We had a lovely time at Indian Springs in Calistoga, and now we’re back so why, you ask, are there still no ties on the Artfire storefront? Well, I’ll tell you, apparently when you sell certain fiber products, the Federal Trade Commission requires that you put a label on them listing a few particular things like fiber content, who made the item and where they made it. I discovered this right before we left for our trip so I didn’t have a chance to design a logo and order labels until this week. The label company is working on a quote and some art for me right now and I think it’s going to be a few weeks before I have the labels in my hands. I promise once I do and they’re sewn on the ties I’ll get them posted on Artfire. Here’s a photo of some of the ties that will be available soon.

All of the ties in this photo are Evie, but I have all of the colors pictured with both Evie and Mary Jane.

Not pictured is a brown and green peacock brocade, the lining has Mary Jane printed on it.

In the mean time, since I promised something new once we got back from our trip, I’m going to be posting three storytime portrait pairs on my Artfire store. The stories are two Aesop’s Fables, The Tortoise and the Hare and the Fox and the Crow, and the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat. I’m really happy with how they turned out and as soon as I edit the photos of them I’ll post them on the store.

If you are near Portland, Oregon you can go see some of my portraits in person at the brand new Paxton Gate store that opened recently on Mississippi. Stop in and take a look around, everything they have there is fabulous and I think their store makes a lovely addition to the quirky stores along Mississippi.

If you were thinking about buying a portrait directly from me in the next month or so I have to warn you that my stock of frames is a little low and while I did buy new moulding just before we left on our honeymoon my shop currently looks like this:

This afternoon Nick came home with a bundle of insulation and we started moving things away from the walls so that we could install it. In a few hours we got two thirds of one of the long walls finished and that process included pulling out wiring and nails that were in the wall so we had a clean slate to work with and then attaching 2×2 boards along the 2×4 studs so that the walls were the proper depth for the insulation.

Nick is optimistic that he’ll be able to finish the insulating and rewiring project in the next two weeks. After that my access to the chop saw and my workbench should be back to normal and I can make a whole new batch of frames hopefully without shivering myself to pieces.

Back at home I spent some time organizing the shop and sewing room. We created a cutting table by cleaning off and covering an old free standing work bench that the previous owner built. We also ran power over to the corner where my sewing table is set up. I am amused by the rustic third-world nature of my environs right now. Eventually we’ll be framing in and insulating walls down in the basement but for now I can tell stories in my head about sewing in the old country.

I carved a bit of space out in the shop so I could spray adhesive on the chipboard and then I moved my whole production into the living room where the warmer temperatures would help the glue cure and keep me from making zigzag lines due to shivering. Insulating and putting up wallboard in the shop is another of those things that’s on the to do list.

Why yes, I do have a 7′ scrabble board rug, and I used to have tiles for it too but I lost them somewhere along the way. Nick and I are eager to make new tiles and, lucky for us, letter templates for the router were among the tools left behind in our house!

Since I’m going to be cutting silk with a rotary cutter, and since my pattern is too thick to pin through, I’ll want some pattern weights to keep the patterns where I put them as I’m cutting. I happen to have half a bag of sandbox sand from another project and I also have a lot of random leather scraps so I decided to cut out some leather to make the weights from. Sewing them up will be a task for next week though because I’ll need to set up my industrial machine and that’s still out in the garage with some re-assembly required. All in all I feel pretty pleased with my progress.

Yesterday I went to the fabric store and picked up more silks for the ties. I found out just after my last post that the fern fabric is back ordered. As I said in that post, prints for ties are difficult to find so I decided to go with solid colors in addition to the black maze pattern. Solid colors give me the added option of printing graphics on the front of the tie so a few of them will be done that way. The four pieces on the bottom are the shell fabric and the red and ivory at the top of the photo are lining fabrics. The shell fabrics are all 100% silk and the lining is 50/50 cotton and silk. I’m excited to start sewing again!

Evie

and Mary Jane

Today I received some of the silk brocades that I will be using as the main bodies of the ties. It is surprisingly difficult to find good tie pattern fabrics and I was a little disappointed that the bottom two pieces in this picture were only remnants that didn’t turn out to be big enough to make a tie.  The black maze pattern is still quite nice, and Nick says it’s his favorite anyway.

