Displaying Art Dolls

I'm preparing for a show of my dolls at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination.   It opens the first Friday of December.  Showing with me are Joyce Compton and Chris Fondi.  About half of what I'm showing are wall dolls and they are easy to display.  Standing dolls need to be on platforms or pedestals.  That's a bit more challenging.  I've been busy making pedestals and platforms.

Fortunately I have access to a great place to build my displays.  The Lillian Street wood shop is a supportive well equipped  studio.  I always have fun when I'm there.  I also have studio space at home where I can do finish work on the displays.

Each doll will have a distinct pedestal or platform geared to it's display needs.  Most of the materials in the displays are repurposed wood.  Here you can see pedestals I made from recycled porch posts purchased at Construction Junction in Pittsburgh.  I build them in batches of similar design.  They become more differentiated when they are finished.

After the displays are built I take them home and paint or stain them to suit the personality of the doll that will be on it.  The white pedestals in these photos just have a prime coat of paint.  They will be painted in coming days.  In a few cases I've added fabric or trim to the pedestal.  

Several of the pedestals have turned out to be fancy such as the one below.  They are especially fun to build.  I've been restraining myself from getting elaborate with the displays because it's a show about doll making and not woodworking.  

Lillian St Wood Shop Update

There has been great progress with the Lillian St wood shop.  The chimneys are gone!  This may sound like a small change but its not.  The demolition of the two chimneys created holes in the roof and the floor, scars on the walls and a large pile of bricks.  The demo crew took care of closing off the roof and Beth Rogers patched the floor and walls.  She then went on to moving a support post and building a lovely long work bench.  This change has created a lot of useful space.

This photo is the before shot.  Notice the chimney on the left and the random arrangement of machines.  

This photo show the same area of the shop from a somewhat different angle.  The counter has had a wonderful organizing effect.  Machines are finding their places.    The area to the left of the counter is a "parking lot" for larger machines on wheels.  

Chris Fondi, Beth Rogers and I spent Saturday, May 5 working on various wood working projects and more organizing.    Chris and Beth are chatting and think they are not in the photo.  The lumber rack on the far right is much improved but it still needs a bit more work.  

It was great to get back to the shop.  I've had some health challenges this spring that slowed me down.  I'm feeling much better now and can breath freely again!  Spending a day working at the shop made me feel like I am myself again.

Learning from Photographs

When I see photos of my work I somehow see the work differently.  Its a fresh perspective that sometimes is helpful.  This happened recently when I had a series of shadow boxes photographed.  I liked the contents but the boxes looked shabby.  So shabby that I cropped away the boxes from the photos. 

 Yesterday I built a new shadowbox to accommodate this work. There are a lot of decisions left about how to finish the piece.  But my gut tells me it is much improved. 

The most challenging thing about making this box was becoming reacquired with using a router.  There were  several routers that I could have worked with but I choose the one that was most familiar to me.  It's been over a decade since I used a router.  It was scarey.  I had to finish building the router table.  I had to remember how to use the jigs.  I had to change a bit that hadn't been changed in years.  But I did all that and it feels good.  Now I'm ready to try the other routers. 

In other parts of the shop Beth Rogers oiled the pieces of her lovingly made trestle table.

Elaine Fuller painted some details on the tale that I made a few weeks ago.  

A Crankie Folk Singer

Yesterday was a good day.  A group of six artists spent the day at the Lillian Street studio working on a variety of projects.  Elaine Fuller continued to paint the walls vibrant colors.  Beth Rogers and Chris Fondi built some storage units and worked on Beth's trestle table.  Joyce Compton made origami shopping bags from newspaper and pitched in on various projects when help was needed.  I built a quick drawing table.  It has mismatched legs, two of which are made from a tree branch.  Elaine will be adding touches of color to this one but most of it will remain wood. 

Ellen Gozian (the crankie folk singer) made her first visit to Lillian.  She wanted me to build a crankie box.  A crankie is a gizmo that displays a story scroll to illustrate a folksong.  It took a bit of design work but here is the crankie that I built for her.

                                            
Ellen brought an illustrated the scroll made with a paper collage technique.  The scroll attaches to dowel rods and the top lifts off to allow for changing scrolls.  We also built the crankie so that it can be back lit or front lit.  With back lighting the applied paper cutouts will appear as silhouettes.   With front lighting the colored papers will show.  When the crankie was complete Ellen gave us a performance.

