A Space-Time Portal for Stones

The portal

There are those among us with a love of stones, rocks and pebbles. We pick them up, put them in our pocket and take them home. There is no objective rhyme or reason for our selections, this obsession is highly subjective. We simply love stones and need to collect the ones that capture our fancy.

Part of my personal stone collection

For my initial theories on collecting rocks and the virtue of helping the stones move around the planet, see an earlier post, For the Love of Stones.

Now I have stumbled upon an even more effective and artful method for transporting rocks and giving them an extaordiary, once-in-a-millenium experience: a space-time portal for stones. The portal is a hollow  papiér-mâche bird, crafted from the pages of one of my old travel notebooks and scraps of gold joss paper.

The portal when closed

A small door on the chest of the bird features a small gold-bead handle. To operate the portal, open the door, place a stone inside, and let it rest inside the portal until it is ready for transit. The next time you go for a walk (preferably a meandering, pointless walk), remove the stone from the portal, take it with you, and leave it somewhere along your way. Select another rock from the landscape, employing the critical aesthetic judgement that makes sense only to you, and return home. Place the new rock in the portal to await its transit adventure.

The portal in operation

This may seem like a trivial, meaningless activity, but consider the implications. For the stone, which may remain in the same place with very little happening for centuries, this is a universe-changing, mind-blowing experience. Its reality has utterly changed. At the same time, though your part in this process may seem minor and irrelevant, you are in fact in the process of incrementally terraforming the planet.

While there are no plans at this end to start manufacturing space-time portals you are, as always, encouraged to create one of your own. Your stones will thank you for it.

The Chatterbox: Brain Mapping

 

Materials: paper towels, linen, embroidery

How to capture the ongoing, incessant, inner workings of the brain? I think the trick is to catch it unawares. Happily, it turns out a habit I've indulged in for decades offered valuable clues.

A lifetime of random doodles

For decades I've been in the habit of always having a glass of diet ginger ale at hand, and to avoid condensation from the glass hitting my work table and oozing onto whatever I am working on, I always place a folded paper towel beneath the glass. This means I always have a handy scrap of paper to use for random doodles, phone or zoom recommendations from others, fleeting thoughts, and inspiration on the fly.

A pile of random thought processes

A few months ago it suddenly occurred to me that these meandering notes and doodles offered an uncensored peek at the subterranean level of my own thoughts, and I started saving them. Ultimately they became this piece - "The Chatterbox."

The Chatterbox framed - 24"x24"

Here are a few close-ups:

Playing with Rust Printing

Rust-printed cloth and sashimi stitching

The hardest part of rust printing is building a stash of rust pieces. The rest of the process is pure experimentation and joy. In fact, collecting rust can be a joyous process in itself. My personal stash of rust has been assembled over the past forty years during walks through industrial districts and combing for junk while strolling along railroad tracks.  

The Process

Rust pieces

There are a number of slight variations on the rust-printing process you can find through googling. After experimenting, I found the simplest to be best:

• Prepare a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and water in a spray bottle.

• Lay down a protective layer of plastic (I used cut-up recycled plastic bags), and reserve an equal amount of plastic to use as a top layer to keep the whole thing moist while the rusting magic goes on. Arrange a layer of cloth or paper. Spray all of this generously with your vinegar mix.

Rust between cloth soaked in vinegar and water

• Arrange your rust pieces on the cloth or paper. This gives you an illusion of control, but don't kid yourself – the best part of rust printing is that the results are always a surprise. Spray everything again with your vinegar mix.

Rust doing its magic

• Put down a top protective layer of plastic, and weight the whole thing down with stacks of books (you are going for maximum contact between the irregularly shaped rust and the material being dyed). It has occurred to me that the ideal way to weight things down would be malleable bags of sand, but I haven't tried that yet.

• At the end of the process, simply wash your dyed cloth thoroughly in a basin of soap and water.

Rust-Dyeing Cloth

Here you can see the results of rust-dyeing the index-card-size strips of cloth shown above. Note that those process photos are showing a technique using a piece of cloth both below and on top of the rust pieces. It is a handy way to double your output, but for all other projects below I stuck with one layer and the protective sheet of plastic, which always goes on top no matter how many layers you have.

This project involves creating another of the pieces I have started calling "spirit cloths," for lack of a better explanation. Making them has become a compulsion.

Freshly dyed cloth panels

Panels sashiko-stitched together to become spirit cloth

Paper

Since I was already using index cards as templates for cutting out pieces for the spirit cloth, I figured I may as well experiment with directly printing on the cards themselves. The results were so evocative that I turned to my archives of vintage books containing copyright free images to create a few vaguely cosmic collages.

"Space cowboy"

"Playing with the matter of the universe"
(or: How were you picturing a higher power?)

