CommuniTree - sculpture as toy

Working on the CommuniTree at the Townie Street Party

Most of the armature still visible

It's been an interesting process building this thing. An an artist I generally work solo and have total control over what I make. When I do community based/sourced projects I have to let go of the control and go with people's creativity, energy and ideas - steering them but letting the project go where lots of people's involvement takes it. The CommuniTree project has been that in a huge way. I brought the partially pre-built armature to the Townie Street Party and assembled it with help from my son and a few volunteers. Then something like 100 people contributed their efforts over the course of the evening. Julianne Pinsak had bought two smaller tree pieces last fall and she brought me 200 phone cords sourced from the PTO Thrift Store. My friend Paul Malbeauf brought a huge stash of cords cleaning out his basement. At the end of the Street Party we rolled the tree up the street to the patio of AnnArbor.com.

Rolling it to AnnArbor.com

Over the next few days a few dozen more people stopped by to help build the tree. Here is a stop motion video shot by Angela Cesere of AnnArbor.com of some of the building.

Some numbers: the finished piece stands about 8.5' tall and is 8' in diameter. It weighs more than 100 pounds - probably closer to two hundred. We used more than 400 cables ranging from mini-usb, scsi-to-serial, fiber-optic, electrical, phone and power converters, mice and CAT5. It's been suggested that the finished piece would be a great interractive lobby piece for a high tech firm - put out a box of cables and invite visitors to play. With that concept it may never be finished. I like that idea and hope it finds a home along those lines.

CommuniTree is a partnership between the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, AnnArbor.com and the Milan Art Center. It is for sale and proceeds of the sale will benefit the Street Art Fair and the Milan Art Center. Bid for it here. Full disclosure - I'm the board chair of the Milan Art Center.

wire and cables and angle-iron oh my

Cast concrete counterweight and lab stool base for Communitree - ready to go and very heavy!


Box of cables for weaving the tree. It won't be enough but it's a good start. Bring me more!

I've been sorting and coiling what feels like MILES of cable getting ready for Monday's Townie Street Party followed by the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I cast the base for the sculpture out of concrete. Still need to organize tools, ladders, etc and finish the armature but the bits are all assembled and ready to haul to town. I'll be in the art activity area during the party. At the end of the evening the tree will roll up Liberty Street to the AnnArbor.com patio - its home for Art Fair.

I'll be there working on the tree during Art Fair from 1-4pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Come and get involved. The finished piece will be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Street Art Fair and the Milan Art Center. I'll post a link to the online auction as soon as it goes live - it will be hosted via ArtFair.org

Community based public art for Art Fair

The CommuniTree-

Once again I’ve been commissioned by the Street Art Fair, this year partnering with AnnArbor.com, to do a community based public art project. We’re growing a tree out of recycled cables. This project was inspired by the little table-top trees I made as part of the Ecology Center's Sustainable Centerpieces project last fall.

coil wire tree

How will this work and how can you be involved? The tree will be a sculpture using recycled and repurposed materials with community help in making it grow. I’m building an armature out of a repurposed lab stool and metal posts, old window sash weights and other found objects. The tree will be fleshed out using old computer, phone and electrical cables and that’s where you come in. I need your old phone cords (coiled ones are great!), computer cables and the like. If you’re like me you probably have a box of them somewhere. You can drop them off at the Art Fair Office at 721 E. Huron St., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 734-994-5260 (PH) or at AnnArbor.com at 301 E. Liberty St., First Floor. Or you can get in touch with me directly.

stool base, procured at UM's Property Disposition

angle iron - part of the trunk to be

When will this all happen? We’ll start assembling the tree at the Townie Street Party on Monday July 18 from 5-9:30. After the party the CommuniTree will move to the patio at AnnArbor.com I’ll be working on it during Art Fair from 1-4 Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of Art Fair. Come help, contribute cables and watch the tree grow. The finished tree will be more than 8 feet tall and will have solar powered lighting.

We’ll have a reception on Friday July 22nd at AnnArbor.com at 7:00pm.