There’s one more piece still on its way to me and that one I also have high hopes for, here’s a photo from the website I purchased it at.

In addition I’m going to look around locally for some solid colors, probably a black or silver and a nice deep red. As I finish the ties I’ll be posting them in my shop on ArtFire but if you know you’ll be wanting to purchase one don’t hesitate to let me know ahead of time and I’ll make sure you get it in time for the holiday. If you have a particular color in mind, even if it’s not one of the colors I mentioned, let me know and I’ll see what I can find in the fabric stores.

These ties will be made using the screens we burned for our wedding and once I finish this run of ties I will be washing out the screens. However, if you don’t manage to pick up one of the girls from this set, or if you had your heart set on one of the other two girls, don’t despair. I’m going to be doing some small revisions to the art in order to fine tune the screens and once I’ve finished them I will be burning new more permanent screens and bringing the full set to my store.

Not so obvious is the fact that Nick and I have bought a house! We’re in the process of moving in now and I’m going to be moving my studio out of Old Ballard and into the two car garage less than ten feet from our back door. I’m excited to have so much space so near our home and I’m already scheming about the table saw I want to buy. In the mean time I have set up a temporary office space in the house and I’m working on a new animal portrait for a special request.

Unfortunately the move put several more elaborate projects on hold, the greeting cards for instance will probably be pushed back into next year. Progress on them hasn’t completely stopped though, I am going to visit the studio of an artist who teaches letterpress classes the last week of this month. I’ve been wanting to learn letterpress for a while now and I think the greeting cards would look much better if the decorative borders I am envisioning were printed that way rather than on a laser printer.

Things might remain a bit quiet around here until the new year, I hope your holiday celebrations are festive!

In 2009 Nick and I flew down to the Bay Area to see Berkeley Rep’s production. We got a back stage tour which simultaneously convinced us that we really wanted to do this show and we probably wouldn’t get to because of the cost. So when our 2010 season was announced we were really excited to see Inishmore on the list. This show is big, beyond the limits of hyperbole big. This show is so big that research and development for the special effects in our production started last season.

As is often the case when we have a show of this size and complexity, the shops have been working on elements of this production in between the other shows all year. We’ve tested pneumatic gizmos that mimic the various effects of gunshots, done extensive research into robotic cats, and there has been exhaustive testing to determine which fake blood recipes are easiest to wash out of costumes. Oh yes, this show is not for the squeamish. All of which brings me to the specific subject of this post; building the body doubles for three of our actors which will be dismembered on stage during every single performance.

I came to this project partway through when it was determined that an extra pair of hands with some sculpting experience would be useful. At this point life molds of the actors had been made and foam rubber replicas of their heads and shoulders had arrived in our shops along with an assortment of other body parts. My task was to take the rigid headless foam bodies and transform them into believable stand-ins for actors who are rather more attached to their extremities than is useful for our purposes and much more difficult to reassemble.

My first task was to articulate the joints on the bodies and reinforce the foam so that it will stand up to use during the show. I was also given a map of the stage showing where each corpse will be during the scene, which body parts will be pre-cut and which ones are removed during the action. This entire project was surreal and I admit to taking a certain ghoulish glee in it. One of my chats with Marne, our props master, involved deciding which of the life cast body parts she’d purchased would be used on which corpse.

I also spent some time figuring out whether we wanted to use a flexed or pointed foot on the body that gets his foot cut off. I borrowed some shoes from the costume department to see which foot was easier to dress. In the end we decided that the pointed toes were more realistic.

Here’s a picture of me cutting the foot off of the ankle so I could reattach it in a way that would flop in a realistically dead manner. Both ankles on this fellow got that treatment but only one of them is also dismember-able. In the photo on the right you might notice that there’s a curved line sticking out of the severed ankle, this is the end of a blood delivery system before it was trimmed flush.

It turns out that ribbons of lycra gathered into ruffles make passable tendons when you saturate them with red tinted latex.

Two of our crew also donated body parts to the show. Thomas, one of the props artisans, gave us his knee and Max, our Master Sound Engineer, donated both of his hands.

