JAM FINE ARTS

Above: Juicy Sunrise, 2020.

This piece is not about the coronavirus. This post is a half-hearted apology/ stammering explanation for having bad timing.

I got tired last fall of working on glass vases. I wanted to use the same technique I use for them, but on a larger scale with more luminosity. After submitting a Saturn-themed proposal for a mini golf hole in October, I hit on the idea of making the Saturn of the golf hole a disco ball and embellishing it. I got very excited and found someone selling their 20-inch, vintage, slightly damaged disco ball and bought it.

I had a mercury crackle glass vase on hand that I started making woven bead tiles for. This became Blue Sun. I loved the effects I was getting by layering glass and reflective bead woven tiles over mirror. It became Blue Star vase. That piece was a study for a luminous sun that I wanted to make.

Meanwhile, there was going to be a long wait on the golf proposal and I really wanted to embellish a disco ball. It was calling to me from it's enormous box. I had finished Solar Panels a month or two prior, and I wanted another piece that celebrated clean energy sources. It's taking a long time to develop efficient fusion power reactors, and I am impatient. I decided to fulfill a wish by bringing the power of the Sun to Earth. The piece would be optimistic, joyous, and celebratory. I decided to make it a sunrise.

Which is good because a high-noon yellow sun doesn't offer much for tonal variations so I opted for a color palette like a sun close to the horizon that is glowing like a red/pink piece of citrus fruit. I was designing this piece and sourcing & mixing bead colors in November and December. Sometime in December I started weaving the first tiles for Juicy Sunrise.

Concerning reports started coming in on Twitter and news sources about a new killer flu-like disease emerging in China.

Weave, weave, weave, weave, weave.

The days went on. The reports out of the orient got more concerning. Then it spread to other countries. Around the time I finished Juicy Sunrise the first renderings of the novel conronavirus were being circulated like a WANTED poster and it looked a lot like my sculpture. I am quick to defensively point out, though, that my sculpture does not have the characteristic coronavirus nobbies. So you must acquit.

Anyway, I'm using it as the featured image on my landing page. I'd say I will try to do better but this is a coincidence and tone deaf I stan for the utopian dream of nuclear fusion power.

 a Top: Liza Lou, Wall Terra, 2018
Bottom: Studio Olafur Eliasson's Moss Wall from 1994.

I hope you are doing all right coping with the pandemic. I am excellent aside from anxiety regarding the danger to the health of loved ones. I have a new appreciation for Clorox wipes.

I have plenty to do.

I am developing a new major project but it's complicated and I have to teach myself how to weave the look and shape I want for the different components. I anticipate a lot of minor study pieces coming about in the next few weeks.

The Liza Lou works pictured in this post and Olafur Eliasson's lush moss wall are inspirations. Lou's weavings are hyperbolic and she's weaving with different sized beads. I'd love to try out the algorithm that she and her team used to get this texture and form. But I don't have it & can't script kiddie Liza Lou bead blobs. I have to build my own little beasties.

The 12" or so hyperbolic beadweaving that I've been growing here and there over the past two years is pictured above. That sphere is nothing but woven beads and thread. It's called "The Rose" and it's an homage to Jay DeFeo's chunky monolith by the same name at the Whitney Museum. (Here is a link an heirloom shot of Liza Lou posing with with DeFeo's Rose.)

The Eliasson work is completely organic and must feel and smell magnificent, especially when it is still a little fresh and green like the wall pictured above. Love him. He's a wizard.

So while keeping an eye on the health and welfare of my family, I'm tinkering around. So far, I have hit on a good algorithm for making a flatter form that reminds me of lichen. But I want this, which might be a stochastic, random-size-bead, round peyote hyperbolic weave:

Oh, the irony. The subtitle of this show is "Art as a Means to Well Being" April 16 to May 22, 2020 at Northern Illinois University. The curator asked me to participate because, "I want your work to touch on the importance of the sun, the moon, the universe and our need to be in touch with that to be well." Okay. Cool. Cool.

