Studio news and other happenings

I have been very busy over the last little while and I thought that I had better bring you up to speed as it were.

I did mention in this previous post at the very end that I had been accepted into the wonderful Hallowe'en and Vine show in Petaluma, California.

Here is what my page looks like in the preview of the artists.

Black Cat is rolling his eyes, mentioning under his breath that he did TRY to be my moral compass. He is thoroughly disgusted with my "Blatant bragging self promotion", his words not mine. I can't help it, I am very excited to be included with all of these fine artists. Some of these people have become online friends and I am very excited to meet them in person.

I have been working on various pieces for the H&V show. I have nothing to show for it yet. I don't work on one piece at a time. The moulds are just about finished, there are floors that I am working on, a chaise lounge, the tin of lima beans is almost finished, and the list goes on. All of these assorted goodies will start to come together in finished pieces. I will post some of them as they are completed.

I did take a break in the midst of all of this to make seven hair ornaments for the bridesmaids and one for the bride, our daughter-in-law-to-be, Nicole. Nicole had mentioned that she was looking at some at a local hat shop. I found out that they are called fascinators. When our daughter was getting married I helped her to put hers together. I wanted to bless my future daughter-in-law, I figure I saved her about $800.00 to $900.00.

I will have the wedding photographer photograph each of the bridesmaids and the bride and do a post about them so that you can see them being worn and not just looking like a clump of feathers.

I had no idea what those hair decorations were called at the time when I made the hat for this candy container ornament, "Edna came as a Paris runway model". I find couture millinery very fascinating, it is just another part of the area of costume that is wearable fine art.

I am going to be making a series of hats for elegant JOL ladies. The hats will be modeled by the proprietors of the "Jollity Village Hat Shop" and their friends.

I am still producing displays for the Hillside Shopping Centre. Michele Paget is in charge of marketing for the shopping centre, she is a pleasure to work with. The window display above was done for the Body Shop. I will get pictures of the big Spring window and post them in the near future.

I have not done any work for the EHAG Emporium at all this year. I may do a few pieces in the upcoming months, we shall see. It all depends on how busy I am.

Well that about does it. This is a very eclectic posting. I wanted to bring everyone up to date with all that is going on both in the studio and elsewhere. I will try to be a bit more consistent with my blog posts. Thank-you everyone for taking time from your busy day to read my posts, it is very much appreciated.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 Happy Saint Patrick's Day 

 everyone! 

Here are a few images from books in my Saint Patrick's Day collection to get you in the mood.

This is a page from the "Children's Party Book" published in 1935 for a Saint Patrick's Day party.

Dennison produced booklets to promote their products. This page for Saint Patrick's Day appears in the promotional booklet "Dennison Crepe Paper Almanac 1913". The booklet doesn't give instructions on how to make the decorations, it is strictly for promotional purposes.

And finally, here is a recipe for "Soda Bread" that I got from a woman in Ireland when I was there many years ago. Bake up a batch, have a cup of tea, and enjoy yourself.

 "Irish Soda Bread" 

4 cups wholewheat flour

2 cups white flour (I use 6 cups of wholewheat flour)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda (Break up the soda in your hand to get rid of any lumps.)

1 teaspoon salt

Mix the dry ingredient with a balloon whisk in a large bowl.

Add enough buttermilk or sour milk (I use buttermilk) so that the mixture is not too dry or too wet. There is no need to knead the dough just form it into a ball. You can either make one large loaf or cut it in half and make two smaller loaves. Form them into balls and coat with flour. Place on a baking sheet and press the dough into a flat disk about 2 1/2" thick. Cut the surface with three or four intersecting cuts. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until the loaf sounds hollow when rapped with your knuckle on the bottom of the loaf.

That's all there is to it! It takes about 1 1/4 hours to mix and bake some of the best quick bread that you have ever tasted.

General Salvage at Jacklin Trading Post

Remember this photograph from my last post, well here is my tour of General Salvage as promised.

What can I say, I love General Salvage. There is so much in this place to look at. When I go there I try to keep an open mind, forget what the items are used for because anything can be turned into something else. Before I forget, General Salvage is in the basement of Jacklin Trading Post. The upstairs is crammed with antiques. If you plan to visit, spend an entire day or do it over several days so that you don't go into overload shock mode!

I must apologize for some of the out of focus photos. I have tried to bring them into focus as much as possible with my image editor program but a bad photo is just a bad photo.

There are small alcoves that have items for specific needs. This alcove has vintage and antique plumbing fixtures and bathroom accessories.

The variety of lamp fixtures is amazing. Once the fellow wouldn't sell me an embossed die-cut brass ring for holding a glass oil lamp shade because I said that I was going to cut it apart to be used in some of my sculptural pieces, evidently they are hard to find. I appreciate that very much, I have some items that I just cannot cannibalize for that reason.

This aisle is a real treat to browse through. On the right side of the picture are metal parts from vintage and antique lamps to be reassembled into your own creation. Some of those lamp parts are from gas lighting fixtures. There are cabinets with thin sliding trays that are filled with hinges and anything else that you may or may not be looking for.

On the top shelf there are glass panels from damaged glass lamp shades, pastel frosted glass boudoir shades and Art Deco wall sconce shades. The middle shelf has all kinds of vintage lamp base parts.

This area has banister spindles and salvaged pieces from broken chairs. On the right hand side of this photo you can see some of those thin drawers that I mentioned earlier, filled with all kinds of treasures. There are lots of cabinets and drawers filled with treasures all around the shop.

