Input? Here's input!
Dale Wambaugh
leaving my wife and I with some windfall time together. It was due too. It
is so nice to have an outing without kids bickering or interrupting
conversations, or needed to edit what we say.
I had gone out in the morning to a hardware store with my son in tow. He
loves the place as much as I do. This place is an AD all in itself. Located
in the University District of Seattle (as in University of Washington), the
store is called "Hardwick's Swap Shop." I imagine it was originally a second
hand store. It is a one story rambling building on a busy one-way street,
and easy to miss as you drive by. The place has every hand tool known to
humankind. As you walk in, you are assaulted by tools hanging from the
ceiling, piled onto shelves, little signs tacked up everywhere. The aisles
are small and crowded with boxes and old plastic paint buckets full of
tools.
There are glass cases full of fine hand tools. Old wood-framed cases with
locks and sliding glass doors or hinged ones. They are full of machine
tools, measuring tools, wrenches, drill bits, wood planes, chisels, gouges,
sharpening tools, screwdriver bits, and more. My favorite cases have German
screwdrivers (Wera) and a collection of tools for fine manipulation. That
last case is full of jeweler's loupes (magnifying eyepieces), about 30 kinds
of tweezers, tiny vices or "third hands" for holding items to be glued or
soldered, dozens of pliers, hemostats, dental picks, specialized mounting
and push pins, and every kind of Exacto and miniature cutting tool in the
universe.
And that barely scratches the surface. There are about 50 kinds of hand
saws, tool boxes, a whole aisle of gardening and digging tools, a whole row
of hammers, clamps, screwdrivers, pliers, vice-grips, tool boxes, tool bags,
parts bins, vices, pulleys, pocket knives, six foot long drill bits, taps,
dies, flashlights, tool belts, gloves safety glasses, hard hats, power
tools, on and on and on.
And THEN there are rows of hardware--- great reproduction stuff for all the
old houses in the area. Hinges, hooks, drawer parts, plumbing, electrical,
wire, rope, chain, tubing, shelving brackets, ad infinitum.
There are rows of housewares--- new and used appliances, electronics,
dishes, pot pans, oil lamps, silverware, mops, brooms, buckets, sponges, and
then a whole room full of used furniture.
I've been all over the world and never seen anything to compare to it. I
used to work for a group of Polish immigrants, and they thought they had
gone to heaven walking in the door. You could move that inventory to Moscow
and sell it all in a morning.
So, I bought two dental picks ($0.79 each) and a plant hook (2@$1.99) and
got out of there. That took me 45 minutes! My son cornered a fellow at the
key machine and asked him questions non-stop the whole time I was there, and
the guy answered every question. He was showing him how to make keys as I
was ready to leave.
We went to an art supply a few blocks away. I discovered the place just a
few weeks ago, and it's great. It is warehouse style, and being a few blocks
from the University of Washington, with 32,000 students, it caters to
discount materials that students need. They have a lot of day-care/child
oriented materials too. My kinda place. It is also fed by the Bohemian
neighborhoods all around the University. All they need is a coffee shop and
bookstore nearby-- no one would go home. The poet Theodore Roethke used to
hold court at the Blue Moon Tavern across the street when he taught at the
UW. I looked at papers and glues, and I bought a new Exacto knife, a squeeze
bottle (for glue) and tissue paper for my paper mache and collage work.
I took my son home for Auntie to pick him and his sister up for their
outing, and my wife and I took off for lunch. There is a great Chinese place
down the street with good lunch specials. She had Kung Pao scallops and I
had the almond-cranberry chicken. We both had hot and sour soup, fried rice,
BBQ pork, and tea. $5.95 a head.
We headed to a paper store south of downtown. It is business oriented, and
has a lot of copy papers, cover stock, packaging materials, and so on, but a
good third of the store has art-related materials. There is a wall of rubber
stamps, fine papers, lots of craft-oriented materials. I did find a real buy
on glossy inkjet papers. I have an inkjet printer that can print at 1440
dpi, but it needs glossy stock to do it. If you go to an office supply, the
stuff is over $1 a 8.5"x11" sheet. This store had 100 sheets for $17, or
singles for $0.20 each. Quite a find, and I have a ton of uses. It really
opens several projects I've had in mind, but backed off from the cost. I
love making digital photos, and the inkjet printer is the other link in the
chain. I want to make a series of montages, and this opens the financial
door.
