Category: Labyrinth

Labyrinth, 8/9/09

Posted on by Dale

Busy, busy, busy.

Yesterday, I started building a new work table for the back yard, based on old farm kitchen tables that I’d seen at antique places. Simple, sturdy construction. I would have finished it yesterday but I ran out of screws halfway through putting the top on.

Not to worry: ran out to Home Depot this morning, picked up some super cool weather-proof screws and actually replaced those I put in yesterday, then finished the table. Here it is in situ, waiting to start its first project:

It’s rather clean looking, if I do say so myself.

First project: patching the omphalic bowl. You see the bowl on the table. You also see a small piece of plywood and a pane of glass.

The idea was that I would put alumnium foil on the bottom of the bowl to keep the epoxy from running all the way through and out the bottom. The problem is that the bottom of the bowl is not flat, but concave.

Solution? A pile of sand on the plywood:

That way, the foil will be pressed up against the bottom of the bowl. That too is why I had the piece of plywood there.

Here are my tools assembled:

The two cans of JC-11 marine epoxy component; plastic spoons for scooping equal portions of the epoxy; spreaders for mixing and spreading the goop; a pane of glass for the mixing. Just at the edge of the photo is a can of denatured alcohol for cleaning.

Here’s the bowl half patched, or rather, completely patched and half cleaned. I was a little concerned when the whole bottom of the bowl looked like the goopy mess on the right. But I began wiping with paper towels soaked in denatured alcohol, and eventually I ended up with:

This is only the first application of epoxy. It will cure overnight, and tomorrow afternoon I will apply a second coat.

I am thinking that I could gold leaf the epoxy: a gleaming hieroglyphic swirling around a dark pool, flowing like lava out through the center of the universe.

Labyrinth, 8/4/09

Posted on by Dale

A full day in the labyrinth.

First of all, I had a full truckload of firewood delivered yesterday afternoon, so the first thing I had to do this morning was to move it all over to its usual spot. Here you can see it where it got stacked yesterday afternoon:

As you can see, the Lichtenbergians are set for the fall. We can drain many a bottle of absinthe without worrying about the fire going out.

I also had this heavy limb to deal with:

Some of you may remember it as the huge limb perched atop my neighbor’s corrugated metal shack. I had tried to get it down earlier in the year, but it was just too big and the upper branches were over the top of the roof.

Somehow, however, it got loose this past week while we were gone and slid on down, knocking the lighting fixture at the southpoint awry. Now I could get at it and saw it into three largish pieces, which were then chopped into more firewood. The lighting fixture was easily restored.

Just for the hell of it, I toted the omphalos bowl out to the center. The blue of the bowl is a little lighter than I would have preferred, and it’s a lot more violet than I would have preferred, but it’s ready to start the installation process.

Of course, the first part of the installation process is to patch those cracks. It turns out that Home Depot does not carry PC-11 marine epoxy, and Sewell Marine has never heard of it. So much for shopping locally. Still, Ace Hardware does carry it, and even has free “to store” shipping, so I’ll be popping by Turkey Creek Road in the next few days, and then we can begin what I’m sure will be many interesting escapades with epoxy.

Just FYI, here’s what I plan to do. I’ll take up the granite and the bricks, carefully marking the cardinal points of the compass, and carefully marking the granite on its underside. As I’ve said before, the granite was not cut on precise 90° angles, so everything has to go back where it came from.

I will dig a hole about 20 inches across and about 3 feet deep, or until I reach the former topsoil under the red clay dumped on top it during construction of our addition. Into this hole I will put a 6-inch wide piece of PVC pipe. That will be filled with rock/large gravel, as will the space around it. The bowl will rest on top of the pipe, and then the brick and granite can go back in place.

Let me know if you see any flaws in this plan.

Last week at the Highlands Arts Festival in Abingdon, VA, I bought this little hand-blown oil lamp:

My thinking was that I would find a vase with a heavy base, and that this would rest in the center of the bowl when it was filled with water. Fire and water, see?

Lo, the very next morning at the antiques show, there it was:

Here it is with the oil lamp in it:

Heavy glass bottom, and that odd shape with the insert. Perfect. I could put dirt in the top, and have earth, air, fire, and water all in one at the center of the labyrinth.

