One of our favorite neighbors and well-known glass artist, Erwin Timmers, has his artwork made from recycled glass included in a new book out next month - "1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse" by Garth Johnson. Featuring 21st Century craft and design, it is an inventive collection of cutting edge work made from recycled, upcycled, repurposed and reused items.

ISBN: 9781592535408

Due November 2009

Paperback

1000 photos/illustrations

320 Pages

The author, Garth Johnson is a studio artist, writer and educator, in addition to maintaining the website "Exteme Craft". Garth writes for CRAFT magazine and his writing has been featured in museum catalogs, magazines, and books worldwide, including a contribution to the upcoming book Handmade Nation from Princeton Architectural Press. Garth is currently a full-time instructor at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, CA.

Click HERE for the publishers link to the book.

Erwin Timmers teaches about the use of recycled materials in an upcoming class at the Washington Glass School, "Recycle Your Glass" - a great class to take to see how you can become part of the Green Movement in glass! Erwin's class takes place over three nights, Nov 4, 11, 18. Click HERE to see the class info.

Saturday night, Chris and I saw Cavalia, a gorgeous horse show created by Normand Latourelle, the co-founder of the Cirque du Soleil.  It was a breathtakingly beautiful spectacle of arial dancers, horses, acrobats and performers all housed under a big top set up in Pentagon City in Arlington. 

The staging was fantastical, at different points it snowed, it rained, pools appeared and disappeared on the stage and at one point moving white horses were projected on a giant curtain of water. But the most awe inspiring part of the show were the horses themselves. 

They danced, leapt, reared and spun, all in perfect tandem with their human counterparts.  

Mary Fischer is one of my favorite artists. Her elegant, spare barn shapes appeal to me greatly. They call up memories of my childhood summers on my grandparents' tobacco farm in rural North Carolina.  I am fortunate to own one of her white barns. You can find her work at Snyderman Works Galleries in Philadelphia. To see more visit www.snyderman-works.com

Mary Fischer
The focus of my work is architecture. I look at buildings in the wild and in books. They get jumbled in my head and sorted out by my hands. The buildings started as boxes. Lids became roofs. Feet and chimneys appeared and things go on from there, changing from season to season.
There are no special techniques or attempts to disguise how pieces are put together. Surface treatments and forms change over time as different things capture my interest. The timelessness of indigenous, especially desert, architecture is an abiding influence, as is the use of concrete by contemporary architects.
The making of houses is largely intuitive, but in order to get the "right" proportions, I sometimes make paper models. It is easier and quicker to make a piece out of paper and then use the model as a pattern to cut pieces out of clay. Building with extruded pieces is like playing with Legos. The more pieces you have to play with, the more you can move things around until the right combination appears. Some works include multiple pieces that are not attached so that playing can continue, arranging and rearranging as fancy dictates.

Lovely, lovely birds on a wire glass dessert plates from my friend Nicole Puzan, a glass artist who works at Washington Glass. Nicole makes flirty, feminine work with an edge and will soon be opening a store on Etsy.

I'll take a dozen, please!

Sunday, I participated in the MPAartfest, an outdoor arts festival sponsored by the McLean Project for the Arts.

It was absolutely the best festival I have ever done, bar none!

 Staff and volunteers were just lovely ( and the homemade racing car coveralls of this gallant volunteer manning one of the golf carts just tickled me) , the provided tents were mini Cirque wonders with peaked roofs, the day was dialed up from the weather gods with perfect blue skies, food and music were top notch and the crowds were full of  educated art buyers with lots of enthusiasm and great questions.

The only problem ( and I'm not complaining!) is that I practically sold out so I need to get into the studio to make more work for the holiday open studio coming up on December 12th at FLUX!

I had the pleasure of meeting Sheep Jones today at the Torpedo Factory where she maintains a studio. 

I have long admired her gorgeous encaustic paintings with their rich depth of color and layered imagery so it was a great delight to finally meet in person. To see more of her work go to www.sheepjones.com

Opening at McLean Project for the Arts!

The opening reception for my solo show at McLean Project for the Arts was last night and 

we had a fabulous turnout! Many thanks to my friends and fellow artists who turned out on a dark and rainy night to see the show.

Also opening last night was To Tell the Tale, a narrative art exhibition featuring the works of the talented Michael Janis, Allegra Marquart and Tom Baker and an exhibition of paintings by Marise Riddell. 

