November 7, 2009

It was the first time the Friends of Fire held a Wearable Art Show. I was showing my jewelry along with 13 other crafts people who made jewelry, hats, knitted garments and silk scarves among other things. It was held at the Unitarian Church in their Fellowship Hall for the whole day. An easy walk for us from Tysen Street, I was able to set up with little effort. Here’s a view of the hall. I had the table in the lower left. 

Our friend Irma had the table near mine.

Here’s what a part of my table looked like.

It was a successful day. We saw a lot of friends and met some new people. I sold a number of pieces.

November 21, 2009

Last night the annual fund raising auction was held at the Noble Collection in Snug Harbor. I had donated two prints of my wine cup drawings as this is largely an auction about prints.  John Noble was a print maker who lived on a barge in New York Harbor producing nautical images.  A part of this Museum is the completely restored barge-studio that he built in the 1940’s. The link on his name will give you a short  history.

Elizabeth Egbert of the staten Island Museum is on the left in the photo below.

Marc Zimetbaum, sculptor and contributor to the auction.

Rudolph Montanez, in the center another artist contributor.

Anita Cimino, and artist and collector who contributed  some of her vintage prints.  The wall behind her is hung with John Noble lithographs.

Anita with her husband Frank, our framer from  Staten Island Arts, Tim is between them.  The restored barge is in the hall behind them.

More of the crowd getting ready for the auction.

The auction has begun.  Colman and I left before all the items had been taken to the auction block.  It was a pleasant evening with friends, cvonversation and very good food.

November 22, 2009

This morning I joined Steve Nutt at the Jewish Community Center for the SINY Culture Fair. He was there to represent the Friends of Fire and promote next month’s Culture Walk. I joined him in support of the group. He had some of his ceramics on display and I showed a portion of my jewelry as a preview for the next event. The JCC is a beautiful, large new building. Here are a couple of shots of the entrance side of the complex.

The building has an indoor pool and outdoor pool, a cafe, an auditorium where the culture Fair was held, an enormous beautiful new Gymnasium and a lot of other amenities I didn’t have time to explore. I think there’s a large theater there too. The impressive thing about all of the spaces I saw was that the ceiling seemed to be at least 30 feet high. A very unusual occurrence in the city.

Here’s a photo of Steve with some of his wares. We both sold some pieces and had a good time talking all day.

Sunday was a beautiful day and we had made arrangements to have a brunch with Ellen at the Morgan and then see the Jane Austen Show. On the way in we met Robert Bunkin and rode across the harbor in conversation with him. He had already seen the shows at the Morgan and talked about some of the drawings he liked in the Rococo and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings exhibition. Colman and I said goodbye as we headed for the east side trains to get uptown. We got out at 33rd and Park to begin our walk to the Morgan at Madison and 37th street. We crossed on 33rd street where I noticed that the other side of the street was all mirrored glass and took a couple of quick photos. Colman says that extra gravity was in effect when I took the photo.

On Madison we passed the Savafeh Carpet store. One beautiful carpet after another was on display in the large windows.  We liked this one,  but it’s bigger than any of our rooms on Tysen Street.

After we crossed 34th street  This unusual large blank space caught my attention,  it’s not often thatyou see such a large un-’decorated’ surface in the city.

This gives you an idea of its location. That’s a new glass tower too,  It seems that all the new buildings are covered with mirrors these days. It must have to do with the thermodynamics of the building, it’s also nice to have these large presences reflect light and be a part of the sky instead of obscuring it.

Here’s some Deco Era New York Iron work, if you want to see it in person, it’s at 181 Madison Avenue, the Domus  Store is on the street level of the building.

These trilobite fossils were in the windows of the Astro galleries across the street from Domus.  The quality and availability of these fossils is something I couldn’t have imagined as a child.

We both like this piece of coral, it was almost hidden in the window behind  the store’s name.

A little further up Madison, some more iron work on a church.

We got to the Morgan and had a great brunch in the Ampersand cafe. Ellen ate a gorgonzola frittata, Colman had the lobster salad on focaccia, and I had french toast  with moscarpone and blueberry compote.  It was beautifully served and really good.  I wasn’t allowed to photograph in the Morgan  so I can only tell you a little about the shows. The most interesting thing (for me) in the Austen exhibition was seeing the hand written manuscripts.  There was a book in Byron’s hand as well as the Austen manuscript pages. I spent a lot of time with the William Blake show and with the eighteenth century drawings. Seeing the original Blake engravings drawings and watercolors let me know how unfaithful the reproductions we see everywhere are.  One highlight is the complete set of 21 illustrations from the Book of Job. It’s well worth the trip to see the engravings.  I never realized that the works were printed in editions of only nine to twenty copies, some works even less.

