Remergent: Art shows, resins, and blogs

A friend asked if I’ve stopped blogging entirely. “I used to read you with my morning coffee,” she said, with a meaningful look, “It was a nice start to the day.”

“My coffee misses you, Cynthia. Hint. Hint.”

I get that a lot and, to be honest, I miss me, too. Believe me, nobody likes reading me more than me.

This is actually a post about getting ready for an art show, but as usual I’m in a segue mood. Wanna learn about the art part? Keep reading.

Morganica-the-blog has been around for more than two decades so it’s as much historical reference as anything. It reminds me of details I’ve forgotten. I’ve used the Saving Elmo series countless times when people ask about disability issues, or want to know about knee replacements, opiates, recovery, whatever. And the glass tutorials still have a big presence; I doubt a week goes by that I don’t whip out glasspost such as the one about tempered glass, to answer someone’s question.

Writing blogposts takes time, inspiration, time, and time, so it’s easy to find blog-stopping obstacles. In the first place I’m certainly not getting out and exploring as much as I did pre-wheelchair, pre-COVID. Between commuting, exploring, and hanging out with friends, I put maybe 250 miles/week on poor little Chiquitita. Now I drive about a tenth that…in a BUSY week.

Ergo, unless I’m gonna reminisce about the old days there just plain hasn’t been as much to write about.

Second place, I’m on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and heaven knows where else: Sometimes the stuff that would turn into a blogpost gets short-circuited when I post somewhere else. The thought’s out and gone before I’ve had time to develop it.

Third place, I’ve started a new profession, taxonomist,* a decade-long dream. I tend to change careers every 10 years or so, so it was right on schedule, and this time it’s taking a heckuva lot of learning to conquer. My biggest work motivator, according to all those career personality tests, is knowledge acquisition. They’re absolutely right on that point, so I’m having a ball.

Unfortunately, the time I’d normally spend blogging and doing hobbies is currently taken up studying.

And that’s the fourth place: Mostly I write about my hobbies/avocations: Glass, metal clay, enameling, sculpture, casting, wildernessing, animals. Hard to write about it unless I’m doing it, and freeing up more than an hour or two a month has been tough. The studio has turned into storage space; I crawl over boxes and random junk to get to my worktable.

Coming this fall: Portland Open Studios

The good news is that all this is changing, fast. The Resident Carpenter-Blacksmith and I have been accepted into Portland Open Studios 2022 season; it’s a juried show where you open your studio to the public, offer demos and refreshments, and hopefully sell stuff. The show runs across two weekends in October, and getting ready for it is going to be challenging, to say the least.

I was an artist in the 2008 show and enjoyed it, though I sure as heck didn’t get rich. Back then I was showing my pate de verre sculptures and pendants, and I learned a lot:

• You need a GREAT gallery website for art.  A “this is my life and maybe some art” blog like this isn’t enough.
• The art you advertise bloody well better be available at your studio, Last time I figured nobody would want a pate de verre bas-relief portrait, so I concentrated on displaying smaller, easier-to-sell stuff like pendants. THAT was a mistake–people came to find…pate de verre portrait sculptures.
• You need at least one person stationed anywhere things aren’t cemented to the floor or nailed to the wall; art, tools, and plumbing supplies (go figure) WILL walk off if unattended.
• You really REALLY need understanding neighbors, because SOMEbody will park in their driveways. (My neighbors are wonderful; they even made cookies)
• Most of the artists are clustered in urban Portland; there are many fewer of us in the ‘burbs, and we’re spread farther, so the incentives to reach us must be all the greater.
• My house isn’t ADA-friendly. Period. (Of course, this really hit home when I wound up in a wheelchair and couldn’t so much as visit the driveway)

We’ll take all those lessons to heart and be ready for THIS Open Studios.

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First off, we’ll make sure we have the stuff we advertise for sale (well, duh). I’ve all but stopped doing glass casting and such (although I’m getting back to it), so mostly I’ll be demonstrating silversmithing, metal clay work, and enamel, so I’ve got to get busy with a new website.

My fascination with vessels continues; I’m building pendants and earrings that are part of their own jewelry boxes. It’s tedious and often frustrating work, but the engineering of such things is fascinating: The wearable part blends seamlessly into the container but is easily detached and worn.

The vessel must be large enough to contain the chain or other findings for the pendant, and I like the “Surprise!! It’s jewelry” aspect. That means, however, that a lot goes into designing the thing, and there are likely at least a couple of failure-restarts along the way.

IOW, these are NOT quickie projects. I’m also doing more conventional stuff, i.e., pendants and conventional bowls/boxes, if only to relax my brain between vessels.

Nathan’s show: Knives, tools, and more

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Nathan, on the other hand, is steaming full speed ahead on his blacksmithing. The highlight will be his gorgeous knives; the ones I’ve talked him into making for our kitchen are my go-to, cook-with-every-day knifes. He’s got a knack for making them lightweight and extremely comfortable to use.

My favorite, so far, is what we’re calling “the kitchen machete.” It looks a bit like a chef’s knife fell in love with a scimitar and had babies, but it’s a great chopping knife and in a pinch does double duty as a cleaver. It’s made from an old Oregon saw mill blade, and he’s left some of the log-sawing marks in the blade, showing its history.

