Santa Rosa ceramic tile installation project

For the last few months I've been working on a public art commission for downtown Santa Rosa, CA, and traveled up there to install it last week. It was funded by the city for a program called "Downtown Connect", and four artists were commissioned to create works in an attempt to connect walkable points of interest in the downtown area. The call for proposals had a wishlist of themes, including a treasure hunt, so I crafted my proposal to be a series of nine installations spelling out the name of the city. I thought this would be a fun activity for children and their parents, when walking through downtown.

The reality of hand-forming, glazing and firing all of these hundreds of tiles was a bit more than I bargained for. It was a really fun way to experiment with different textures and glazes, though. Some I built into little craters and melted glass in them during the firing process. I carved my own stamps to make most of the letter tiles. I made similar tiles for my Herrudura Tequila project last year.

The original plan was to install them on various surfaces - building corners, light posts, utility boxes, the ground, etc. But on my initial trip to meet with the planner and walk through the targeted areas, we realized that acquiring all the different permissions and possible damage problems (skateboarders!) made my plan pretty complicated. There were large planters around downtown, and most being city property helped to simplify things. The plan was to start in Railroad Square, continue down 4th street, and end up at the Old Courthouse Square. Still not simple enough - some permissions never came through from the mall and in front of some storefronts, so another game change was done the morning I was set to install them. 

If you've ever installed tile, you know that water is pretty important to have around - not only for clean up, but when grouting you end up rinsing and ringing out a big sponge more times than you can imagine. When I asked the organizers where I could access water, they told me I was on my own figuring that out. Okay.... I ended up buying big buckets at Home Depot and filling them up with a hose at the Airbnb where I was staying, then hauling them to each site. Luckily the Airbnb hosts were cool with that. I was staying in a cute little vintage trailer set up in their driveway. An added bonus was that they had chickens that they let me play with. Not that chickens are much for "playing", I just miss having them, and was happy to be able to briefly hold one.

Being a shy person, I was just a little terrified to spend several days installing these - sitting on streets and sidewalks in a busy area. But I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Most all of the comments from passersby were of a positive bent, and I met some interesting local characters ( a boisterous hot dog seller, a few odd wandering/drunken souls, a youth who asked me to glue one of my tiles to his prized bong). The most common remark was "Is somebody paying you to do this?". When I was scrubbing the grout off (which was very difficult with the textured tiles, complicated by the sun beating down on most which dried it too fast, plus limited water), several people thought I was doing some sort of penance by cleaning the planters.

It was a totally new experience to have strangers call out sanctions of approval from cars or walk by and give the thumbs up while I was at work. I'm used to working in solitude, often with a sprinkling of self deprication. All in all, a great experience! Which is why I keep pursuing the public art realm.

goat stew

Goat stew is something that floats through my mind often.... on days when my two pet goats are out of control. Luckily I've managed to "train" them to not expect to be fed very early, but for some reason 9am is the time that some clock goes off and they want to be fed NOW. Veronica gets indignant, circling the house and wailing, and then starts head-butting the front door. This morning she slammed into it so hard that she forced it open, despite being locked. How reassuring. Though the only intruder I really fear are these two with the horns. They can cause all sorts of destruction in minutes, and live to do so. I have an arrangement with the FedEx guy that delivers my art supplies, where he now puts them in the back of my van with a delivered note on the gate. This was after boxes were torn open and canvases gored (seriously). Last week, however, I suspect one of the goats ate the delivery notice, so there were new paints and canvas baking inside the hot van for four days until I decided to track the shipment. As I was excitedly bringing the boxes in, Veronica slipped out the gate. So began a half hour of chasing, cajoling, and finally dragging her back by the horns. As I was getting her in the gate, Betty managed a switcheroo, and took off to trim the neighbors tree (after watching Veronica hit that buffet out of her reach). Luckily I had corn husks from dinner the night before to lure her back with. (see instagram video of this scene here: https://instagram.com/p/3MrOeZNPNP/?taken-by=ranchokelly )

So why do I even have them? I ask myself that often. While there's days of intense frustration with them, they will then go back to being quite charming for many days - somehow, their personalities win you over. I love looking out the window to see them reclining in the shade of a tree, beards billowing in the breeze, peacefully chewing on their cud (which always has the relaxed look of someone chewing gum).

