Border Wars

 "Look Ma! I'm jumpin' outside the lines!" 

(a snippet of a Jax plaque)

It's against my nature to do what I'm told. Something deep down makes me rebel against boundaries, being told what I can and can't do. I don't know...maybe it's because I prefer to do things my own way, or it could be that I want to win my own triumphs and make my own mistakes on my own terms. Doesn't mean I can't take orders if I'm inspired to follow, but most of the time I dance to my own drum. Then again it could be that, as my husband lovingly observes, I'm just a brat. 

But being a brat isn't always compatible with art, especially when it comes to standardized formats. If you're familiar with my previous bas-relief work it's clear I don't like to sculpt "inside the lines." To me the boundaries of the edging shape are meant to be toyed with playfully, being a suggestion rather than the rule. This not only results in a better design, but it opens up design possibilities otherwise unattainable. So if a wisp of mane, twitch of an ear or a flick of a fetlock need to pop out more -- no problemo! Just do it.

But this idea cannot be applied to tile cutters. These things are designed in specific, industry-standard shapes and used to cut the clay slab into pre-sized portions for tile pressing, just like a giant, spring-loaded cookie cutter. 

Here are some of my trusty tile cutters to give you an idea of what I mean by "cookie cutter." While they're worth their weight in gold in terms of handiness, they do force a limitation on design. The trick is to interpret the limitation as a positive -- because in the long-run, it is.

Now I could sidestep this issue altogether and slip-cast everything, but the problem is time. Tile pressing is faster and less labor intensive whereas slip-casting requires quite a bit of baby-sitting and delay during the casting process, plus the cleaning up of mold seams. If I want to keep my gift ware affordable and keep the process easy enough to maintain inventory (and evidently the ease of tile pressing is a challenge even with that this year), I'm forced to rip down the time required to finish a single item. The less time my hands are on it, the more affordable I can make it and the more of them I can make, but that cannot be achieved with slip-casting when I'm the only one doing all the steps.

I think this is the #1 mistake artists make when trying to make a living at art: they don't understand that their time is everything. It's all they have. Every moment of every day is an essential building block to success, and no amount of talent, drive, or business savvy can compensate for misused time. The moment an artist doesn't treat her time like a finite resource is the moment she's out of business. Making a living at art isn't only a passion -- it's a discipline.

What this also means is that thinking beyond the boundaries of a project is beneficial more often than not. Many years back, I took a workshop with Veryl Goodnight (with my buddy Lynn, a trusty workshop-mate), an artist I greatly admire. In her gentle shrewdness Veryl conveyed to us lessons perhaps more important than those imparted about sculpting, one of them being: maximize your time use. You spent time, skill and energy creating that one piece -- so is that where it stops? No! Rethink, reuse, reapply! Whatever other application that piece can be adapted to is in your best interest. It can get your work into more hands, it can open up new opportunities and partnerships, and it can ensure greater financial gain to allow you to continue to create art for a living.

All these years later I still remember this smart sense and have begun applying it to my gift ware and collectibles in earnest. By maximizing the possibilities for a single bas-relief or stamped tile design, I'm essentially maxing out every minute and iota of energy I put into creating it in the first place. I'm literally completing multiple pieces at once. 

So...back to bas-relief and boundaries. The rub with tile cutters is their fixed shapes which don't allow for all those fun pointy-out bits outside the "parent shape." Rubbing salt into the wound, installations and all tile accoutrements are manufactured along those standard shapes so unless I want to spend a mint on commissioning custom-made tile accessories (with an accompanying lofty retail price), I'm stuck with the limited dimensions of the cutters. Like a stinging game of dodgeball, I have to stay inside the circle...or square, or rectangle. Oh snap!

 

 Here's my Feral Mare medallion in cold-painted resin (top), my Reflective plaque in glazed slip-cast earthenware (middle), and one of my new CubequinesTM in original oil clay (bottom). These pieces demonstrate what I mean by "sculpting outside the lines" with design portions that pop out beyond the oval, circle or square, respectively.

This reality makes me chomp on the bit like a snarfly pony. Poofy-haired and pudgey and oh-so irritated. It's also immensely difficult design-wise. For me to create a design that plays nice within the lines can take almost twice as long as one that doesn't simply because I don't have the cheat of busting through the boundary.

This border war may not seem like a big deal, but when it comes to bas-relief or stamp design, it's pivotal. What makes this art form so intriguing is its unique blend of sculpture and flatwork. It's basically a 3D painting. As such, it's best approached as a painting (for bas-relief) or graphic design (for a stamp) rather than as a sculpture.

So actively employing concepts about composition, positive or negative space, narrative and line so fundamental to flatwork really help. Indeed, they can make or break a piece. No amount of technical finesse, popularity of subject matter, or novelty of an idea can make up for compositional errors, just like with flatwork. In short, a horse head on a flat background with lots of empty space isn't the way to approach it. Bas-relief isn't about the subject, it's about the design.

