Back to work!

School vacation week for the kiddos is finally over!  I loved spending time with Skylar and we did a lot together, but now it's time to get back to work.  Back to putting her on the bus and going directly to my studio until it's time to get her off the bus.  I can't wait!  Also, I have some company now for when I work.  I got my dog back from my parents and she has been glued to my side since she came on Thursday.  :)

Also, I have to be on the lookout for some new tools to add to my inventory.  I need a bowl adze (which I have been told are hard to come by), some dogleg chisels (which are proving impossible to find), a vice (easy), and maybe a grinder and mini grinder...

Hopefully I'll add some new pictures later today.

On My Way

My husband has been supportive enough to tell me that I should return to my love of woodworking and work on selling my work instead of getting a full time job.  I have had difficulty securing a job, as some of you may know jobs are scarce these days and the number of applicants for each position are astounding.  Couple that with minimal work history since I worked full time in high school but in college I was a full time student even through the summers while I was raising my daughter who was born 7 weeks before I started my degree at UMA and that left no time for work.  Apparently, no matter your skills and abilities, if you have no experience they don't want to hire you.  On top of that, my husband was just promoted to a supervisory position at his new job that he started at the beginning of the year.  Being a supervisor on the flex team means long days/nights, little to no sleep, and being gone constantly...someone needs to be home to get the children on and off the bus and care for them.  I am so thankful for my husband's support in doing what I love and also thankful that we are financially capable of doing this.

With that said, I have already harvested, stripped and sealed 22 pieces of wood for drying and harvested and stripped 12 pieces of already seasoned wood.  I have also discovered that there are several trails behind our house and that the power lines are less than a mile away.  This creates the perfect environment for accumulating material!  I have already started 3 new projects that I'm working on!

I have come to discover that although I have several useful tools in my collection, I still need to acquire some more basic and specialized tools for the projects that I'm working on.  For now I am waiting on my income tax refund so that I can acquire the tools I need.  Some of the assortment includes a vice, some clamps, splitting mauls, an adze, a spokeshave, some dogleg chisels and a few other selections.

I'm looking forward to expanding my tool inventory and being able to progress further in some of my pieces as I am at a standstill with particular ones right now.

It's been a long time...

So, it's been quite a while since I've made an update to my blog...life sure has been a whirlwind.  I have gotten married, gone on our honeymoon, sent out daughter off to kindergarten, applied for more than 60 jobs (having one face to face interview and two phone interviews), gotten a job at Kmart, purchased a house with my husband and moved 30 minutes away causing me to leave the job I had, my husband started a new job.  I have applied for more than 30 jobs this time, had four face to face interviews and a second interview to be offered two positions and left me in the position to decline them.  Why you ask?  My husband's new job is a guaranteed 40 hours a week (not like his last one which proved to be anywhere from 22-38 hours per week) but his schedule is nowhere near regular.  We generally don't find out until the day before or the day of what, where, or when his assignment is going to be making it incredibly inconvenient for me to get a regular office job, actually near impossible.

On the upside?  We are now homeowners!  Our home is a small and cozy little two bedroom on the quiet outskirts of Auburn, set on a very comfortable two acres.  I now get to complete home improvement tasks and have a yard to work in.  We'll be having a vegetable garden for the first time this summer (since I was a kid anyway) which both kids are very excited about (myself included).  It also means that I have a near endless supply of wood for carving.  There are plenty of fallen trees and others which need to come down...it'll keep me going for a while, and if not there's always my dad who has cut down trees as a second job for as long as I can remember.

Another plus?  We have a two car detached garage, which means...I have STUDIO SPACE!!!  So upon the frustration of the job search my husband said to me, why don't you just do what you love?  With that, we cleaned out a corner of the garage and I shoddily set up my studio...for now.  When we moved in the garage was just about full, I have crammed most of it into the front corner of the garage and am anxiously anticipating the day the "junk man" comes to haul it away so that I can victoriously claim the entirety of my studio space!  I can't wait to get all organized and set up, but for now the space I have will do.

Monday through Friday, while the kiddos are at school I can be found in my studio, which I lovingly call my "ice box" this winter.  I think we'll invest in a space heater for next season.  My husband cuts up the trees around the yard for me and I get to strip and seal them and then haul them down to the basement.  Lucky for me, our basement stays right around 55 degrees so that I can properly dry my wood.

What is my plan you ask?  At the moment I'm working on a plaque that I was asked to create for the Kora Shriner's Provost Unit.  After that I'll be cutting my wood to size and beginning on a new carving venture that I've been waiting to start for quite some time now.  My plan is to get together a decent body of work now so that when spring rolls around I can attend art shows, flea markets, submit to shows and really try to get my name and work out there.  Can I get myself on the map?  Well...even if it's only a tiny little dot crammed between all the other big dots I would be sufficiently happy.  :)

More to come soon!

Update

I suppose an update is probably in order as I have not been on in quite a while.

