New work in progress

With spring arriving, I've been working on the latest printing of my cookbook (more on that later!) as well as some new work. Here's a snippet of my project for the Mt. Lebanon Library's CHAIR-ity benefit (I'll post photos of the whole piece later so as not to spoil the surprise):

I'm also making some new small mixed-media pieces. I was lucky enough to choose a present in a white elephant exchange last December that turned out to be a mid-century fancy address book, complete with very old (pre-seven-digit) phone numbers. I've been making small drawings on each page. Here are the first three.

Passenger pigeon

Laysan crake

Moa

All three were driven to extinction at various times in human history, either due to overhunting or habitat loss. Not all of the animals in this series will be birds - or extinct - but these are the first three I was inspired to do. They're all a combination of gouache, graphite, and watercolor.

More bats

Working on some ideas for new pieces:

Yep, I'm still into the bat thing. It's hard to forget about - in Pennsylvania (the state in which I currently live), the Game Commission has failed to take steps to declare that bats are becoming endangered, therefore deciding not to move forward with protection and treatment, despite the fact that 98% of some of the state's bat populations have already died from White Nose. In keeping with our state's history of prioritizing mineral profits over public health and the environment, there were a lot of people who felt that helping the bats make a comeback - by doing things like limiting the hours windmills run and cutting back on logging and mining to stop the spread of the fungus - were too much of an economic sacrifice, and forced the Commission into backing down from their initial stance of considering bats endangered. Not good.

Night shots of Future Tenant installation

A few night shots:

install day 2

Put the finishing touches on the installation last night, including adding a little cluster of bats right up to the window. Night shots of the finished work to follow.

Hibernaculum install at Future Tenant

I'm in the process of installing hibernaculum, my piece comprised of many many little paper bats, at Future Tenant in downtown Pittsburgh.

 A picture of the individual disassembled "tiles" of bats:

Install help from the ever-handy Dave:

Getting tiles up on the wall. We built a plywood wall in the bay window to make a space large enough for one or two people to walk into and view the installation:

And a shot from the street:

I've got a bit more filling in and edge cleaning-up to do before I'm finished, but if you're downtown you can already check it out! The installation will be up for the whole month of May at Future Tenant, located at 819 Penn Avenue. Check their website for events - and note that because there are no exhibitions in May, the gallery will probably not be holding normal hours. But I may be there for a few afternoons, so I'll post dates and times here.

Environmental Aesthetics opening

Here they are! Pictures from the opening at Fe Gallery!

A view of hibernaculum as you enter the gallery:

 Some detail shots of the bats themselves:

And a view of the installation with people in it, for scale. The walls are about 13 feet tall.

Also a few pictures of some of the wonderful work in the show: Rise Nagin's collage of natural objects and Carin Mincemoyer's mirror-clouds in the gallery's bay windows.

Before I tell you anything about this piece, let me first say that I owe its existence to some very awesome people. hibernaculum would not have been possible without the time, materials, installation help, expertise, and support the following people have generously shared with me: Brandon at Laser Lab Studio, Sam Ditch, Deanna Mance, Alisa Michael, Chris and Kristen Osterwood, Christy Rollinson, David Rollinson, and Katherine Talcott. Also, it was hugely reassuring to work through my first installation with the other artists I showed with - their experience with installation art made everything a little less terrifying for me. Thank you all!

So. About this piece. If you've been reading this blog, you've noticed I've been thinking a lot lately about the invasive fungal infections that are suddenly killing off many bats in North America. This show ended up being the perfect opportunity to work with that idea, and expand on previous themes of paper-constructed animals to create a large-scale work. I wanted to use paper from natural history books to reference my thoughts about how we use science to make sense of the natural world, even in situations where the world is changing faster than we can understand it (often as the result of our own actions). In an earlier entry I mentioned one of the books I used, The Uncivilized Races, or, a Natural History of Man, and supplemented that with more material that was donated to me and that I found at used bookstores: books about native trees of Canada, a textbook on forestry, a book about endangered species from the 1970s, books on evolution.

These bats are all cut with a laser, from a template that I designed. Every single one is attached to cardboard shapes, backed by foam, that were prepared in my studio and installed at the gallery, with some re-adjusting, re-pinning, and filling in as I went. My best estimate of the number of bats is between 6,000 and 7,000, and they average about 100 per square foot.

As far as the shape, I spent a lot of time looking at photos of bats clustered in caves, but for this installation I felt it was more appropriate to respond to the space rather than create a simulation of a natural bat shape. After all, it was already apparent that these were flat paper objects. I did a lot of fussing and adjusting and freaking out about finishing the edges on the sloped part of the ceiling before I realized what I was actually doing was subconsciously making a map . . . which is why those edges remain un-rounded. To me it referenced the geometric structure underneath the bats, which wasn't so visible unless you really inspected the substrate carefully. It also reinforced the analogy between the cities of people, and the cities of bats.

This is the first truly large-scale piece I've ever done. A lot of people at the opening told me it reminded them of lichen, or fur, or leaves, or shelf fungi - all textures I'd hoped it would evoke. I really wanted the piece to be readable and interesting at a lot of levels, from the overall shape and appearance to the individual snippets of non-information legible on each bat.

So there it is! Many thanks to everyone who made it to the opening as well. If you are in Pittsburgh and didn't make it, I hope you can still get to see the piece. I'd welcome any comments or questions. Fe Gallery is open from 12 - 3 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and is located at 4102 Butler Street between Fisk and Main Sts. in Lawrenceville. Environmental Aesthetics will be up until November 6th.

Paper bats

Just a quick update on the paper hibernaculum project - my bats came back today from Laser Lab Studio in Bloomfield and they look terrific. I'm really excited to start putting them all together to make the piece... and anyone who saw my locust installation knows I'm almost crying with joy over the time this will save me. Time I can spend constructing and eventually installing the piece, instead of cutting out a zillion paper shapes and giving myself carpal tunnel in the process. Hooray for technology!

owls and robins

This was passed on to me by fellow artist and paper aficionado Seth Clark:

The Paper Sculpture of Annawili Highfield