The things no one sees
Preparing for my next solo show has been a wild ride. My original idea was to create an exhibit on borders and boundaries with a series of 25 experimental monoprints. But the reflective time offered by my residency at the Vermont Studio Center led me down a different path.
I followed the path into the unknown and found myself in the middle of an interdisciplinary series of works that I had not anticipated at all. Interdisciplinary? Yep. Drawings, oil paintings, fiber, and found objects. No monoprints at all!
And this change has meant overcoming some absurd obstacles. Let me tell you the story of my fairly simple idea of using charcoal on wood to draw an immigrant woman and child at Ellis Island in the early 1900s.
The wooden surface would be made of strips of old weathered palette wood and I would loop some barbed wire over it. If you know my husband Doug, you know he scavenges lots of discarded and interesting wood that he makes into beautifully finished projects. And though he thought it was odd, he willingly made the panel I needed leaving it uneven and unfinished as requested.
I was off and running! The strips of wood formed beautiful stripes that were fence-like, prison-like, and even suggested the stripes of our flag. Everything I wanted! Using charcoal over rough cracks and knot holes that popped up in the wrong places was challenging, but I was up for it. I found that rags and stumps could push the black charcoal into the crevices. And I achieved the dark tones by doing that until my hands ached.
Once that was done, I was ready to string rusty barbed wire over the drawing. After days of working on the weird rough splintery wood, the next part would be easy. I reached out to our local farm share. I knew the owner, Derek, had been installing deer-fencing all summer and thought he’d have some discarded ends of barbed wire I could buy. Well. No. He told me barbed wire is “frowned upon” as inhumane. He doesn’t use it at all.
I really needed rusty wire to finish the work, so I purchased a 10-yard roll of shiny new barbed wire, intending to make it rusty. But after leaving the roll in a pan of water for a couple of days, I discovered that it was heavily coated with zinc to prevent rust. Next, I tried the crafter’s method of vinegar, peroxide, and salt. The kitchen smelled like we were making hundreds of Easter eggs, but there was still no rust. That wire sure had some heavy-duty coating!
Eventually I had to scrub the wire with Brillo pads to break through the coating. A disgusting task that got even worse. Have you ever smelled old wet steel wool and rusting metal AND vinegar? Lots of it? After two more weeks of turning it over and over in the smelly mixture, I finally had the perfect shade of brown.
A-a-a-n-n-d then…what the heck? The rusted metal left tons of vile orange powder on and near everything it touched. That would completely wreck my charcoal drawing!
I packed the rusted chaos into a thick bag, brought it to the studio, carefully unrolled the springy, tangled, and very sharp mess, and hung it up like a clothesline, then spent a few hours coating the whole thing with matte varnish. It was better, but still left some marks, which meant I had to come back the next day and coat it again. And again. And when the fourth layer of varnish dried, I was finally ready to begin installing it. The color looked perfect and I was happy, until I realized that 10 yards wasn’t enough. I had to buy another 10-yard roll and start the process all over again!
That was just one of the unexpected technical surprises in this series.
Today, on another drawing, I’m getting ready to burn 7 small holes in a piece of Duralar (a plasticky drawing surface). But I don’t know if the whole plastic will go up in flames. So, I’ve set the Duralar on an old cookie tray on top of a marble counter, and pulled out our emergency fire blanket before I begin burning the holes with a hot soldering iron.
Wish me luck!