Notes from the Atelier - 8/6/2020

at·el·ier

/ˌadlˈyā/

1: an artist's or designer's studio or workroom

It's been a couple years since I regularly posted my Work In Progress Wednesday (WIP) posts. I miss them. But not on Wednesdays in particular.

So here's my fancy fresh start on those posts. 

 August 6th, 2020 Notes from the Atelier:

 

I've dabbled in woodwork throughout the years and wanted to do more. I got a carving knife and a spoon knife (not used for these toggle buttons) and a book on working with green fresh wood. When a tropical storm came through and brought down some good-sized maple branches, I excitedly got to work.

Because wood gets significantly harder as it dries, working with fresh greenwood is remarkably easier. It turns out that one trick for keeping wood green for longer is to pop it in the freezer. Several forum comments I read mentioned that the only risk in keeping some wood in the freezer was marital strife. As we have a chest freezer, I'll take the risk. 

Another recent project was to make a basket from the wild grapevines I pulled off our fence line by the gardens.  This basket is about 12" in diameter. It needs a few more small vines to fill in the bottom.  When we trim HandsomeJoe's grapevines this Fall, I'll get to try a different basketweaving technique and see how large of a basket I can make! 

Finally, for this edition at least, I've started preliminary sketches for my Capstone project for my Book Studies Concentration (Studio Art Major) at Smith College. As I'll be doing this project (and my Fall Semester) remotely, I'll have to figure out how to print such a large piece by hand. I won't have access to the printing presses at school as I'd planned. 

There was a learning curve when it came to printing my snails by hand last semester. As those woodcut blocks were around 3"x5" (approximately the size of a large index card) it will certainly be a leap to print this piece which will be 9.5"x25." I'll fold it down to the shape of the model dos-à-dos book shown at 1/4 scale at the bottom right of the photo above.

Wish me luck! 

-Myrrh