Tag: salmon

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More Buttons and Pendants

Buttons
Buttons

These buttons are made out of clay from the Anchorage mud flats (Cook Inlet glacial clay), the same clay that is used in my tiles, and the images are from the stamps that I have created to decorate the back of the tiles. They are approximately one-inch in size and destined for a coat that I will make soon. Last year, I had bought wool and silk, and processed my own fish skins for the purpose of making a coat for the 2015 Anchorage Object Runway event, an art/fashion show, but it was cancelled. The coat will be patterned after a paper coat that I made a few years back that had won people’s choice award in the same Anchorage Object Runway event.

I’ve been busy since Christmas making tiles, inventory was down to three tiles. So everything I made last year sold! I hired a temporary part-time artist to help with waxing, while I did everything else.

I participated in the Colorado Indian Art Market, Jan 22-24, and did well. My favorite customers were the interesting couple that bought two twelve-inch tiles plus a few other tiles of various sizes.

My next two events will be the Anchorage Fur Rondy sale at the Dimond mall, March 2-6, and the Heard Museum Indian Arts & Crafts Show in Phoenix, Arizona March 5, 6. There is an overlap, so someone will cover for me at the Fur Rondy.

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New Fisherman Plate

Fisherman Plate
Cutting the Fisherman Plate
The old plate is in the upper left above and overlapped by the new plate that is being cut out of 300-lb cotton rag etching paper. The cut pieces that will be glued to a matte board are visible in the upper and lower right, under wax-paper, to keep an unexpected sneeze from scattering them about. My preferred glue is actually gesso and over the gesso will be brushed acrylic medium. This design is popular and probably has the most cut pieces, maybe two hundred or so. The triangular shape of the netted salmon gives the composition a stable and pleasing aspect. I will post a finished, glazed tile next.

I will be selling tiles at the Colorado Indian Market, January 23-25 in Denver.

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Rarely Made Tiles

Other Tiles
Other Six-Inch Tiles
These six tiles are rarely made. They are all six-inch square. They are a flying owl, blue heron, seals, single seal, cicada, and an early version of the double salmon. I’m kind of likeing the old double salmon now that I’m glazing it differently. Before, it was colored with mason stains and then sprayed with a clear glaze. It looked good until the paper scales wore away and didn’t leave an edge to catch ink while plate wiping. Sorry for talking technical printmaking lingo. These designs are early and the plates are worn and a bit harder to work with compared to the more current, newer plates, but it is still nice to make these and have a wider variety of designs for customers to look at.

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Cut Out For Collagraph Plate

Cut Out Process
Cut Out Process

The last few posts had blurry pictures. I cleaned the lens on the iphone and this picture looks better. Anyway, This is a partial cut out of the 140 lb. cotton rag paper that will be used to make a plate. A collagraph plate is a printmaking term for a process where you just glue stuff to a stiff surface and then use it as a plate. I use a light table to transfer the initial drawing onto the 140 lb paper and then to cut the images out. Notice the “Arches Huile France” water mark on the lower left side of the paper. The plate is thirteen-inches square so that the final fired size of the tile will be twelve-inches after shrinkage. The fish with the zigzags are chum salmon, the fish below are white fish. The smaller caribou make up the upper edge of a birch bark basket.

I can’t complain about 2012! I love to travel and got to go a lot of places. Went to Chicago, Fairbanks, and Seattle for tile related shows. Then Seattle again for a ceramics conference. I Went once again to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland Oregon for an end-of-season vacation. And the big one was when me and my sweetheart went to Spain and Portugal.

Tile sales slacked a bit compared to 2011, but I had two winter commissions that more than made up for sagging sales. As a side note to running an art business, I attended a workshop on how to do better on the business side of art, like pricing work, and projecting a friendlier, attentive demeanor when selling at arts & crafts fairs. It was put together for Alaskan Native artists by the First Peoples Fund; they help out indiginous artists internationally when it comes to the business aspect of living the life of an artist.

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Salmon

Double Salmon
Salmon

Six-inch Double Salmon, $85
Collagraph print on Cook Inlet clay, cone 6 oxidation
Multiglazed with background of Tenmoko gold over a strontium carbonate base glaze.

Salmon fishing is a huge industry in Alaska as are other types of fishing. On researching the salmon, I found out that it is descended from European river trout. Cool. It looks like any other fish, silvery, at sea, but once it hits fresh water to spawn, it turns red, green, and it’s teeth get all snagly. My blood pressure was trending upward with age and my doctor recommended eating salmon once a week, and sure enough, by blood pressure went down. Now each summer we stock up on fresh salmon in the freezer to last through the winter. It’s cheaper to buy whole fish during the height of the season and have it cut up, filleted, and vacuum sealed in meal sized portions.

I read “Four Fish” by Paul Greenberg and worry about the fisheries. Today, I’m not against farm fishing because there are not enough wild fish to feed the world’s population. I’ve even taken a liking to tilapia, a fresh water vegetarian fish that’s been farmed since ancient Egyptian times. And it doesn’t require other fish to be used as feed as some of the other farmed fish do.