m e a n d e r i n g
d r i f t w o o d #1
r o c k s k e t c h # 1
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This past Saturday was one of those rare and miraculous NW winter days where the weather and light join forces to show off their most enchanting stuff. The morning was crisp and white frosty but unfolded into a short-sleeve, shoes off affair that everyone in Seattle is still talking about days later. It was a perfect day to be at the farm.
m i m i & e g g
I had the additional pleasure of having artist Mimi Allin along with me this time. I met Mimi in Fremont, we grabbed coffee from my favorite place then started south around 7:15 AM. For the hour + ride to Orting I luxuriated in hearing about Mimi’s thoughts/actions about her current/next work. Her musings are poetry and listening to her is a magic carpet ride. I answered many questions about my own processes and thoughts around this farm work. Being deeply considered and listened to by a discerning and compassionate artist had a galvanizing effect on previously loose ideas. I felt renewed and celebratory in the fact I get to do this work at all. Being with Mimi is like that.
Once we got to the farm we visited with Ken (Carrie was at an organic farming event in CA) then took off to meet the animals. I gave Mimi a fairly quick tour then we separated. Ken left for Tacoma then it was just us and all the animals. I built myself a nest in the sun and dove in.
The morning was filled with photographing a sold piece, finishing a new piece and gathering rocks. Lots and lots and lots of
s t o n e s
rocks. Ellie the dog kept me company while I gathered and sorted the piles that I will ultimately felt and use to “draw” in the field. I did a quick sketch with a few rocks on this trip and, well, more on that later.
I experienced death on the farm for the first time this trip. A sheep and a turkey died recently (couple days ago? last week?) and they tied the animals’ feet together and strung them up individually in a tree by the brook. I first saw and photographed them from across the brook then walked the plank footbridge to where they hung. I will not spell out the details here, but will say it was a truly haunting experience to get close to these animals as they hung there in silence. I felt like running away. I felt like crying. I felt like the animals were infected and that I might get sick if I got too close. I was surprised by how big and overwhelming these feelings were.
Ken told us the animals were out there almost first thing. I guess he knew that it could be troubling for the uninitiated. He 
explained that the animals were now bait for coyotes. There is a real coyote problem – for all the farmers. There is a $50 bounty on coyotes. Ken said that some friends of his were going to come out that night, in the bright moonlight, and try to shoot a coyote – not for the bounty, but as a measure of balance.
From where I am today, I do not believe I could dress and string up the sheep (its mid-section was wrapped in burlap and it was bleeding). I could possibly tie and hang the turkey. I could not shoot a coyote. I don’t have the gun skills nor the stomach for it. Or maybe I do. I did wish that I was staying overnight so that I could sit in the blind with the men. I had a lot of questions and wanted to see a coyote. Maybe it will come up again and I’ll see where I am then.
Mid-afternoon Mimi called her old friend (and new friend to me), artist Stephen Roxborough, to come join us at the farm. He had mentioned some time ago that he would like to visit the farm and possibly take some photos. He drove down and did just that. It was wonderful to share the farm and the rest of the glorious day with people who appreciated the farm and the work I was doing there. Thank you, Stephen and Mimi.
Once the sun started down and our work space fell into shadows, we packed it in and called it a day. We said our good-byes to the animals (Mimi is head over heels in love with the pigs) and to Ken and his friend, Bill.
Can’t wait to do it again.
Thanks for visiting.
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I returned from Eorthe this afternoon a very happy woman. I got to spend the better part of an afternoon, an entire night and a morning on the farm with Carrie, Ken, neighbor Bill and the animals.
w e l c o m e
I originally planned on pitching my tent in the sheep/llama barn, but Carrie said I could bunk in the greenhouse so I took her up on it. Not only did it smell a whole lot better in there, but there was a downpour and the rain sounded fantastic on the roof. I set up my gear then met Carrie to feed the animals. We loaded up grains and fresh water for the pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and llamas then hopped in a golf cart and made the rounds.
e a s y r i d e r
The baby pigs have grown a lot. Mama pig was shooing them away from her grain in not so subtle tones. Carrie said the babies will probably be weaned and separated from their mother by next weekend. The mother will be returned to her mate’s pen and will be ready to have another litter in the spring. The babies will be sold.
Once the eggs were collected and everyone was fed, I took off to snoop around. The first stop I made was to the glorious collection of stuff piled off to the side of the sheep barn. There are tractor parts, stones, timber, poles and a great and varied assortment of thingies. I wandered through and set aside some items that I thought would make great armatures or that I simply liked. I then headed through the back field toward the creek.
