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Big news coming…little news HERE !

Posted on June 14, 2014June 14, 2014 by heather

Grab a cup of coffee, I’m on my third, this one is a catch up long in coming…

After a week of storms, and a Friday the 13th wherein another storm featured prominently…especially, but not exclusively, the part wherein Anita, the wonderful helper at Snyder’s Sew and Vac, exclaimed that the torrential deluge, which we were all marveling at through the shop window, was POURING in to some poor fools’ open truck windows…yep, that’d be me…

anyway back to the point of entry…the stormy week…

has passed and this morning dawns cool and clear and absolutely blissful. An early walk around the garden reveals that the infant veggies have pulled off their raincoats and are quite ready to get back to the business of growing. Snow peas didn’t need no stinking slickers…they just kept right on and the first real batch was plucked into my t-shirt.

Then I walked under the arbor and was thrilled to see that we actually, after five or six years of waiting, have something resembling a real concord grape ! You will notice the avian anti-theft devices twirling in the background which seem to work just dandy to have kept the hungry spring beaks from plucking away the all important, and yes probably tasty, buds. Look hard, there are grapes there, dozens of clusters.

But seriously, the main event, for which I interrupted Herself’s bowl of cereal to insist she run to see…

MIMA’s Sour Cherry tree, “Sweet Lorraine”, has…or make that had…the first crop of sour cherries to bless this garden. Last time I had looked, there were some tiny green bobbles and the other tree, which was loaded with blossoms had none…so I wasn’t keeping close watch. I love those kind of surprises and they happen every day here in June.

So…if my garden is producing ripe cherries, the orchard just over the hill should ? Some Ritz ready made and rolled pie crusts were added to Pat’s grocery list…just in case. And a very tiny scrap of dough will be ceremonially wrapped around the tinier handful of Mima’s sour cherries for the inaugural bake. Maybe I’ll freeze them so Zoe can taste. These trees are for her after all.

OK – do you remember me mentioning Anita ? I’ll swing back around to her in a minute.

First, if we can focus on the day job…painting…

The long season of longer days and well into the late nights, as I worked to put together the paintings for the Granary Gallery Show…which opens July 20th…was wrapped up this week with the last brush strokes, on the last painting. It felt like months of straight on brush lifting but when I looked back in my daily journal it was exactly one month to the day, of 12-16 hour daily sessions, begun on May 9th and completed on the 9th of June.

Just a couple glimpses here as I wait for Mr. Corcoran to do his photographic magic for the big reveal…

The curve balls which were hurled at the studio over the winter do have me running about three weeks behind where I would like to be coming into the show season, and I have added an exciting adventure to the schedule …a real live show out in Santa Fe in October complete with the artiste in residence for the opening. More on that later…but keep your head up…that’s just the beginning.

The resulting creative intensity has correspondingly been escalating around here. And I have promised Herself and Myself to slow down enough to enjoy each other and every garden grace, and all the other mischief that my hands enjoy getting up to while they still can.
After watching the latest episode of PBS’s Craft in America, speaking of treasures, I have been studying the quilts made by the women of Gee’s Bend.( Here’s quick link, Quilts of Gee’s Bend but you can all do your own googling and I encourage you to dip away.) They are glorious, spectacular, and humbling works of art and the works by Joe Cunningham, who was featured on the show…mind blowing.

Like that…I have to quilt. No, I didn’t drag out any of the three or four projects “in progress”. Those bags are for later. I am too suggestible and, after seeing a tiny photo of some new fabric which Kaffe Fassett has produced, I ordered a fat bundle. You can see it in the background here but stop and smell my garden roses along the way.

Quick trip to Intercourse…no, the village in Amish country north of Lancaster, to the quilt mecca shop, somewhat disappointing as they had none of the notions I was there to collect. It’s just not the same when you have to order a tiny thimble online…but nothing, not even those storms…can stand in the way of this, my latest, obsession, which was held frothing in the starting gates until…the last brush stroke…AND my beloved and I had a wonderful day together, which is after all at the top of the list.

As Joe C. describes in the show, most of the time he has no idea where his quilt compositions will end up. That artistic license is essential to the creative process and it was important, for me, to be reminded of that. Seeing the free form quilts that he and the ladies have sewn, has passed down the “permission” to let loose.

No need for tedious marking and measuring and fussing over precision corners. The stitches should come from the heart. The color should pour from the soul.

My studio loft is the perfect nest for fiber arts and I was happily flying through the piecing stage..

until…the machine froze up.

And this brings us back…again…to Anita ! And Edith !

My newest angels, who are standing behind the fancy new machine which I went home with …in the middle of that storm. I googled “help my sewing machine is broken” and found Snyder’s Sew and Vac.

