Going Walkabout

Between having to shop and cook dinner for everyone last night and being at a bit of a cross-roads workwise, I ended up walking most of yesterday away. Thought you'd like to see a bit of Den Bosch:

Here's the very edge of the polder and part of what I think is one of the old city motes. Mote in foreground; polder stretches way into the distance. It's 3:30, but it feels like 5 or 6. Behind me is the city, 4 lanes of traffic (albeit miniature traffic by US standards) -- but you'd never know it once you walk down into its fields. It's about 20 feet below street level. Who knows how many feet below *sea* level it is.

Crossed back into town and Whoop! There he is . There's at least one in every shop window if not 6-8. I would have catalogued them all for you, but to be honest, most of them are really dopey looking.Here's Verghtustraate -- it's one of the longest shopping streets in the city, making quite a sweeping arc. Looks like a ghosttown because 90% of shops are closed on Monday. And if they're not, they don't open until 1.

This particular building shook me out of my Medieval boredom -- there's so much of this everywhere I keep forgetting that it's not *everywhere*. I wish I could have snapped the photo with myself at the front door for scale. It's tiiiiiiny. I'm sure the front door is not even a foot taller than me. Feel sorry for the increasingly large Dutchmen and women who probably bang their heads on these sorts of squat places all the time.
No I don't.

And of course.It's true. They're everywhere. Gnomes. Mushrooms. Gnomes and mushrooms. These ones clearly are about to have a melt-down. Brrrrrrrmmmmm-ching. Have a little red wine with your dinner, folks.

All for now. The clay calls. Hope this Tuesday is treating you well.

Happy Black Friday

I'd forgotten about Black Friday until those words jumped out of the Volkskrant (the Dutch paper) yesterday morning, in what I could only guess was an article about the US economy. I'm still in far more support of doing *nothing* the day after Thanksgiving, besides watching movies in bed (in the morning!) maybe taking a walk,or doing some yoga.

So how was your Thanksgiving?
Here, it was a day like any other here for the most part -- although there were ripples through the staff and non-Americans (everyone but me, that is) about it maybe being an important American holiday. It was a day of plaster and molds and then trying to explain the meaning of Thanksgiving to everyone over coffee and later, dinner. Its an explaination that gets very absurd quickly. I haven't had to explain Thanksgiving to anyone as an adult and, well, try it yourself. Just think through it as though you're trying to talk to foreigners. Maybe it goes something like this: It's a celebration of when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth rock and the Indians (clearly good with crowds) threw a big dinner party in their honor.: a celebration of new friends and the abundance of the fall harvest. It then ends with, 'and then the dinner guests took their land and gave them diseases and killed most of them.'

Props to Tracey Whose-last-name-I-don't-know (I don't know anyone's last name here -- it's kind of like a treatment center or witness protection program in that way), Jeremy's girlfriend from Providence who is visiting this week: she came armed with cookbooks and her own apron to make us all a proper Thanksgiving. They rode around for a good part of the day and found several Grouse for sale but no Turkeys. Grouse are described as 'Wild Chickens Who Live In the Mountains' by one of the staff members -- although how can that be? There are no mountains here. 'But there are big mountains, 300 meters high!' says Jakob, one of the Dutch residents. I suppose perspective is everything, and when you're starting below sea level, well, ok.
Anyhow, it was a swell piece of home, and made me think of everyone and everything for whom I am thankful, including you.

Speaking of explaining cultural differences, this just came in from John Keith, and maybe you know it, maybe you don't. But it's a far better explanation of Christmas here than I could ever muster. Thanks John, and thanks David. So to start your Christmas season, whatever that might mean:

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/bs16/Christmas/6_to_8_black_men.txt

Request and dedication

There's been a couple of requests for more pictures of me in action on the blog. So to those who asked, I dedicate the following acts of simultaneity in the isolation chamber before the day gets under way and is once again lost in a cloud of plaster.


This is for the clay:

And this is for all the stoneware legos that came out of the kiln pretty ok: and this is for my homies:

from Yoga to...