Don’t worry, I gave them back when I finished with them. Although it was a near thing, and we did keep some of Thomas’s leg hair. Oops! There was a bit of a learning curve involved for all of us.

All in all this has been a fantastic project and I learned a lot during the weeks I was on loan to the props department. I can’t wait to see the bodies in action on opening night!

Next I’m working on a Fox and a Crow from the Aesop’s Fable of that name. Each pair will be framed with the text or an excerpt from the story they’re based on depending on the length of the tale. Here’s an example of what I think they’ll look like once they’re matted.

The framing and matting costs a bit more for something of this size so I’m not sure what the price for these portraits will be as yet. However, I also plan to frame them individually so if you fall in love with one but not the other don’t despair.

In related news, production of the note cards has stalled slightly due to a combination of things, though predominantly I admit I was a little caught up with planning my wedding. I will be back to working on those as soon as I send out the portraits for this show and I hope to have something fun to share by Christmas.

Sadly for me, I did not really work on this play in any substantial way. While the set for Lady was being built I was working on the set for Inishmore. I did watch Jeff use this somewhat medieval looking tool to make very precise paired bends in the square tubing that went together to create the back wall of the set though.

I also caught a photo of Giles standing in for Julie when the designer visited to check out the sight lines on a mock up of the all important writing desk. The set is similar in height to our table saw bench which explains the somewhat precarious positioning.

On the first day of load in just as we were starting to install the stage I was given the opportunity to go work in the props department building dead bodies for Inishmore. I have to admit it’s hard to pass up an opportunity like that. I did sneak back down to the theatre later in the week to take this photo. You can see the back wall is made up of ribbons covered in old photos meant to represent all of Ann’s readers. These photos include pictures of ACT Theatre staff members and their families. I don’t appear in any of them because the cut off date was early 1970’s but my mother was kind enough to send me some photos of her as a child and my grandparents as an adorable young couple. (Don’t worry Mom, I got the photos back safe!)

If you want to know anything else about this delightful play you’ll just have to head over to ACT Theatre and see it yourself. Previews start on September 10th. The Bullitt Cabaret is, as I said, a smaller more intimate space so seating in each of the shows is limited, if you’re interested in a particular date it’s probably best to purchase your tickets now. Some of the performances are already sold out, but don’t worry in order to give everyone a chance to see it there are shows all the way through the end of October.

The Allen theatre is being returned to a plain black stage at zero level so that Seattle Dance Project can come in and perform Project Orpheus. Then in November we’ll load in Christmas Carol. Before that happens we have shows to load into the Bullitt Cabaret and the Falls Theatre. Given all of that, perhaps these photos are a little late in arriving but I still want to show you the last little bits of our build.

As I said in my previous post about Yankee Tavern, the bar had a matching header that was wrapped in almost as many layers of moulding. Once we finished building it the painters applied the same multi-step woodgrain treatment.

The hotel sign had some working neon letters and some intentionally broken letters. Nick had the letters made for us by Dr. Neon at the Neon and Electric Signs Company on 15th. We drive by their warehouse every day on the way to work, so Nick was really excited to have a chance to meet them.

Nick also got to play around with a jukebox. He and his crew removed the guts of the machine and added lights that could be run from the booth during the show. They hooked the jukebox’s original speakers into the theatre sound system so that when there was a cue for music on stage it actually came out of the jukebox.

The props department is responsible for building and dressing the set in the rehearsal hall. Over the course of rehearsals the location of the various hand props is decided on. In order to be certain that everything makes it to the proper place they take photos which they used to dress the set on the Monday before tech.

We’ve been working on the last two shows for the season simultaneously because one of them is fairly small and the other one is really big. I haven’t really been working much on our next show Lady With All the Answers so unfortunately there aren’t many pictures to share. I do have lots of pictures from the build of Lieutenant of Inishmore though, so you can all look forward to that. Until then, here’s the gallery of all the photos from Yankee Tavern, including some that I didn’t post in the journal.

On August 21st 2010 I had the great joy of marrying my beloved, Nicholas Geoffrey Farwell, who I met three years ago when I started working at ACT Theatre. As you might imagine the wedding of two theatre people is quite a production, especially when all of our talented friends and family get involved.

