Up Lifting View from Texas Museums

I just got back from the 2011 Texas Association of Museum Conference. 3 days of lectures, group discussions and workshops with 388 people that work in museums from across the state, museums like the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, as well as hundreds of smaller historic museums, historic parks, historic houses, culture centers, libraries, and foundations.

Between the sessions a lot of the coffee talk was about the resent cuts to the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Texas Historical Commission, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife. That said, the overall atmosphere of the conference was upbeat, with sessions focusing on Do it yourself public relations, Developing partnerships and Resource building. A Yes this sucks, and it's going to continue to suck, so let's make the best of it attitude prevailed. I for one, came away invigorated by the commoratery and the positive problem solving attitudes.

Next year, the TAM conference with be in San Antonio, March 27-30th. I'll be participating as part of an Art Conservation roundtable. More on that next March.

Up Against the Pecha Kucha Clock

Several people have asked if I could post my Pecha Kucha Dallas presentation on line. So here it is, 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Pull out your stop watch and see if you can beat the PKN clock...

Tonight I'm taking you on a rambling journey of Flashbacks, Visual Connections, and Unintentional Concoctions.

Welcome to my slightly dyslexic world of Art-O-Vision.

When these Hummels came into the conservation studio, I was trying to quite smoking for the fifth time. They were coated in 30 years worth of second hand tar and nicotine. 

Sometimes when you make a tough decision, the world backs you up.

This pre-Columbian artifact was broken in half. Inside are fingerprints so clear that the FBI could use them for identification. 

This isn't a cold ceremonial artifact, it's a direct link to a once living person.

This is my childhood home. 

They say you can never go home again. 

Well, a few years ago I moved back into this house. So I can tell you from personal experience that it's much more surreal the second time around.

Every time I dig in the yard, I dig up toy guns, G. I. Joes, army men, and the tools that I borrowed from my Dad. 

Yeah, I'm just now returning them to the tool shed. Sorry it took so long Dad.

When I dug up this small ceramic turtle, suddenly it was the summer of 1966. I was 4 years old, sitting in the gravel driveway with the turtle in my mouth, squashing ants with a stick.

This is one of my Dad's paintings. It was in "deep storage" for over 40 years. 

When I pulled it out, I could see it hanging in our living room. I was just a tot, and I remember thinking it looked like fried eggs in outer space.

This is some of my work. A small work on paper, a lacquer panel, and a page of doodles, the kind you make while your listening to someone talk.

These were all done before I rediscovered Fried Eggs in Outer Space.

These abstract drawings were done for a show at Gray Matters. At the time, I was a senior art conservator, spending my days restoring gilded frames, chair legs, and drawer pulls.

In this project I photographed lots of buds and seeds. The photos were used as building blocks to generate the abstract shapes on top. So, those shapes would not exist without the information contained with in the photos below...

A few months later, I came across this almost direct photographic translation of one of the abstract shapes.

I spent a week at the Untitled ArtSpace in Oklahoma City producing a series of block prints that were totally non-representational.

It was all about creating PURE abstract shapes...

Yeah, apparently while I was up there in Oklahoma, I was channeling the creative spirit of the ceiling fan down here in my bedroom.

So much for purity.

Art Basel Miami! Developing Art-O-Vision. 

5 days of nonstop art viewing. 

On the first day, Damn I saw a lot of art! By the end of the fifth day, you have gone beyond burnout. Everything looks like art. 

I highly recommend it.

Vermont Studio Center, where each month a new batch of 50 neurotic, self absorbed artists and writers are let loose on the small northern town of Johnson Vermont.

I drew, painted, sculpted, photographed, shot videos, blogged, and talked Art Art Art 24/7.

It was very unnatural...

...Unlike making art in my studio at home.

All the distractions are actually part of the creative process. They allow ideas time to gel and ferment. 

SculptCAD Rapid Artists. I was 1 of 14 artists that spent 3 months learning how to create sculptures on a computer... 

The top row are the actual sculptures I created using the program. They're plastic resin sprayed with black velvet, so they are soft to the touch.

But I really like how the photos below have squashed the sculptures back into a 2D space.