Because… that’s what I will have around the periphery:

These are the cutouts from the bowl, glazed with some pretty awful colors. But hey, it’s a start. I got a quickie gold leaf kit from Michael’s, and in less than 30 minutes:

From the top, clockwise: North/brown/earth. East/white/air. South/red/fire. West/blue/water.

Definitely a successive approximation. I’m thinking I could find some paint/stain for the actual paving stones in the labyrinth, stain the four stones, and gold leaf the alchemical symbols onto those. Or when I return to GHP in 2011, I can make nice markers. Any other ideas?

Goals

Posted on by Dale

Here we are, end of GHP and vacation, the beginning of the school year, one of those cusps that seem to demand that I set some goals, to figure out what I want to do next. I don’t know why, especially since these are no-brainers. It’s not as if I’m going to not do these things if I don’t write them down, but writing them seems to give them some legitimacy.

  • get back into the 24 hour project work. I have #12, #13, and #14 still to set, and they’re all three doozies. I really ought to try to come up with two more movements to go with the string quartet/bassoon piece.
  • get serious about my “Field” series of paintings, especially Seth’s commission
  • schedule Tai Chi time, and stick to the schedule. Grayson gave me a beginner CD for my birthday, and I’ve only looked at the first section once. The problem is finding time and space. But I must.
  • get serious about my ELP sketching, especially faces. Soon it’s going to be time to start sketching in paint as well. It has occurred to me that proficiency in graphite does not automatically transfer to gouache.
  • do some writing in the Neo-Futurist vein for Lacuna. The GHP theatre kids used the Neo-Futurist mold for their work this summer and it was a fascinating way to do theatre.
  • and of course the labyrinth needs attention: mowing, reseeding, repair, installation of the omphalos

That’s not too much to think about, is it? It does not include routine stuff, like cleaning my study or doing the final reports on GHP, or updating the WordPress software everywhere, or starting back up with Masterworks Chorale and Lacuna Group.

More bits & pieces

Posted on by Dale

I spent most of this past week in West Virginia, a lovely state, although where we were was a bit lacking in those things which I tend to enjoy while on vacation, such as fine dining and access to art in any form.

However, there was this, the New River Gorge Bridge:

That’s a four-lane highway on top; for scale, a car could drive on any of the girders of the arch. It is immense. It’s the longest single-arch bridge in the western hemisphere, and the second tallest in the U.S. As you can see in the photograph, there was a slight haze to the air that day, so the whole mise-en-scene was a bit CGIish. Confronted by something like this, the brain rebels. It can’t be real. It’s too big. Somehow a computer did it.

Before the bridge was built, folks used a smaller bridge down at the river (still there). It took 45 minutes to get from the top of one side of the gorge to the other. Now it takes less than a minute.

I was impressed.

I was also more than a little bored, not being the outdoorsy type who jumps at the chance to spend all day rafting down said New River. It rained nearly the whole time we were there, so I couldn’t even take naps in the sun, and there’s only so much hot tub one can take.

I was also largely internetless, having left my laptop at home. I was able to keep up with email via my iPhone, but there are about 13 major emails to which I have yet to reply because they need some thought and depth to them. I’ll get to those tomorrow.

So I amused myself by not shaving. Here I am after a week without a razor:

One always hopes that one looks raffishly sexy, but I know I’m just unkempt. It all comes off tomorrow morning, lest I scare the rest of the leadership team at school.

I got home from GHP last Sunday, left for West Virginia the next day, so I didn’t really get a chance to check on the labyrinth, other than to take this photo late last Sunday afternoon.

As you can see, the dry summer has not been kind to the space. The grass is mostly dead. Today I was able to pick up all the little sticks that had accumulated, and I spread a “weed & feed” fertilizer on it. I also have to get the lawnmower fixed, and then there’s a host of other little things I have to swing into action on. I’ll take more photos tomorrow afternoon and blog about them tomorrow night. I also hope to have a full report/plan on the omphalos bowl and its accoutrements and installation. Big doings in my near future.

Various updates

Posted on by Dale

I brought the bowl back to the dorm this morning. It’s awfully heavy. I continually fear I will drop it.

The cracks are now a feature, not a bug. When I think back on the puzzle of what to do with the interior, I am reminded of the line from Casablanca: “It seems that destiny has taken a hand.”

