Mixed Bag

• July 11th, 2005 • • experiments, meandering, photo, supplies •

Several items to cover, in random order.

1) I don’t recall whether or not I talked about my new sink! No, the studio doesn’t have running water…from an outside source! My father gave me a bunch of left-over plumbing bits, so I crafted a new sink with a 3 gallon or so reserve. My technologically-advanced sink has the following features: an actual faucet with an on/off valve; a flexible hose drain which snakes around the outside of the garage door into some bushes; a method for plugging the drain which involves looping the end of the drain hose and slipping it over a curl of iron the shelf the sink is sitting on. Huzzah!

2) Grass paper update: Arrrg, I just realized that I deleted all of the photos I took off of my camera before uploading them! Why did I do that? Well, there IS news, but I’ll put that in another post with some nice close-ups of the paper. Grrr.

3) Remember Michael’s Mother’s Studio? Well, I got to root around in the mountains of art supplies again last weekend. It’s so much fun to discover the treasures this woman left behind. From clippings of poetry and quotes she found to be important, on to sketchbooks and journals, it’s all very interesting. Unfortunately, the summer heat and lack of room to move items (this place has no A/C; it’s a converted garage) kept me from looking too long. However, I did manage to find the following treasures this time:

1 - a complete X-Acto Knife kit. They don’t sell kits this complete anymore! Wow!
2 - a nigh-complete compass set. It even came with a compass lead sharpener. I didn’t know those existed!
3 - a carbonite marking pen. Cool! Another etching tool!
4 - a variety of french curves and floorplan stencils
5 - a home-made light table. I might have to replace the light on it, but hey! It’s well-made!
6 - two home-made clay sculptures. I like having artwork from my future-past mother-in-law.
7 - a jewelry vise with magnifying glass
8 - computer punch cards. HOT DAMN!!! Need I say MORE??

The coolest thing I found was a portable screen-printing setup. Yeehaw! Whotta deal. It appears to be homemade, as best I can tell. There’s a large portable board with different hinge layouts for the various screens I found. I have to replace all of the silk, as it’s somewhat rotted and filled with holes. Other than that, they’re all in great condition, and I can’t wait to try them out when I get the chance to order some new screen! Yippie!

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