Went to my first yoga class Sunday -- small class, nice teacher, new stuff, followed pretty well in dutch. Afterwards, the teacher smiled and agreed that much of what we'd done in class was new. I just made it up, she says, big smile.
Indeed. Glad I went, not sure I'll go back. If anyone has a good yoga CD out there, let me know.
But that's not the main event.

I exited Yogawinkel (literally 'Yoga Shop') into a street filled with sounds of a marching band, and a big crowd just a block down.
Not a boat passing under the drawbridge this time, but a parade. Apparently, Sinta Klass had just arrived by boat along the canal ( as he always does), with his helper, Black Peter:


No, I didn't take these photos. I was with yoga mat, not camera. But you can imagine the shock and again, the shear absurdity. Not only were there adults like these dressed in blackface and courtly costumes, but children, too. So many children. Mostly the palest, blondest, bluest-eyed variety, in winter coats and gleeful smudgy darkened faces. I just kept thinking, I'd like to see that in Park Slope.

Here's the link to the legend that everyone at dinner Sunday night was struggling to explain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Peter

There is no acknowledgement of the racial element here amongst any of the Dutch I've spoken to. They love Black Peter and they accept him for his blackness...I suppose.

Humility, thy name is Lane 3

I was bragging about getting invited to join the Bossche Zwemvereniging (BZV for those in the know) -- or the local swim club. Last week, during the Monday lap morning lap swim a nice man -- one of the other few swimming something besides breast stroke -- and fast, too! -- came over and complimented me on my form. Said he was a pentathlete (what could the other two events be?? For me: TV watching and hanging out with Charles-Willis and Jelly) and a trainer for a swim club. And I should come. Would fit right in. Left the pool feeling pretty good about myself -- I'm getting out, meeting people beyond the compound here and staying fit, even though the steady diet of cheese and yogurt and bread is telling my pants otherwise.

So last night I go. Tell everyone here I won't be around for dinner because I am Going To Train With BZV. Admittedly, stuffing my ipod buds in my ears, and setting out for the pool, the stomach was a little nervous because years have passed (think High School) since I Worked Out with a team, but a little excited, too. This could be my ticket to better health here, and relief from the stress of the art-making. Running is getting boring and with a yoga teacher who just makes things up, and no bicycle, options are limited.

After some confusion with the staff at various checkpoints (the Sportiom is a different world at night: there are people in every corner, and a bar filled with smoke) perhaps because I kept saying, I am here for the BVD, I ended up in the same locker room as I do every morning I swim. But yet, at night, with so much expectation, it felt different.

I should have known when I stepped out onto the deck and saw all the parents.

Found Ronald, and for those of you who are pronunciation-specific, roll that R. They do it here. The roll. And I can't, but I try. Found him, he gave me a warm hello, and says he thinks lane 3 would be good. 'May be a little fast, but we'll see.' Ok. Sure. Clutching my cap and goggles in the confusion of the crowded deck and noise, I picked my way through to Lane 3. And at this point, I'm still expecting to find a lane of 20- & 30-somethings trying to get in better shape.

Instead: Tweeners. Maybe they're fully-fledged teenagers, but they're not out of puberty yet. They're more like rubber bands than girls. And then there's me. Lording over them in size and age, definitely *not* a rubber band. In the minutes while we waited on the side to get our workout, I tried to sort through my horror and the absurdity of the situation to know avail. Stubbornness took over. So in I jumped, feeling a bit like a troll amongst fairies. I let them go first.

I'll spare you the further details, except that
A. I did keep up...for the most part.
B. They were all much better behaved than their elders who swim in the morning. Polite, well-trained, and know how to pass in the center.
C. A massive leg cramp saved me after 40 minutes.

God bless Ronald, who, as I struggled to get rid of the cramp, walked over, shrugged with a smile and said, I thought it was good to try. Maybe you can come with us to the Masters swim Saturday.

Yes...maybe...but only if they're out of college.

'It's Ok.'

