knocking out sheet rock

I knocked out some small wall sections in my studio, removed a storage loft, and a ceiling. The studio is now more open allowing more light to come in from the windows. It feels really different.

Stripe and Pink Giraffe

I have about 64 of these bread boards. Lots to experiment with. Thinking about themes, series, and groupings.

Wool French Coat, Bread Boards, Suitcase, and Sewing Needles

I am enjoying the bread boards immensely. Their surface, with scratches and remnants of flour are so beautiful to me. Each one very different. It is difficult to change the surface. Instead I am enjoying them as they are and using them in different installations. This one in particular reminds me so much of Joseph Beuys, and Christian Boltanski. It reminds me of lost identity and emptiness.

Found Bread Boards

While out walking, I sometimes pass by Acme bread. I noticed beside their dumpster a beautiful pile of bread boards.
Yes!, I got my pick up truck and loaded the boards into my car. I talked to the bread baker and he said that the boards were splintering and they have changed the surface to metal. He was happy I was taking them.

Joan Brown with her horse

I have been working at the Berkeley Museum.
I love this piece that Joan Brown did.
It's a rag cloth and string horse.
This photograph and this horse
strike an emotion in me.
They feel so familiar to me.
Today I took Monday off to work in my studio.
I had the choice to work and make money at the museum or paint for my friend. Instead I decided that I need to work in the studio. It is a constant challenge for me to understand that my art is my career, and I need to work very hard at it.

Sailing

I am sailing a classic old wooden El Toro sail boat in the SF Bay just off the Berkeley Marina. I was so scared when I pushed off the dock but as soon as the wind caught my sail I sat back and relaxed. Last night, I begin working on my first art piece since my return from Nebraska, what a relief.

Basketball Series Continues

I am reunited with my lovely dog Lucha. The basketball series continues. I will keep finding hoops and shooting balls.
This hoop is right outside my third street studio. I found the hoop on the street about 4 years ago. Goetz Constuction worker, Rico, drilled holes in the cement wall and helped install it.

Home

I am home now. Its time to reflect on my experience and keep making work as I settle into this fascinating bay area landscape and city buzz.

Aimee, Shawn and I

I am in Nevasda now, I will arrive in the Bay Area today. Wow. Transitions take place quickly. This was our very first residency, it couldn't have been a better match. Aimee is on her way to Vermont to another residency, and Shawn back to Seattle. I miss them dearly.

Good Bye Nebraska

Today I leave. I am at a loss for words. The feelings I hold right now are deep, layered, sweet, exciting, and sad. I feel full. Transitions are fascinating. I am ready, and I love moving my energy. The hours on the open road ahead will be a great time to reflect upon this experience as I drive out of Nebraska along the Platte River, into Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and finally California, which is my home. I will miss the picture perfect barns, the prairie, the sunrise,the enormouse sky and starlite nights and all of the Nebraska smells, but I realize, they have found a place in my heart and it's deep, maybe as deep as the hole that I sat in. 3 feet and 3 inches in the earth of Nebraska.

Sitting in the hole

The corn against my body felt cool, slippery, and tight. Any movement I made, the corn would tighten up against my body, filling every available gap. When I looked up at folks while they poured corn onto me, I was very thankful for their involvement. I was curious about how each person decided to pour corn; fast, slow, gently, lots or just a little quickly. Sometimes there was conversation, and sometimes there was just the audio in the background. I was comfortable, most of the time. The hardest moments were, when the weight of the corn around my chest got heavier as it rose closer to my neck, and each breath became more difficult.

There was not always a constant flow of people, I spent time alone too. I felt helpless, because I could not move, but relaxed. I enjoyed listening to all the interviews and sounds that I recorded. The wind blew and leafs would fall into the corn crib coming close to my head. The smell and coolness of the earth was pleasant. I closed my eyes. Other times I would rotate my head in all directions looking at how the sun light burst through the slats of wood.

Corn Crib Performance

I dug hole in the center of the corn crib. I sat down in it. Audio speakers were installed on both sides of the crib with the recorded sound of farmers talking about farming, coyotes, corn cribs, technology, bins and silos. There was also recordings of corn being poured through the elevators out onto piles, the sound of huge combine machines in the fields, cows, poetry about farming the Nebraskan land, as well as a few of my own words about holes and corn. I sat in the hole for 45 minutes two times a day during the opening. While in the hole I would holler out to folks to grab a small bucket of corn on the outside, come in and help fill me up with corn to my neck while listening to the audio. Some folks were hestitant at first but everyone participated and eventually my hole was filled with corn to my neck.

Lying Down In Corn

I will be getting ready to leave Nebraska this week, please notice the address change in my profile, and I would still love to hear from you via snail mail anytime.

Mark and Hannah First Ones In Silo Collar

During the Art Farm Harvest Weekend, I had folks climb into the Silo that I painted bright colors. I took their portraits, and their e-mail addresses and will be sending them their picture. It was a lot of fun to see their heads pop up and out of the collar.

Raven, Ed, and I

Ed and I sit outside my studio at the end of the Art Harvest weekend. It was a very busy, succesful and fun weekend. We think at least three hundred people showed up. A lot of folks came for the first time and learned about the Art Farm Harvest event through the local Grand Island Paper. A full page report appeared in the Sunday paper with pictures of Aimee, Shawn and me.

Colorful Collar

She is finishing the last blue stripes on the silo top. During the opening, this weekend, she would like people to climb in, find the hole, poke their head out, and she will take their portraits.