The Communitree will be auctioned off over the course of Art Fair. The proceeds will go to help support the Street Art Fair and the Milan Art Center. The auction will end when Art Fair ends on Saturday evening.

panorama!

My friend Gene Parunak kindly shot this panorama of the Immersed show. Fun to see it all laid out in one place like this.

Working in the studio in encaustic loses some appeal when the high for the day is in the mid-upper 90's. Time to explore water media perhaps? More digital? And an upcoming sculpture project I'm excited about and will be able to talk about soon!

Meanwhile I had the amazing experience of flying to Chicago in a private jet thanks to a generous investor in my husband's company. We flew much lower than a commercial flight and naturally I shot for most of the flight - nice to have my own aerial source material rather than relying on NASA's much higher altitude (and quality) images as a starting point.


Look for mixed media pieces coming from this euphoric experience...

Painting as jazz - improvisation and exploration in the studio

Rippled, encaustic & mixed media on panel, 24 x 32", ©2011

Painting as jazz

When I started working on the pieces for Immersed I spent a lot of time thinking about my painting process. It’s been a very intellectually driven kind of activity, focused heavily on the content of the work and the integration of data/mapping with paint and other imagery. Kathi Reiester challenged me to paint about “just water - just surface, appearance, beauty, sensation”. A good challenge; one that forced me to loosen up and just let my arm swing. It didn’t hurt that these images are all based on photos I shot at a beautiful place - Wingaersheek Beach on Cape Ann, visited with my friend Lynda Cole a few years back.

Wingaersheek Ripples XIV, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20" © 2011

Wingaersheek Ripples V, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20" © 2011

These days I listen to jazz in the studio as I paint. Specifically I listen to my local NPR jazz station WEMU so Linda Yohn and Michael Jewett end up making the soundtrack to my studio practice as I work. As the mother of a young musician I’ve found myself spending more time thinking about the parallels in how musicians and artists approach their media and their art-making.

Wingaersheek Water Surface, digital, encaustic & mixed media on panel, 28 x 40" © 2011

Wingaersheek Ripples II, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20" © 2011

In the studio I let the music take me to a loose improvisatory place where I can explore and experiment, aiming to set my judgmental tendencies aside for a separate time. This is not to say that the critical, intellectual part of my normal practice doesn’t enter into my current practice but rather that I aim to separate the two approaches in time so that I can bring a more painterly aspect to producing the work. That which doesn’t meet my standards never sees the outside of the studio of course but I hope that these pieces, especially the monotypes, reflect the exploration and joy of a good jam session.

All photos of artwork taken by Anne Savage.

Immersed runs until May 26 at the Gallery at the UM Duderstadt Center. The reception is this Thursday May 19 from 5-8pm

Immersed and other events

I have a piece in Game ShowNYC. This interactive exhibition is at the Macy Gallery at Teachers College, Columbia University NY. If you're in the area the opening reception is Friday May 27. Unfortunately I won't get there but I'm thrilled to be part of it. More on the show at the organizers' blog.

More locally I've got new work at WSG and Artistica. And on this Thursday May 19th is the reception for the Immersed exhibition at the Gallery at the Duderstadt Center, University of Michigan. This water themed show ties in with the UM water semester and features Kathi Reister's photography and sound installations and my encaustic paintings and monotypes.

Fjord, Ice & Water, encaustic, digital & mixed media, 28 x 40" ©2011

Rippled, encaustic, digital & mixed media, 24 x 32" ©2011

Wingaersheek Ripples I, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20", ©2011

Immersed, installation view w/sound dome

Immersed, installation view

Wingaersheek Ripples XIV, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20", ©2011

Wingaersheek Ripples XIII, digital and encaustic monotype, 16 x 20", ©2011

Ripples & Lilypads, encaustic, digital & mixed media, 24 x 24" ©2011

Photography of art by Anne Savage, whose work I cannot recommend highly enough. The installation views were taken by me.