They all provided me with the best shopping experience I’ve had in this town in years, complete with plastic bags to cover those soaking truck seats (thank you John for that and all your good advice !). I love working with humans who know their stuff and when you thrown kindness and a good sense of humor in the mix…customer for life !

Now a new morning has dawned. The gremlins who taunted me yesterday are dismissed. The skies are clear, the cherries are ripe, the paint is drying, I’m one lucky woman and…your coffee is probably cold.

It’s time to get to work and every which way I turn there is something fun to get my hands into. I hope that is true for you as well.

And that big news… yep it’s coming. Stay tuned, stay frosty and live it large.

News from Menemsha

Posted on April 2, 2014 by heather

From the MV Gazette…(photo credit, Albert O. Fisher)

New Harbor Master Shack Arrives in Menemsha

A new harbor master shack arrived in Menemsha on Monday afternoon, replacing the 35-year-old building perched above the commercial dock. The shack was built by students at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and transported via trailer. Voters approved spending $24,000 on the project late last year.”They did a nice job,” harbor master Dennis Jason Jr. said at a recent board of selectmen meeting. “The building was nicely put together.” – See more at:

http://mvgazette.com/news/2014/04/01/new-harbor-master-shack-arrives-menemsha?k=vg5246eee864179#sthash.tZMH95pO.dpuf

So, if I read this correctly, this newly delivered building will replace…

this old building…

Harbor Master – 2002

Just part of the many new changes in store for this old fishing village…stay tuned.

My pal the professor…

Posted on October 29, 2013 by heather

Here’s shout out to my peeps in the Boston area for…tomorrow !

The Follansbee, who is getting so famous now that I will have to do extra time in PT to achieve the appropriate bow of respect, is going to be at the MFA …yes, that venerable institution of all things fine and art, to give a demonstration and talk about his unique speciality…17th Century Joinery.

Here’s the link to the info on his blog http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/same-gig-different-spot/
which I have also copied below…

Wish I could be there but we were grateful for a stop over visit the other week on his way to yet another lecture. We are a couple of aging artisans, but the friendship has a patina that the antiques roadshow collectors would envy.

So proud of this guy…

I’ll be at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston this Wednesday afternoon/eveing, doing a demonstration much like my usual day job. Just a snappier venue…

Here’s the text from the website for the Four Centuries project http://www.fourcenturies.org/ai1ec_event/artist-demonstration/

Be sure to look around at that website = there’s lots going on in Massachusetts if you like furniture…

If you’re in town (maybe early for Game 6 of the World Series around the corner at Fenway) come by the MFA

Artist Demonstration

Peter Follansbee will be demonstrating some of the techniques he uses in making reproductions of 17th-century joiner’s work. Usually done in oak split or riven from the log, this furniture most often includes carved decoration. The carvings combine geometric, floral and architectural patterns, often in combination. Mr. Follansbee has studied New England furniture in the MFA collections for almost 20 years, and will show how these designs are laid out and carved with a compass, several carving gouges and a wooden mallet. He will have examples of his reproduction furniture for visitors to examine up close, as well as resource materials to explain the complete process. Peter Follansbee began his woodworking career in 1978, learning traditional methods to build ladder back chairs. His study of 17th-century joiner’s work has led to numerous articles in the scholarly journal American Furniture, Popular Woodworking Magazine, as well as several instructional videos with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. In 2011, Lost Art Press published a book, co-authored by Mr. Follansbee, called Make a Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century Joinery. Since 1994, Mr. Follansbee has worked as the joiner at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Presented by Peter Follansbee, Master joiner from the Plimoth Plantation

Made Possible by The Lowell Institute

WHEN

October 30, 2013 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM

WHERE

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Druker Classroom 465 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 USA

MAP IT

PRICING

Free with Museum admission

CONTACT

617-267-9300

Exciting news…

Posted on July 6, 2013 by heather

I’m thrilled to announce that my paintings will now be exhibited in the Sugarman Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico… Here’s a link to their website…Click Here

It is fitting therefore that, among the first group of paintings, they will be showing Bucket List. Thanks to gallery owners Michael and Christie Peterson I can now cross one more thing off of my….bucket list !

Cape Cod ARTS

Posted on June 28, 2013 by heather

On newsstands now…

It’s a thrill to be one of the artists featured in Cape Cod ARTS magazine’s 2013 issue. Here is a link to find out more…click here

Good Company

Posted on June 3, 2013 by heather

I knocked off work early last night and sat with Herself in the studio yard where we sipped martinis and watched the stormy sunset then headed home for a movie night.

