Alright. So! (composite) Gold leaf.

As this viola is supposed to be as close to the original as we can manage, I made stencils from the images of the painted/gilded ribs, which are posted online--then, using the measurements from our own instrument, stretched the images to fit, in photoshop. Then I made myself stencils from the printouts, and painted in, darkly, where the gold for the letters should go; made sure the paint was tacky enough that the leaf would adhere, and then laid it on in sheets late last night. Today when I went in, it was dry enough to dust off the excess--though not yet dry enough to get a good, antique-looking sanded effect.

Apologies in advance for the image quality--as it turns out, it's hard to take pictures with your weaker hand while wielding steel wool in the other!

Most of the gold leaf will actually get worn away, when all's said and done; in many spots, only a speckly-distressed surface will remain.

Whew! A long day of viola work--will post pictures tomorrow. In the meantime, the other thing that got accomplished today: the back of my postcard.

 

As per J. R. Compton's recommendations, I think I'll add my website, and the Harwood's phone number...and check it to make sure nothing's in the way of postmarks and etc. Other than that, they're ready to be sent to the printer.

So, as to yesterday's goings-on. Fred and I drove some work to Las Cruces, to meet up with other members of the Ghost Town Arts Collective (a non-profit cooperative set up in far North Texas, to which I've belonged since I lived there five years ago): Heidi Rushing, Katherine Taylor, and Liz Elsberg.

(Heidi Rushing, Ghost Town Administratrix, and Fred, all-around helpful guy)

Being that this is our tenth show as a group, we're pretty much familiar with the artists, the spaces in which we've had regular opportunities to show, and how to arrange / hang everything in those spaces. So arriving at the Las Cruces Museum of Art and realizing that basically dropping stuff off and signing a contract was the extent of our involvement was something of a revelation! It is both exciting and frightening to leave a show looking like this:

...and to know that when we return next Friday it will be reception-ready.

Among the pieces from Heidi, Katherine, Liz, and myself, will be work by Katy Cannon, Patti Dye, Arlene Cason and Mike Kury, Karen Cleveland, Tim Tracz and Jean Roelke, and Jess Reinhard, among several others whom I've long admired.

(Works by Patti Dye and myself)

(Jess Reinhard, Raised by Wolves and Hippies)

(Works by Liz Elsberg, Katy Cannon, and Katherine Taylor [still safely packed])

Among other (more social) exciting art goings-on today, I made a concrete step on the march towards my show at the Harwood--the postcard!

After way more hours in photoshop than was probably necessary, I'm pretty happy with it. Tomorrow I'll finish fact-checking the back info, and get those suckers ordered.

Something I've been trying to finish up this week is a series of reflections from the Land Arts: Redux trip. I'm hoping they'll serve as a sort of epilogue for the journal that I kept throughout the original journey last fall. When I've finally finished it off, the whole thing will (ideally) go to the archive at the Center for Art + Environment (at the Nevada Museum of Art, in Reno). So while scrawling out new observations, I went back to document the old. Here are a few pages:

[Warning: tiny nudes]

I spent a good part of the afternoon in the studio, putting varnish on the ten most recently completed panels (in preparation for my show in October). I also did a bit of housekeeping and documenting...little things that have gotten away from me all summer.

Among those little things were some miniatures, portraits of my husband that I made for the group show Friends and Lovers at the John Sommers Gallery in July.

They're on 11" x 14" watercolor paper (which I've cropped down in the photos for the sake of detail), though the painted areas are only 1.5" x 2.5".

So! Luthier Peter White and I are finally to the painting stage on the copy of the Amati viola that we began making several months ago. I carved the scroll on this instrument (my very first scroll), but this is the arena in which I'm much more comfortable.

Applying the design itself was easy--though the aging requires a little more thought, I've found. After a bit more antiquing (read: scratching and scraping away) of the medallion, comes the lettering, which is the real challenge for this thing. Gold leaf is still terra incognita for me.