The creek was running fast and was foggy with silt. I could have spent the rest of the day sitting on the bank watching and listening, but after I walked a good length I turned around and headed in. I was completely soaked, the fog was rolling in and it would be dark soon anyway. If it’s dryer the next time I come, I will camp there next to the water.
So I got out of my wet clothes (mostly) and settled into my tent – in the greenhouse. The sound of the rain was so big and commanding I simply sat and listened for a while. I then heated soup on my little gas stove, spread materials out everywhere and found good company in Engage, the aptly named chatty and affectionate greenhouse cat.
o u t s i d e i n s i d e
Alone with piles of stuff and a whole evening of time, I felt giddy with possibility. The open-endedness of this project is incredibly liberating. That and the wealth of materials at the farm and all the new experiences plus Carrie and Ken’s generosity and warmth make this a real playground. Paradise! I picked up a stick and some fabric and just started sewing. I sewed and wrote and read and ate and listened and sat and petted and assembled and it was good.
The next morning it was still raining and I was somewhat wet and cold. I was geared up fairly well this visit, but will look for stuff that stays warmer and drier to bring next time. It was pretty early – around 5:30 – and there was no light in the house, so I jumped in my van and took off to Orting (about a mile away) in search of coffee and to get warmed up.
Shortly after I got back I found Carrie at the pigs. I asked her for a few minutes for Q & A and she offered to fix me a “cowgirl breakfast.” We went in the house and were joined by Ken and neighbor Bill. Ken actually fixed us an amazing breakfast of fresh eggs, cheese and veggie chorizo. They also shared some toast and lilikoi curd they brought back from their recent trip to Hawaii. We shared facts and food and stories and I was filled up.
I worked a little longer out in my nest, took a few more pictures then I closed up shop and packed it in. I said my good-byes and headed back home. Already looking forward to next time.
Thanks for visiting.
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I am gathering gear and materials to head out to Little Eorthe tomorrow. I get to stay out at the farm for a full 24-hours for the first time. The forecast is for rain, rain, rain, but I will work and sleep inside the barn with the llamas and sheep.
b u n k m a t e
The materials I will work with include sticks/branches, stones, feathers, wool, water, dirt and other sundry items. I will also get to work with Carrie doing farm stuff/whatever the day calls for. I am a little daunted by the cold and wet, but equally excited to have so many hours of uninterrupted work time and to camp with the animals.
I am pleased to begin real work on the farm. I am also pleased to welcome this new season – to shake hands with winter and finally get aquainted. I typically try my best to hide from winter cold. My normal way of being is under wraps indoors restlessly waiting for spring, or I get out of town. Occasionally I wander out to play in the snow or go for walks, but it’s not a comfortable time for me. This year I am doing things differently. This year I am acutely aware of the quiet life being forged just beneath my feet. Literally. Giant, ancient forces are working on tiny lives in the security of the dark underground. This year I am paying attention.
I will report what I see and do over the weekend. Thanks for visiting.
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White House South Lawn
I learned about farmer Carrie Little back when Obama first took office. There was a thought that the new White House residents might turn a section of the lawn into an organic food garden and so the project needed a farmer to lead it. There was a call and farmers from all over the States were nominated for the role. Carrie Little was my farmer of choice.
I advocated for the project enthusiastically. I chose Carrie Little as my candidate because I felt she was especially qualified to turn that particular piece of ground into a fertile and nurturing place of good. I believed this based on an earlier project Carrie spearheaded. While at Mother Earth Farm, Carrie developed a model program for the Washington State Department of Corrections where Purdy inmates were trained to organically plant, weed and harvest crops at the farm on a regular basis. This program was so successful that another program emerged wherein successful crew members were granted a Certificate in Organic Farming from the University of Santa Cruz Organic Farming program.
I felt so excited to learn that inmates (Purdy inmates are all women, by the way) had an opportunity to get their hands in the dirt and both metaphorically and physically raise up new life! They were able to coax new beginnings and every sort of health out of dirt. I was incredibly moved by this marriage of practicality and spirit infusing work. And there was more:
“It was also Carrie who was responsible for developing a flower garden at Mother Earth Farm that was tended by a Girl Scout Troop in which every girl had her mother incarcerated at Purdy. While the mothers and daughters were not allowed to be at the farm at the same time, each could watch in the development of the labors of the other.” (Taken from here.)