A dear friend described me as being slightly insane and completely awesome when I told her all of the things I made or organized as details for our wedding. That is a description I can live with. We’ve been working on this event for over a year now and the past few months our house and studio have been hives of activity. The whole weekend was incredibly magical, Nick and I felt so loved and supported by all of our family and friends. I feel like it would be impossible to thank everyone enough.

Jennifer Mobley from Pinup Salon did my hair and makeup as well as the hair for all three of the girls in the wedding party My dress was made by Val Maes at the UW costume shop.

Nick’s amazing suit was made by Connie Rinchiuso from the costume shop at ACT Theatre with design help from her wonderful partner Carolyn Keim.

I put together our bouquets and boutonnières using flowers I purchased from the delightful etsy shop Mary Not Martha.

My mother Michelle Clary Gallagher is a ceramics artist and she made the dessert plates we gave away as favors. We stamped them with a glyph I designed to look like both an N and an A. At the end of the project my father and sister helped me and my mother glaze all of the plates in one completely delirious and entirely fabulous day.

Dorit Zingarelli implemented and improved on the vision I described for the hall, creating a truly magical setting for our celebration. My friends Lia Nouwen-Surprenant and Jeanna Gomez sewed and dyed the table runners and ribbons for the decorations and helped Dorit the day before and the day of our ceremony along with my friend and bridesmaid Lisa Geertsen and many other friends too numerous to list.

My friend Jennifer St. Cyr made the adorable flower girl dresses. She also makes really cool aprons but I don’t know if she sells them online or not.

Here is Nick’s best man JP modeling one of the ties I made for the wedding party, the musicians, and our lovely officiant. JP was a super rockstar, he drove up from the Bay Area a week early to help us run last minute errands and he stayed until the very last moment to clean up after the epic party we threw together.

My best man Blaque Mackintosh was invaluable the day of the wedding acting as my problem solver and question answerer while I sat in seclusion getting my hair and makeup done. He also made pizza sauce as part of the pizza feast we served up on Friday night to everyone who showed up early to help.

Also invaluable to me the day of the wedding was my good friend Julie Keenan. She put herself at the beck and call of me and my attendants the day of the wedding bringing us food and drink and in my case fuzzy bear slippers and double stick tape. I would have been lost without her.

Brendan Hogan, sound designer at ACT Theatre and among other things a member of Miss Mamie’s Band, did the arrangements for the songs he and our friends Johanna Bobrow and Eric Mumpower, played during the ceremony. Johanna and Eric are both members of Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band. All three of them are incredibly talented musicians and if you ever have a chance to hear any of them play I highly recommend you take it. I don’t have photos of Johanna and Eric in their wedding finery yet because not all of the photos have made their way to me. However Johanna took many of the photos that are illustrating this post, she’s a woman of many talents.

Here are two more incredibly talented men, Jacob Aginsky and Ejyo Remington. Jacob not only set up sound for the wedding and DJed during dinner, he also acted as our kitchen tzar organizing and cooking breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday for all of our guests and he kept us from going into a tailspin when Nick and I suddenly decided to almost double the number of people we were cooking dinner for on Friday night. Jacob is the owner of Theresa’s in Vancouver and his experience feeding really good food to large numbers of people in a short period of time was invaluable to us.

Ejyo and Brad Howe (who I also don’t have any good photos of) played wonderful gooey electronic music for us during the reception that I just couldn’t stop dancing to. Here’s a photo of Nick and Brad’s elbow. I think Nick must have been challenging Usama, the next of our friends in line to join the married people club, to a dance off. Even if that’s not what’s happening here, it should be.

There are so many photos of the weekend out there, but I need to wait a bit longer for them all to accumulate in one place so I can post them somewhere and tell the story of the weekend properly. There are people I need to thank that I haven’t managed to thank here because I don’t have the photos to adequately illustrate how awesome they are and also because this post has gotten a tiny bit out of hand already and tomorrow I have an exciting day of sculpting bodies for our final show of the season the Lieutenant of Inishmore. I can hardly wait to start telling you about that!

Now that we’re back from Orcas Island I hope to get back to a slightly more regular posting schedule.