Upcoming projects, new work

Raw Ripples, encaustic & mixed media on panel, 24 x 24"

Fjord, Ice & Water - encaustic, digital and mixed media on panel, 28 x 40"

New series of encaustic & digital monoprints all about 11 x 15". I'm aiming to work looser here, more spontaneously and with more sense of just playing with the encaustic monoprint process. These are fairly experimental pieces and I'm enjoying the freedom of just exploring layering encaustic and oil and paper and seeing what develops.

It always seems like the middle of winter with holidays, visitors, back to school etc slows my art-making. This year I added a little travel as part of a daughter's application to music school to the mix. Result was a long fallow period with much thinking and development but major gaps in production. That's done and I'm in the midst of working in the studio and planning several big projects. I'm doing a lot of work with water just now for an upcoming show at the Duderstadt Gallery in May - more to come about the specifics of that show soon.

upcoming events

Autumn vignette, encaustic & digital, 4" x 4", framed 5.5" x 5.5"

Here are a group of new paintings, all destined for my featured artist show at Artistica Gallery in Dexter. The opening will be Dec 3 from 6-8pm. This work features a number of very tiny paintings as well as some larger work.

Zion - cliff clinging tree, encaustic & digital, 6" x 6", framed 9" x 9"

Storm/shore, encaustic & digital, 6" x 6", framed 9" x 9"

coastal abstract, encaustic & digital, 4" x 4", framed 5.5" x 5.5"

Prairie sky, encaustic & digital, 7" x 23", framed 12" x 28"

Fisherman's Island Dusk, encaustic & digital, 7" x 23", framed 12" x 28"

New Mexico Skyline, encaustic & digital, 4" x 4", framed 5.5" x 5.5"

Some of these pieces came out of the summer's trip out west, some are Michigan based. All reflect an emotional connection to the landscape and to particular times of day - generally late afternoon when the light is at its most lyrical.

One other upcoming event of interest - the Milan Art Center is having a holiday extravaganza on December 4thWhat is that? We'll have an exhibition of gift friendly art by local artists including Kim Trail Rhoney, Marne Evans, and myself. We'll have a craft project fundraiser that will produce a cool gift and we'll have hot chocolate after the annual Milan Holiday Parade. More information on our Facebook page.

Sustainable Centerpieces project

I've been working with the Ecology Center on their upcoming 40th Anniversary Fundraiser. They invited me to coordinate a different sort of art fundraiser than the usual "donate your work and write off just the materials because you like our cause." Instead, we're doing something much more interesting: artists were invited to create Sustainable Centerpieces - small sculptures which reference one of the themes the Ecology Center focuses on like wind power, recycling, water use, etc. The pieces will be sold by silent auction at the upcoming Nov 17th dinner featuring Van Jones and dinner at the Michigan League- you can buy tickets here. What's unique about this? The artists will take home most of the proceeds of the sale of their work, sharing a cut with the Ecology Center. We're excited about this as a more collaborative way of raising funds and supporting both a terrific organization and the artists working with them. There are 21 artists contributing a total of 35 pieces to the project - below is a small sampling - I'll post more in the coming days.

Barbara Melnik Carson Recycling Outside a Small Circle of Friends

Candace Compton Pappas - house

Sobel - resevoir

Sobel - coil tree

Sobel - cable tree



Rick Lieder Capturing the Last Joyride

Mike Sivak Reliquary

Laila Kujala

Rick De Troyer

Barbara Brown

Jill Love & Mary Bowe - Earth

A week of ideas and events

My life is generally way too busy these days and this week took that to a whole new level of crazy. On Tuesday I went up to Grand Rapids to see ArtPrize with three friends. We missed more than we got to unsurprisingly - the event included more than 1700 artists this year and I didn't manage to see multiple friends' work so will have to try to make another trip if humanly possible.

We were particularly blown away by the works shown at GRAM - Grand Rapids Art Museum and UICA. At GRAM I was very impressed by the work of Young Kim's moving and evocative installation, Steven Sorman's beautiful and immense print,drawing and mixed media on paper, Al Wildey's digital on aluminum piece , Janice Arnold's amazing felt installation. Heechan Kim's sculpture was fascinating - wood and copper hanging in space. Perhaps the most interesting piece there was David Sprigg's. Installed in a large vitrine and comprised of multiple paintings on mylar suspended, making a dimensional image that changed with the viewer's angle, evoking the cosmos, it was thought provoking and fascinating. I'm skipping over plenty of other strong work in the interests of brevity.