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Herradura barrel project

Many months later, I'm finally getting around to posting photos of my Herradura tequila barrel commission. Besides having great tequila, they have a pretty cool marketing campaign. I think this was the 2nd year they did this - they selected 10 artists in various cities around the US (I was one of the lucky folks from LA for 2014), give them all barrels to go crazy with, then have a big opening event with LOTS of tequila, and judges who decide on the best three and hand out big cash prizes. Sadly, I didn't win, but I will say I had a barrel of fun.

the process - making tons of ceramic tiles, glazing and firing, plus these ceramic "port holes" that I then fired partially to slump glass inside. I probably should have put some make up on for this shot, but yeah, #Imaketileslikethis

The tile-making was just tedious - the hardest part for me was drilling big holes into the thick wood of the barrel, making them just the right size for the port holes to fit, then wiring it up to light up from the inside. The best part was the smell of inside of the charred oak barrel reminded me of chardonnay.

the finished piece on display at the amazing Vibiana in downtown LA

several margaritas in.....  that's me in the back, 3rd from left.

If only I was a tetrachromat

I heard a fascinating podcast on Radiolab yesterday about color perception. I knew that most animals see less colors than humans, but never knew that some animals can see vast amounts of colors we can't. Humans normally have three types of cone cells and are therefore trichromatic…. however it has been suggested that as women have two different X chromosomes in their cells, some of them could be carrying some variant cone cell pigments, thereby possibly being born as full tetrachromats and having four different simultaneously functioning kinds of cone cells. One study suggested that 2–3% of the world's women might have the kind of fourth cone that lies between the standard red and green cones, giving, theoretically, a significant increase in color differentiation.

This of course made me wonder and hope… could I possibly one of the chosen few with super color sense? Researching the phenomenon online I found a test here, but after taking it my hopes were dashed with a crappy score. Of course, I do have a pretty dirty laptop screen.

There was so much amazing information in this podcast (here's a link)…. they went on to talk about someone who noticed in Homer's Odyessy his odd descriptions of colors. And then that he never once mentions the color blue. Studies of ancient texts reveal a pattern: across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue always comes last. Theories are that it's due to how rarely blue occurs in nature and the fact that it's the most difficult pigment to create for paint or dye. Because of this, many cultures have no word for blue. 

I think I'll paint something blue today.

goodbye to the donkeys

Yesterday I gave my two donkeys away to what I hope will be a better home, where they can act as guardians to sheep and graze on 20 acres. I gave them the best care I could in the near year that I had them, but I felt like they were really bored. They loved going on walks, their goal being to sample every growing thing they could fit in their mouths. But Ethel was so hard to control - one time she kicked the lead out of my hand and galloped down the road to visit another donkey (also adopted by a neighbor, they had come from the same place). And dragging them back home was always very difficult, involving lots of pulling that left me with a backache, despite carrot bribery. The final straw was being told that the new owners of the house next door might be coming after me to move the existing coral five feet back.

I didn't know much about their past - as the farrier I hired to trim their overgrown and damaged hooves said, between spits of tobacco, "it ain't like you can call up carfax and get a history on these animals." I was told they were adopted out after being captured wild by the BLM, and received paperwork from their captures about seven years back. According to the vet, they're about eight or nine years old, so they must have had a few years of free roaming. Enough to remember what it's like (another farrier wisdom: "donkeys don't never forget nothin"). How strange that we (humans, that is, not me and the farrier) tamed and bred these animals for mining work over 100 years ago, set them loose when they were no longer needed, and now decide to round them up to either be shot or shuffled around to screwball caretakers like myself. Now supposedly the "Wild free-roaming horses and burros act" of 1971 declares them to be “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” and stops them from being slaughtered, after a long letter writing campaign started in 1959 by a woman known as "wild horse Annie". However, there are reports online of National Parks and the BLM hiring out hunters to shoot as many as they can find, as well as videos of inhumane treatment during round-ups. A particularly painful one to watch shows a donkey being yanked up by it's ears. It still refuses to budge - a testament to how incredibly stubborn they truly are. Donkey advocates say that they are being unfairly vilified without scientific evidence as destroying habitat. That seems a likely bandwagon for me to hop on, except I can't help but wonder that the BLM must have better things to do with their time than pick on these stubborn creatures for no good reason whatsoever. And I've seen how they can eat. With similar gusto as the folks I've witnessed (and joined) at the Pizza Hut buffet up here in Yucca Valley.

At any rate, I'm heartbroken to have them gone and hope the pain of the empty corral passes soon. Twiggy had gotten very affectionate, and would nibble kisses on my face with those big fuzzy lips in the photo above. Ethel was essentially a b*tch, but did love her ears rubbed and quickly learned some tricks like this one: http://instagram.com/p/qNqF3oNPI-/?modal=true . She was mean to Twiggy, biting her and blocking her from the hay at feeding time, but I would sometimes see them being affectionate (only out the window when they didn't know I was looking). Last week I caught them sunbathing together, and got some photos of Twiggy annoying Ethel by deciding to take a dustbath. I'm glad I could find a home for them together, and just hope they are happy.