Studio Journal

Helping An Old Friend

Students using mosaic bench

 

Once upon a time… 

a whole bunch of Sculpture and Ceramics students made a large freeform mosaic bench. It took four years and I was ringmistress for the last two of them. After another two years it was installed in its permanent location in the new Art Quad at Cabrillo College. That was seven years ago as of this writing. It’s weathered a few winters, droughts, preschool field trips, freeform mime-dance performances and hundreds of lounging students. It’s a landmark and a meeting place. A sentinel and a touchstone. And, one day, a tile broke off…

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Home Again, Home Again Jiggity-Jig

 

Ceramic Incinerator Boxed and Buckled Into A Seatbelt

 

The HOME Exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery has closed. After almost seven weeks away,  my “Homefire 1957” incinerator piece is coming home.

When it’s in transit, I have learned to handle my work myself whenever possible. (Here’s one sad, sad example of why.) I figure if I break it, I am pre-forgiven. Others, they feel terrible all by themselves and I can’t assuage it! Consequently, I am glad for any nearby opportunities to show my stuff because I can deliver and pick up in person. If I have a driver, I hold pieces on my lap, but when I drive, I need to either fully pad and pack pieces in a lidded container or buckle them in thusly.

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The Party’s Over, Time to Go HO…

Ladder with beer in front of wall title being de-installed

 

The HOME Exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery just closed. Everybody’s pieces are going home – some to new ones. I have written about this exhibit for the past six weeks: the drop-off, its reception, three of the most compelling pieces in it, and my artwork in depth. (All the links you need are below.) We will close this Summer Blog-a-thon too, with a tiny glimpse of striking the set and beginning the new production. Over is OVER, as the deconstructed title wall serendipitously demonstrated when I showed up to get my piece.

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Apparently Space Stinks

 

ceramic incinerator side with sgraffito of incinerator, smoke and latin phrases

 

After one gets over the news that it smells bad, it looks like the odor of Outer Space is hard to pin down. It’s reportedly a bit like burnt metal, welding fumes and seared steak. Acrid but slightly sweet; sulphurous and undeniable. The astronauts’ suits and gear, upon returning from space walks, stunk like they’d been camping at a celestial tire fire. It was such an unlikely surprise.

But at one time so was the discovery that smoke from earthly tire fires, oil refineries, automobiles and backyard incinerators probably was to blame for the continually bad air.

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The View From HOME

 

Small ceramic tile of sky, clouds, palm and pine trees
“Central Coast Summer” by Maren Sinclair Hurn, Ceramic

 

Let’s take a walk together, just down the block and back. We can marvel at the sky moving behind the trees. Feel the songs sung by skywires.

In this third-of-three looks at individual works of art in the Pajaro Valley Arts HOME Exhibit, (links to all the others below) we have the pleasure of spending time with Maren Sinclair Hurn’s small porcelain wallpiece titled “Central Coast Summer.” It’s as brief and brilliant as a haiku. Evocative. A sassy statement about HOME without mentioning the house.

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Dad Points Things Out

Detail of Ceramic Incinerator with scgraffito carving of two silhouettes

 

It’s a moment from one’s childhood that becomes a primal imprint. We were suddenly out in the warm LA backyard twilight. Dad had us all looking straight upward, scanning, scanning. He grabbed my shoulder and pointed when he saw it and I think I saw it too. It was not a bird. Not a plane. Not a shooting star. I’d seen all of those. This was different: a glinting dot moving in a speedy soundless arc directly overhead!

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The HOME of the Phoenix

a tryptych assemblage composed of what was left after the artists house burned down
Lost Home Memory Box, Joan Tanzer

 

What makes a piece of art compelling for me is primarily Wonder. As in it fills me with Wonder (amazement at beauty, uniqueness, ineffability) and makes me Wonder (curiosity about technique, backstory, message.) With a quest for wonderfulness in mind, I set out to find the artworks at the current Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery HOME Exhibit which carried me away into their worlds whether I fully understood them or not. Pieces that called up more questions than answered them. Pieces that pushed the idea of HOME into new shapes.

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