Altar update.

The truth is I've actually made a bunch of stuff at work in the past month, and by the end of the week I'll get you pictures. But this is what I did today... well, mostly today: I altered the altar.

Can you spot the differences?

A: Of course you can't, that would be insane. So here they are:

1. Subtract the white glove from the tiny chest (I think that's the only subtraction)

2. Add the Chinese Lantern necklace, (gift from grandfather to grandmother from WWII when he was stationed in Japan)

3. Add the new oracle cards. I'm trying to learn about this stuff (I guess that's the point of the altar too) because I think it's interesting and I like the objects ascetically and the ritual aspect kind of appeals to me, but of course those are the wrong motivations. Look at the cards. I was supposed to get a simple, positive, easy to read deck.

4. Add tiny altar. After reading about all the cleansing and beam-of-light imagining I was supposed to do in connection with the oracle cards I had a little freak out about my nialism and the life of detachment and misery ahead of me. I dealt with that by making this tiny altar on my altar.

4. Add tiny altar continued. You might remember from the previous post that my strategy for altar construction is visual and intuitive (I just find stuff I like and move it around until it stops making me uncomfortable). That's what I did with this one. Elements are listed from the bottom up.

a. Ceramic tile I made in college. Abstract flower painted in colored slip with a sumi brush onto unfired stoneware slab, matte glaze.

b. scrap torn from problem scene of play in progress.

c. coins moved from the other side of the altar.

d. candle stub.

e. scene from Waiting for Godot drawn with thin tipped Sharpie on card stock given to me by Gina's dad.

I also made some banana bread.

Altar

I don't think of myself as New Age-y. A dabbler. Not a believer. Anyway, I've been a bit shaky lately, stretched a little too thin, and I was talking to Dana about her New Age-y online course and I became convinced that I needed an altar. So with almost no research, on almost entirely aesthetic impulses I made this one:

Components (listed more or less from the top down and left to right):

1. Wine box from France, formerly full of spices (gift from Mom)

2. Hand-made crow box from chocolate shop in Boston (gift from

Barbara M)

3. Matchbook (left by previous tenants)

4. Tiny chest from Tibetan shop on Bedford Ave (gift from Dana)

a. Balls of white, yellow and light blue yarn left over from

Wonder Woman sweater. (bought in Fort Greene, NY)

b. Ball of green tweed yarn left over from various projects. (bought in

Albany, NY)

c. Ball of dark blue yarn left over from aviator hat (bought in Lee,

MA)

d. Vintage white knit glove (origin unknown/not remembered)

5. Piece of modular menorah from Chicago museum of Contemporary Art (gift from Mom)

6. Flawed Hanukkah candles from Lennox, MA (gift from Mom)

7. Slinky (bought in Mamaroneck, NY)

8. Tea lights (gift from Dana to help me with my altar)

9. Lava rocks from Iceland (gift from Dana)

10. Awesome clock (bought from vender with folding table at SUNY Purchase, NY)

11. Spare change, including Bahamas quarter and Canadian penny

(grabbed at random from bowl on top of toaster oven Greenpoint, NY)

12. Silk brocade square with fish (bought on ebay in high school and

mailed from Antioch, CA 5/6/2005)

13. Printed cotton scrap left over from unfinished quilt (bought at

Fabrics Garden 39th st between 7th and 8th New York, NY)

The formatting of this post makes me weep. I've edited it maybe a dozen times trying to get the indents right on the list.

Teaset

We sell this tiny teaset. I spent an obscene amount of time designing an painting one.

It looks like a lot if you put it all together...

Self-explanatory.

Desert.

Ocean.

Forest.

Arctic.

Somebody broke the teacup. No names.

Commissioned Artwork!

This post feature a notebook and diorama I made for Leslie for her sister's birthday.

This is the story of the notebook in the breifest possible terms. (I'm keeping it brief because it's such a sad, beautiful story about such a beautiful object, but it's somebody else's family history and the fact that I was entrusted with it for a little while doesn't really make it mine to put on the internet).

This was Leslie's grandfather's notebook. He was Preacher to an Arminian Congregation at the time of the Arminian Genocide. He lost his homeland and had to be the leader of this group of reeling, mourning refugees whose suffering was not acknowledged by the international community. This was a note book he kept of clippings and quotes cut out of newspapers or typed on English and Armenian typewriters. the cover bears this legend:

Flowers picked

From here and there

While casually roaming

In byways of thought

For my inspiration

I loved having it around. It really is such an amazing collection of quotes and thoughts, and the object itself is simple and remarkable. Anyway, my assignment was so do some light restoration, basically just reinforcing the holes in the paper where they were starting to tear (I was so afraid of this part of the job that I may have done less of it than I should have), And to make a blank replica in happier colors for Leslie's sister.

I didn't realize this photographed so poorly, you'll have to trust me. The cover was made with red cotton fabric over heavy illustration board with metal eyelets. Text was hand-drawn in Extra Fine Sharpie.

I put in the front-plate upside down but it isn't so bad. Scanned and altered from the original with the name changed. Printed on cream-colored label paper

These are interior pages. I scanned some pages from the original and scattered them between the blank pages of the copy.

This part three of the project: a diorama of Leslie's sister's church (she's also a preacher, in Florence MA) made with the paper from the new book plus construction paper. the inside of the box is papered copies of the old book.

