DIY Cockcades

Yes, I have a bicycle in my living room.  I know it will miraculously find a place to reside at some point.  If I just click my heels together three times and say "there's no place like home..." all will be put to rights.  Meanwhile, a small assembly line was created in the shadow of the cycle.

I had managed to put together two Be A Rebel or Just Look Like One/DIY Cockcade Kits for the opening of Battle Ground last Saturday at Proteus Gowanus.  I still had four more to make up before I could cross that item off my To Do list.  

The kits are for sale in the PG gift shop.  And what do you get for the money?

Everything!  Well, everything you need to make a cockcade:  ribbon, pins, an already-threaded needle (worth the price alone!), a center piece on which you can write your own rebellious message, a felt backing and instructions.

All kept neat and tidy in a lovely paper mache box.

Available through June 30th.

Battle Ground at Proteus Gowanus

Should you find yourself in Brooklyn over the next several months, I hope you will stop by Proteus Gowanus, the unique artist space at Union and Nevins Streets, just spitting distance from the Gowanus Canal.  Their year-long exhibition theme is Battle and the current incarnation of that theme is called Battle Ground.

Bettle Ground features work by Paul Benney, Peter Bonner, Sasha Chavchavadze, Eymund Diegel, Robert Gould, Katarina Jerinic, Andrew Keating, Christina Kelly, V. Komar & A. Melamid, Angela Kramer, Robyn Love, Eva Melas, Duke Riley, and Robert Sullivan.

I have two pieces in the exhibition.  One is Give Me Your Hand Old Revolutionary, pictured below.  It takes its name from the first line of Walt Whitman's poem about the Battle of Brooklyn titled Centenarian's Story.  Each letter is spelled out with a black cockade.  Black cockcades were one of the (few) ways that the Rebel soldiers could be identified.

The other piece consists of six DIY Cockcade Kits, which are for sale in the gift shop.  Everything you need to create your own rebellious cockcade!  

One thing that I love about Proteus Gowanus is that it was born out of a belief that artists can and should be supportive of each other, not just exist in this bizarre world of competition that the prevailing art market seems to encourage.  It is a very practical response to the question of how do we really make this art making thing work?  At the same time, it is idealistic because of the exact same reason.  I love that there is room for my DIY kits and for the more conceptual work.

All the artists in the exhibition have a lot to offer.  Here is a piece by Eva Melas, who collects discarded coffee cups off the street and refashions them into art (click on the photo to see the text better).

Battle Ground will be on view until June 30th.  Stop by and see it!

Process Not Product

Here is the physical manifestation of Saturday night:  approx. 150 yds of very soft Merino in a thick single ply.

The biggest challenge in getting the bike/spinning wheel combination to work was to make it so that a person could pedal at a normal rate without making the bobbin spin too fast.  The bike guys kept saying, "we need to gear it down!"  We (they) spent hours thinking up ways of doing that but it always ended with the need for something to be made that was impossible given the timeframe (48 hours) and the budget ($0).  Finally, one guy grabbed a dremel tool and engraved a groove in the hub of the rear wheel very carefully while someone else pedaled.  Then, he filed it in a similar way.  And voila!  A beautiful, elegant, simple solution.  We put the drive band into the groove of the wheel and connected it to my wheel and there are basically a 1:1 spin ratio.  In fact, you actually had to pedal fast to make it work.  I wouldn't use SpinCycle for any of the shorter staple fibres - the speed is too slow (just in case you were thinking of creating your own - stick with the long staple fibres, like Merino).  A technical point, but important nonetheless.

People have been asking what I plan to do with the yarn.  I think my answer is nothing.  I will label it and begin an archive of skeins produced in this most wonderful manner.

SpinCycle - The First Installment

You know when 1 + 1 = 10000?  Well, that is what it was like at the World Premiere (that is a joke, btw) of SpinCycle.

