Adding the Details to A Deeper Sense

By now (in mid-January), the Deeper Sense art exhibit at the Paul Smith's College VIC has been open for more than a month. Its accompanying research presentations are completed and many of the Paul Smith's College student researchers have graduated and launched into the larger world. 

My own art for this show, Standing in the Stream, will be submitted soon for a juried exhibit. For that reason, I won't show the finished work here yet, but I will finish its story.

Above are some of the photos I took at the Smitty Creek watershed as well as a map scan, transformed into sepia images and printed over the textured stabilizer that was painted with acrylic washes.

The strips of text above were printed on sheer silk organza, lines by Robin Wall Kimmerer from her essay "Interview with a Watershed," published on  the website Ecological Reflections:An Archive of Art and Science Collaborative Efforts. Her writing expresses much of what I had to say about the relationship in this project between the science and the art, and Robin allowed me to use some of her poetic words in this piece. I'm very grateful to her.

 Here is some data from the project and an antique map of the study site, all also printed on silk organza. My friend David Casey adjusted the graph into a more useful form for me. Thanks to him as well.

In the photo above, I have started applying the printed maps and data to the eco printed silk panels, along with strips of hand-dyed silk in shades of blue that represent the importance of water as the basis of the ecosystem studied in this research project.

The images printed on the textured stabilizer were stitched to a central narrow panel of cotton. All three sections of the piece were hung from one curved stick that had been peeled by beavers, an animal that dramatically alters this landscape over long periods of time.

My next post will take you to the opening!

A Deeper Sense - Doing the Work

For a few weeks, I've been getting the parts of my mixed media interpretation of the Smitty Creek watershed project together. The botanical contact printed silk panels have been hanging on my design wall, as I added bits of blue fabric to signify the important of the water component in this ecosystem.

The next component was the textured background on which I wanted to print my photographs and other images. I used a non-woven synthetic fabric stabilizer (also know as interfacing), on which I spread fiber paste, an acrylic product that contains small fibers that create a stable texture when dry. I have to be careful to lay on a thin layer so the resulting material will be accepted by my inkjet printer. (Sometimes I use molding paste instead of fiber paste.) When the paste was completely dry, I sanded it thoroughly to remove any small peaks and extra rough areas.

The next step was the application of thin washes of acrylic paint to the stabilizer. For this piece, I used both medium brown and blue-grey paints. I accidentally applied more paint than was compatible with my need to have my photos show up fairly well, so I rinsed parts of it under running water in my big studio sink before the paint dried.

More to come - LOTS more!

Getting to the Deeper Sense

For me, making art based on a particular place is a long, slow, thoughtful, enjoyable process.  I often bring objects back to the studio to think about and to work with. When I visited the Smitty Creek Watershed in October, I collected plants, along with photographs and notes made while listening to the Paul Smith's College students and faculty about the research going on there. I also do a fair amount of research, exploring related scientific literature and other writings, maps, and images.  

The plants I collected were frozen until I had was ready to begin the work. I decided to make a couple of eco prints with them, a process of wrapping the leaves tightly in fabric or paper and then processing them with heat.

I dipped each leaf in a dilute ferrous sulfate and water solution to deepen the tones of the plant pigments. A few old iron and copper nails were wrapped in the bundles as well, to add some marks representing the human influence on the landscape. The leaves were laid out on two silk panels, then wrapped tightly around pieces of pvc pipe and secured with string.

The silk, metal, and leaf bundles were then simmered in hot water for about two hours to set the leaf pigments and the nail marks on the fabric.

Above is one of the silk panels, now permanently printed with the leaves and nails, as well as with the long linear resist marks made by the string wrapped around the bundles during the heat processing. Below is a detail of the print, showing evidence of spruce, fern, red maple, aspen, and black cherry leaves.

Next, I will add maps, data, photographs, and words. Check back here to see how I do that in my next Deeper Sense post.

A Deeper Sense: Looking at Place with Science and Art

 This photo is from one of several field trips that have already taken place this semester with Craig Milewski's Stream Ecology class, a course for senior Paul Smith's College students working on final projects before graduation - called Capstone Projects at this college. As a scientist and a poet, Craig encourages his students to do high quality field research and to also think about this final project as an opportunity to interpret their work artistically, through visual, written, or musical arts. And he again has invited several area artists to join in to produce artworks that interpret the project in some way. The students' final presentations and art will be presented to the college community and the public, along the artwork of the lucky professional artists invited to join in.