I suspect the kitchen knives will bring in the traffic, but woodsman’s knives are his real love. I have one of his mushroom knives (it’s best to gently slice off mushrooms at the base), and he does specialty knives for hunting and camping and fishing and such. (did you know there are knives specific to those things?)

It’s handy to have a blacksmith around; when we need a door handle or coathook or bracket he just…makes one. I’m hoping he’ll have time to do those too, and even better: Sculptor’s tools.

He’s made me a set of sculpting tools in iron and copper that hold up better than the wood-and-wire clay tools I’ve been using, and I can tell him exactly the shape I need.

So…lots to do. We’re talking about maybe collaborating on some work, perhaps me doing pate de verre goblet bowls while he does the stems.

I’m already doing mosaic pins and handle blanks for Nathan’s knives, and we’re learning a lot about what works and what doesn’t. The pins help attach the knife’s tang* to the handle material, assisting in holding things together. They can also be very decorative, and if you look at custom-made knives you’ll find some really beautiful versions.

So when your roomie is making knives that need to be pinned, and you have some copper tubing, a bunch of superglue, and about 800 pounds of glass stringer and rod sitting around the studio… I think I’ve made enough mosaic pins now to support a dozen knifemakers, and I keep having new ideas.

We’ve learned, though, that glass is about the WORST thing you can put in a mosaic pin.

Glass-containing pins look great before insertion, but the glass has a tendency to thermal shock and pop out of the pin while the handle’s being shaped. We pretty quickly decided to look elsewhere for pin material.

I’d already used epoxy resin to make a mosaic countertop. I wish I hadn’t–resin makes a lousy surface in an art studio, but it did introduce me to the medium. A two-part epoxy resin can be colored, transparent or opaque, and you can add mica, metal shavings, sawdust and other stuff for interesting effects.

It’s also a great adhesive for holding disparate materials together, if you do it correctly. It’s the basis for something called micarta, which is a knife handle materal made from layers of fabric soaked in resin and pressed together.

So…tried my hand at some knife handle material. THAT awakened my long-dormant interest in marquetry and other woodworking, and now I’m making handle blanks.

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The Camo Cleaver in one of the slideshow posts was made from resin and copper foil.

As with any craft, there’s a learning curve: Which resins work best, what adheres to resin and (strangely) what pops right off, the differences between “set,” “cured,” and “fully cured,” what tints produce the colors I want and which just make a mess. I’m learning about the RIGHT ways to incorporate mica and interference powders into resin, and to take continued movement during cure into account.

Tinted resins seem to love to move around until they settle, blurring lines and blending together. That’s great if that’s the effect you’re going after, but a pain if you’re looking for sharp, precise color blocks. They’ll also seep under just about any barrier you erect in the mold, so I’ve learned to build my barrier inclusions (copper foil or expanded metal or whatever) and fit them in place first.

Then I mix up enough resin to cover the bottom of the mold to about 2mm, embed the inclusions and let them set. That gives me sealed, enclosed spaces that keep colors separate. I can precast shapes in specific colors and use them as inclusions, too.

Resins have LOTS of unwanted bubbles after mixing, and there are various ways to get rid of them. The most effective, supposedly, is to put the mold in a vacuum chamber, which (sometimes violently) forces all the bubbles out. I have a vacuum chamber, but only iffy results so far.

The other, most common way is to wait for the bubbles to float to the top of the resin (one reason you want a slower-cure resin) and then hit the surface with a blowtorch. This causes the air in the bubbles to expand, popping them. It works like a treat, and it’s fun to light up a torch…but a second too long and you’ll get chunks of distorted, whitish resin on the surface.

The safest method I’ve found so far is to pour in very thin layers, and torch for maybe a nanosecond. I’m told that misting denatured alcohol over the piece will also work, but haven’t tried it.

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot about resin casting and I’m getting pretty good at it. So good, in fact, that we’re running out of room for handle material.

The blank will be shaped to fit the chosen handle. Look at the outline of the handle compared to the blank, and you can see how much material will be lost.The sad part about making these handle blanks is that so much material is lost as the handle is shaped to fit the hand. They’re roughly 2.5 inches by 6 inches, big enough to accommodate odd curves and turns in the handle. The honeycomb blank that will be fitted to to the handle shown (you can see through the handle to the metal if you look carefully); at least 50 percent will be lost.

Since I tend to design the blank for its original size, that also means that most of the design is gone, too. The obvious answer is to create the metal part of the knife first, and shape the handle material specifically to fit. Working on that next.

On the wood side of the house, my friend Carol introduced me to Gilmer Wood in Portland, which may be the closest thing to heaven for woodworkers. They have just about every species of wood still in existence, do a lot of specialty sizes for luthiers and such, and their scrap piles are simply amazing.

I have to restrain myself from buying out the store. I did, however, invest in a scroll saw and some veneer, and start practicing inlaying one wood into the other (not sure what you call it–marquetry?). It’s a lot of fun and the results can be impressive.

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At some point I really want to figure out how to do knife handles in pate de verre AND make them, er, practical. That, however, is for another day.

So…stay tuned.

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*As with most artforms, there’s a whole new language to learn with knifemaking. A tang extends the blade into the handle to hold everything together.