I spent an hour with a string quintet this morning reading through and working on Waltz for string quartet & bassoon. A cello subbed for the bassoon. It was great fun, and I was able to help them hear what I heard and to play it. I think that with actual rehearsal it would be a very presentable piece indeed. My friend and colleague Stephen Czarkowski plans to program it this fall, so maybe we’ll get a YouTube video performance of that.

There were three places that I wasn’t sure were effective, and I found that I was right about those as being weak. I was able to fix one of them on the spot, and the other two are simple doubling issues, i.e., I need more oomph at two spots that sounded bare, so all I have to do is copy and paste some notes. Done, for a ducat!

I haven’t blogged about this because it’s been touchy, but for the past week here at the Land of Pan-Dimensional Mice we’ve been under “social distancing protocol” restrictions due to the flu. No one could sit directly next to each other, everyone was issued hand sanitizer, etc., etc. (There is no hand sanitizer in the city. Tomorrow there will be no Sharpie markers.)

The “no touching” thing had some interesting repercussions. We canceled Field Day and the Saturday night dance. (Everyone dressed up in their 80s finery anyway.) I canceled my Grand Ball. We had to cut seating at peformances in half, which meant we had to double the number of performances, which meant increased monitoring duties for me, which meant less time to get the program ready to close out. It was very stressful.

The worst was facing the fact that we were going to have do the final Prism Concert twice, cancel the Friday night Graffiti Dance (the kids sign each others’ t-shirts in a last paroxysm of bonding), and somehow split up Saturday morning’s Convocation. What kind of good-bye is it when half the people you love are not there? And the idea that we were going to keep these kids from hugging each other was ludicrous. The increasing anxiety about this very real downer was getting to everyone.

Last night, however, the word finally came that since we had not had anyone register any symptoms since our only case ten days ago, we were free of restrictions. We could end our summer as we should. And there was much rejoicing.

All in all, we were magnificent. We responded quickly and appropriately, and the kids were fantastic in their good-spirited compliance with the protocols. They were actually grateful that they were still at GHP, and many said so. All the final events were kept on the schedule, and as far as I know no one was turned away from something they wanted to see. We deserve much praise.

Two days, one hour, two minutes until GHP is over.

Omphalos, 7/21/09

Posted on by Dale

All right, who didn’t light a candle?

Yes, those are cracks. They are large cracks.

See??

We are not to worry. We will patch these cracks with a marine epoxy, perhaps even with some colorant. And actually I kind of like the pattern they made.

I don’t know when I’m going to do this. Maybe between midnight and 2 a.m. one evening between now and Saturday.

Tomorrow morning I sit in on a rehearsal of my Waltz for string quartet & bassoon, although I’m not sure whether they ever recruited a bassoon.

Omphalos, 7/19/09

Posted on by Dale

So.

First, Andy showed me how to patch the enormous ring of cracks:

That’s a mixture of glaze and the clay I pulverized last week, rubbed into the cracks.

Then we moved outside to the spraying station. That’s right, children, I didn’t have to spend hours painting my glaze on. Andy let me use the sprayer. Here’s the bowl with its six coats of white glaze on the outside. (Don’t panic. The bowl isn’t going to be white, at least not where you can see it.)

Here’s the manufacturer of the spray booth:

That’s pretty dang close to Lacuna. For all I know, it’s Laquna. (It’s not. I just checked. It’s Laguna.)

Next, the inside of the bowl:

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It’s cobalt blue.

Later, I glazed the little cutout pieces from the four corners.

Those are for East, West, North, and South. I think what I’m going to do is to gold-leaf the old alchemical symbols for air, water, earth, and fire, respectively, onto them. Then… I don’t know. They’ll go somewhere out there.

The blue, brown, and red glazes were just underglazes, so they had to have coats of clear glaze:

Yes, I know it looks like Pepto-Bismol.

It all goes into the kiln tomorrow. Cross your fingers/light a candle/walk your labyrinth that the big bowl comes out clean and sealed.

Omphalos, 7/16/09

Posted on by Dale

I arrived in the studio just as Andy was taking the bowl out of the kiln. It is still too warm to touch even as I write this:

It has of course cracked exactly where we saw before:

Again, Andy is not concerned. The ground up clay that you see here will be mixed with glaze to form a grout to seal the cracks.

We still have not decided on the interior. However, I look forward to welcoming my fellow Lichtenbergians to the Land of Pan-Dimensional Mice tomorrow, and I feel sure they will provide guidance in that regard.