UICA has work that is edgier, more political in content and more varied in how well it worked for me. Two particular standouts were Chris Jordan, whose work addresses the horrifying amount of consumer waste we generate. UICA has a number of his large digital prints which graphically demonstrate very large numbers of things like the number of plastic water bottles dumped every day. I was familiar with his work but had never seen it in person and the large scale adds plenty of impact to strong work.

Wayne Belger's Untouchable Camera series are a set of beautiful photographic prints of people who are HIV positive - shot through a filter and with a camera elaborately machined by the artist and using HIV positive blood as the red filter. The method is important and involved and my conversation with the artist made it clear how important his process is to the content of his work.

I didn't get to see the work of several friends so will need to make a follow-up trip to see installed work I've seen in progress by Brenda Oelbaum, Margaret Parker and Oliver Aguilar

So that was Tuesday. phew!

Wednesday: Tedx Detroit Bigger, better organized and more inspiring that last year's conference, this year's event was held at the DIA. It was terrific. I was really moved bySteve Kahn's presentation on Math Corps which is doing incredibly important work with inner city Detroit kids. If Detroit is going to be a sustainably functional city in the long term its schools have got to be fixed. Math Corps is not a solution but it's certainly an important part and I know I'm going to contribute to what they do.

It's hard to pick out specific presentations that really resonated because they were all really good. Poets David Blair and Jessica Care Moore, artist and educator Jocelyn Rainey really grabbed me. Rainey takes her inner city Detroit students all over the world, expanding their horizons remarkably. It's worth watching the online videos of the event, especially of the performances. In the interests of keeping this post to a remotely sane length I'll stop here other than to say that the energy in the room was palpable and the connections made are likely to endure and grow into more good things for the region.

If you've read this far don't forget - tonight is the fundraiser for the Milan Art Center at Original Gravity Brewing Company in Milan.

technology, recycling and repair and gratuitious images

clouds & sky

I found, via Metafilter, an interview with Kyle Wiens of iFixit talking about repairability, the impact on the environment of our consumer culture and the importance of extending device lifespans to reduce the amount of waste we're dumping. He has been working in Africa exploring the horrific conditions in which people are extracting valuable materials from our consumer waste - video here. I've been a huge fan of iFixit for years, using their manuals and parts to repair computers with my kids. I had no idea of the scope of their ambitions until I saw this and I'm very impressed. I've said for years that I'd happily pay more for computers designed with repair and upgradability designed in rather than planned obsolescence. We can't afford the environmental cost of continuing to build stuff to just toss it and replace it. It's immoral to dump stuff, full of heavy metals and toxic substances in third world nations where people will get horribly exposed to bad stuff while re-cycling what they can - just so we can keep buying the newest, latest gadget. Wiens isn't a Luddite and neither am I - I don't think we should go back to a non-technological society but we need to be smarter and more environmentally focused about how we use technology.

golden field, grey sky

And a couple images of current work in progess just as a chaser for the serious stuff.

Fall workshops

I'm teaching a series of 4 workshops at the Milan Art Center this fall. You can take as many as you'd like - one or more. Each workshop is 4 hours long and self contained, taught at the brand new Milan Art Center in downtown Milan on a Sunday afternoon from noon to 4pm. You can register at the link above.

The classes are:

Encaustic monotype - working with encaustic on paper. Sunday September 19 Working on paper and a heated surface we'll create beautiful one of a kind prints.

Encaustic and collage - Sunday October 10. Encaustic is the ideal collage medium and we'll explore it with multiple permutations and other media.

Encaustic - incorporating digital elements - Sunday November 14. Want to combine your photos or digital paintings with encaustic? This class will be focused on how to - participants will get information in advance allowing them to bring prints to incorporate into their encaustic works.

Encaustic and 3D - Sunday December 12. Bring your encaustic work into the third dimension in this workshop.