All throughout the creation of this project, I have been waiting for it to fall apart or otherwise self-destruct.  None of it made sense - why was I making spinning more complicated?  What was the point of the bicycle?  And how in the world did it actually manage to pull together?  Yet, somehow, someway, the thing came together and I was giving it the test drive on Friday afternoon.

Can all my projects have a rehearsal?

Come Saturday evening, people began gathering even before the appointed hour.  We had two tables of yarn - generously donated by Lion Brand Yarns (can we just take a moment and appreciate their support for artists.  I mean, I know they get publicity and all, but I am not the only artist that they have helped out with yarn donations.  They deserve our appreciation - thank you Lion Brand Yarns!).  We set out the yarn and the instructions for finger knitting.  

If you finger knit it, they will come.  Within minutes we had a crowd - old, young, men, women, all shapes, sizes and colours.  By the middle of the evening, hundreds of people had given it a try and many of them had settled themselves down on a chair or the floor and were deep into it.  It was a sight to behold.  In fact, here!  Behold it!

This was taken before the evening officially began, so it was when the crowd was still small.  One extra cool thing was when one person who had just learned began to teach those around them.  I had recruited two volunteers to teach - the brave Shannon Hayes and Miranda Norris.  I barely saw them all evening since they were three- and four-deep in the crowd.  Shannon had volunteered to teach and then, about three days later, emailed me to tell me that she actually didn't know how to finger knit.  Never let a lack of skill get in your way, I always say.  She did wonderfully and, in fact, was still helping people well after I had already packed up my contraption.

Speaking of which, the contraption worked.  It worked beautifully.  People pedaled the bicycle and it turned the bobbin and I drafted some white merino and, yes, we had yarn.  But there was more to it than that.  As people signed up to pedal, I greeted them and invited them to help me spin and to tell me a story.  I had prepared some prompt cards, so people were not put on the spot to create something out of whole cloth.  Then they began to pedal and we looked at each other in a mirror I had propped up on the floor.  I could see their face and they could see mine but we couldn't see our own.  Among the surrounding chaos of finger knitting and people walking by, our sharing the story via the mirror became an intimate space.  We were the only two who could hear what was being said - and people told some incredible stories.  It was beautiful.

At the end, I again shook the person's hand and thanked them for spinning yarn with me and sharing their story.

This was my first time making a performance with such a ritualized beginning and ending.  Usually I let things take their natural course without any interference.  This time, it felt like the interaction needed more of a structure.  Ultimately, it felt like each encounter was complete.  This project will be re-created at an upcoming one-person exhibition at Northern University (in South Dakota) next spring.  I am excited to see how it unfolds in another context.

I did ask a friend to video tape some of it and I will post it here when I do some editing.

Many thanks to The Brooklyn Museum, especially Lauren Zelaya, for inviting me to participate and working with me on this piece.  Also, again to Lion Brand Yarns for their donation of yarn, and to Todd Cowdery and Shawn O'Hagan for excellent ideas that helped to shape the piece, and to Bob Lanaghan, who came through with extra Majacraft drive bands at the last moment (just in case mine broke).  Thank you all!  

And thank you to all who came and pedaled with me and shared your amazing stories.  It was a wonderful night!

A Different Kind of Charm

Lucy used to keep a blog written under a false name for the doll who supposedly wrote it i.e. the name of the person writing the blog was not even the name of the doll.  In fact, the name was female and the doll was male.  Or as male as one could make out from a velour shape filled with rice and stuffing.  I loved that blog and she even started having a following of people who had no actual relationship to her.  She coulda been an internet phenomenon.  But she was, you know, eleven.

Now she has started a new blog:  Lucy's Museum.

It isn't the same innocent charm of Sodia Pop, but it is most definitely charming.  Check it out.

What is an Island Without the Sea?

Yours by Daniel Hoffman   I am yours as the summer air at evening is Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms, As the snowcap gleams with light Lent it by the brimming moon. Without you I'd be an unleafed tree Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring. Your love is the weather of my being. What is an island without the sea?