(The first of these art-and-science projects in which I participated took place in Spring 2012. See my blog posts from March through April 2012 for my process that time. And here are images of three of the five final works, which I now realize I did not post!)

 

This new project - "A Deeper Sense" - focuses on a forested watershed not far from the Paul Smith's College campus where research has taken place for about 12 years. Questions about the role of stream channel disturbance after 2 consecutive hurricanes with heavy rains are being investigated, among other issues.

As I prepare my art work focused on this project you can follow my process on this blog. I'll post on my main page, and you can also find the whole project on my page "Deeper Sense Project" listed in my blog header. I welcome your insights and comments!

The Best Kind of Limitation

Often I talk with my students about how limitations and constraints can be good for an artist. They can increase creativity by reducing the sometimes mind-numbing thousands of directions and options. At least, that's what they often do for me.

This science-and-art project that focuses on the processes of management, regrowth, and ecology in the Long Term Ecology Research sites at the Paul Smith's College VIC is a challenge. There are so many organisms, microhabitats, seasonal changes, and management types that making art to interpret any of this can feel too big and too complex.

I worked through various styles and formats for making artwork of my own for our exhibition, and I could not settle on what I wanted until a perfect collaboration occurred to me. The professor teaching the class that is organizing this project is also a poet - my friend Craig Milewski. When I realized I wanted words to combine with my images, the poem Craig is writing about this place and its ecological processes seemed like the right fit. And Craig agreed.

What you see above is a try-out of several pieces that will be layered to make one of five for the show opening on April 24th at the VIC, one for each of the parts of Craig's poem. The perfect and best kind of limitation - and collaboration.

Finding the Essence

Paul Smith's College Student Center on Lower St. Regis Lake

Teaching art classes at Paul Smith's College since last September has been an adventure. The students are lively, creative, and friendly. And many of them are most at home in the northern forest or on pristine lakes. After all, it is a forestry and natural resources school, among other things. For fun, some of these young people snow shoe, climb trees, and throw axes. Others are in the culinary  and hospitality programs - some of them like to play with food (and sometimes bring me exquisite bites of their creations). In these and the other programs, they are very hands-on people, which makes them great art students. They amaze and inspire me. The faculty does no less.

Recently I was invited, along with several other artists, to interpret the science involved in setting up and monitoring a Long Term Ecological Research Project by students in a senior-level course. That Art & Science connection is dear to my heart - having loved and worked in the ecological field as scientist for years - and I am honored to be part of the project. I was out at the research site last weekend, and now I am processing images and information to determine how I want to make a visual artwork for the exhibition of the science and the art at the Paul Smith's College VIC, which will open on April 24th.

The research and monitoring will take place - hopefully over at least the next 200 years (!!!) - in the plots set up about 15 years ago along the Jenkins Mountain Trail to study the effects of 5 timbering techniques in the forest at the Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center, formerly owned by NY State and now owned and managed by the college. The photo above summarizes the challenge of telling this story with visual arts - ecological interactions, human use, history, and regeneration. 


I'll show my process here of experiencing the site; learning what is know about it already; talking with the students, faculty, and other scientists about the project; and then making some art that tells this story from my own point of view. I hope you'll tell me what you think, offer your ideas, and enjoy the process. Thanks!

 

Pleasure of the Process

There is so much to do to prepare for an art show! In the case of the Out of Season exhibition opening on April 13th at Paul Smith's College, I am putting it together with my friend Lee Ann Sporn. And what a pleasure to work with her! There will be more about this show in an upcoming post.

So, press releases to write and send, e-mails to create, post cards and lists and posters to make, etc. But the BEST part is doing the artwork. I finally got most of a day to continue working on some pieces, including more holographic pieces using some of my photos from Florida. The one above is a detail from a small piece using those beautiful Sea Grape leaves that were golden and red in January. Making the fabric color and pattern choices, deciding on the assembly order, sewing the pieces together - all so satisfying and happy-making.

Back of sheer printed layer with border

Sheer printed layer & opaque backing layer

For more information about this process, see the last section of my March 14th post. 

The fabric for the border of this and another piece came from the Foofsique Quilt Emporium in Chatham NY. I was stumped by some project and fabric questions, and Diane really bailed me out. The fabric above was her perfect answer for this border, as well as some other perfect answers I brought home with me. Thanks, Diane!