CARPETS

The carpet-ground shall be with leaves o'erspread,
And boughs shall weave a cov'ring for your head.

Virgil, The Pastorals  (translated by Dryden)


Years ago a friend asked me how to start decorating her home.  It was the first time I ever really thought about it as my life has been based on recombining the things I already own.  But, when I had to say something about what is important in a room I was quite certain it was the carpet first.  Every room I have ever admired in a shelter magazine has hardwood floors and a beautiful oriental carpet.  (I am not considering art in this category as I don't consider it decoration.)



The chair for Luca Ghini, sitting on top of the Herbarium, had less presence without a carpet under it.  His rug is the wonderful kind of fabric that changes color when it moves.  In this case it is a combination of  green and orange.
The theme had to be botanical so it is covered with leaves and grass and a red poppy button.  Many things are sewn onto the rug but other things are mobile and can be rearranged so it never gets boring.

There is a feather rug in the first Bird Temple in the room and there will be other carpets for the floors in upcoming temples.

The most recent rug is a pochoir (stencil print) called Forest Carpet, created for a portfolio assembled by the Muskegon Museum.  I have not done many prints since I graduated with a master's degree in printmaking and it was something of a struggle to accomplish a work I was happy with.  First was a woodcut which didn't work.  Then there were three or four designs for pochoirs based on other completed drawings and that didn't work.  Finally, while driving the car, a regular incubator for ideas, I decided on a new image that would be put together the way I do my drawings, one thing at a time.  It is not the normal way to do a print but it is the way I am most comfortable working.  The basic composition is a stencil built of dried ferns, then sprayed with acrylic paint.  Grasses were added as fringe on the ends.  One stick, 2 butterflies, vines, and numerous leaves were added till the image looked right.  It was an interesting experience and one that may lead to doing pochoir images in future books.

GUEST BOOK

"Any questions or compliments?"

Mona Weisser (Age 8, upon finishing the reading of her paper at the Fernwood Montessori School Science Fair.  May 2012)



I have always regretted not keeping a diary but it is not within my talents.  Recently I rediscovered and read a book Donella Vogel made of Email letters I wrote to her in 1998.  When she gave me the present I was pleased but now I am thrilled to have it.  It is amazing  how many noteworthy things happened that year.  I would never be able to reconstruct those events at this point.  The reason for this blog is to keep  notes on the construction of the different aspects of the installation before I forget them.  Once I have finished a project and I am on to the next one, I shed old information promptly.

I wish I had kept a record of the people who have already visited the Cabinet because that too will get mixed up or forgotten.

During the latest cleaning and reorganization of my studio, I found a shabby old ledger from our early days in business when my father set up and monitored our bookkeeping.  That was well before average people were using computers for accounting. That book has morphed into a Guest Book for the Cabinet.  The outside and inside of the two covers are now decorated with collages.  In keeping with my idea of using what is available in my house as much as possible, the images come from over-run pages from my books, bits of old projects and papers in storage.

The original ledger paper will act as sign-in pages for guests.

I am proposing three different types of entries for future guests to choose from.
The first and simplest is a signature with a date - comments if the person wants to are fine but not required.
The second option is to sign and also draw something in the book or send something back to paste into the book such as a poem or picture.
The third and perhaps final option is for the person to take over a whole page to draw, write or paste on.  That paper might be a plain sheet if the person doesn't want their work to be mingling with ledger lines.  It can be taken away and sent back.  I am not good at creating under pressure or watchful eyes and understand if others have that same problem.  Since it is a ledger it can be opened and paper rearranged as needed.



Viewing of the cabinet is by invitation or can be arranged upon request.   There will be open house days arranged in the future.

SEED MAN

SEE \ DY. adj. [from seed.] Abounding with seed.

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

On the "List of the Unexpected" Dr. Arno Klein's masthead for his website (www.binarybottle.com) must rank somewhere.  It is a line-up of head shots of 11 years of his Halloween costumes.  These, coupled with his work labeling the human brain, make an odd but not disturbing combination.

The costume that I am concerned with is that of Seed Man - a far more benign looking persona than Dog Food Man. With the help of his costumiere, Deepanjana, Arno was topped with a hat of acorn caps, seeds were glued to his face, and a garland of acorn caps was strung around his neck.
I have admired this portrait for several years and decided to add it to my Herbarium wall between Green Man and Moss Covered Me.  Normally I don't work from photographs but in this case I had no choice. When the drawing was almost complete I came to the opinion that it looked like the photo but somehow had gone boring.  After pondering the problem I realized my only hope for rescuing the image might be to paste seeds on part of it.