A Little Yarn Music

That is approx. 632 yds of lace weight Shetland that you are looking at.  When I tell you that it looks even better in person, please believe me.

Colours by Widdershins.  It is available in my etsy shop.

Just As They Should Be

Because clearly the correct thing to do before a Big Project debut is to go away and sit in silence for a week.  So I did.

In fairness, I planned the week in silence before the opportunity for the Big Project arrived in my inbox.  While it may seem to some that I am always running off to sit still (no names will be mentioned cough, cough finnandlucy cough, cough), in fact, I barely do more than the minimum expected from formal students in the MRO.  In any case, the week had been put on the calendar and planned for all around, so I did it.

The morning before I left, I needed to deliver a critical piece of the bike/spinning wheel puzzle to Rommel (please, pronounced romMEL, not ROMmel - he is not a German general).  When we first met and I explained the project to him in a way that was, no doubt, circuitous and slightly rushed and breathless, he just looked at me and calmly said, "Don't worry.  I fix things.  It's what I do."

He was so calm and so certain and steady, that I didn't worry.  Rommel will make this happen.  It's what he does.  My own idea of how it would happen was quickly nixed due to the fact that I actually understand bicycle mechanics not at all.  Cycling tenderfoot!  My gratitude to Rommel and his ability to fix things was deep and sincere.

Rommel also very calmly told me that the date of my project (April 6th from  7 − 9 p.m, btw) was the due date for his first child.  So happy!  So calm!  I offered my hearty congratulations and felt certain that Rommel would weather new fatherhood just as steady and grounded as anyone ever did.  However, in my own rushed and breathless way, a wee bairn of a thought entered my head (a thought that Lucy later told me I was a selfish jerk for having, which is true but I did have it) that my project could be slightly derailed by the early arrival of said first baby.  Yeah, I know.  It was the height of self-centeredness to even draw any line between my piddling project and the arrival of anyone's first child, let alone the personification of gentle sweetness himself (Rommel).

As I was saying, three paragraphs before (see? I am a bit circuitous in my storytelling), Rommel and I made an appointment for me to deliver this critical piece of the bike/spinning wheel puzzle on Monday morning before I headed upstate for the Monastery.  I was there at the appointed hour, but no Rommel. Up until this very moment, everything had been falling into place with this project and I had been pinching myself that it was going so well.  And then, no Rommel.

I had a sneaking suspicion of what was going on.  Babies, even first babies, have been known to arrive a little early.  They care not for project deadlines and anyone who thinks that they might is a selfish jerk, like Lucy said.  Actually, not a selfish jerk (Lucy was specifically referring to me, not making a blanket statement).  People who think that babies will respect deadlines are simply deluded and quickly find a way of giving up making and keeping deadlines or they live a very frustrated life.

So, after making some last minute arrangements (thank you, Dan), the piece was delivered while I sat in silence upstate, the baby was born, the project continues in some way, shape or fashion, Rommel is a dad, I will be at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, and things are (as they always were) just as they should be.

SpinCycle at The Brooklyn Museum

What do you get when you have a bicycle, a spinning wheel, a metronome and a mirror?

You have SpinCycle - a new project that will have its World Premiere at The Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, April 6th from 7 − 9 p.m. as part of their First Saturday program.

Please join me!  In fact, I need you - SpinCycle depends on your participation.  Come pedal and spin yarn and spin yarns.  Finger knitting also will be taught by Miranda Norris and Shannon Hayes (and maybe Lucy too) using yarn donated by the ever-generous Lion Brand Yarns.

For the bicycle part of the project, I have been working with the awesome crew at Recycle-A-Bicycle, who, as it turns out, have a warehouse a 1/2 block from my studio.  It looks like this:

But from that, they pulled out this:

Add the spinning contraption, the mirror and the metronome, and darling, I will see you there!

A Scatter Tea Cup

If there are scattered pieces of pottery hanging around the dining room table, then you know only one thing is possible.  Yes!  We are back working with our delightful pottery instructor, Stacey Cushman.

Do you say "yes" after your bowl is empty?

