New Ideas from August

Real life experience of the world without us!

A lesson from an expert pod maker!

I am playing with bags again

In my search for the various forms for the plastic bags, I started weaving them on a wire form. This is my first attempt a bit too egg like but I had to work out how to make the wire frame and see the thing woven. I can see some possibilities.


While working in the garden I needed to put up an arbor for the peas

I was about to place this brown ugly grid on the poles when it occurred to me that all they need is a weaving to climb.


I can't wait to see how the peas grow up on the weaving and totally engulf the matrix.

This is a sketch of a sculpture. A couple changes are going to be made. First the birds will not be all the same bird, second the weaving will be less regular. This is the story of the bird carrying the bags. 

Found these poor guys on the road the other day. The things I've been thinking about a lot lately is the details of life. The things that pass us by most of the time but occasionally it gets noticed and then it has a new power. I have also been interested in the struggle of man and nature. Really thinking about the place where these two forces meet or collide.

These are several drawing I am doing. I am working out a language with these. They grow organically for me and they remind me of the philosophers stones in Chinese gardens.

A friend of mine told me a funny story of her grandson and his beloved blankie named Linus:

 

Joseph can go no were without Linus and when Jo Ann picked him up at day care she forgot to grab Linus. This was okay for a little while because of the newness of being with Grandma instead of mom but after all the errands were done and Joseph is heading home with mom a very clear message was heard. Jo Ann’s daughter Alison looked desperately around. “Mom I need Linus where is it” Oh I forgot it at Sweet Pea Daycare. “Oh” said Alison “I’ll manage.” As Jo An was driving home she call Alison “ are you okay do you want me to go back to Sweet Pea and get Linus” Over the screams Jo Ann heard a very exhausted “yes please that would be wonderful.” Jo Ann being the dutiful Grandma she went back for Linus. Alison was ever so grateful.

 

This ensued a conversation about “blankies” Mine was Lambie I still have him, Jo Ann had Buncky and Tim had Matilda the pound puppy. Poor Marcy doesn’t know were Kooky is. Her mom threw it out years ago.

 

 

This got me thinking about things we can’t throw away. Either it has sentimental value or we have a guilt factor.

Baginatree sound and drawings

This is my drawing assignment for China, the page is 11x14 done with micron pen. I have bought all the colors and plan to keep this up using colored lines instead of black.

This is a sketch for a sculpture idea, they are meant to be bags rolled into balls as one would when knitting. To me they are like cocoons, representing potential. I have had this experience when asking the staff at the high school I teach at for bags. They have completely bombarded me with bags, and every day more keeps coming. This caused me to ask why do people have so many bags saved? I guessed people don't know what to do with them, even though on the bags it says "Please recycle drop your bags in the recycle bin at the nearest participating store." We have a lot of Market Basket stores in our area and not one one them has a bin. So here we have this packaging item that people just can't throw away. This lead me to think about string; during the depression my grandfather would get packages from the store they would be wrapped in paper and string. He would very carefully unwrap the package and keep the string in a ball in the kitchen drawer. He did the same with everything.

The video is supposed to loop. So the idea is the bag is taken out put back in taken out etc. A reflection of my own struggle of do I want the bags in the trees or out.

This will be reshot without the zoom and framed better. I haven't done that it yet.

American Beauty moment. I tried not to move the camera most of the movement is coming from the wind.

There is no image only the sound. This is also supposed to loop. I think it's funny and have thought of it as a "musak" sound going on in the background of an installation.