So far in my experience, this is the Dutch at their most expressive: modest and deadpan. It's the response I get in agreement (at least I think it's agreement) when I say, 'That's fantastic!' 'Wonderful!', or 'How lovely!' And yesterday morning, when I had to stand in front of the entire staff, the director, and all the other participants to present my work, that's the best I got:

'It's Ok.'
Tough crowd.
But good for shaking off any need for external approval.

But let's rewind: where have the past 10 days gone?
I want to give a special shout-out to my nephew, who celebrated his big 4th birthday with good rowdiness; and to my magical new niece, who apparently sailed through her baptism, looking like a victorian doll in an antique gown, melting the hearts of everyone in the congregation. Also, props to Georgia Chesler Emmanuel for logging birthday no 2, with style and sass, no doubt.

As for me, I've been celebrating over here. Tiny victories after *days* of slow learning and waiting. This is what I've learned so far: there is alot of waiting involved in ceramics, and that the clay is smarter and I am merely trying to trick it into doing what I want it to. Also, I am Nature's bitch: ceramics comes down to physics, chemistry, water and air -- and I never did particularly well in those subjects in school.
And I am still not a savant, although I am learning patience and slowness on a whole new scale.

It is primitive and slow and works on the earth's clock it would seem. Processwise, I've been learning how to make molds and cast them. Thought maybe I'd be able to lay it all out for you, but each part has pages of steps, and there are many parts. But the highlights are these: plaster is magic. Slip (liquid clay) looks like the yummiest chocolate milk you could imagine, and extracting molds should not be hard, but when they are, they'll give you a heart attack.

Plaster is magic for several reasons. Plaster and water have to be mixed by hand, and although it is liquid, it feels like velvet. I've never felt anything like it. Once poured, it kicks into high gear and starts drying -- when it's dry enough, it's really warm to the touch. And in a cold place, that's a gift. However, you know it's not dry enough to receive clay yet if it's still cold to the cheek. Yes. You put your cheek to the plaster mold to check it, and if it's cool, that means there's still too much water in it and it has to dry longer. Ie. days more. Here are the first two molds. I will explain the lego later.




So my past week looks like this: Thursday, learn to make molds. Make molds. Thursday night and Friday, look lovingly at molds. Saturday, get told that the molds are so big, they're never going to dry and I should put them in the drying machine. Drying machine? Doh. Put one of the two in the drying machine; advised that the other can't be used for slip casting and that I should try a press mold. Press mold? By hand, you press bite-sized pieces of clay into the mold. Ok. Saturday night: go to Amsterdam to escape the isolation chambers: watch football with a pack of artists at a pub (Liverpool 2, Fulsom Nil), have cheap but delicious Surinam roti dinner, and then some belgian beers at a belgian bar in S.Amsterdam, or, what might be considered the Lower East Side of A-dam. Apparently, gentrification can happen even in such a tiny old city as this, and it's happening fast. And maybe once smoking is banned in the bars here next summer, it will happen even faster. Everything I own it seems smells of smoke now. But I digress. Sunday: return and prepare for presentation.


Monday: find out that the first mold in the dryer is still not dry enough for slip casting. Also find out that slip must be mixed at least 24 hours before use. So we mix the slip. It's like cooking -- I am given a receipe that involves alot of clay dust and a couple spoonfulls of really toxic stuff called deflocculants. And then we put in the mixer. Stop me if this is boring. But it's quite lovely to watch. Mix for 20 minutes on high, 60 mins on low -- although one of the pros here says he mixes his *all night long*. Not what Lionel Ritchie had in mind, but that's the kind of party we've got going on here. And then it gets covered and it sits.

Also, Monday: I was invited to join the local swim team.
Will explain more later.

Tuesday: finished pouring the molds for my CNC models -- remember those? -- they had to be varnished several times to seal the foam from which they are made. That took 4 days. These molds are three-part molds and my eyes glazed over the first time the plan was broken down for me. Molds can get quite complex quite quickly. It's a new kind of thinking -- in invisible volumes pulling themselves apart. That probably makes no sense, but it's the best I can do right now. So proceeded through each of the 3 pieces of each of the 2 models -- which requires applying layers of soapy lather followed by a layer of grease before the plaster can get measured, made and poured. Realized that the forms look like the commonwealth of Virginia. Freaky. Had to repour one -- not enough soap and grease -- lesson learned.