We said goodbye to Ellen and headed downtown to Canal Street to buy some tea in Chinatown.  It was incredibly crowded on Canal street and we took to some of the side streets getting back to the trains when we were through shopping.

You’d think that all of the city was finished with building skyscrapers, but as we crossed center street and looked down toward City Hall this new, mirror clad tower was rising into the sky. I don’t know whether I like it being taller than City Hall or not. It will certainly be bright.

The sun was setting as we crossed the harbor back to Staten Island.  Manhattan is magical in this rosy sunset light. People are always taking photos on the aft deck, I do it a lot too.

A lot of seagulls were following this boat.  As we got closer to Staten Island  the sun was even lower.

Home again and fixing dinner,  I wanted to try a new recipe from the December issue of Cucina Italiana magazine.  Pollo alla diavola con olive; the recipe called for two chickens  for 4-6 servings. Italian chickens must be smaller, our roaster  was about 6 pounds before I cut the back out of it, we’ve had two dinners out of it already and we have yet to touch the breast. From the photo in the magazine, I think they must have used Cornish Hens. It cooks at a high temperature with herbs, adding wine and olives after the first twenty minutes. It wasn’t that pretty coming out of the oven but it tastes very good.  Maybe even a little better tonight for the second dinner.

November 6

I had worked on my teapot and it was time to trim the top. Gennady had to do it.  We marked it with the surface gauge and gennady got out a large pair of metal shears. One of the handles was locked in a vise, he held the pot in one hand and worked the other part of the scissor-like shear trimming the pot. The uneven thickness of my raising made trimming the edge difficult. Here’s a shot of the trimmed pot and the bits he cut off of it.

After trimming I annealed the pot and planished it from the middle toward the top. I had marked it again with the surface gauge  at a point about 25 mm from the lip where I wanted to close the top a little more. This is as far as I got before class ended.

We were invited to tonight’s opening by another old friend Robin Sherrin. It’s a group show of etchings by the New York Society of Etchers being held at the Art Club in Grammercy Square.

I got there early  so I was able to find  Robin’s print  in the collection of  what looked like about 60 works.  I also saw Steven Fredericks  who runs the society and for whom I have made portfolios in the past.  It was amazing how many people showed up. Here’s a shot of one of the three rooms in which the prints were hung.

Here’s Robin with Colman.

The Art Club is a fascinating place. It’s Old New York like we see in the movies.  Marble, stained glass, heavy woodwork and tiles all in a genteel setting complete with door man and concierge. As we were leaving I took this photo of us in a mirror in the entrance hall, you get an idea of the atmosphere from the things you see around us.

We walked out of Grammercy park toward Fifth Avenue where we were to catch the R train to South Ferry and passed by this doorway. I stopped to look at the decorative work and the unusual iron work railing.

When we got to Fifth Avenue we were near the Met Life Tower fully lit for the evening.

October 31

Everything seems to happen on a Thursday. I was in my silver class and I knew that I was meeting Colman at an opening near Canal Street at the Painting Center afterwards. I put that classes progress in the last post so I can get  on to the opening.

I took the train down to Canal Street and got out  where the Number 1 train stops at Varrick and Canal.  It was late afternoon and we hadn’t moved the clocks back yet and there was still sunlight around 6:30.  When I got to the street, I was startled by all of the construction.  Here’s a shot looking East down Canal. Two new buildings are complete or near complete and there is a new glass tower  on Varrick Street.

While I was preparing the photos for this post I saw  this part of one photo with a worker on one of the new buildings by the crane.  It’s remarkable what these digital cameras pick up and record. It turns the camera into a digital telescope showing things I couldn’t see when I took the photo.

I got to the opening early enough to see the paintings before the crowd arrived. Malachi, a binder friend also from Staten Island was there too.

Here’s a photo of Craig Manister with one of his paintings.  All of his recent works are landscapes with white or black ‘keyholes’ in them.

Another shot of of the event.

While we were there, a painter friend we haven’t seen in twenty years appeared, Here’s David Fratkin. His name links to his website and images of his work.  It was a pleasant surprise to see him.

October 15

In class I began to close the top part of the teapot.  We  scratched a line about 50 mm from the base and I  planished a line to harden the pot at that height.  Then I began to raise and close the upper half of the pot. This is as far as I got in class.

At home I worked on the pot and finished the round.  I don’t have a big enough torch to anneal  something this large at home so I have to wait until next class to continue.

