Recently, Steve was wondering how to hang his small works on paper for his upcoming show. I suggested archival tape hinges, floating the pieces off the wall on small wooden blocks. This, of course, leaves the question of how those small wooden blocks attach to the wall. A quick rumble through my flat files turned up a variety of methods I have used over the years to build similar blocks that I used to mount to the back of panels. I’d recommend poplar as a wood choice for this. Home Depot has little racks of nice poplar boards – they are clear-grained and light in color. It’s also a soft enough wood that it takes well to the things you need to do to it, and sands up nicely without too much effort.

The one below is great if you need the piece to be really snug against the wall and not go out of level every time a door closes, or something. I used these keyhole hangers a lot when I was making bent panel pieces that would protrude off the wall – having the ability to snug the screw up meant that the mounting block wouldn’t sag off the wall because of the leverage.

The one below is simple and cheap, but would require a two-layer block for Steve, so I don’t think it’s practical.

This one is closer. The sawtooth hanger has been hammered flat, and a square has been carved out of the block using a chisel. Not too tough, but a little labor-intensive, especially considering the number of these things I think he has.

Baby bear thinks this one is just right. Flattened sawtooth over a quick hole made with a paddle bit.

01091507
4″ X 4″
watercolor on paper

Someday, I should do a step-by-step of this. Today is not that day.

Still, here’s a close-up of the edge of a panel I am preparing:

This is 1/2″ Baltic birch plywood for the surface, and 1″X 2″ poplar for the edges. Once the panel is glued together and sanded down, I start in on the surface. I begin with several coats of matte medium to seal the surface, scraping it into the wood grain with a plastic squeegee. Then comes the gesso/matte medium mix, applied with a foam roller. I probably end up rolling on 6-10 coats per panel with the roller. Once I have sufficient white built up, I start alternating between sanding and scraping in another layer of the gesso/matte medium mixture. Eventually, this leaves me with a very smooth, absolutely white surface with the texture of vellum.

All in all, there are at least 20 coats of gesso and/or medium that go into every surface preparation, and in some cases many more. The panel pictured above is ready to go. You can see the cornice of gesso that has built up over the edge. Once the painting is complete, this cornice will be trimmed off with a small block plane, and the sides will be sanded again.

Next post: watching paint dry!

02101007
12″ X 12″
watercolor on paper

Just completed this a few days ago. The line about two-thirds down got really wonky as it bled out on the wet paper. Normally, I “fix” things like this, but this one struck me as so fluid, I just had to leave it alone. Or, to quote my daughter from another context:

“You just have to go with what the earth gives you.”

From the mouths of babes…

Below is a macro shot of the little porcelain dish I used to mix the watercolors for this painting. This particular piece was built of a blue and a brown – and the pigments settle out at different rates as the puddle dries, leaving results like this. Looking at the vibrancy on the palette, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that all that will smash down into a quiet grey. This is the magic of color mixing.

If you look closely at the piece, you can still see some of the individual pigments, even though the all-over effect is less differentiated:

This arrived in the mail today from Steven LaRose, a colleague from Ashland, Oregon. I “earned” this by responding to a question posed on his blog.

It’s a beautiful little gem, and is now in the queue for framing.

For a while in 1998 and 1999, I was dabbling with candy as a medium. Moistening certain kinds of candy will get it to stick to almost anything. For instance, the windows at Seattle Center:

01062299
gummi bears on glass
8″ X 216″

Or a gallery wall:

01120398
starburst on gallery wall
60″ x 120″

On the floor are the wrappers of the starburst. As I unwrapped and stuck them to the wall, I let the wrappers fall, creating a matched color banding at the bottom of the piece, albeit much more organic than the arrangement of the starburst themselves.

This work was silly in a way, but had something to say about process and the alteration of spaces. And – as unsophisticated as the available palettes of candy are – something to say about the use of color, too.

I’ve finally edited my “about” page, which says a little bit about why I do what I do, and a lot about what I’ve done. I’ve also added a page: “chromophile” representing my statement and some images from the last show I had at Davidson Contemporary in Seattle.

Over time, I hope to upload more pages for old shows, as well as perhaps some excerpts from reviews.