Which brings us to yesterday, if you're even still reading.

Yesterday: presentation, Ok. Trip to the Big Wednesday Market in the middle of town: think Union Square Greenmarket PLUS textile stalls, sock stalls, foam stalls, electronics stalls, bicycle equpment talls (!), flower stalls, and the lace stall, which was my market. Interested in casting lace. we'll see if it works. Back with my lace, I wait for a couple more hours for the staff to get out of rounds of meetings.

And then I learn to pour the slip. This is dragging on I know, so I'll keep it short. The first pour was a disaster. The slip looks like chocolate when it dries and it's hard not to want to lick it. But extracting these first molds nearly gave us a heartattack because everything was breaking. Well, I had the heart attack. Marc, the staff member said, so now you know these forms don't work so well. He likes to play the cynics' card and I like him for it.

Against his advice, I poured them again. Went to dinner. Came back, a little more fearless for the wine at dinner, and started extracting. Figured they would break anyways, so I just went at them renegade style with an air-pressure gun and a rubber mallet. Yes, let's just imagine me doing this. Furrowed brow. Tongue sticking out at strange angles. Good comedy.

But they worked.
Everyone here watched me make these things and with an encouraging smile, said Yeah! Try it! It Probably Won't Work But Then You Will Know.'

So cue the Phil Collins, here's what I made:

Broken first pour stands by and watches second pour harden.

Second pour: the jaunty little things from above and in elevation.
I got a great Ooooh! from the Canadian who is a pro. O, Canada.

The Isolation Chamber

Well, not entirely --- but for those of you who were wondering what it looks like where I am, here are a few snaps:

1. View from the train window of somewhere between Amsterdam to 'S-Hertogenbosch. I still have no explanation for the 'S-.

2.

A window along the trip from the EKWC to the center square of the old city which is really more a circle than a square.
This one boasts large fruity tarts, and clearly their doping effects on the local gnome population.

3.

The view from my shoe-sized room. It's even better when there's a large boat parked out there.

4.

Isolation Chamber No. 1: My shoe. A view from the bed pillows. Not much is missing really, except the desk table which is 1 foot to the left.

5.
Ta Da.
The real isolation chamber. The light is pretty great but the emptiness is some tough love.
My computer is hiding just behind the support.
The bags of clay are where I dropped them a week ago.
The aforementioned poop experiments are on the shelf above and barely even register as a pixel here.

Oh, Oh, Oh, It'sMagic!

(Maybe one of these days I will pause a moment before pounding away at the New Post window -- I aspire to it. You're worth the outlining and editing and thoughtful shaping of ideas. But right now if I hesitate on any front, the moment is lost. I hope you can understand.)

So where have I been these past couple of days? Silently suffering. Just kidding -- only a little. This part of the creative process, shaping the ideas to generate the forms that will eventually mold the clay (so to speak in some cases, but here literally) is *so* -- I'll head off the more dramatic descriptors at the pass -- challenging. Especially, as many of you have experienced, to be in this part of the process with nary a lick of fun in sight to balance out the challenge.

I can easily say, with the exception of getting utterly lost in the choices of the Saturday Market in the town square (23 produce stands alone not to mention the dairy, meat, textiles, electronics, clothing, and flower booths), and going for a run on the moor yesterday, I was either reading, slogging through Rhino lessons, attempting some elementary drawings in rhino, or totally stressing myself out that everything's kinda crap. You've been there. You know what I mean. The utter hopelessness that every so often arises at the nexus of perceived lack of time and too many ideas.

But then I revisited Brian Eno's essay 'Into the Abyss' and was reminded that it's all part of the cycle of things...and started to make some more satisfying drawings. I joined Second Life. That's right. I'm diving in -- not because I'm not satisfied with my first life -- for the project, which I know I haven't explained yet. In due time.