At this point it holds 16 ounces of water and I am thinking that I should  redesign the final shape.  I have been looking at a number  of teapots and think a squat pear shape will give me more volume and surface area to chase on.

Here’s a picture of the saucer,  Gennady wants me to work on the rim which means annealing it again. He thought the rim was ‘boring’.  I have come to agree that it does need something to finish it properly.

October 22

Back at FIT, I was to work on the bottom half with a Hook Hammer. I raised and closed the top some more.

Then Gennady set me by a stump with a depression and showed me how to use the hook hammer striking the pot on the inside below the raised and hardened area.  He produced a continuous and regular line of raised surface on the outside of the pot. When I did it, the line looked more like a segmented caterpillar.

You can see some of the first strikes inside the pot here.

Here it is at the end of class, the shape is pushed out at the base, it’s a little lumpy but we can smooth it out in the next rounds.

The sun was setting during the ferry ride home. Here’s the Statue of Liberty  with the Elizabeth port container cranes and the Bayonne Bridge.

October 29

Last week’s class was a lot of work. Work I wasn’t really skilled enough to do.  Gennady wanted me to set the base so that i could planish the lower half of the pot. I set up my flat top stake and tried to sharpen the circle of the pot’s base. It was very hard to find and strike, the base is so wide and was slightly warped, the sides of the pot had been pushed out for the nice round shape of a teapot and were interfering with the face of the hammer.  Luckily, Gennady  came to my aid before I had done too much damage and started to correct out my poorly struck edges. When he saw a particularly bad strike,  he said,  ”That ’s your last mistake.”  I was in danger of thinning the metal out too much in a very small area. While he worked his way around the pot  he showed me that I could push some of the rounded side wall down in order to get the base circle set.  Something I had been avoiding and in the process of that avoidance, I lost sight and control of the circle I was trying to secure.  Then he chose another stake, in the foreground of the next photo,  with a small stake insert that fit the shape of my pot.  He showed me how I should strike with the planishing hammer  and I began. I spent most of the class time planishing up to the half way mark, slowly  striking, watching reflections connect and build a uniform surface. The planishing, though slow, was something I could do.  Setting the base on a vessel with this shape will take a LOT of practice.

Once I made it up to the mark I switched stakes and began to close the to some more.  This is as far as I got with that

This photo show how Gennady ‘tacked’ the base  with a network of hardened spots rather than hardening and possibly thinning the entire bottom. I intend to sink the center so that there will be a foot to the pot and a depressed area for chasing and hall marks.

November 1

I finished raising the pot today. I also gave the top half a bit of light planishing to even out the surface and marry the curves of the profile.

It  now holds over 22 ounces of water  with about 12mm of air space. We will eventually trim the top edge and solder a bezel in place into which the lid will fit.

Now that the shape is nearing what I want, it’s time to start planning the spout and handle. Usually this would be designed before the disk received the first hammer blow, but this pot has become larger than my original drawing and I would like to take advantage of the extra volume that has been created.  This project has become one that is being designed as we move along. I’m leaning toward one more like the one in the top of the right hand sketch.

Last weekend there were two openings and a preview. One reception was for Anita Cimino. She was showing over 50 artworks, mostly monotypes, at the Empire State College  here in Staten island. It was really good to see so many pieces spread out over an entire floor of the building.  It was well attended and I forgot my camera.  Sorry there are no photos.

On Sunday  the Moment of Knowing Show opened at Wagner College.   The day was overcast but  the view of the Verrazano Bridge and lower new york Harbor is always captivating.

Ann Marie McDonald curated the show where short written pieces by poets and artists told of little epiphanies or turning points in their lives that  were hung along with artworks and shown with some of Ann Marie’s Sculpture.  It’s a good little show.  Here are some photos of the reception.

Ann Marie on the left talking with two attendees.

Annette is one of the artists in the show.

Robert and Susan talking outside the gallery.

Ann Marie’s bronze sculpture of Icarus.

Colman and Sara.

Sara took this one of us.

We left the Reception a little early beaucuse  a preview taking place at the Noble Collection.  The preview is for the benefit Auction that will be held later in November.  As we left the Wagner  student union building a damp warm wind was blowing. All of the closed umbrellas looked like I felt, wanting to be cloaked in the light rain,  protected from the wind.

Here are a couple of shots taken at the Noble collection.  A lot of nice prints were donated for  auction, including two that I gave them.

Colman and I walked back home through Snug Harbor where leaves were thick on the ground, Fall has arrived.