Claire's Altility Art Studios Field Study Reflection

1. After taking a nice tour of multiple Trimet bus routes, we arrived at Altility Art Studio on Mississippi (near the waffle place that sent enticing aromas over to the studio, teasing my tummy). We were welcomed by Wiley, a black, wolf-y, amber-eyed, white speckle footed dog. Aaron then introduced himself and his friend Zach. He showed us the project he his currently working on for an art series in Cannon Beach. The “canvas” was an approximately seven foot tall rock with a circumference of three feet and a shape that reminded me of the pinky finger sized crystal I got at a place I remember sold yoga movies and smelled of incense when I was four-ish years old: a rough thin main length tapering at the end, like the way my dad slices baguettes when we have guests over. The rock looked like it might be about to go rock climbing; it was harnessed and rigged so it would stand up straight, pointing to the ceiling. It looked heavy—I cannot make weight estimates but it was probably heavy enough to kill you if it fell on top of you. Winding around the rock to the top and back down were metal salmon. Aaron said he was collaborating with a Native American woman who was going to be adding carvings of the salmon life cycle to the rock. I think the end product will be riveting.

After surveying Aaron’s current project he showed us how we would make three hooks. First he heated a kiln to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. He then balanced three two-foot long iron rods with an inch circumference inside the kiln. While waiting for the kiln to heat the rods, he explained most blacksmiths make their own tools and showed us the tools he made, describing that the circular ended hammer evenly spread heated iron when pounded and the narrow, rectangular ended hammer spread heated iron in the direction the pressure was applied. Aaron also showed us a three-foot long anvil and how pounding iron on different planes of the anvil resulted in different shapes. Once the iron rods were heated to a glowing yellow-orange much like the color of the sun when it seems to sink into the ocean at sunset or a farm-fresh egg yolk being lit from the inside by a 400 watt light bulb (using my imagination hear, wouldn’t suggest experimenting), students took turns pounding the rods with the different hammers (don’t worry parents, we wore gloves and safety goggles). I thought it was grueling and fatiguing work to pound the rod, especially because there is only a few minutes the rod can be beat into shapes before it cools too much. After each student pounded the rods Aaron and Zach fashioned the rods into hooks, the kind you might mount onto a kitchen wall and hang a tea towel from (although they looked strong and tough enough to hold a fifty pound tool belt in a dark basement). The whole process took about two hours, with the pounding and reheating repetitions. The final result was a square hook, a hook with the tea towel holding part curling inward, and a hook with the top back part curling inward as well as the tea towel holding part. The experience was interesting and I had a fresh respect for Aaron’s work after I tried it myself, especially after flipping through his binder of other projects he has done, much more complicated looking then our simple hooks.

Our class was ravenous after our laborious blacksmithing and the majority of the class snacked as we wait for the bus—bus #1. We took another tour of a handful of Trimet bus routes on our way back to SES, gobbling food whenever possible. Arriving back at SES around later-then-expected, we collapsed exhaustedly into our chairs, guzzling any leftover food. The life of blacksmithing. Ah…

2. The Steps of Blacksmithing: To shape iron, it must be heated to at least 1650 degrees Fahrenheit. When struck repeatedly, iron will become brittle and crack, so it must be heated and cooled, heated and cooled many times. This process is called annealing. Fire, water, earth, and air is used in blacksmithing: ore from the earth, fire to heat the metal, air to increase the heat of the fire, and water to harden the metal. An anvil is used to shape heated metal. Almost any iron can be used. Hammers are an important tool used to shape metal in the blacksmithing process. The striking surface of a hammer causes the heated metal to spread in different directions. The blacksmithing process is a long one, and requires patience (something I have learned personally by trying blacksmithing).

3. (My object is a teacup.) Making a teacup using the blacksmithing process would take a long time. I imagine it would take hundreds of repetitions of heating and cooling a piece of metal to form a cup—with a handle. Today, there are efficient machines that construct teacups but I have made teacups from clay before and know it is a slow process. Making a teacup from clay is not a quick project, because one must be careful to construct the cup with no holes or cracks or else a tea-drinker will not be especially pleased when their scorching tea leaks onto their fingers. Having the opportunity to try blacksmithing made me think more about the time and process it takes to make a seemingly simple object.

i decided to put pictures on other things that blacksmiths make. I found these pictures the first one is of a hook like we made on tuesday. the second one is of a horse shoe that  blacksmiths can also make. The third one my favorite is if a hook with a leaf one it that looks like the leaf has a bit of color on it. 

Spring Garden Day

Monday, March 15th
(teacher inservice day)
9am - Noon

Come on out and help get the school ready for Spring! We will be:

• putting in some new plants
• building a patio out in front of the school
• cleaning-up around the grounds
  

Join the fun - bring some water, snacks and your enthusiasm for greening our school grounds!

Questions? email: sunnysidesustainability@gmail.com

Wonderments

Under the leaf litter lies a world of mycorrhizae, nematodes, bacteria, earthworms, mites, moles and beyond. These organisms perform myriad functions including soil-decomposition, nitrogen-fixation, and adding nutrients to the soil.