So today, it's evident that all the time in the isolation chamber was worth it, because as I tap, the CNC machine is Cutting The Foam.
I'm thrilled.
It's magic.
I made these drawings and output them to a certain file type, which got opened in another software and saved out as another kind of file And then we -- the staff member in charge of the CNC machine, Mark -- went downstairs and cut some foam to size. I'm back on big machinery for the first time since Mr. Meadows' class called Industrial Arts (what a classy name for wood shop) in sixth grade. The culmination of my studies back then were a cheeseboard (with a very elegant mallard duck burned into the center, freestyle, by yours truly) and a mail sorter, also following the mallard motif.
How times have changed.

The foam went into the machine bed, and the last file type was uploaded into it's brain. The whole set up -- fully DOS -- made me think of Matthew Broderick and Wargames. He was so nerdy and great, and now he's just creepy.

It's nearly time to go check the model, so I'll leave you with these photos of the process:

Step 1: the Rhino lessons. I think I made it from 1 to 17 before feeling fully frustrated. After 17, I skipped to 47 and learned how to draw the rubbery ducky.


2. Drawing something -- anything -- in Rhino freeform. Here's my 3rd hillside study.


This is Mark's office where all my files get fed into another program and compiled for the CNC machine. There's alot of foam up in there. And the table in the foreground is actually large-scale CNC milled styrofoam.There two tiny chairs that match it, too.


3. There's the machine! It's cutting!


4. Ally Sheedy (http://imdb.com/title/tt0086567/), eat your heart out. These are the coordinates of my sketches that tell the mill-head where to go. It's amazing that after all those vectors and commands, that at the end of the line it's a simple text file with coordinates that makes the machine work.

Looks Like Poop

So I plunged my hands into some clay, and guess what?

What I made: it looked like poop.

That realization illumated several important points:
1. That I am not a ceramics savant as I had secretly hoped
2. I do not have enough time here to evolve naturally up the skill pyramid just working with my hands because
3. It is time to admit that so many years in front of a computer working in 2 dimensions has made me really good with computers and 2-dimensions so
4. Plan B: Go With What You Know.

With the exception of the Canadian architect who just arrived from Berlin, I am the only non-ceramicist participant in the house. I mistakenly thought it was going to be a 50-50 split, or 60-40 maybe, but no such luck. That means that I've already sustained a fair amount of first, blank stares at dinner when I said I was a graphic designer and then a round of ribbing about how, if I'm a graphic designer than I must not like to get my hands dirty. Well, f- you very much and Ouch. What if I don't?

It's not the *dirt* so much really as the *dryness*, I'd like to know how to say in Dutch and German and Spanish and Swedish to each of them.

So yesterday I sat in my studio the whole day -- instead of holed up here in my shoe of a dorm room -- just me, my empty tables, empty shelves, two bags of unused clay, drying poop, computer and Rhino manuals. Everyone else around me was in various states of clay-covered and I was desperately trying to figure out which, of the hundred buttons in Rhino, was the Home Key (lesson 3 of the paper tutorial).

And at dinner, when the conversation came round to My Work Day, I could feel the jokes coagulating like the edges of the South African meatloaf on my plate. I'd sat through a round of tounge clicking about how the big kiln didn't get up to 1250 (temp in C) and how the poor swedes (who really are nice -- I think they're both named Maria) had to re-fire everything in the batch because the translucency and color were bad from the lower heat. And how each firing in that big kiln costs E 150. Yipes. I paused after the question and replied, 'I spent the day learning Rhino because Monday I have a date with the CNC machine.'
Pause.
Really? You are going to use the CNC machine on Monday?
Sure -- unless someone else wants to use it...
No -- we don't know Rhino. Been meaning to learn it.


Ta da.

A special shout-out to Ruben Ruckman and Mark whose-last-name-I-don't-know here on staff.
I'm off for more lessons. Up to page 54 of 213.

Later, I will be taking a break to make a t-shirt that reads:

2-D and proud