I hardly know how to talk about this without sliding into weepy drivel. I’ll just say that Carrie’s long career is made up of similar stories of feeding people in every way there is to be nurtured. Suffice to say that I am incredibly honored and thrilled to get to work along side her as an Artist in Residence at her new farm, Little Eorthe Farm, in Orting, Washington, this next year.
Little Eorthe Farm
During my residency I aim to establish a pattern of tending where I work, record, experience and begin to know intimately soil, sowing, rest, quiet, emergence, green, water, time and reaping. And because I will be working with Carrie, I suspect I am to learn a great deal about love as well.
Ultimately, a work will emerge. I am not altogether sure what it will look like, of course, but I will take what I have gleaned and harvest what grows in me during my time at the farm, specifically my time with Carrie Little.
Thank you for visiting.
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I am American, English, Jewish, 
Cherokee, Certain, Conflicted, Fearful, Confident, Lazy & a Workaholic Perfectionist. I am a gypsy but have had the same address for 2007.5 days. I am curious, open-minded and compassionate but will cut you off instantly when emotionally injured. I like to think of myself as fun loving and easy going. This makes people that know me laugh.
I hit a milestone birthday this year. For whatever reason it’s got me thinking about how I arrived at this moment and place with all the “me’s” that make up me. I am also wondering about how and why one employs different “me’s” instead of coming to everything whole. I could probably just dig out my freshman Psych text – I’m sure this is basic stuff, but, anyway I am getting off track. I am curious about these things, but this not really what I want to think about right now.
What I want to explore is the beauty and courage of what it might look and feel like to bring all the bits together and approach situations and people whole – like young children do. Sure – you risk social alienation – but maybe that’s a worthwhile price to pay. Hmm. It doesn’t actually sound so good. But living splintered doesn’t either.
So, to amalgamate is 1. “To combine into a unified or integrated whole; unite. 2. To mix or alloy (a metal) with mercury.” (The Free Dictionary). To come together – Yes! As an aside, that mercury part is interesting.
[When I think of mercury I think of mornings when I wanted to get out of going to school and would touch the end of the mercury thermometer to the lightbulb that was creating the sweats inches from my face. Mercurial comes to mind too, of course:
mer·cu·ri·al (m
r-ky
r
-l)
In the coming year, I am diving in head first – going in deep – to have a look at the imperfect and broken and horrid and sublime and find acceptance of the whole – The Amalgamated Me. To at least make peace with the hideous and celebrate the sweet and see the beauty of what’s really there.
A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.
- Clive Bell
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So I had an amazingly spectacular time at the Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Festival. It was magical. I was particularly moved by Sarah Kavage and Adria Garcia’s Woven Grass Sculpture and Keely Isaak Meehan‘s Whispers to Me. I thought these elegant and perfectly executed works really captured the essence of Lo-Fi’s mission: ”to seed the Farm with narrative and inquiry about place and our use of landscape.”
I liked so much of what I saw and experienced and was genuinely thrilled to be a part of Lo-Fi. The only hiccup was that my dragonflies did not endure as well as I’d hoped. Their working parts needed constant supervision and tightening. Two sets of wings came loose and positively battered the delicate fabric. That said, I thought they looked beautiful and were such pretty surprises when roaming through the paths.
The broken mechanisms will end up being an excellent teacher, I know. The dragonflies will fly again; however, not in four days – not for the Nature Consortium’s Arts in Nature Festival.
For AiN I ended up taking the moving parts off and installed the dragonflies together (mostly) as static sculpture. I was very pleased with the arrangement and started to wonder if the dragonflies would actually be improved if they could move.
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The AiN festival was excellent. So many good things to do and see. At this year’s festival I was particularly wowed by Trimpin‘s sound sculpture and Cabiri‘s aerial splendor. I also really enjoyed Kristin Tollefson‘s story installation.
Well, the festivals are over and my summer obligations are met. I swept out the studio, took a few days off to camp in the San Juans and have started collecting thoughts and implements for my next projects. I am purposefully not setting any show dates for the next 10 months in order to create the space to go deeper with materials and processes. I am positively captivated by making things work and can’t wait to play with mechanisms of all sorts. Please check back often to see the works!
Thank so much for visiting.