And when it comes to the design, the outer border, or shape, determines what you can and can't do with the piece in future applications; it dictates the versatility of the piece and mandates production methods. So if I want to invest my time most efficiently, which is imperative with this kind of work, I need to create a shape that has the most potential, able to be applied to all kinds of casting and projects. In other words: I have to do what I'm told -- I gotta sculpt within the lines. Argh! Leave it to clay to put me in my place. 

The reason I bring this up now is because of two new Unicorn bas-relief tiles I'm working on, a matched pair with a moon and sun motif...

Here's the first incarnation of the moon design (very roughed out), with all the sticky-outy parts so typical of my approach. I really liked this draft. A lot. Then Veryl's words rang in my head. I realized this design would force me away from tile pressing, the very thing that was my primary intention for this set. I had to bite the bullet and redo it to fit into the 4.5" circle dictated by my circle tile cutter.

Voila. Here's the retweaked design (still very roughed out). I wanted to make the Unicorn as large as possible while avoiding "kissed" borders or gobs of empty space. The way I got around that was to add another circle, in this case a border, to let me poke parts out while still remaining inside the parent circle. So I got to lob some teaser shells at the boundary while still playing nice. "Does this bug you? I'm not touching you!" And, ultimately, this is a stronger design and far more versatile. I figure the Unicorn has universal appeal, so it would be unwise to limit its potential simply because of design.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll document the completion of these two designs in oil clay as well as their pressed ceramic production, plus how I adapt them to different projects. Along with stoneware and earthenware, me thinks porcelain is a definite must. But they're also destined for resin casting and perhaps metal later on. Most of all, I've got my eye keenly fixed Glasclay. Can you imagine these in glass?! Swoon! And all thanks to embracing boundaries.

Now all this doesn't mean that I'll be creating bas-reliefs only in these standards shapes from now on. Only selected ones. I have a workaround for the odd balls, and one I'm quite excited about. But I'll leave that for a future blog post when I actually implement it. The beauty of this workaround though is that it allows me to adapt any shape to any standard tile accessory, but since it requires an investment of more time, resources and energy at the back end of production, it's ideal only for specialty items. Anyway...back to the work bench!

"And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so." ~ A.B. Yehoshua

Border Wars

Thinking Inside The Box

Earlier this year I started a new project I'd been contemplating for some time, and just finished the first batch. My Dancing HorseTM tiles are immensely popular, and I'm expanding on the designs to offer more variety. I'm slowly developing my Christmas ornament series, too, along with various other projects to offer more diversity on my Etsy shelves. But I've been wanting to offer goodies that are more technically realistic, more in line with what my regular customers collect. 

However, any such pieces had to be collectible, affordable, versatile and, above all, easily produced to keep up a steady inventory. That last bit is the sticky part. Realistic work is labor and time intensive, so it took some cogitation to come up with an idea that fit all those parameters. So ta da - introducing CubequinesTM!

Each piece represents a different breed, and they're all based on a 2.5" square -- the "cube." These are the first ten, and every year I'll come out with five new breeds. Their breed is inscribed on the side, but I haven't shown that because the letters need a lot of clean up in the waste castings.

They'll be produced in colored resin, maybe with opalescent finishes, and have magnets attached to their backs, making them functional art (something I have a particular weakness for). But I'm still debating on whether to sell them individually or as sets, and a lot of that depends on my cart options in Etsy. I'm also mulling over the run date of each design, but I think ultimately I'll feel my way with this series and keep my mind open. 

But being versatile designs, I plan to gussy some up in different ways and sell those as specialty items. Cold-painters are welcomed to paint them realistic colors, too, opening up new options. So overall, this series serves as a continuous outlet for my bas-relief collectors while also providing fun introductory offerings to new customers within the Etsy venue.

Now the reason for the 2.5" cube was because that's the size of my smallest clay slab cutter. The original idea was to contain the design neatly in those dimensions, allowing me to create pressed clay versions, too. But as my creative urges tend to do, I "colored outside the lines"! 

As for mud, it's conceivable I could make slipcast molds of each piece for slipcasting. The designs would have to be retooled to remove the deep undercuts and other features that aren't compatible with a rigid plaster mold (easily done with the waste castings), but that will have to wait a little bit. That kind of production is time and labor intensive, comparatively speaking, defeating their initial purpose a bit, but I definitely want to explore this option to create specialty items. Me thinks porcelain in particular is quite tempting! One ceramic option I definitely want to try is seating a couple of these pieces onto a 4x4" tile, tweaking the design a bit, and making a mold of that to open up options for installations and tile paraphernalia.