*cough*

Unfortunately, C19 cases are spreading like wildfire and the campus might be closed by then. Standing by...

Edit 3/13/20

NIU requested an artist statement relating to the theme of the exhibit. I though about including the amount of digits of pi in each piece but decided that was too dorky:

March, 2020

Julie Mars
“Very Well, Thank You” Artist Statement

It is healthy for us humans to be mindful of our place in the universe and our home world. By doing so we can overcome the draining ruminations or mitigate the stressful minutiae of our daily lives. We can refresh and reboot our attitude and perspective by periodically expanding our focus and immersing ourselves into the  big picture. By seeking to understand and appreciate the sublime vastness of our universe and celebrate our place in it we can lead happier, healthier lives and perhaps be better able to cope with life’s challenges.

NimbusMoon, piSun, and piRipples are a series of flat round glass bead weavings. The technique involves orbiting outward in a spiral from a central point. In search of creating a rich, painterly field and wanting to use an appropriate algorithm for the design, I adopted the use of color coding  the beads with the digits of pi. The colors used to encode pi were changed for the different color zones of the works.

Flat Earth was also woven in an increasing spiral from a center point. This piece was conceived as a fantasy model of a flat Earth. This Earth would rotate like an LP on a turntable and have a dynamic atmosphere.

Exodus is a free form bead mosaic with woven star elements. Nothing is static or constant. Like us, even the stars in the sky are not immutable. Even they are in a state of dynamic flux.

I am researching sun colors for my disco ball sun. I am leaning toward a reddish pink ball like the artist Jules Breton was so good at painting. I'm thinking somewhere between pink grapefruit and blood orange. I haven't started testing color variations yet, but I have a pattern that evolved while working on Blue Sun. It has a good scale to get the texture I want and a little repeating spiral to make it dyanamic. Imagine the beaded tile to the left repeating all over a sphere. I have to look at more astronomical pictures of the sun to see how or whether I should flip the spirals going left and then right.

If you have ever been to the Art Institute of Chicago you have probably seen the picture above, "The Song of the Lark" from 1884. Although not a Regionalist piece, it resonated in sympathy with the midwestern aesthetic groundswell that brought "American Gothic" to fame.

Rising or setting, I like his suns. These photos don't do them justice. The top one below is called "The Weeders" or "The Gleaners". The title I am finding for the bottom one is "Tired Gleaner." I'm guessing Breton's real titles were in French.

I'm starting work on a mercury glass almost-globe vase. It's a study for a disco ball sun or-- if my proposal is accepted for Par Excellence--Saturn. Or both.

I want the reflective silvery surface to shine through the bead mosaic. I am learning some new bead tiling techniques inspired by of Gwen Fisher's blog. The modular tiles have nice voids that will hopefully give me a layered, dappled effect.

It's going to be a blue star because I don't think I need those colors for other projects. I can spare them. I will be using blue reflective beads and blue transparent, maybe some translucent 6/0 beads.

Back to Gwen Fisher...she is one of the hyperbolic and mathematical beaders. I love her work.

Call for entries and prospectus http://www.xculturearts.com/Curiosity-artist-briefing.html

The exhibition will be at The Old Courthouse Art Center in Woodstock, IL. I haven't shown anything there yet.

You can submit up to 5 pieces. I proposed Solar Panels, Cosmos, The Rose, Enchanted Spring, and piSun.

I haven't shown The Rose before. I am going to keep adding to it for years like a giant ball of twine. It's a curiosity so I thought, why not.

This project took me about 6 months from concept to installing it and taking pictures yesterday. Once the photos were in the can I was so relieved that I got everything done that I had a good cry.

This piece celebrates the power of the sun. In addition to playing with optics and light effects like all of my other pieces, this one harvests photons with solar collectors and photo-luminescent pigment. As my daughter informed me the piece has an Easter egg...when it gets dark this piece glows like a bioluminescent cove in a tropical paradise. The underpainting has a layer of a pigment called Blue Lit that glows from beneath the transparent and translucent beads.