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Well, the countdown is on. Ten days to installation. There has been a lot of trying this and trying that and abandoning this and 
altering that. So goes the creative process. I am in full production mode now and so excited to see these critters coming to life.
d r a g o n f l y - m a k i n g
If you’re in the Seattle area this August, I would love it if you came to one of the festivals to see the dragonflies! The first festival is the Lo-Fi Festival at Smoke Farm in Arlington, WA. It’s a family-friendly, camp-out opportunity to experience TONS of art! There will be music, dance, installations, poetry and loads of other art forms. Smoke Farm is a very special place already, but that Saturday night is also the Perseids meteor shower. That could be a really spectacular thing to share with friends and family among the arts and natural beauty of Smoke Farm. For tix and more info: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/171964.
The following weekend I will have the dragonflies at Nature Consortium’s Arts in Nature Festival – also an amazing place to see arts of all kinds. Details: http://www.naturec.org/arts-in-nature-festival/.
These are not your run-of-the-mill festivals with lots of pressure to consume anything. These are true celebrations of the arts and I sincerely hope to see you at one or both!!
Thanks for visiting : )
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This morning I am gathering all my supplies and nerve to dye the cheesecloth I will use for the dragonfly wing “skin.” So far, at every
step, my perfectionism is rearing it’s horrible head and making me wish I had just gone with the easier cold dye solution. There is a lot of precision required in the measuring, dissolving and maintaining both the mordanting solution and madder dye baths. It’s ironic that for such a perfectionist as myself that precision is not my best thing.
Right now I have 4 sq. yards, or 1.75 ounces, of white, cotton cheesecloth in a 5%, 100 degree aluminum acetate bath. I am to maintain the 100 degrees for one hour and turn the cloth frequently. Every few minutes I go and stir the cloth and check the temperature and so far have had to add a little cold tap water to bring the temp down a tick. Will this affect the solution ratio poorly?? Dunno. Just checked again. 101. Turned the fire off. Thirty-eight minutes to go.
So mordant literally means, “to bite.” The mordanting process is necessary so that the dye pigment will become chemically linked to the fabric and not simply wash away. It also helps to brighten and deepen the dye’s color and help increase lightfastness. Turns out that aluminum acetate is also used topically to ease a myriad of skin irritations. It is particularly useful on wet or weeping lesions. Good to know.
Okay – the mordant bath is completed, the fabric has rested and now it’s time for the good stuff – RED. The red that I chose for the wing scales is “Brick.” I want a color that will contrast yet compliment the scarlet red of the rest of the bug’s wings. In order to achieve the deep, rich brick red without the orangeyness, I used processed madder root in combination with calcium carbonate. To gain the clearest, brightest color, madder needs hard (mineral-rich) water – thus the addition of the calcium carbonate. I didn’t know this previously, but Seattle and surrounds have the softest water in the US.
I prepared the dye bath, added the fabric and simmered them together at 160 degrees for one hour. Next time, I will get better tips on how to best maintain the temp. It was worrisome as the color will go muddy brown very quickly if the temperature goes above 160. After the hour I let the fabric cool and sit in the bath overnight.
When I got up this morning, I dumped the dye bath and rinsed the fabric. I was astonished at how fast the dye was. I only needed to rinse the fabric twice before the water ran clear. The resulting color is incredibly rich and evenly distributed. I love the color! I kinda want to wear the cheesecloth as a wrap and not cut it up – but I will. That’s coming next.
Thanks for visiting. : )
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So far the best gift that has come from working on this dragonfly project is getting to meet and work with fabulous artist Tricia Stackle. I learned about Tricia from my friend Mary who’d taken a felting class from her. After seeing her work, I knew I had to meet her, too.
I got together with Tricia in her West Seattle studio and we went over how I want my dragonfly wings to look and function. Shortly thereafter we were elbow deep in hot suds and roving.
Tricia took me step by step through two wet felting processes. In one process we simply wrapped prepped roving “shingles” around a wire armature and proceeded with the wet felting process. This process looked fantastic, but ended up being too heavy and didn’t have enough tension.
We then tried drawing a wing shape on a piece of heavy gauge plastic sheeting. Again we took roving shingles and laid them out to cover the sheeting and proceeded with wet felting. Once the felt started coming together we wrapped the edges of the sheeting and flipped the wing over. We did the same process with the other side. Once the felt became opaque and one solid piece we went a little further and watched the piece begin to shrink snugly around the plastic. Once we were satisfied with the shape and texture, we cut a hole in the wing and removed the plastic. 
After drying, I stretched the felt around a wire armature and stitched it to get the perfect tension. I am thrilled with the look and feel.
Now to make it red….
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