Another kind of clay these designs beg for is metal clay. I have big plans for a jewelry line in my Etsy store, and a PMC kiln is on my "must have" list for 2012. The cool thing about metal clay is that I can use its shrink rates to shrink down these 2.5" designs into more jewelry-friendly versions with relative ease. Once I have those smaller versions, I can make press molds and be off and running with collectible jewelry bobbles. I plan to sell them as separates to jewelry makers and beaders, sorta like collectible beads. I also plan to apply the same strategy to all my stamped clay tile designs!

Anyway, interestingly enough, the Quarter Horse, Andalusian, Clydesdale and Ardennes started out as generic versions, such as "stock horse," "iberian," and "drafter." But I thought to myself that if each cube was to be a different breed, why not leave the door open to sculpt them all? I'm glad I caught myself with this thought because now I won't have to worry about running out of subject matter. Though it will prove interesting when I get to color-based breeds, such as the Paint horse and Appaloosa! 

This series is a good opportunity to showcase rare or endangered breeds, too, such as Marsh Tackies, Abaco Barbs and Cleveland Bays. I also plan to expand the series into all equine species and hybrids, and I'm really looking forward to creating them. Kulans, Tahki and Hinnies, oh my! 

On top of that, I graduated from UCSC with a degree in Environmental Studies and I've long been wanting to combine that training with my art to help along those efforts, since I'm shamefully not using my degree now! Unfortunately just about all wild equids are on the Endangered Species Red List today, such as Mountain Zebras, Takh, Grevy's Zebras, Somali Wild Asses, etc. If it's not a caballine, it's probably endangered -- not cool in my book! Fortunately, I can use this series to aid their plight with some partnered projects and I'm really looking forward to that.

Another fun thing about this project was the "overview stage" in which I weighed each against the other when they were all roughed out. Altogether, they have to be a collection, be coherent as a group, and not just a pile of different ideas with a 2.5" constant. So I ended up retweaking a few of the pieces, such as the Andalusian, Morgan, Clydesdale, and Quarter Horse, to give them just a bit more oomphf to synch better with their brethren. 

They'll be cast by Bear Cast LLC, and I hope to deliver these first ten to Barry next week. I'll clean up the resultant waste castings and then he'll make the production molds and off we'll go! It's going to be so fun picking out the colors for the resin and I know that teal, purple, green and gold are definitely on the list! 

I'm so excited about this project, and I can't wait to get started on the five for 2012! But first, I have Christmas to contend with and sculptures to finish. In particular, that sproinging Arabian mare is definitely staring at me. I've slated her to be my first piece in bronze, so the faster I finish her, the faster I can start that leg of my journey. So much to do! So many ideas! That's a very good feeling.

 

"It is in rhythm that design and life meet." ~ Philip Rawson

Thinking Inside The Box

All You Need Is Love

I've been working like crazy lately, trying to get caught up in my schedule from the chaos that happened earlier this year. Sandwiched in this mad scramble is the 2011 porcelain Christmas ornament, the second in the series started last year. As I promised myself, I would get this project started much earlier and it looks like I'm on schedule in that department.

I knew immediately after I finished the 2010 ornament what this year's would be: a Friesian with stars as a motif and "love" as the theme. This piece will be pressed in black porcelain, something I'm really excited about. I've fallen in love with this stuff and a black version is just too tempting, both as a new thing to try and as something appropriate for the all-black Friesian. I think a purple ribbon would top it off beautifully and add spice to a Christmas tree with colors a little different from typical holiday fare.

But as I worked on this piece, I began to realize just how apropos the theme really was, at least for me. If anything could sum up what held this year together in my world, it would be Love. 

My father's accident was a frightening and stressful time, but we held it together through Love. My friend's battle with cancer has been alternately worrisome and triumphant, and Lynn's adventure has been held together by Love. My husband is having a blast at his new job, developing that funktionslust that I have for my own own work, perhaps even more in Love with technology than ever before (and I didn't think that was possible). My buddies Laurie, Kay and Stephani lovingly came to Boise for my birthday because they knew I didn't want to leave my parents just now (and showed me a great time!). My sister in law, Megan, completed another AIDS LifeCycle ride, pedaling her Love into dollars for AIDS research. My friend Lesli started a book series on her passion, horse color, an exciting prospect for my book shelves! Even Dante is a reflection on Love. And in fact, this 2011 ornament was inspired by my friend, Kathy, and her wonderful relationship with her Friesian gelding, Nylis. 

And there are so many more examples of how Love of something or someone has carried us through difficult times, or compelled us to reach for new heights and experiences this year...I would run out of space listing them all. How has Love worked in your life in 2011?

I believe The Beatles were right. Love of something, someone, anything to carry us forward and tie us together, reminding us of the things that really matter. So I give to you the 2011 Christmas Ornament, #2:

Original clay. I hope to make the plaster molds next week, and then start pressing late September! If all goes well, they'll be available in my Etsy store, hopefully by October.

"Love gives light even in the darkest tunnel." ~ Anonymous

All You Need Is Love