Jane (Sigler) Burckard - Memory Jug

Today’s featured artist also happens to be my aunt Jane. And, it just happens to be her birthday! Together, let us celebrate aunt Jane and her foray into terracotta modication, or should I say “beautification.” This artifact is what paleontologists call a “memory jug.” On the Mill Creek reservation the natives call this rather large and heavy, but delicate piece the “Juggernaut” or possibly “Jug-or-not.” As all history of this memory jug has been passed from one generation to the next through the oral tradition, and no documentation, save for these photographs, is known to exist, the exact spelling remains a mystery.

The enigmatic artist, who is a particularly social being and yet camera shy, declined to be filmed in our interview about her memory jug magnum opus. If you have any questions about the process involved in producing this jug please post them in the comments section. Jane is known to be a regular reader of this site. On behalf of my aunt who couldn’t appear on video I would like to thank all the little people who contributed to the making of this memory jug.

See detailed close ups of Jane’s memory jug.

Read more about the folk art tradition of memory jugs.

Brad Price - The Cellar (Painting)

I just heard from a childhood friend. It’s only been about 25 years since we’ve seen each other. His father made the wedding rings I posted here a while back. Turns out that Brad Price is quite an artist himself. I totally dig this painting of the wine cellar at Elizabeth’s Cafe in Duck, NC. There’s just something about the collision of patterns in man-made objects and hand-made or human painting that always does it for me.

When I’m back to livin’ large I’ll try to get him to sell it to me. He posted two more killer paintings at his blog today. Aahhh! I want those too! Check ‘em out at BradPriceArt.com.

Christ Card 2008 - Large Scale Light Painting

There is no Photoshop trickery happening here. This image was captured in one take using a single long exposure photograph. Blah blah blah blah, or you can just watch this video. Jump below for the details.

Larger video

This large scale light painting of a Christmas tree was made in our backyard. On the ground the tree was 55 feet tall and about 25 feet wide. It appears short and fat because of the angle of the photograph. I had the camera, and video camera, in a stairwell window at the back of our house. I’m at least four storeys (someone asked, that is in fact the correct spelling) in the air because our property drops quite a bit. We are in the mountains. But the back lot is nice and flat. I used rope to lay out the tree and enlisted the family and some conveniently located neighbors to move the lights around.

The kids were in the middle of the tree swinging the light sabers (see below) in circles to make the “ornaments” and Mars walked back and forth to make a “garland.” The Moms (Mary and Jill) made the tree outline by waving two light sabers each as they walked along the rope, invariably racing at the end of each take to finish in time. I used a kitchen timer and called out the remaining seconds.

I wanted to do some light painting myself so I took the tripod and camera outside and made some “Nöels” in green and red. Nöel (Which I now know should be spelled “noël” – oof, embarrassing. I was in the dark!) is way easier than trying to write “Merry Christmas,” backward mind you, in the dark, before the time runs out and the shutter closes. Plus, Nöel is so short I was able to turn the light on and off for each letter, and add the umlaut over the “o.” I put a strip of four of these inside the card, along the top.

Nöel Light Painting

We did something similar for the family shot on the back of the card. For this one I used another camera, mounted on separate stand, just for the flash. That way I could move the lights around to make the frame, then get back into position before the second camera flashed, which would make us visible in the photo taken by the first camera. Staggering the timers on the two cameras so that the flash would happen after I was done drawing, but before the shutter closed on the first camera was a challenge. Have I mentioned we were in the dark? The image came out too dark on the card but the original looks good.

Family Portrait Light Painting

This was a fun card to make, but I was stressing about the execution. I mentioned to my friend Gary a couple months ago that I was worried about the logistics and he said something like “only you would have a Christmas card with logistical challenges.” Why do things the easy way? Walk hard.

More post performance photo fun:

See more of our light painting pictures at Flickr.

