Red Bird

The mascot for the high school down the street from our house is the Red Bird. It looks like an angry cardinal. The marquee in front of the school spells out in LED lights: It's a Great Day to Be a Red Bird. I find this funny and take it as a challenge. We'll see how great it is to be a red bird.

So far I've draped the veil-like portion of the Red Bird head piece. Need to anchor my head-mannequin so I can lean into it. I love the challenge of moving from drawing to object, although so far the drawings are more exciting and engaging than the red corduroy hood waiting in the studio.

I imagine wearing it and dancing around my neighborhood as if in a music video by Mimi Cave. The neighbors might worry. Or they might join in. Such could be the greatness of being a red bird.

Bartram the Land Scout

I read an article recently about American botanist John Bartram. Accompanying the article was this great drawing of Bartram by Howard Pyle an illustrator considered to be the father of The Golden Age of American Illustration. There's an excellent group of Pyle paintings on exhibit at the Baer Gallery right now. If you live in or near NE Wisconsin, the show will be up through the end of this week.

After it the Pyle show comes down I'll help install Land Scout illustrations in that same gallery. It feels sweet and serendipitous to find this image in common.

Production

Over the winter break I enjoyed getting into the studio more to work on things for the upcoming show. Among the things were seed balls. I will recreate the trade-installation I showed at Pellissippi last fall. These seedballs will carry a variety of midwestern wildflowers as selected by American Meadows. It is rare (for me) to get to the point where the decisions are made and all that remains is to make the things. Rare and pleasurable in its straightfowardness. I hope to have 200 + seedballs to fill two low pedestals in the gallery. While on the subject of production: a shoutout and thanks to my one-time assistant and all-time ceramicist Amy Hand, who helped me refine this process and recipe.

In the Studio - Late Fall

This has been a nice Thanksgiving break: lonely without our families, but easier in that we've not had to travel. I've been able to get into the studio more and that feels great. A smart friend on the phone today said something like, "I'd love to see images of what you're working on. Maybe you have a blog?" and I cringed because I do have a blog, two in fact, but don't often post and even less frequently show the work I'm making. So here to remedy that are some images of the things I've been working on in my home studio.

My main focus is, or should be, preparing for a solo show that opens this February at St. Norbert College. It will be a retrospective of sorts and will feature three distinct bodies of work-- Costumes to Save Your Life, the Land Scouts, and the LAND BOOTS-- with a few other newer pieces.

A floor plan of the gallery and a thinking-drawing.

In the meantime, I'm working to extend To What End?, a 30 foot chain with oversized links made of stitched mylar food wrappers and lined with various found materials. It is my piece of purposelessness and helps balance out the overthinking I bring to the other work.

To What End - Katie Ries, ongoing

I'm also working on fleshing out and making paper patterns for some head pieces. I hope this will grow into a series, but will start with (It's a Great Day to Be a) Red Bird.

At left: notes on the head pieces and other works. At right: the paper pattern waiting on the mannequin.

I'm also trying to stay up on drawing and to push myself to draw more often and with greater ambition-- which I define as experimenting with materials, methods, duration, and content. Drawing often and for more than an hour at a time remains a challenge. I think it is more important for me (right now) to keep limber and draw often. Hopefully the duration and content will build from that.

A drawing started at bar drawing and worked up further. Also studio detritus on the table.

Credit Is Due

I like consuming images. I enjoy looking at things and sometimes not having to think to hard about where they come from, who made them, or what they mean. This kind of image consumption doesn't sustain me for long, but I understand the impulse to look at pleasing or pretty things and not have to analyze why it works or what's going on. When I want to scroll through images curated by other people I turn primarily to two websites: pinterest and tumblr. Both are visual echo-chambers in which popular images are "repinned" or "reblogged" by others. This means an image picked up by a popular blogger can get a lot of eyeballs on it, or impressions. This could be great exposure for the people who make the images, except that most pinners and tumblrs don't credit their images. Often, I assume, because the source where they find the images has not credit the photographer/designer/artist/maker. And so all the hype around a provocative or pleasing image doesn't benefit the work or page hits of the image-maker. It's lazy and a disservice to people who make their living creating said images. This is a losing battle, but I don't repin or reblog images for which I cannot find a author/artist/designer/source and I'd like to ask you to join me in this. So there you are, a small rant for the weekend. And back to work.

If you're so inspired, you can download a higher-resolution version of this file here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

There's a lot of fluffy wisdom on the internet telling us how to attract a partner/mate, how to be at peace with ourselves all the time, how to deal with difficult people, and so on. Much of it comes to me in the form of precious jpegs on pinterest and facebook. It's not that the suggestions of how to be better are off base, it is that I am annoyed by the implication that my problems and solution are a function of my outlook, bad attitude, or gluten intake. Some of them might be, but that's something else. Complaining aside, there is one positive meme that resonates with me and that shows up well beyond the scope of pithy life-coaching pics: cultivating gratitude.

Landed Gentry

Now we are in Wisconsin-- near the Fox River-- settling in and learning a new place. The unfolding adventure has been bolstered by many fine friends and our loving, furniture-schlepping families. It is odd and a little lonely, especially in these first couple weeks, to be without those people in our daily lives. Phones, email, and video chat mean my longing for distant folk pales in comparison to that of say, Laura Ingles Wilder, author and protagonist of the Little House on the Prairie series. But hark-- as Ms. Wilder might have, I've been taking solace in writing letters to friends. It feels joyous and urgent: Hey! Respond! It scratches an itch and helps me use up some of the abundant small materials in my studio.

If you'd like to receive a piece art-like, joyous and urgent mail, please send your mailing address to katie@urbanlandscouts.com.

Lake Michigan and algae