Here is a sample of antique door hardware. The etched designs on some of the old brass plates are quite beautiful.

Here is another very old showcase filled with vintage glass door knobs, metal door knobs and a wide variety door hard ware. Some of the hardware could be framed and treated as art work.

More glass shades and wall sconces as well as the metal bases for attaching the sconces to the wall. He has several glass cabinets filled with antique glass shades.

I don't go into this area very much, it is mainly electrical parts. My son and I found a porcelain light bulb socket and a button light switch that he used to turn a brass light cage into a table lamp. I want that table lamp, he did a beautiful job.

This photograph of a portion of the kitchen/household area has antique crockery, pastry molds and old scales. There are boxes and baskets of items to browse through.

Here is another view of the kitchen/household area. The shelves on the wall have old bottles and tins of all sorts.

This old fireplace would be quite wonderful in a very contemporary shop. He has fireplace fenders, fireplace tongs, brushes and shovels of all sorts.

There are tins, boxes, baskets, bottles and... stuff. The place is crammed with lots of very interesting STUFF!

The bedroom/boudoir area has side tables, bed frames, lamps, and chairs of all sorts. I think that I have said "of all sorts", "treasures", and "stuff" or something very similar quite a lot in this post. There is another area with disassembled metal bed frames in the shop.

Now we are going out the back door and up the back walk to the less valuable and more weather proof merchandise.

If you are interested in recreating a 1920's garden there is some galvanized wire fencing just behind that wood stove insert. He has door frames, window frames with most of the glass in them, and a few farm implements.

Inside the big arched tent like structure are doors and banister parts, and some interesting hanging lamps.

This section shows the variety of sinks, bathtubs, and faucets available.

Here are more sinks, some medicine cabinets, mirrors, and farther down windows that are in better repair than the ones outside.

Rows of assorted solid wood doors all minus there hardware, you can purchase that inside.

There are shelves of assorted vintage and not so vintage glass lamp shades.

This last picture of the tented area shows assorted tools, windows, and even some old crates down at the very end.

The upstairs shop called "Memories" as I said has antiques but the downstairs is filled the bits and pieces of daily living from bygone eras. I go there fairly often and love every minute of it.

I have been busy in the studio.

I had promised to show you what has been going on in the studio, so here we go.

Quite a few of these items I have picked up at General Salvage, one of my all-time favourite stores in town. I will do a post about it in the near future with lots of pictures so that you can see why I like it so much. The brass picture frames I picked up at Salvation Army. This lot will be turned into parade lanterns, rattles and sculptures.

What looks like a tin can is a piece in progress, Debra Schoch of "HopHopJingleBoo" included this label as well as a bunch of other delights in a contest give-away that I won last year - Thank-you again Debra. It is wrapped around a cardboard cylinder and by the time it is finished will look like a real tin of lima beans.

Here are those treat buckets that I was working on. Twelve new heads, some are pumpkinish but most of them are based on squash and gourds. The moulds are ready to be taken off of the clay heads and then I can cast, paint and assemble all kinds of delights.

I thought that I would show you how I approach the sculpting of the heads whether they are large or small. First and foremost they are vegetables that just happen to be alive, so I always sculpt a realistic vegetable first. I have various books that I use for reference, so with a quick look or a bit of a study I sculpt the veggy form.

Once the vegetable has been sculpted I turn it around to find the side that the face looks the best on. Large lumps of clay are placed on the veggie for the features. They are then smoothed out, refined, all the while adding more clay as needed to build the face to its completion.

This is what I finally ended up with for this squash. I have other large heads that are ready to be turned into moulds but you will have to wait and see what I come up with for the finished pieces.

This year I will only be focusing on Hallowe'en sculptures. I am fairly busy doing window displays for the shopping centre. Sometimes I have a nice large block of time to work in the studio then all of a sudden I have a display job that cuts into studio time, this happens with freelance work and it is not a complaint. I need a lot of finished pieces for September. It will be easier to focus on one holiday and have the work ready in time without losing my mind.

Why do I have to have so much work ready for September, you may ask. I will be seeing a lot of my on-line friends in Petaluma, California at Hallowe'en and Vine. I have been accepted, WHOOPEE!!!

Well, I had better get back to work. 

More snow pictures.

I realize that there are a lot of people out there that really don't want to see any more snow pictures but it is such a novelty in Victoria that I am going to indulge myself. On the isIand we don't get 6 months of snow. A bad winter is more than two weeks of snow all totaled and for that reason I can honestly say I love it!

I took these two pictures yesterday when we walked to the mall. It looks like we are out in the wilderness but this stream is tucked between the residential area and a major road.

There is a wooden bridge to cross over it. I photographed the stream from both sides of the bridge. This stream is so beautiful during the different seasons. When we walk to the mall we usually stop to have a look at it.

I will do a post tomorrow about some of the items that I have been working on.

We have snow!

I thought that I had better do a post just so that no one thought that I was lying comatose on the ground sucking jujubes with my hands twitching at my sides full of licorice ropes, toffees, and chocolate covered coffee beans.

There was only supposed to be about 3" or 4" of snow yesterday...

...but we ended up with over 30cm/12"! There was supposed to be another 25cm/10" coming last night but it didn't arrive. It is supposed to snow today so we shall see. Tomorrow I believe it is all to turn to rain and start to disappear.

(I spray painted four columns for a party last year and liked them in the garden so much that I left them there. There used to be a tall bright yellow column beside the watermelon pink column - top picture - but it is now in the Spring window display at Hillside Shopping Centre.)

I will do an update tomorrow about some of the things that are going on in the studio.