We watched an old favorite, Strangers in Good Company.

Neither of us could remember how long ago we saw it for the first time, it was released in 1990, but both of us agree that we can now identify much more intimately with the women who form the cast of characters.

It is a magically artistic look womankind.

You can read about the movie and how it was made by clicking on the Wikileaks link (click on the image above) but there’s not much more than the brief outline…eight women on a bus in canada…bus breaks down in the woods…they seek shelter and tell their stories. Simple. Quiet. Honest conversations.

I want everyone of the grandchildren, nieces, nephews, godchildren and godmoose children to watch it. In fact I insist. With cell phones removed from the building.

They won’t get it…yet…but it needs to be on their radars now. And revisited every ten years until their first grey hairs begin to appear and then every two years after that.

So… Amanda, Ben, Isaac, Anna, Melissa, Neill, Johnny, Abby, Emily, Danny, Sarah, All the Decker girls, and yes, even you Zoe…put it on your netflix queues now.

Gran and I will look forward to sitting in the studio yard, watching the sun set, and listening to your movie reviews.

A Success Story

Posted on June 2, 2013 by heather

I thought you would appreciate an update on the Wille Sundqvist Movie project. They received an amazing response for their Kickstarter campaign to help raise money to fund their production of the movie to capture Wille’s woodworking genius.

Peter wrote a bit more about his connection to Wille and his road to being the pre-eminant 17th Century Joiner in the modern world. It includes a photo taken at the beginning of that journey … what a bunch of manly men…reminds me from where my hippie roots were so happily planted.

I’ve still got to resist the urge to pick up an axe rather than these tiny brushes as the Granary Show deadline lurches ever closer…but soon…very soon…I’ll get a spoon carving break and my blood pressure will slow accordingly.

From Peter…

I got a note back from Jogge Sundqvist the other day, when I wrote to congratulate him on the immediate success of the kickstarter fundraising. Here’s part of what he wrote:

“YES.

This is just overwhelming!

I haven´t in my deepest imagination ever thought that we should reach the goal so quickly. Within 24 hrs…

This is so helpful, not just the money, it also strengthens everyone involved in self-confidence and trust in the movie to be something really good.

And everyone involved in the film is full of humility and wonder at the response we’ve had to make the film about Wille.

We have a little way to go before our actual budget… I hope you still want to continue to spread the word about the film, every little contribution is incredibly valuable to make a film of high artistic quality and with a clear content.

Hi 5. he, he”

So if you are inclined, there’s still plenty of time to donate to this project. Here’s the kickstarter link, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/761142325/the-spoon-the-bowl-and-the-knife-craftsman-wille-s?ref=recently_launched or if you prefer, you can send a check to Drew.

Make it out to:

Country Workshops – Sundqvist video project

990 Black Pine Ridge Road

Marshall, NC 28753

BUT – you might ask: What’s all the fuss about Wille Sundqvist and some wooden spoons? Ha! You’d be amazed.

Wille Sundqvist spoon

As the years keep ticking by, I often think about connections and chronologies. May times people will think about events in their lives, and how one simple happening might turn your life this direction or that…and I think that without Wille, I might not be a joiner/woodworker today. Certainly not a spoon carver. And yet we barely know each other…

I first heard of Wille of course from Drew Langsner, whom I met in 1980. That was the start of my woodworking career, although you wouldn’t have seen it coming then! I have often told the story of how I got to Drew’s Country Workshops to learn traditional woodworking. I was a mainstay there in the 2nd half of the 1980s and early 1990s (til I got a job…).

But how did Country Workshops begin? Drew has told me and many others the story many times, and a while back wrote it down in one of the Country Workshops e-newsletters. http://www.countryworkshops.org/newsletter31/ (scroll down to “CW History” – and if you haven’t yet, you can sign up for their free newsletter. It always has good stuff in it, besides update on classes and tools, etc.)

The gist of it is that Bill Coperthwaite brought Wille Sundqvist to meet Drew & Louise in 1976 or 77. Drew had a couple days’ worth of lessons from Wille, and was wanting more. Thus the idea of inviting him to come teach a workshop, which led to the Langsners hosting woodworking classes ever since.

Drew included Wille in his first woodworking how-to book, Country Woodcraft, in 1978. That’s where I first saw/heard of Wille.

Wille Sundqvist 1978

Then as I became a regular student at Country Workshops, I often heard stories of Wille’s craft and his teaching, and also saw examples of his work. As it turned out, I met his son Jogge first, in 1988. Then a few years later I was able to attend one of Wille’s classes.