It was the first showtime at the Lillian Street studio!  A good time was had by all.  I'm looking forward to attending one of her shows to see the crankie in a public performance.

Ethernet Cable Joy

This morning I solved the internet connection problem for my computer.  I drilled two holes in my floor.  One near the router and one near the computer.  Then I strung an Ethernet cable across my basement ceiling.  It took a while to figure out where to plug it in on the computer.  Then the challenge was to learn how to change the computer settings to a local area network.  Now that I've done it I understand the logic of what I needed to do.  But when I was problem solving all of this it was a daunting task.  I'm looking forward to getting back to blogging. 

Today I'm purchasing a tabletop drill press and tomorrow I'm setting it up at the Lillian Street studio!  I'm really looking forward to that!

Button Display Boxes and Button Cards

This past weekend I worked at the Lillian St wood shop to make display boxes that will be part of my craft fair display and storage inventory system.  While I was there I also made some wood buttons.  The storage boxes are made mostly from recycled wood that has been languishing in my stash.  The side bars of the boxes are fun.  They are old rulers and paint stir sticks.  After taking the boxes home and filling them with button cards I realized that the boxes need to have a second bar lower on the side to prevent the button cards from falling out.  I'll do that next weekend. 

I also designed some button cards for my recycled and hand dyed buttons.  In the two cards on the ends of the photo I used images from vintage button cards.  I'm trying to express the idea of making old things new through creative reuse.  So my appropriation of these images to illustrate the button cards is in this spirit.  If you look carefully at these two cards you can see that the illustrator was suggesting uses for the buttons.  I took this thought and designed the card in the middle.  By sewing the buttons onto images of paper flowers I'm suggesting to scrapbook artists that they can use my buttons in their art.  I won't know until the Indie Knit and Spin craft fair if these cards are effective selling tools.

I like making the button cards because the process is making me learn how to do things with my software. 

Building a Craft Fair Display

Today was a day spent at the Lillian Street wood shop.  It was lots of fun as usual.  I used my time to build a table top craft fair display.  I'm honored to have been invited to participate in a well organized craft fair that is focused on providing supplies to indie fiber artists.  You will be hearing more about this fair as I prepare for it.  It will be held Saturday November 19th from 11:00 to 5:00 at the Wilkins School Community Center, 7604 Charleston Ave. in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  Check it out!  

It will be my first craft fair and I want to have a terrific display for my button shop.  I built this display entirely from old stash and recycled materials.  It was fun to figure out how to make it without spending any money.  The exception is that I will purchase hooks to hang my button cards.

I started making some buttons from recycled hard wood moldings.  I'll drill the holes on the buttons next Sunday.

At the other end of the shop Beth Rogers is building a table top.  She is in the process of becoming reacquainted with fine woodworking techniques.  If you look carefully you can see that she is gluing up some bread board ends for the table top.

This is a photo of the renovated tool cabinet.  Can you see the influence of playing a lot of scrabble?

Happiness is a New Bandsaw

While I made dolls and did family stuff in August Beth Rogers has been working on the Lillian Street wood shop.  It's looking good and it's getting organized.  For me the most exciting thing is the arrival a a lovely new band saw. 

Beth is hard at work building a new bed for herself.  My tools are moved in and my workbench is waiting for me to get started on building my new couch. 

Beth built herself a drawing table. 

I'm looking forward to making the time to work in the wood shop!

A Discovery During Studio Construction

While working on the walls of the lower level of the Lillian Street Studio Beth Rogers and I made an exciting discovery.  We found some old casework and drawers that had been walled over!  We had been working on the studio renovation for a year and a half and somehow hadn't noticed that there was unaccounted for space under the upper cabinets.  You can see the area in the far right of the photo below. 

Look to the far right where tools and lumber are propped in the corner.

 We took a prybar to the area and found this.  

The framing is still in place but you can see the drawers and casework that had been closed off for years.

We then noticed that there was space above the upper cabinets so we opened that up and removed the cabinet doors.  It was a very exciting find!  The mystery is why it had been walled off.

In this photo the drawers have been temporarily removed to let everything air out.

Other things are happening at the studio as well.  

Ceiling lights have been hung

Drywall is up and primed on the main work level.

Wev'e begun framing work benches.