This is the original church. This project was made possible by Google Street View.

The following are five nearly identical glamour shots of the box, which is a 6x6x6 cube.

And that's it. Commissioned artwork.

Tea for One and an Arm

It's another thrilling wall display.

This time we're selling a paint your own tea set kit.

An ill-lit longshot.

The Pot. Thanks Van Gogh.

The Cup.

And thanks again. The nice thing about Van Gogh is that if something doesn't look quite right you just add more paint. He kind of just had the one trick.

And a close up of the head.

Fashion Design Kit

So, the big negative comment in my performance review was "we think you spend too much of your time lurking behind the register with your scissors and whatnot" and the solution was to move my table into the middle of the floor and make me craft there, like a performing chimp.

The first thing I did was open this fashion design kit.

The fabrics are mostly acetate, and the dress form is so shapeless it's hard to tell the front from the back (hint: there's a seam down the baak), but it's actually kind of a decent kit in that it encourages creativity rather than achievement. Parents and grandparents do not always agree with that model and I hear a lot of "she can't do that" and "if it's not easy she'll just give up" and "where are the instructions?".

Anyway there's a giant column behind my table, a white monolith in the center of the store, so I've taken to making relevant cut paper displays and mounting them there. 'Cause what else am I going to do?

So without further ado (and there has been rather a lot of ado) the clothes line display:

I've nearly filled the sketchbook and at some point I'll "borrow" that and scan the drawings.

Sundries - Met Store edition

This is what I do all day: I stand on a Terrazzo floor, talk to ladies from the midwest about their grandchildren, and build displays.

Cut paper skyline.

This is a two foot high wood veneer block at the top of the stairs, I put children's books about New York City on it. Sometimes people buy them.

Squirrel.

This is a portable easel with drawers full of art supplies. This is what it looks like with art on it. Why a squirrel? Why not a squirrel?

Photoclip Mobile.

Yes, it's poorly photographed. And yes, it's been up for eight months and has not contributed to the sale either of the mobile or the jar full of pompoms, pipe cleaners and streamers from which the elements are constructed. But dammit it's the first thing I made when I got to the children's department and you're going to look at it. You can see the owl at the center (giant pompom, pipe cleaner, card stock). I'll take better pictures of everything else.

Glambrella.

This an under-lit corner between the t-shirt display and the handicapped elevator. It's where we display over-priced, poorly made color-it-in crafts for 8-11 year old girls. The crafts have slightly disturbing conspicuous-consumption overtones and anti-feminist undertones. I scaled up the patterns on those projects, drew them in Sharpie and colored them in with color-change markers. It brightens up the area nicely. I've code-named it "Operation: Lure Children into Dark Corners".

More coming. I've photographed my big (i.e good) displays too and I'll be posting them soon.

Wonderbaby!

It's my very first sweater. I'm not being modest and I'm not looking for praise: I've done a lot, a lot of knitting, I've made mittens and hats and scarves and socks (not very successfully) but I was worried about making a sweater with it's seams and closures and whatnot.

So I decided to make a tiny sweater for a tiny person, which would be faster to knit and require less yarn investment. Then I found out that Linsay and Shane were making a tiny person and almost simultaneously I found this pattern at practicalpolly.blogspot.com. But it was for a full sized person so I adapted it. And that's the story of my sweater.

This is the front!

And the back!

And a close up of the snaps. A successful result of much squinting and hand-wringing and asking for advice from people who where sick of hearing about the stupid sweater.

Open snaps. To accommodate a giant baby head.

Wrist bands of power!

Just in case a knitter wanders onto my blog I'm including the charts I made for this sweater. I think they're accurate, and that they have enough information... if not please comment.

Actually I think there are some pretty big problems but I'm not going to figure it out unless I know somebody wants to knit it. So let me know.

Jumper

So here's what happened: I was going to a housewarming and thought "I'll make them something, that'll be nice. A diorama or a collage or something." And then I thought about it for a few days and then the day of the party I sat down before work and started cutting up a magazine and I ended up with this. And I like it, I do, but it's not nice...

Fashionably Self-Destructive

But this is the happy ending: "The Misunderstanding" (the one with the hunchback and the little girl) has a new home With Annie and Olga in Crown Heights.

Stitchosaurus-Rex

The cocktail napkin stitch-sketch: a natural result of drinking where you sew.

Labor Intensive and Devoid of Function

I call it Janus in my head (and now on my blog). I think it's a headband, or a necklace if you don't have a strangulation thing... or if you really do, I guess.

Maybe I'll get a new personality someday and wear it.

Tableaus

So these are all little unrelated tableaus (you have no idea what I went through to spell that word properly).

I'll probably be changing the captions or figuring out a way to make them into one thing but for now I thought it would be good to get them up.

Hubris... ouch.

Something to prove.

Girls can be so cruel.

Taking a stand against the logging industry.

Simple misunderstanding.

Punk Cameos

So this week I'm on a silhouette kick. There's a book on silhouettes for fun and profit at the store. It has very strange tone. Very strange. I didn't really follow it.

These are between 5 and 6 inches tall and about 4 inches wide. But I like them small like this.

I don't really know what to do with them. I think they might look good on t-shirts. Or maybe I'll mount them separately or mount the matched pairs between sheets of plexiglass and hang them above my dresser.

God, they're really sad... or somber... or Victorian. I guess they're just cameos.