This complicated web allows plants, animals and fungi to live together. How did we figure all this out? It started with a question and a dedication and passion to find an answer. Having a magnifying glass and a microscope also allowed us to be able to see all those tiny processes unfolding.

Let's look at the other side of things: something massive. How about the axial tilt of the Earth? The fact that the Earth rotates on a 23.5 degree tilt causes all sorts of interesting things to happen. As the Earth moves through its orbit around the sun the Northern and Southern hemispheres face the sun at different extremes.

For those of us lucky enough to live North or South of the equator, we have seasons. The further we are away from the equator, the more change we see between summer and winter.

Isn't this stuff amazing?

As we live our life we are somewhere in the middle of the minuscule and the massive. We don't need to be experts to understand these things, either.

-This post was copied from an email sent to me by the Wilderness Awareness School. Last summer, I spent a week at this school deepening my understanding of nature...

Claire's Summary of Terry Winters—Linking Graphics, Prints 2000-2010 (Cooley Gallery at Reed College)

I thought the exhibit was interesting because Terry Winters uses math and science in his art, unlike other artists. Everyone saw different objects and meanings in Terry Winters prints, whereas the nude art from hundreds of years ago that we saw at the Cooley Gallery is recognizable to people and the meaning is clear (if you know things like Greek mythology like Gregory did). I liked watching people from our class look at a piece and move on, but then take another glance and come back to it to scrutinize a color almost completely hidden under other layers of the print or contemplate the meaning of the print after hearing someone else say, “I see a water slide!” or “Look! It’s a irrigated farm through a wet camera lens!” I think this exhibit was more engaging to everyone in our class because the art was like a series of puzzles. People were drawn to a piece because of what they thought they sawvbut when the student next to them said, “No, look it’s a (blank),” they continued to examine the piece instead of moving on through the gallery.

I liked “Process Color.” What drew me to this one is the vivid colors that seemed like if the print was on a block of paper pulp that was five hundred feet tall the color would still continue to the bottom. The knots that so often occurred in Terry Winter’s art and were plentiful in this piece reminded me of a garden of cabbage roses growing abundantly on the prints. The effect the colors had, some lying on top of each other, others blending together in a fresh wash, topped with delicate prints, seemed Japanese to me. The aspects I liked best were under curving black lines and the whole print was stamped with a star-like shape. As a result, I thought the colors and roses looked far away.

The set of prints called “Intervals” also drew me in. These prints were not as busy to my eye. I liked the simplicity of the white embossments that the looked like the fast revolving toys at OMSI set on crisp, clear November afternoon, sky blue paper. I also like how they were “classified” by the identification section at the bottom of the paper. (This leads me to think the “fast revolving OMSI toys” are a concept of science.) As a set of six, the pieces felt right to me. They had order by identification (an idea I liked included in art) and a feeling of calm, perhaps from the simpleness of white on blue after the surrounding frenzies of black lines.

Terry Winters attempts to capture science and mathematics in his art by having prints of things that look vaguely familiar from spending time in a science lab and numbers and patterns strung throughout his prints. I think Terry Winter’s style is interesting to look at and definitely amazing. So much experimental work went into each piece, from transferring an idea onto paper through a printing method. I wonder if the final prints of pieces are ever exactly how Terry Winters first imagined them. His style overall is around the neutral to me, on a scale of hate-love. I certainly enjoyed looking at his art but I didn’t think, “This unbelievably outrageous,” or “I could have this framed on my bedroom,” or “I want to see everything his has ever made.”

In the natural world, I believe there is an indirect joining of science, mathematics, and art. Science and mathematics make up the natural world, explain why, name how. Today, global warming equals science. Plant coloration is often constructed of patterns, like pineapples, cabbage, irises, lettuce, and shells have Fibonacci pattern markings. I think many people who believe in God probably think he created art by making the world. But personally, I believe art is indirectly linked to mathematics and science in the world because so many people use the natural world and things that happen because of the natural world as inspiration for their art. I do not believe in a god, I believe in evolution, so I do not think the natural world is a man in the sky’s masterpiece. I do believe art is related to the natural world through the beauty people see and try to capture through their art.

Cooley Art Gallery-Terry Winters

Terry Winter's art had a lot of recurring themes and that gave me the impression that he was experimenting and learning as he created his art. Some of those themes are the knots, which I didn't like but he used a lot, the dots or squares connected by lines, and the netting or webbing which I loved and he seemed to find a different way to twist in every piece he used it. Some of his pieces, like the layered one with red and blue, were so layered and complex it seemed that every time you looked at it you saw something different. I like this in art, I like it to require you to think and have to dissect it in your mind. I was also impressed by Terry Winters ability to put things from real life, like the knots, into the prints and make them look like they fit into the abstract image. This was a great exhibit to see and I hope to see pieces by him somewhere else.

Abigail

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