Since graduation I have been hard at work, only now it isn't school work.  The Monday after graduation I began work on the YoUMA summer program which was my internship last year.  YoUMA is a summer interdisciplinary immersion program that we host on the UMA campus during the last week in July and the first week in August.  Last year was our initial year, it was my internship for no pay - but out of it I got to know so much more about myself, knew what type of work I love doing, met many new people, and after the weeks were complete I was incredibly rewarded by the success of the program I had essentially created.  (After the skeleton of it was thrown into my lap last May)

After last year's program ended it found a home in the Admissions department, from there it changed hands a few times.  Finally, the week before graduation, I received a phone call asking if I would come back to head up the program again this year.  I am currently the co-coordinator, alongside Mike Cooley from the Admissions department.  So far, it has been fantastic!

Other things going on in my life have kept me busy as well.  I am still planning that wedding which is now only 2 months away.  I have also continued to attend psychology appointments for my daughter.  We have also begun therapy since she was diagnosed with Sensory Seeking, Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD).  SPD in itself is a huge challenge and we are just trying to work through that day to day.

Tomorrow my daughter is graduating from the Pre-K program at her daycare and moving upstairs to the kindergarten age classroom on Monday.  She will be starting kindergarten the Monday after the wedding.

I will go into the gallery tomorrow and remove my piece, pick up my guestbook and read it over.  I'll bring it home, go to the graduation, and then keep planning.  Life is such a whirlwind!

Finished!!!

I am now finished my senior project...it has been titled "Intuition".  I will be posting pictures below.  My piece has been installed in the Gannett Building Gallery at 331 Water Street in downtown Augusta along with the rest of the artists in the building.  We all finished installing yesterday and I have to say that all of the work looks great together!  We are definitely a great group!  Hopefully I'll be able to get in and see the show at the Danforth today...I'm excited to see what has been done with that!

Now all that is left is to pick up my label and place it and put in my artist statement.  :)  It's been a long road but it's finally finished and it feels great!  I feel honored to be a part a such a great group of artists and hope to keep in touch with them for years to come!

Nearing the end...

Last Tuesday's class critique went very well!  We all made an interesting discovery about my piece when it was turned on its side, I feel it is much more successful this way. 

Since Tuesday's critique I have been sick, I am getting better now and the rain has finally stopped so I can get out and work.  I can only work at home now since I am no longer allowed to work in the sculpture studio. 

I have a good chunk of the day to be working today.  I started off by cutting out extra areas and problem areas that just weren't working with the piece.  Yes, I got gutsy and started sawing pieces off!  Fingers crossed that the final transport won't be too rough on it since I'm now removing pieces that could compromise structural integrity in transport.  Standing alone, though, it should be fine.  My plan is to work as much as I can all this week and this coming weekend I will stain it.

I have decided to go with stain, especially since it will be laid on its side now.  When it was standing up I think the stain would have brought too much out and compromised the aesthetic but I think it will be ok now.  I found a nice stain at Home Depot called Golden Pecan.  It is darker than the natural wood but not much, it should give it a nice honey colored hue.

Now the only consideration left is to figure out how the piece will be displayed...  Any thoughts on pedestals would be super helpful!  I think they should be between knee and waist height so viewers can see the upper parts of it but also not have to crawl on the floor to see the underside either.  Thoughts and advice are appreciated!

Ponderings & questions for YOU!

When I met with Lin Lisberger over vacation she had expressed concern for me getting my entire piece carved in time but that I struck her as the type of person that will get it done anyway.  I agree, but when there's a deadline I get the project done.  One thing she suggested, to move the process along a little faster, was to try using a grinder.  I was a little apprehensive about this because the grinder wields so much power and could easily take off a chunk of unfinished piece or a completed detail that I didn't intend to remove.  Last week in the studio my Dremmel quit on me, the last thing I needed at this point.  After taking it back to Home Depot and getting a new one, they were very nice about it and understanding that I did not have the time for it to be sent out for repair, I got back to work.  After a little prodding from Russ on Thursday I finally got gutsy and decided to use the grinder...  I have used one before, when I took the welding class, but grinding steel and grinding pine are two very different things.  It was a little daunting at first because the wood is so soft and the grit of the grinder just eats away at the material, but after a few minutes I got into a groove and I must say it really does the job!  I can't wait to get back into the studio tomorrow and get some more work done!

Something I have been thinking about is what I'm going to use for supporting materials with the display.  I feel like my best option is a book.  If you can recall from my revised artist statement, I talked a lot about process and materials and my interaction with them.  I went into this project with a basic plan but not a vision of the exact outcome, rather than forcing the wood to become what I want it to be I have a conversation with it...  I tell the wood what I'd like it to do and it tells me how much it will take.  Please keep in mind that I'm not actually having a verbal conversation with my materials...I haven't jumped that far overboard yet!  :)  What it's really about is the intuition with which I carve and the fact that combined with my coaxing, I allow the material to do what it wishes and become an end product much like a collaboration.

My plan is to create a blurb book for my support material.  In this book I plan to use images and text.  The images will contain different portions of my process from start to finish.  I haven't yet decided exactly what I want the text to depict yet.  Somewhere in there I plan on having my artist statement.  Other than that I'm not sure what would be intriguing for others to read about. 

So here is my question for you...if you could ask me anything about my piece, process, direction, statement, etc. what would it be?  If you were to look in this book of image what might you hope to walk away with as far as information?