The combination I use of watercolor and color pencil is confusing to many viewers who can't identify the medium.  This work takes the problem a step farther by combining the real with the unreal yet blending them so that at a slight distance everything appears unified.

The frame for this drawing is from the collection of my cousin Carol's husband, Lee.  In the four corners I glued glass acorns which have real acorn tops - another unexpected combination.

BIRD TEMPLE #1

The average weight of a hen's egg is 2 ounces.  The shell weighs on an average 12% of the total weight of the egg and is made of a calcareous, porous substance, pervious to air, water and smells.

The vitellus, or egg yolk of the egg (30% of the total weight), is an opaque, soft substance which congeals in the heat.

Larousse Gastronomique, first American edition (1961)

I have read and re-read The Birds by Aristophanes.  Things are lurking there that continue to intrigue me.  I have copied out all of the songs the birds sing and assembled them into something that looks like a poem.  I have noted the species of birds referred to on another list, with no particular purpose in mind.  I have extracted pages of quotes describing the creation of the world and the importance of birds.

The birds build a city in the air between the earth and heaven, thereby interrupting transmission of the sacrifices humans are making to the gods, which gains them great power.  The text does not describe temples in the city but I assume they are there - Greek temple bird houses.

For me actually building temples would mean learning a new skill set that includes machinery for which I have no room. When I saw my first vintage clock case without a clock I knew it was the answer. There was the perfect size dwelling with a round entryway.  Ebay is full of them!  Often they already have columns, like a proper temple.  Cases without clocks are basically sold for parts and if they are not in great shape they can be very inexpensive.

The decor of the first temple was inspired by the ancient Vietnamese technique of veneering surfaces with egg shells.  What could be more appropriate?  In the 1920's and 30's, when labor was cheaper, eggshell veneers, Coquilles d'Oeuf, were applied to all manner of objects. 
It is not difficult,  just tedious : collect eggshells, remove their interior membranes, let them dry, crush them and, in this case, paste the chards directly to the gessoed surface of a clock case.

When the surface was covered it was left to dry throughly, sanded, varnished and lightly sanded again.  The effect is like craquelure on an oil painting.

The inside of the case became an egg yolk with drawings of molecules of some of its components: oleic acid, phosolipid, vitamins A, D and E, cholesterol, Palmitic Acid, xanthophyll and  protein.




White feathers sewn to a piece of felted material act as a rug for the floor and a cushion for 3 tiny nests.  One nest was found on a street in Ann Arbor by Hetsy Slote and another was abandoned by a phoebe on the property of Megan Parry in New York State.  The third has been around so long its history has faded.

When the temple finds its home in the room it will probably be on top of one of the bird cabinets that are in progress.  It may demand additional work at that time.  For now it is awaiting a resident or three.

MY MOTHER'S PILLOW

The proper order of things is often a mystery to me.  You, too?

The Cheshire Cat (as quoted by Lewis Carroll)

The contents of my cabinet fall into different categories.
Beyond my making drawings and books, the room has acted as a magnet for so many of the possessions I have acquired over my lifetime. I am regularly surprised to find something more, unrecognized,  lurking on a shelf or in a drawer, that belongs there.

Other elements being added are objects created by artists whose work I admire.

Another category is the representation of people who are important to me for personal reasons - for instance, the drawing of my father as the Green Man.

My mother's contribution turns out to be a pillow she did in needlepoint which I inherited and put in our living room on a chair.  The image of a cat is particularly appealing.  It was made from a kit so it is not original to her but the time she spent and the pleasure she got from making it were unique to her.  Whenever I look at it I remember when it sat on her couch and I can go back in time to the house she loved.  Recently that pillow migrated from my living room to sit on a chair in the cabinet where it now lives with the birds in a peaceable kingdom.

POTATOES

MASHED POTATOES LUXEMBOURGEOISE
Mash potatoes in butter, and red wine instead of milk.

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, 1954

My fourth, and perhaps final, cook book for the Herbarium goes underground:  The dusty potato, native of the Andes, is paired with elegant examples of marbleized paper.  As an element in cooking there are few more universal foods.  Included are recipes from Peru, Brazil, India, Belgium, England and the United States.

FURNITURE

Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.

Fran Lebowitz

There are rare moments in life when a problem is solved with less effort than predicted.
Wandering around Haberman's Fabrics in Royal Oak, on a completely different mission, I found myself faced with the perfect fabric for the chairs in the cabinet room.  It was so amazing that I was actually reluctant to buy it and took home a small sample to ponder. It seemed too easy.  Luckily when I came to my senses and rushed back it was still there.  Of course only 15 minutes had elapsed since I left the store.