The solar powered elements soak up sunlight all day and then when it gets dark enough they turn on their fairy lights.

I plan to exhibit "Solar Panels" for the Elmhurst Artist Guild's Winter Member's Show. The Guild has a 40" max width for the show so "Solar Panels" will be installed vertically. That will be fun to see!

Below is a video, shots of the piece in daylight, twilight, and dark modes, the prep studies, and a spin-off bowl that I made while making solar panels.

When I was a new student studying sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago I was very aware of a collaborative miniature golf project that lots of artists were working on. It wound up being wildly popular.

Recently, the same group of artists put out a call for entries that they are doing it again—this time in partnership with the Elmhurst Art Museum. After Elmhurst, it is expected to travel to other art centers in the midwest.

This is the time to resurrect an immersive/interactive project like this. Interactive exhibits are all the rage with traveling Kusama installation shows, Meow Wolf, and the new Flyboy exhibit, etc. Sure, they're Instagram traps, but they are also totally fun.

Anyway, I just submitted my proposal "Swinging Round the Rings of Saturn." The objective of the hole is to navigate your probe (golf ball) through the dynamic ice fields of the rings of Saturn to explore the planet. The bird's eye footprint view of the roughly 82"x132" putting enclosure minus cutout is shown above. It features a black Astroturf playing surface that will be embroidered with strong, flat iridescent ribbon into a representation of the rings of Saturn.

Yes. This is going to be a PITA. I'm guessing that I'll have to build the platform in pieces including the Astroturf so I can manage. I'm having visions of not being able to get a carpet needle through the turf and having to drill holes for the ribbon. Also, the individual stitches will have to be pretty short so it doesn't get stuck in pointy shoes.

The planet Saturn will be a 3D, cut out hemisphere that conforms to the footprint—unless there is room for me to do a full hemisphere, which is what I want to do. I will try to use recycled/salvaged materials wherever possible on Saturn and throughout the installation.

{(Edit 1/9/2019) Thinking of making Saturn out of a second-hand disco ball. I think most have foam cores which is perfect if I have to crop the sphere to stay within the footprint of the mini golf hole. I am pretty sure I will do a layer of open-weave mosaic embellishment over the mirror. I am very excited about doing this and I'm about to make a piece over a mercury glass globe vase as a study. New brag! Disco balls are my primer. I'm going to see a guy about a second-hand 20" disco ball tomorrow.}
 
On the putting surface, there will be free rolling lightweight balls ranging in size from 5" to 8" embellished to look like they are made of ring ice. These rolling balls are meant to get whacked around by the golf balls and make the putting surface more dynamic, frustrating, and competitive.

In addition to the rolling elements there will be 3-5 larger stationary obstacle chunks of "ice."

The ice elements will be made out of recycled plexiglass, reflectors, and clear bag plastic for filling. Many of these elements will be embellished with acrylic beads and reflective tape.

I made a prototype of one of the rolling ice balls for the proposal. Here's a picture of it on the raw sketch:

I'm happy with the way it looks, but I used glass beads on the prototype and they are too heavy. I'm switching to plastic from here on out. Here's a shot trying it out against a live putt for scale:

We were asked to suggest ways to continue the theme of our holes up onto a wall if our hole is sited against a museum wall. I thought it would be fun to do an assemblage of a planetary probe made out of a salvaged satellite TV dish and, if I can find some, salvaged solar panels. If I can't find a nice set of 3 panels, I'll simulate 3 solar panels to make something that looks like this on a field of stars:

Space probe!!! I so want to make this.

I chatted with Mike Vanko back in December about his Body of Work "Decaying History." Vanko is an urban explorer/photographer. I had the privilege of helping him put together the first solo exhibition of his photos and videos for an unscheduled popup show at the Addison Center for the Arts from December 15, 2018 to January 12, 2019. Click here to listen to the podcast on SoundCloud.