Here’s how the Clay Tools tile for the Artist’s Tool Belt mural looked aftert each firing. The first is just the screened outlines, the second is with the shades of grey filled in, and the third is with the colors added. I spent just inordinate amounts of time drawing and redrawing and redesigning this piece, but when it came time to actually put some china paint on the tiles, it went pretty fast. Of course the screening step took very little time, maybe half and hour for all 10 or 12 of each image, including setup and cleanup. And filling in all the greys and colors took about 15 minutes for each firing of each tile.
It’s done! Here are all 6 of the tiles depicting artist tools, the piece titled The Artist’s Tool Belt. I have shuffled them around several times and this is the order they’ll go in. What I was rearranging here is the positive and negative spaces, and how the design flows over the whole run of the piece. It’s 21’ long, 18’ on one wall and 4’ around the corner by one entrance to the building, with the midline about 6’ off the ground. If you look at the designs you’ll see that 3 of them are ways to divide a square using straight lines, the other 3 dividing the square using arcs of a circle. Two of them are centered in the middle of the tile, 2 centered on opposite corners, and 2 centered on the midlines of opposite sides. So I’m trying to not have all the circle ones on one row and the straight ones on the other, and not have the 3 midpoint designs next to each other or facing the same way. Now we just have to wait for the weather to warm up enough to install them outside in Montana.
This is the sixth and last image in the Artist’s Tool Belt series. The piece is now done! I think this is my favorite of the six. It’s certainly the most complex, which is why I saved it for last. I’ve been shuffling them around for the last few days, and I think I now have them arranged in the order I want. I’ll show you that in a few days.
Next in the series, these are of course really special to me. For one thing, most of these tools are right out of my throwing tool box. In addition, the trowel is from a picture that Rudy Autio’s daughter sent me. Rudy was my teacher and this is almost the only tool he used in making his large sculptural vessels. Then crossed with that is the one and only slip trailer (ear syringe) that I have used to glaze landscapes since 1973. It’s put on every glaze on literally tens of thousands of tiles, plates and other objects. Only one more image to go, the Clippers & Grippers.
Here’s the next in the Tool Belt series of tiles for the MT Museum of Art & Culture. I think they’re getting more colorful. I think I might have to go back and punch up the Brushes Tile a little. One thing I like about china paint is that I can keep firing it almost indefinitely. I have a limited ability to make the colors lighter, but I can always make them darker.
They have built the wall where my mural will go on the Montana Museum of Art & Culture. They got the height of the niche and the height off the ground exactly right, which is a huge relief to me. I haven’t heard the length dimension yet, but I’m assuming they got that right too. It looks like it. The niche is 1” deep, so the tile and thin-set will fill about half of that, so there will be a very slight shadow line. And that gives me about a 1/8” grout line. I’m thinking a dark grey grout, pretty much like the brick color.
Here’s the next in the series of artist’s hand tool tiles for the MT Museum of Art & Culture mural, the Fiber Tools. This was a hard one to design because so many of them are just straight skinny sticks. So I decided to lay them out crisscrossing each other as if they were woven. I had thought this was the least successful of the 6, but the last thing I did on them was add the threads coming out of the spindle, using a pen. If you look close at the group shot, you’ll see that each one is a bit different. Now I really like them. This is the third in the series so I’m half done now, and moving on to Blades.
I had a very frustrating week, the week before last. The screen chemical for the Brushes tile worked sort of OK, with a lot of touch-up. But the screen for the Hammers completely failed FOUR TIMES! Evidently a bad or old batch of chemical, and maybe a worn-out light bulb. No art supply store in the area had the chemical, and evidently you cannot buy a 25-watt bulb anywhere anymore. Had to order both online. But the new chemical and the new bulb worked perfectly, and here are the Hammers. I’m now 1/3 done, with the Fiber Tools up next.
This picture just came in from some clients. I believe they are in Virginia, and they wanted a scene of their local salt marsh.
Here is the first finished tiles For the MT Museum of Art & Culture mural, the Brushes. I love the patterns I can make by arranging them in different ways, but they’ll never be seen this way in the end. They’ll be arranged in order with the other 5 designs. Last week was very frustrating with technical and logistical problems with the next design, the Hammers. But I’m loving these and can’t wait to get on the rest of them.