Or are you satisfied?

This is Fin's torture tea cup.
He made a cup that will actively harm you if you don't hold it properly.  He even made a little shelf for your pinky.  I don't know what the mini cup is for and, frankly, I am afraid to ask.

Great Mines Stink Alike

The post title is from Brian O’Nolan, a.k.a. Flann O’Brien (1911-1966), writing as “Myles na Gopaleen,” in The Best of Myles (Myles na Gopaleen) (1999)

and, in keeping with the generally wooly theme of this blog:

“‘Now take a sheep,’ the Sergeant said. ‘What is a sheep only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep? What else but that?’”

—	The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Beat Goes On

In case you were wondering, the combination of two cats and one metronome will, in fact, create hours of family fun.

...and thank you to Shawn for creatively solving one potential problem with my upcoming performance thingy at The Brooklyn Museum!  More on that coming soon.

Not Just Textiles

...sometimes I also think about shoes.

While in Toronto, Lucy and I were recommended to visit the Bata Shoe Museum, whose motto is "For the curious".  How could we resist?  

We loved it: world history as told through shoes.  Lucy has been studying the Renaissance and not really enjoying.  I know, I know, how can you not like the Renaissance?  Her contention that it is too heavy on men who believe that they knew how to do things better than anyone else does have the ring of truth to it but, still, it might be a little harsh to sum up the entire era that way.  Fortunately, a crack of light broke through her dark assessment when she spied these:

Shoes from the Renaissance!  Very groovy shoes from the Renaissance!  Oh, thank you Bata Shoe Museum.  Suddenly the Renaissance was not so stuffy and patriarchal...I mean, check out that funky velvet platform number on the stand.  Sometimes you just need to get a foot in the door (har, har) and things will open up.  And so it was with Lucy and the Renaissance.

Zen Buddhist shoes from Japan in a section on shoes from world religions.  The Buddhist shoes were among the most dull, except for the Tibetan ones (of course).  Let's face it, if you are looking for visual excitement, Zen probably isn't the place for you.  Even as I write that, I am proving myself wrong in my head, but in the shoe department at least, it is true.

And speaking of Tibetans...the museum also boasts a collection of famous people's shoes, all of which were donated by the celebrities themselves.  From Justin Beiber to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, they have their shoes.  We were both delighted that HHtDL's contribution was a pair of very worn flip-flops.  Just when you thought you couldn't love him more....

Saturation, Toronto-style

We made a trip recently to Toronto.  The reasons had been piling up - friends to see, curators to schmooze with, and then there was the Marimekko exhibition at the Textile Museum.  Now that one can rent a room in someone's apartment for a most reasonable rate via the inter webs, such a trip is not an outlandish thing to do.  So we did it.

We visited with friends, including dear Colette.  It was a very good visit and worth the trip alone.  For those keeping track, she is holding her own and fiercely hoping to be back in Newfoundland this spring/summer.  I also fiercely share this hope.

As for those other things on our agenda, we braved the early March wind (winter does not disappear on March 1st in Toronto, in case you were wondering) and checked out Marimekko.  I loved it for the bold colour, of course, but also for the utopian lifestyle that the founders embodied as they developed their designs.  It was a whole culture, not just some fabric and dresses.  Similar to the Arts and Crafts movement, they believed that they could make the world a better place by making beautiful things.  And you know what?  The world is a better place for it.

Fabric swatches

Dress samples

Groovy 60s and 70s advertising

More cool swatches and designs

If I were standing on a rock in Finland, I also would like to be wearing this.

These would definitely take my wardrobe out of the "Liz Lemon Look-Alike" category.

A perfect antidote to the grey March sky outside the museum.

More photos to come...

Query: Can you do yoga in a skirt and heels?

A thoughtful friend, who also happens to lead professional development workshops for social workers on occasion, invited me to teach an hour of restorative yoga to a group of said social workers yesterday.  They were working on training towards some kind of certification and, at the end of the day, she wanted to offer them an hour of "self-care".  That last bit was very thoughtful of her, don't you think?  She knows that social workers have very high pressure/low appreciation jobs and burn out isn't just an abstract idea for them.