Details details

Our tools for the light painting

Camera: Canon G9, 15 second shutter time, ISO 100, some other stuff I can’t remember

Lights: Light sabers from FlashingBlinkyLights.com, only $36 for 12 (Note to parents: some items at FBL are PG13); one regular flashlight for the garland. Sourcing some good lights was probably the toughest part. I looked everywhere, poi stuff, glow sticks, gels, etc. This idea needed large swaths of light and these sabers were perfect, and cheap!

People: 2 moms, 6 kids (one toddler helping Paris), and a gigantic whining dog with me in the stairwell

Oh man, I hope doesn’t rain up in Gingerbread Town because those cookie people are going to get wet. Mary later decided to disguise this chasm on the gingerbread house roof with a Playmobil Santa, sleigh and reindeer. Clever. She makes one every Christmas and the kids join in.

Mary spent a few years living in Germany and has been to the Kristkindl market (giant Christmas market place) in some of the cities including the gingerbread capital of the world, Nürnberg.

And, our “neighbor” up the hill, Grove Park Inn, has a gingerbread house competition every year. We haven’t been yet this year, but I did find this video of some of the winners from a couple years ago. I don’t think we’re ready for the big leagues, yet.

Paris made this with her grandmother when she was “camp” with them this summer. She claims to have sewn it entirely by herself. She said she made the yellow sweater for the bear because his body was a little lopsided. The grandmother-granddaughter team was making a batch of bears for a charity, but Paris decided to keep this one. She even learned how to crochet to make the green scarf.

Handmade all the way. Keep making stuff.

It was, and the winner is… Cecilia P. in California.

Sign up to win the giveaway next Friday.

Mumsy is back in the doll making game after a little hiatus. A while ago she made 20 rag dolls for a charity called Rag Dolls 2 Love, Inc from a pattern they provided. This one here is a Christmas gift for the latest grandchild, Oli, and it’s made from the scraps of another project. She’s a crafty crafter! This handmade rag doll is a combination of the charity’s pattern and her memory of a two-sided doll from her childhood.

From the Rag Dolls 2 Love site:

Rag Dolls 2 Love, Inc was started to put a soft cloth doll in the hands of children who live in countries ravaged by war, are orphaned or infected by HIV/ AIDS or traumatized by natural disasters. In the summer of 2003 as I listened to a report of Palestinian children shot during a raid by the Israeli army, and the death of Israeli children in a bus bombing, my frustration and anger spilled over at the loss of so many young lives.

Find out more about Rag Dolls 2 Love, Inc.

Everyone else, you still have three more chances. Winners are chosen by generating a random number at Random.org.

Enter to win a free set of these cool modern pillows!

The letters have been broughten, peoples. Yeah, I said “broughten.” I was originally going for an Art Deco flavor but these ended up more like op art, which I also like. The plan was to use these panels to make Letter Pillows, and that is still going to happen. But why wait on us? We’re adding these to our Etsy store and folks can use them to make anything they want. In addition to pillows I can imagine piecing these panels together to make quilts, duvet covers, tote bags, chair cushions, wall hangings, table runners, what else? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Each panel is 17″ square with a half inch seam allowance for a finished piece of 16″ square. The fabric is a 7 ounce organic cotton poplin. As green as we can get!

In addition to all 26 letters we printed yardage of a matching concentric square pattern, terminating with our anvil logo in the middle. The plan is to use these for the letter pillow backs, but they look pretty cool just hanging on the wall. Curtains? I don’t know. We may offer this for sale as yardage.

This pic of the anvil is reasonably close to actual size, maybe a little larger.

Later tonight I’ll post a graphic showing all of the letters. UPDATE: And here they are. Click for bigness.

Do not delay. Sign up today. For the giveaway-zuh.

We’re giving away four sets of three Jackpot Pillows (with the super cool vintage slot machine icon art) over the next four weeks.

You can sign up here: WeAreHeavyDuty.com/JackpotPillows