Michael and Allegra each gave informative and revealing talks about their work, which I truly enjoyed. If you get a chance, go see the show. It is up until November 7 at McLean Project for the Arts.

Met again with Washington Parks and People to determine bird placement with paper models. Can't wait to see it finished!

Met with Washington Parks and People this week about their public art piece, deciding how to change the metal framework before they did the final welds. 

This piece goes by their front door to the Riverside Center in Marvin Gaye Park. I will be making ceramic birds to perch on the stylized branches.

It will definitely be a challenge to finish by the end of September but it will be rewarding to finally see it finished.

Installed solo show at MPA today and it went very well, thanks to the excellent eye of Nancy Sausser, the talented exhibitions director of MPA. Here's a teaser of the bee installation.

Finalizing work for installation tomorrow at MPA. Really happy with how the burnt wings have turned out. 

The day has finally arrived! Installation of the mural at NIH.  Thanks to the outstanding efforts of Erwin  Timmers of the Washington Glass School, Noah Armstrong, my studio mate and Nicole Puzan, a local glass artist, we were able to install in one day. Poor mural, with its tape bandages- holding the last tiles which were left out to screw the back panel into the wall. 

More to follow as it sheds its swaths of blue tape and Philip Kohn installs the camera, screen and interactive software.

Bees are finally all fired and I am now gluing tiny mounting tacks to the bellies of each one.  HOURS and HOURS of gluing tiny mounting tacks. 

I am the envy of every eighth grader right now.

Soooo, one of the things that takes so long with cutting the backing boards for the mural is that the entire mural must be removed, placed on small boards in sections, and then reassembled on the backing boards of birch plywood and all 400 pieces squared up and tightened. It must then be measured and traced then removed again. Cut and repeat all of the above. And repeat and repeat and repeat....

Nicole Puzan, who has been assisting me part time, has been a godsend. Sanding acres of wood isn't nearly so miserable with fun company, especially when she can sand faster than you!

Cutting backing boards for mural so it is in 6 manageable pieces that slot together like a puzzle piece with the tiles overlapping the seams. Tricky but I get to jigsaw crazy angles and turns, all at a 45 degree angle which has had a steep learning curve for me but has been great fun.

Who doesn't love power tools?

( Well, maybe not my studio mates, who MUST be tired of the roar of the saw and compressor by this point- sorry Laurel and Elena!)

Ah, ice cold beer after a 12 hour Saturday at the studio.....

For those of you wondering, it is a watermelon flavored microbrew at Pizza Paradisio. And yes, it tastes just like you might think- a girlie candy drink, but who can resist watermelon anything in the summer? 

Did I mention the bees?

The mural for NIH is moving along nicely. It is glazed and ready to mount, which should be a 2 week process. Especially love the dragonfly wings!

Bees, bees, bees. 

And more bees!

I've been casting bees for my upcoming solo show at McLean Project for the Arts. Can't wait to see the final installation but oh my god, what was I thinking, casting 400 bees?!

Stole Chris away from his laptop this afternoon for a few fun hours on 14th St. Ate a delicious brunch at Cafe St. Ex and saw a must see show at Smith Farm inspired by Frieda Kahlo and juried by Lenny Campello. The work was truly powerful, much of it disturbing, hauntingly beautiful and very poignant. 

My friend Elissa Farrow Savos has work in it that is just gorgeous. I was especially struck by her sculpture of a nude woman bathing in a pool of blackbirds.

Go see it before it comes down! 

Finding Beauty in a Broken World:
In the Spirit of Frida Kahlo

A mixed media exhibition juried by F. Lennox Campello

Tribute to Frida Kahlo II by Tanya Gramatikova

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Frida Kahlo remains one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, but her spectacular life experiences, writing and views on life and art have also influenced many artists. Frida always painted herself: her pain, her anguish, her sorrow, her passion, as well as her triumph over disability. Her paintings and retablos celebrate a life constantly reinventing itself, in spite of the physical disability that strove to confine it. This exhibition will showcase the work of artists influenced not only by Frida's art, but also by her biography, her thoughts, and her writings.

Exhibition Dates: July 1 - August 29

Opening Reception & Awards: Friday | July 17 | 5:30-8:00PM

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Farm Center
1632 U Street NW
Washington DC 20009
www.smithfarm.com/gallery