So, with my shiny, new certification, I entered into the lion's den.  It wasn't quite that bad - for one thing, social workers tend to be extremely nice and caring people - but there were a couple of things that my friend neglected to tell me.  She had mentioned that there would be 45 of them.  La la la...no problem!  We will just stick to very simple movements and lots of breath work.  She also told me that probably none of them had done yoga before and possibly about 20% of them would not be able to get down on the floor.  Ok...chairs and simple movements and lots of breath work.  Oh, but she didn't tell me that she wasn't going to tell them about the yoga portion of the day, so naturally many of the women had on skirts and high heeled shoes.  And some people simply had no interest in yoga, period.  And the room was a bit small for 45 people to stand in, let alone to whip out the mats that she had very generously provided for everyone.  They were all pretty psyched about the mats, however.

When I arrived and quickly noted the situation, I realized that I had to scrap about half of my class plan.  Because, however wonderful my teacher training was (and it was!), we never talked about how to teach yoga to 45 people in a small room, where half the people are in inappropriate clothing (for yoga), one of them is pregnant and a handful prefer to remain seated with their chins in their hands and a look that says, honey, if I wanted to move my arms around and visualize the moon on a still pond, I would NOT do it here at work.  And PS. I don't want to do those things.

Needless to say, it was an excellent learning experience for at least one person in that room yesterday.

There Will Be Yarn

For a long time, I have been lamenting my laziness.  Somehow, I just never seemed to get around to spinning yarn for my etsy shop.  How can this be?  Too much wasted time on the computer?  Daydreaming out the window when I should be applying myself?

Yesterday I realized that, perhaps, it wasn't total laziness.  Maybe it was, in fact, busy-ness.  Because now that teacher training is over, suddenly I find myself listing yarns in my etsy shop.

Over 600 yards of lace weight Rambouillet!

A wee skein - only 56 yds - also of the same Rambouillet.

A gorgeous bulky two-ply.  When I made that orange and black skein for my friend's hat the other day, it was so fun to knit up that bulky two-ply that I decided that I must share the love!  Made from a Widdershins fleece that was 80% BFL and 20% silk.  So soft, it is like a dream!

And check out this dreamy shot.  Currently under production...some Shetland lace weight.

It is nice to be back.

The Dawning of A New (Old) Era

April may be the cruelest month but, for me, it will be the busiest month.  Suddenly, the deadlines are stacking up.  It's all good, as they say.  Actually, I hate it when people say that...it isn't all good!  Sometimes, it is bad!

Whatevs, as they say.  Right now, it is all good.  I would go so far as to say it is awesomesauce.

First up in April will be a participatory performance project of an alliterative nature done as part of The Brooklyn Museum's First Saturday program.  I am pretty excited about this since approximately 10,000 people attend these events.  Yes, you read that correctly - 10,000.  Excited might not be the best word for how I feel about it, but let's keep it at that for now.

More on that project later, today I simply wanted to acknowledge that I just ordered sewing patterns for historically accurate dresses from the American colonial era as part of a video project I am creating.  This is all part of the ongoing collaboration with four other artists on the subject of war, revolutions and the Battle of Brooklyn.  A new group exhibition on the subject will be installed at the end of April.

Is she so rosy-cheeked and happy because of all that food?
Or because she knows her garments are made with 100% historical accuracy?

For many months, I have been feeling like my work is shifting in its direction but mostly that feeling has been just that - a feeling.  I haven't taken many actions towards making it real.  So plunking down cold, hard cash for costumes for a video feels like something.  

Ideas.  I have Big Ideas.

Where is this all heading?  I have no idea but I guess we will find out.....

Post-Grad

It's official.  We had our 500-hr graduation ceremony, which consisted of our teacher giving us our certificates of completion and a copy of a chant that she selected for each of us.  She chose a chant that related to our practice or reflected something about our training and where we are at now.