"Galactic communication"

Rust-Dyed Clothing

And finally (for now) we have rust-dyeing on up-cycled thrift store clothing. This is a standard man's business shirt, with the collar removed (carefully pick out original stitching, remove collar, restitch closed). The trick here was to do it in sections and to use weights to hold the shirt in place so the whole mess didn't go sliding off the table. I restricted the dyeing to the bottom edge of the shirt. That dye creeping up the front placket was an unexpected, but not unwelcome accident.

Shirt front

Shirt front detail

Shirt back

Shirt back detail

Hopefully this will inspire you to do some experimenting of your own, and to wander down gritty alleyways and old barns looking for rust. Your house will stink of vinegar, but who gives a damn?

The Roots Project: The Beginning

 

Indian grass (left) and Reed Manna

The Roots Project began during the Covid-19 pandemic, has continued for the past six or seven months, and is ongoing, with new experiments growing as I type. The project began when I lifted some wheat grass up out of the hydroponic system I was growing it in and noticed how wonderfully fascinating the roots were. I "harvested" the wheat grass a little later, lifting the roots entirely out of the water, and hung the whole thing to dry. Then I found a little spaceman in one of my bins of rubble, and the result was the first piece in the Roots Project.

Roots bottle series #1

Roots bottle series #1

Roots bottle series #1

I decided to take a deep dive into working with roots and seeing what was possible. The first step was to order three different types of native grass seeds: Indian Grass, Reed Manna, and Winter Wheat. The hydroponic system I have been using for years, fashioned from recycled plastic soda bottles, was already ideally suited for root growth and harvesting.

Hydroponics using recycled soda bottles

Grass varieties used

Within a month I had a little prairie growing in my front windows overlooking Lake Merritt in Oakland.

The prairie

This long, slow art project was ideally suited for floating through pandemic isolation with a measure of calm. I had only to wander up to the living room and watch the grass grow and see how the roots were developing to feel I was accomplishing something.

Below is the first of the harvest and the second in the Roots bottle series.

Roots bottle series #2

Close-up

Another close-up

This piece is made from Indian Grass, which has a lovely red tinge to its roots. Tucked inside the roots is a small, corked vial with a message inside. And yes, I wrote the message, but because of pandemic-brain have absolutely no memory or idea at this point of what that message says. Which works perfectly with roots and buried memories, and loss and the passage of time, and the messages that never get delivered — from words of love to sage advice.

Another early experiment was the hanging shown in the first photo in this post and again, below. The hanging itself was too latter-day-hippie and ho-hum for my sensibilities, but it was my first foray into teasing the roots apart and learning how strong they are, and how different the roots from different grasses look. 

Pink-hued Indian Grass (left) and the stronger, white Reed Manna

A series of posts will follow over the next week or two, illustrating how I began to become a little more bold in working with and manipulating the roots, moving on from the bottle series to jewelry fashioned from roots, to a collaborative jewelry project that involves actively working with the roots as they are growing. Stay tuned. 

Mended Vegetables: Fava Beans

Mending may start as a practical necessity, but throughout history and around the world we see it evolve into a tradition, an art form, a way of life, a mode of meditation. While shelling a pound of early spring fava beans a few days ago, the urge became irresistible. So here you have some mended favas, which I may (or may not) lead to a forthcoming series of mended fruits and vegetables depending on how the mood strikes me. Enjoy.

Playing with Corn Husk Creations

Corn husk flower

In the past I've made corn husk dolls, a relatively easy craft. Look for a how-to sometime near the New Year because for me, making, drying and then burning corn husk dolls is an end-of-the-year ritual.

This time around I decided to noodle around with corn husks and see what else could be done. If you've never worked with corn husks before, head for your nearest Mexican grocery store, buy a bundle of dried corn husks, and separate a bunch of them to soak in cold water in a large pot for a couple of hours. This makes them soft, pliable, and easy to work with. Once you've finished your creation let it dry and the husks once again become rigid and fixed in whatever shape you've created.

Corn husks: a very cheap craft supply

You can also dye the husks using a natural dye of your choice, from onion skins and beets to red cabbage, turmeric, or blueberries. This time around I experimented with pure cranberry juice, letting the husks soak overnight, and got the lovely rose shade you see here. Rinse the dyed husk thoroughly before using to get rid of the juice; the dyed color remains.

Corn husk necklace

My initial goal was to experiment with corn husk jewelry and I came up with this creation, comprised of cranberry-dyed corn husk disks and a couple of woven corn husk spheres, strung onto thin string. When wet, corn husks are easy to sew, which opens up lots of other future possibilities.

Corn husk necklace close-up

Because I couldn't stop there, I experimented with making a couple of miniature boxes, using a smaller version the recycled cereal box pattern I've posted previously, and an alternate pattern I found on the Web.

Corn husk boxes: natural and cranberry-dyed

Corn husk boxes

Finally, with a few remaining husks, I made a couple of corn husk flowers. These were assembled and then stitched together to secure the petals.

Corn husk flower

Corn husk flower

Expect more corn husk experiments in future months. I will be experimenting with more natural dyes, with stitching, and with corn husk flower brooches.