Here is a quote from Wille’s book, Swedish Carving Techniques (Taunton Press, 1990):

“Carving something with a knife or an ax is a very tangible way to get a sense of design. Because the object being made doesn’t have to be secured in any way, it’s easy to move it to different positions and see its lines and shape grow out of the blank. A three-dimensional object isn’t just a picture. It’s an infinite number of pictures, and all of the pictures must find harmony within the object. The lines of the object must compose one unit, congruent from whatever direction it is seen. Carving teaches design.”

And that is really a big part of it. Wille’s spoons are very deceptive. Unlike any furniture work I do, these are subtractive woodworking – you’re cutting wood away & leaving just the right bits. You hope. Each cut means something. There’s so many layers to what Wille teaches – the postures, the tools, the design. You learn about wood and how it grows; and its strengths and weaknesses. Also about the tools, the edge and how it slices. If you have ever seen me use a hatchet, that work comes to me from Wille, some of it directly and much of it through Drew & Jogge.

To me, the spoon carving is a revolutionary act. It helps cut through the mass-produced cheap culture that we have absorbed like zombies. Such a simple household implement, taken to extraordinary heights. Why shouldn’t our most basic kitchen stuff be beautiful? Out with plastic! Think about Coperthwaite and his quote “I want to live in a world where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.”

The kickstarter campaign runs for 4o more days and at this writing is over $7,000. That’s not counting whatever got donated directly to Drew or Jogge. Thanks to everyone from here who helped. If you’re inclined, please spread the word.

More links to some related material:

http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/how-did-i-get-started-country-workshops-the-langsners-is-how/

http://www.countryworkshops.org/newsletter11/wille.html

http://www.surolle.se/

http://www.herondance.org/reflections/bill-coperthwaite/

Supporting the troops…Vineyard style

Posted on May 27, 2013 by heather

I’m looking forward to watching this tonight.

The island fisherman have brought wounded vets to the MV Derby and it’s a good old American Throw Down. I’ve got my money on the Tomahawk piloted by my pal Buddy Vanderhoop…but the waters are deep out there.

Here’s a link to the trailer… Click Here

Happy Memorial Day to all !

Special Gifts…

Posted on April 30, 2013 by heather

As the spring flowers bloom all around the studio yard, I am reminded of all the season’s holidays, and weddings that will be just around the calendar’s corner. If you are looking for a unique gift for that someone special…

I hope you will consider selecting a print from our new Etsy shop.

There are lots to choose from for that gardener you love…

and the sports lover…

the woodworker…

the artist…

that beachcomber…

who loves to read…

and yes, even your favorite tea drinkers…

All prints are signed by…me.

And, for all my blog readers, I am sweetening that tea with the offer of a SPECIAL COUPON…

just type in this code…

HNBlog2013

and you will recieve FREE SHIPPING on all orders.

Coupon will be good up until July 21,2013 (Which just happens to be the opening day of THE GRANARY GALLERY show this year !!! )

Happy Spring and, as always, thank you…I am so grateful for your support,
Heather

Boomerangs…

Posted on April 18, 2013April 18, 2013 by heather • 1 Comment

An arc
Something thrown out into the world
Where it spins and bounces off of life
Then comes sailing back to where its journey began

In this case, two people
brought together by chance…by hazard
then launched into the world
to follow separate paths
in search of creative truths
and now reunited and returning …

Rex Wilder and I started our fling in the late 70’s when we met as students of life attending Connecticut College. He, with ambitions to be a poet. Me, the fledgling artist. On the road to masterpieces, we both carried around sketchbooks and filled them with earnest, if early, scribbles and thoughts. We scoured the streets of New London in search of authentic souls to gleen for signs of intelligent life in the universe. I, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. And many a windmill did we tilt.

Then our trajectories divert and almost 40 years of pursuing our separate arts flies by…Rex becomes that poet and achieves fame and book royalties…I become that artist and get to paint every day.

And now the story comes sailing back to home and we, the seasoned artistes, have collided in one act of creation…

This, his second published collection of poems, is poised to be launched on its own journey…and humbly holding all those precious treasures in place…if you’ll forgive me…Suspended.

On so many levels this is magical. For us both, the circles within circles are joyous and stunning to celebrate and sitting back in my easel chair and pondering how far we’ve both traveled and being reminded of the youthful ambitious dreams that we shared finds me smiling alot these days.

I’m sure there will be much ado surrounding the official book release and I will keep you all posted about that. For now, you can access more information and even pre-order the book on Amazon via this link…click here.

And the original oil painting is currently on display at Gallery 1261 in Denver and you can visit it via this link…click here.

I’m waiting until I have book in hand to read all the poems but I have peeked at a few and they are delightful divertissements… I think you will enjoy.

Now, back to the brushes.