For me, she chose a sloka from the Bhagavad Gita (so not really a chant but it can be chanted).  Here it is:

karmanyeva adhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana

Your right is to action alone; never to its fruits at any time.  

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

Meanwhile, on a lesser note, there was knitting involved.  In this tradition, we use little stick figures to explain the practice we create for each individual.  Each asana is drawn out with little symbols for inhalation and exhalation so that the person doing the practice at home can follow along until they memorize it.  So I made our teacher a hat with the little stick figure in padmasana on it.

And then, because she managed to have twins in the middle of the training, I made two more hats.

Inhale

Exhale

And then, we had a party at a lovely space in Brooklyn.  Lots of delicious food such as hungry yogini's would want.

And then, those babies test drove their hats.

I think they like them.

How To Be Satisfied

Each year, the Struts Gallery and Artist-run Centre in Sackville, New Brunswick (Canada's oldest!), holds a fundraiser on Valentine's Day.  Called The Sweetest Little Thing, the fundraiser involves sending artists a piece of masonite (I think it was around 6" x 9") and inviting them to create something with it, in anyway they see fit.  This year, I decided to cut it up into pieces, drill holes in it and paint it.

The question of how to be satisfied is one that I think about a lot.  What does that really mean?  I had a lot of opportunity to consider this as I ran up against obstacles at every step along the way of making this little piece. 

First, I do not own a saw, so I borrowed a saw.  Then, no drill, so I went to the hardware store and bought a drill.  Then, I thought we had paint, but nope, no paint.  Bought new paint.  Then, I swear I thought I had loads of copper wire, but wrong again!  No wire.  Bought some wire (they didn't have copper and I didn't have the wear-with-all to search around for copper).  Whew.  Finally, the piece is done.  And a bit late.  So, to satisfy the deadline, I will overnight it to New Brunswick.  

If you would like to own this very satisfying piece while at the same time helping to support Canada's oldest artist-run centre, place your bid here.  Well, it isn't up yet, but go there on February 14th.  You, too, will be satisfied.

Tidy Up Time

When the kids were little, we always had "tidy up time" at the end of the day when they would help put away their toys and things so that the living room returned to something ever so slightly less than total chaos.  My mom started this tradition when we went to Newfoundland for the first ever time in 1997 when Fin was only seven months old.  She got him to help gather up his things before bedtime - she even made it into a game that was fun - and the notion stuck with us.  These days it is a little harder to motivate the wee ones (ha!) to pick up their things and sing "tidy up time!".  Personally, I just like the word tidy.  It is so...tidy.  In Newfoundland, there is a contest called the "Tidy Towns" contest.  Gillams has never won and I must confess that many of the towns sporting signage that they were once the winner of this title are a little...um...boring.  Sorry, but it is true.

Well, call it tidy or call it dull, my week has been all about tidying up.

First, heavens be praised, I finished my 500-hr teacher training.  I can hear the shouts of joy and relief!  My apologies if I have ventured into "unbearable" with all the yoga talk.  It has been an intense and wonderful year.  Finishing is definitely bittersweet.  Happy to have my weekends back, sad to not have a reason to be with my fellow YTT's, a group that I have grown to love.  And sad to not be looking closely at all aspects of yoga from all angles.  Fortunately it is a lifetime of learning.  I will try to keep the sharing to a minimum.

And second, I de-installed my piece in New Haven.  In addition to many hours of quality knitting time on MetroNorth, it offered an opportunity for some artsy do-nothing photos. 

According to the curator, many of the passers-by in downtown New Haven eagerly embraced the message, some even raising their fists in the air and shouting "Do nothing!  Yah!".

My work is nothing if not a crowd pleaser.

For me, however, this piece was as much about considering what it might mean to do nothing as it was a deep appreciation of the suction cup hook.  Will I ever create something that uses 450 of them again?  I can only dream.  

And you have to admit, it was a pretty tidy solution.