squatters aren't gone, I'm calling an exterminator.

The third species I had to evict are little moths. They've been flying around for a couple months, and I didn't know where they were coming from. That's actually why I moved the couch in the first place. I thought the moths were laying their eggs behind the couch. But after I had vacuumed under all the furniture in the family room, moths were still flying about. At this point I should explain that the family room is next to the kitchen, and the couch is within a few feet of the stove and some cupboards.

Last Sunday evening, I went to make rice and discovered we didn't have enough of the white left. I dug to the bottom of the cabinet and got out the brown. It had been in there for a long time, and I found little moth cocoons in the creases on the outside of the plastic bag. So the next day I went back to look deep into the cabinet, and what I found is even more indescribable than what was behind the couch.

But I'll try. It was explained to me many years ago that sometimes these little moths get into flour and other dry food products and lay eggs. After the eggs hatch, the larvae have a food source. My friend and neighbor who told me this then went on to say that's why sometimes you open the flour and a moth flies out. That had never happened to me, but after this I always kept my flour in an airtight container. Supposedly, if you keep your flour and grain products in an airtight container, the eggs can't hatch, they're so tiny you'll never know they were in there - lovely.

I had this conversation over 25 years ago, and it all came back to me on Monday as I began pulling out the boxes of nuts, rice and pasta I keep in that cabinet. I found a few bug parts in some old risotto and threw it away. There wasn't any evidence of them in the open box of matzoh ball mix, or the matzoh meal. These are apparently goyish moths. I found a few more cocoons on some more plastic bags, and threw them away. Then I found the thing you should never have to find in your cabinet. It was a plastic container of pepitas, apparently not so air tight. I opened it and a moth flew out. I didn't take a long look at what was in there and I closed it right away. I threw the whole container away - it was Tupperware, and I threw it away. I don't throw plastic in the trash, and I threw it away.

Then I finished cleaning out the cabinet. I discovered something interesting about little grain-eating moths: they don't poop where they eat. How very civilized, they choose a corner and all use it. It's totally gross, I'm sorry.

On Tuesday I started to move things so the plumbers can work (read: put holes in the walls). What I discovered shocked me once again. Really, our clothes hamper could be moved to vacuum under once every two weeks. The dressers that stand on 6" high legs could be vacuumed under, really.

Ok, so there's a pattern here. I have clearly not been vigilant about the cleaning. Changes will have to be made.

Submission Sent

Nicki commented on yesterday's litany. She said take that photo into Elements and it will be beautiful in no time. So I did.

Actually, I have an older version of CS2 on my daughter's old laptop. I cropped the photos a little, and adjusted the contrast and color balance. I improved them a little, and they looked better on the laptop monitor.

I put together the submission, sent it, and will hope for the best.

Next project: major clean out of my studio.

photograph day 2

Well what was I thinking anyway?

I've seen Paul's light set up in the studio, it's two large banks of lights. I know an artist who replicated Paul's set up when he lost his lease last year. She spent $2000 on lights and equipment. So what was I thinking with my two $5 tungsten light bulbs and $13 clamp-on fixtures - that don't even have switches - from Home Depot?

This morning I took a series of photos with the camera on different settings to see what I could learn. I learned that I'm moving it all to the back porch today.

Un professional photography

Adventures in photography. I have taken a few seminars in photographing your own work. I decided to take the plunge this week, and photograph the headpiece to submit to a fiber show who's deadline is this Friday, the 20th.

Maybe I could have taken the piece in to my photographer, Paul, yesterday and gotten the images back today so I could get the submission in the mail this afternoon or tomorrow morning at the latest. Probably what I should have done.

Yesterday I went to Canoga Camera. I got some backdrop paper to create a sweep in my dining room. I got some tungsten lights and clamp-on fixtures.

That makes it sound so simple, it was quite a more complicated matter:

first I had to clear off the small table to the side of the dining room. I cleared my clutter to the big dining room table, which it covers. (I need to do a major studio clean up. Stay tuned, that's next on my agenda.)