Corn

The bins are full in Marquette. When they are full they just put the corn out on the ground. Oh, she tried so hard not to climb to the top and dig holes and roll around in it. Instead she just kneeled down, touched it and put a few kernels in her pocket before walking away.

Mel Russel's Court

This is where she met Mel Russel and his sweet dog, Lucky. She saw the basketball rim and could not resist just driving onto the private property and shooting a few. He came out of the house laughing at her, wondering why a woman would come to shoot hoop at his basket and photograph herself. They had such a wonderful conversation. He told her he has spent his whole life here in Marquette farming. She loved asking him questions about the corn, coyotes and tornadoes but in the end it was basketball and dogs that they liked talking about best.

Hoop in Marquette, Nebraska

Hoop Beside The Railroad Yard, Aurora

This is a special spot. While you shoot hoop you can watch the long trains filled with coal go by.

Soybeans

She stopped on her way back from swimming at the YMCA to climb up and speak with this man in charge of the lever that opens and closes the hatch for the flow of soybeans that fall into the trucks parked beneath. The soybeans in this bin were just sold to another distributer down the road. The harvest of soybeans and corn is like a cash. It is transferred between different bins. The bigger bins buy from the little bins, and when the economy is good and there is a high demand, the grain is sold locally for ethanol and feed for cows or shipped out of the country as feed for people. The bins allow you to have control of the market. The bigger the bin the more powerful you are.

3 feet 3 inches

She decided to dig a hole in the center, inside the corn cob building. She wants to stand inside the hole so that just her head will be sticking out. She is 5'11. She has over 2 feet of dirt left to dig out of the hole.

2006 Art Harvest

Corn Crib Cleared Out

Thats Ed, the director of ArtFarm on the tractor. The tractor fits perfectly. The building was built around 1905, and is a corn crib, used to store and dry corn. Corn Cribs were first used by Native Americans. The space in the middle is built with the exact dimensions for the tractor to fit in and to promote airflow. The space is now ready for her to work in.

Installation Space

She was wandering around the farm, and this building reached out to her, giving inspiration. The smell, the light shining through the holes in the roof, and especially, the length, height and width of the space seemed to resonate in her heart and with her own height and body. It is one of the original buildings on the property. Corn was stored up in the rafters on both sides of the building over sixty years ago. She chose the middle of the building to clean out and use as an installation space.

Drawing

It was twenty degrees last night. She had to stop drawing because her hands were suddenly numb. She was thinking about coyotes, they were close by last night, with high pitch howls, maybe three of them together, crying out into the night. Objects are starting to come out of her drawing. Most of her pieces evolve in this way.

Railroad Wk #1

Harvest

All of the fields around Art Farm are being harvested. There seems now to be even more sky, and a feeling of being exposed around Art Farm. I am sitting in a soybean field recently harvested.

Hitchhikin

Look at us!!! After eating at Wendys, the only thing open in Central City, it was time to go back to Art Farm. The temperature dropped dramatically, it was cold, and we were ready for a nice ride home. We hitched for a few minutes before a cop drove up and said it was illegal to hitchhike in the state of Nebraska. We walked back to the corner gas station, stood around, asked a few folks filling up if they were heading south. No luck, decided to try again out on the road, and sure enough, a white Cadillac pulls up and it's Ken, a man I had met in the post office in Marquette, just the other day. He drove us directly back to Art Farm. Yee haw.

Central City

Five hours later we walk into Central City. We are tired and hungry. And proceed to look for a place to eat in the small town.

No Tracks

The tracks are not there. Beautiful piles of rusty metal scrap appear every few miles. All of the rails have been pulled out, leaving us an easy path to walk on. Aimee throws rocks at the metal, creating different acoustic sounds. The sounds were so unique and made me laugh.

Walk To Central City

Aimee, Shawn and I set out on a walk to Central City via rail road tracks. It takes 12 miles to get there.

Road Work #4

Horse Ramp

I have not shown you much of what I have been making, but this little tailless horse appeared the other day to walk on the 15 foot ramp I built with old barn lath.

Studio

I have two studios. One, I use to sand, cut, and assemble my wood and messy projects. It feels cool, emiting the colors of blues and greys, with the neon lights and cement floor. In the other one, I draw, read, write, and paint in. It feels warm, glowing with the color yellow with its wooden floors and regular lights. Amazing how you can really feel the difference betwen cement and wood spaces.

Marquette, Nebraska

This small town is the closest town to me. It is walking distance from Artfarm, a long walk. There is a post office, and a fire department, residential buildings, railroad tracks, basketball hoops, abandoned lots, lots for sale and a grain factory. I'll tell you more as I will attempt some walking field trips there in the next few days, with of course, my baskteball. My sense of the place when driving through it, lonely.

Marquette Water Tower

Farm Chores

Racooned proofed, and sheet rocked attic section. From doing this project I got a lot of ideas for using lath in my art projects. In order to put this up I had to climb behind it, to install, and only leave a small opening for me to escape, I did not panic.

Road Work #3

Road Work #2

Evening Chores

This is what I am working on every evening, tearing off the shingles of this old barn so we can get to the wood underneath and reuse. Tomorrow, will be a different chore. Shawn, Ed and I will go take apart a 15 by 18 foot silo and bring it back to the farm. I love this work, I love Nebraska.

Art Farm Crew

Here we are.

Hands

He was thrilled to know that I was from California, he smiled huge. I bought a wisk broom for my truck from him. Look at his hands.