Feather the Nest - Upcoming Event

Cake Decorating on Canvas

It may sound strange but I just painted with a cake decorating tool. It is the same tool that decorated many cakes for my young children but it now has a new life as a painting tool.

I filled it with paint and am making a thick nest on canvas. It was so so so much fun. The paint does the most fantastic things when it comes out of the tip of the applicator.  Here are some shots of me playing on canvas.

More Progress on Sculptural Nests

Tear Jar Exhibition Pieces

I have completed the pieces for the TearRoom Project exhibition that will be happening at the Museum of Antiquities at the University of Saskatchewan.  Exhibition run April and May 2012

 

 

 

New Sculptural Nests

I am working on a few new nests.

The nest below is made from the decorative ribbon used on furniture. I had a huge amount of it donated and am using a hook rug technique to adhere it to the chicken wire frame. I have not cut or damaged any of the pieces in the construction. 

This nest is made from mailing tubes. I am currently using old yarn to tie the poles together. It is a labour intensive task.  

This nest is made from old couch springs. It is really intricate when viewed up close. It is complete. 

Again thanks to Market Mall for donating the space for the construction of the nests for the Children's Festival.

 

Another nest from springs

This nest uses a different spring, this spring is for the back of an armchair. It has been a big challenge to hold these together. Getting the springs required actual dumpster diving. My husband and I arrived a little late to the upholstery store that was closing and he had thrown them in the dumpster. In the true spirit of creation my husband and I jumped in and untangled them from the mess of other things.  They arrived at the studio in a huge tangled mess.  After much work they are separated and are being retangled in a systematic way.

The final product will have cord and edging from upholstery woven through it. The project is a long ways from being completed. Good thing I don't have to have them ready until June.

 

 

New Super Huge Studio Space

I am artist in residence for the Potash Corp Children's Festival and at the festival I will be creating an installation of larger than life bird nests from various reclaimed and recycled materials. I needed a large space in which to make these and approached a local mall that had some empty store space. Market Mall generously donated the space to me.

Here are some images of where I am working.

Nest from Old Springs - Completed

I completed the nest from old springs today. I am going to work on an egg (nest egg) for in the nest but the structure of the nest is done.  Thanks to Sacher's Upholstery for the springs and to my husband for lugging them into the car and then the studio. 

The curator's for my upcoming exhibition saw the partly completed work on Friday and are going to include it in the exhibition at the Affinity Gallery (Sask Craft Council) in April and May.  It will then go to Kiwanis Park for the Potash Corp Children's Festival in early June.  

Nest from old Springs

I have begun to work in my new super huge studio space. Market Mall has donated a store space to me as I work on the installation pieces for the Potash Corp Children's Festival.  Here is an image of a nest I am making from old spring. I am binding the springs together to form the nest. The springs were donated from Sacher's Upholstery. 

More Clay Nests

Just finished more of the 100 clay nests. These nests are created using scrap clay that my students have finished with. We don't have a pug mill at my school so reworking clay is super labour intensive and the children never do as well with reworked clay, so I decided to use the scrap throw away clay to make these nests rather than rework it.  I found things to make nests with, similar to what a bird does. However, working with dried up, overworked clay is less than relaxing or easy. I guess the same goes for a bird, they have to work with what hits the ground. I even scraped clay from the classroom floor for these nests. The rolling of worms with dry clay can be exasperating at best.

My goal is 100 nests as an exercise in production and the link to our currency. In current times it seems that producing more is better than producing quality. Trust me, some of the nests lack some quality.  As I worked on this self inflicted stress I realized the nests of various shapes, sizes and quality definitely replicates our world where some homes are just nicer visually than others. I had many real bird nests as models for the nests so there are various types of nest design.  I also realized while in the bushes looking for nests that not all nests are wonderfully created, each bird has their own way of doing it. My son joked that the lady bird might be giving her mate grief because the nest is not turning out right and the male bird had represented to her that her could build etc etc.

The exercise of making these also makes me think of  the marginal productivity curve which my daughter explained to me. She explained that the quality of the nests would vary based on many external inputs.

A marginal productivity curve is one that graphically illustrates the relation between marginal product and the quantity of the variable input, holding all other inputs fixed. This curve indicates the incremental change in output at each level of a variable input. The marginal product curve is one of three related curves used in the analysis of the short-run production of a firm. The other two are total product curve and average product curve. The marginal product curve plays in key role in the economic analysis of short-run production by a firm. 

The nests measure in size from 4 cm to 15 cm across.