This being my newest work, I really don't know what the epiphanies are yet. But with my niece graduating high school and my nephew graduating college, I assume they are about liver spots.

Thank You

Well, there you go. To much info, to little time, but a lot of fun to do.

All of the Pecha Kucha Dallas events have been held at small venues, Sons of Hermann being the biggest so far. The 150 seats at the last PKN Dallas, held at the Dallas Center for Architecture was sold out in just under 2 days. The small size of the audience makes each event feel like you are sharing something special with a bunch of friends. Of corse the small sized also means that a bunch of your friends have and will miss out on the event.

More On Hall of Fame

Here is another entry for the More On Hall of Fame. This is a close up photo of the back leg join from a very hansom oak arm chair, circa 1890.

This leg join  has three kinds of glue on it, dried stripper, Four split wood dowels, four 3" long nails and five 3" long brads.

Here is the probable story of this chair.

It was originally constructed using wood dowels and animal skin glue. Over time the glue started to let go, this caused the chair to squeak when someone sat in it. To "fix" the squeaking, someone squeezed more glue into the loose joins, this acted like a wedge that helped to spread the joins further apart. Then someone added a few 3" large nails, which they pounded directly into the solid wood. This split the wood and caused more glue joins to fail.  Later someone submerged the chair into a strip tank. This removed the painted finish that someone had applied to the chair and also filled the all the joins with paint stripper.  With all the joins now loose the person refinishing the chair shot every join with enough 3" long brads to kill the squeaking. 

All this chair ever needed was to be simply dismantled, cleaned, and then reconstructed with animal skin glue. Basically, a day at the spa.

 

Speaking at the Texas Library Association Conference

I've been practicing on my portion for the presentation "You have a What? Preservation of the Unusual Objects in Your Collection." 

This is one of the programs for the Texas Library Association 2009 Conference. I am presenting with Carol Roark who is the Archivist at the Dallas Public Library.  The program is being hosted by Michelle Mears who is the Archivist at UNT.

I am speaking about the importance of knowing what your items are made from and on the effects of slow damage. That's a lot of info to cover in just 20 minutes. So lots of slides and quick talking. 

There are some slides posted on my web site as well as a list of resources.

Cows in the class room

 Doss Heritage and Culture Center wins the prize for the most surreal experience of the month. 

They made an appointment to have Studio Six examine some recently donated items, four Longhorn Steer mounts and one Buffalo mount. The Doss Center focuses on the history of Weatherford Texas which has always been a big cow town, so having a few stuffed cows in the collection is what you would expect. What made it surreal was stepping into a classroom that was filled with cow heads. I laughed outloud 

The Underside of Family History

A client recently brought in a dinning room table that originally belonged to her Great Grandmother. It had been stored in a barn until the estate was dispersed and the farm was sold. The table was in very very bad shape, but the connection to family history was to strong to pass up. So the client brought it into Studio Six for restoration. 

As the conservation report was being made it was noted that the underside of the table (see photo) had lots of pencil scribbles and what turned out to be numerous globs of old crusty chewing gum. 

After consulting with the client it was determined that these artifacts were limited to an area where her Grandfather would have set. The client decided not to remove these items because they gave a personal insight into the young life of her Grandfather.

More On Hall of Fame, A new conservation technique?

A client brought this marble top plant stand in to Studio Six Art Conservation. She got it from a friend of a friend. She thought it was pretty but a bit too wobbly. So we took a look to see what the problem could be. When I removed the marble top I saw these white squares sticking out from the four leg joins. Upon closer inspection I was dumbfounded to see that the plant stand was held together with velcro! 

TAM meeting 2008

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             This was the third Texas Association of Museums meeting that I have attended. There is always loads of great lectures, but meeting and talking with people involved in museums and obsessed with history is the real joy of the meetings. This year the TAM meeting was held in Galveston, so the evening social events included h’orderves and wine at the Bishop’s Palace, Freeto pie at the Galveston Art Center, grilled shrimp at the Ocean Star Drilling Museum, and on the final night, dancing under the wings of B 52 bombers at the Lone Star Flight Museum. How can you not love history!