The small table is one of those old jobs from the 1950's that unfolds and expands to seat 10. It has something like four leaves in the closet. It belonged to my in-laws when they were first married. When I went to pull the legs out and unfold the top, I noticed that the leg I fixed back in the old house (18 years ago) was loose again. So I went out to the garage to get the wood glue and pipe clamps. The hack saw fell off the shelf, the blade came out, and the saw frame split in two. So I picked up the saw and put it back together and put it back on the shelf; this only took a minute or two.

This photo has nothing to do with anything. I put it here to give you something to look at in the middle of the story.

I put newspaper under the little table, which was now upside down on the dining room floor. The cap of the wood glue was clogged with dried glue because someone left it open the last time they used it. Hmm, who might that have been?? It took a half hour to dig all the dried glue out of the cap. Then I glued and clamped the table.

So while the glue on the small table needed to dry, I moved my 24" table loom off the card table and moved that to the dining room for my photography set up.

But I still needed to get the light fixtures. Canoga Camera had some for $30 each, but I thought I could get them cheaper at Home Depot. The Home Depot at Fallbrook didn't have any fixtures that could take the high wattage lights. I went to Lowes. They had the right fixtures, but only one was undamaged. The aluminum reflectors were all dented. So I bought one light and headed to OSH. They didn't have the right fixtures.

I went to the other Home Depot on Valerio. They had the right fixtures and they were all dented. There was an employee helping me. He was kind of asking "why do they have to be undented?" I said I just didn't want to buy something that was already damaged when I bought it. I took the least dented one and started to head for the register, intending to ask for a discount. So the Home Depot guy says, "I'll just give you this." He was the manager, and he comped me the light. Pretty cool

By this time, it was almost 4:00. I stopped at Jim's Fallbrook Market to get something to make for dinner. I had left the house at about 2:00 to get the fixtures. If I had just paid for the fixtures at Canoga Camera on Monday morning, I'm thinking by now, I would already have my photos done. How much time had it cost me trying to save $30?

Since the wood glue had so much time to set, I put the card table back in the living room, and made my set up on the small expandable table.














I'd like to say something about Paul, my photographer. I love Paul. He does a fabulous job. His photos are freaking fantastic. I really started getting into juried shows when he started doing my photos. I just want to be able to take my own photos for times when I need a very quick turn around. Like this week when I have a submission that needs to be in Camarillo by Friday. Camarillo is like a 20 minute drive. I coulda taken the piece in on Monday, and paid for four views.

Ok, so I got my backdrop set up, I got the cheap fixtures. And boy, are these fixtures cheap - downright flimsy. They don't even have switches; you plug them in to turn them on. As I was setting things up on the backs of a ladder and a chair, I was thinking, this is why I pay Paul.

But, I got it all set up, I cleaned my cameral lens with my brand new lense cleaning kit, I screwed the camera onto the tripod, I covered my head form to hold the headpiece, I adjusted the camera, and shot my images.

And, well, this is why I pay Paul.
MY PHOTO

PAUL'S PHOTO

I guess tomorrow I'll be on the back porch in the morning. Maybe I'll get the submission in the mail by the afternoon. If not, Camarillo is still just a 20 minute drive.

Touching Sample

I'm finally officially done with the headpiece. I decided to make a sample for touching, and I decided to do it before I put away all the yarns.

Now I can clean my studio and move on to new work.

The first thing I plan to do tomorrow is to apply the things I learned in Daryl Lancaster's Photographing Your Own Work seminar at the ASCH conference last weekend. I'll photograph the headpiece.

The next thing for this coming week (after sending in my submission for Focus on Fiber II at Studio Channel Islands Art Center) is to start a plan for re-landscaping our front yard. I'll post some 'before' pictures this week. It's pretty ratty looking, and we want to put in draught tolerant and native plants. I want to put in California native grass, which doesn't need mowing and requires very little water.

Here is my work table in my studio that I need to clean this week. The whole rest of the room looks pretty much like this.

I was going to post a picture of more of it, but I decided to forget it, its too embarrassing.

Well, more later. . .