The other place on my list for the day was a huge art supply farther south,
Daniel Smith (see http://www.danielsmith.com ). The place caters to the
professional (and well heeled) artist, and has most of the 2-d mediums in
stock. I spent over an hour looking at the books (book-making looks like
fun!), magazines, and all the shelves full of materials. You have to realize
that my orientation to making art has been in photography, and I'm no
stranger to art supply stores, but this visit in my recent "AW" frame of
mind was like a kid in a candy store. The people who make art supplies
really know how to make you drool too. All the paints, canvas, sets of
pastels, markers, pencils, papers, sketch books, airbrushes, inks, manikins,
pens, papers, palettes, easels, even high-budget "artist" clothing-- sun
hats and vests with a zillion pockets, logo sweatshirts. All they missed was
sunglasses-- maybe they were just out. We both went over the place several
time. I found lots of future stock, and bought a can a new kind of gold
spray paint to try on my paper mache bowl. We were both bug-eyed coming out
of there.
My wife suggested a large craft supply nearby. We drove there and the store
had been moved or closed. I turned to point home and came to a thrift store
I had forgotten about. I got several books, some household items, on old
speedometer for an assemblage, and my wife got a silk blouse. $7 for the
lot--- it was 50% that day.
On the way home, we went through another very large thrift store-- one of my
favorites. My wife wanted some champagne glasses for Easter dinner, and we
found an odd assortment of cut crystal glasses for $0.25 each, along with
two nice brandy snifters. I got a couple more books, a nice small "fanny"
pack, a new nylon wallet, and on the way out, I found a $180 Jansport
external frame pack for $10.
We stopped at a video store on the way home. We were looking for "Chariots
of Fire," (my daughter is on the track team), but it was out, so I got
"Runaway Bride," and "Eyes Wide Shut." Funny/sweet Hollywood love story, and
Kinky Kubrick, in that order.
We had chicken breasts with a lemon marinade, salad, peas, and biscuits for
dinner. We all watched "Runaway Bride" after dinner, and I watched "Eyes
Wide Shut" after everyone else had gone to bed. My wife like escape movies
and I like in-your-face stuff. I got what I asked for there. I stayed up
until 3am, channel surfing on cable. I finally drug myself to bed and got a
few hours sleep before they all got up to go to church.
I good artist's day in general. I really shouldn't stay up that late--- it
kinks the rest of the weekend and makes me grumpy the next day.. I get the
urge to pack in as much as I can, and it actually takes away. Sometimes I
feel like I just crave input, and I jump all over the place looking for "The
Answer." I've done that with a ton of self help books too-- always looking
for the one that would tip things my way. Artist's Way and this group have
certainly done that, thank God.
Today-- I felt like writing, so you all got to go along on the ride. I still
need to do my MP's (it's 11:20). The family is back from church (brunch with
blueberry pancakes I'm told is on the way), and I have laundry in progress.
The kids have some homework to catch up, and my wife is gardening for the
afternoon. I'm going to get the mani rock work cleaned up (dried glue---
grrrrr) and get a layer or two of tissue paper on my paper mache bowl. I
need to clean up my work bench and get to work with the chicken wire and
make an armature for a paper mache work. I'm at a loss where to start with
it-- maybe a small animal or a fantasy musical instrument. I'm going to look
through a book of assemblage history and get inspired.
Have a good weekend, all!
Dale Wambaugh
Seattle, WA, USA
mailto:wamb...@earthlink.net
http://www.nerdtek.com
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tigerella
humm, I'm a bit on the overloaded side of that, but glad you took the time
to post!
what did you think of eyes wide shut?
and how did you find the time to post, come on, this page must've taken more
than half an hour. Didn't you have dishes to wash, kids to put in bed???
just joshing.
write again, I'm a part time TAWer by the way. Totally committed, well, half
the time.
best wishes
jenny
Dale Wambaugh <wamb...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:xVnK4.33966$y4.12...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Craig Luce
This is the kind of banter one would expect here, glad to see it, Jenny.
You, Dale, and Frank may save the NG yet.....
I had the similar experience last weekend of walking into a place called
Woodcraft. GAWD!!
Sure, I had been in there before, BUT this was an AD planned long ago....
As a painter, I have little use of going in there, but as a lover of
wood, it is a siren song--- the rocks being that I want to spend a lot
of money there that I do not have...... handcarving tools, power tools,
fine woods, classes....
Just something that brings back the remembered joy of flakes turning
from a blade, the floor littered with 'gold.' Is that a pecularly-MALE
joy? I don't think so, just that more men do it.
So, OK, I did succumb to two carving knives, one a skew and one a very
shallow gouge--- Swiss steel and razor sharp, mounted in long handles
like chisels. One would not suspect their facility in handcarving,
which I generally thought-of as a more intimate enterprise. I had a
piece of basswood that had held up my aircponditioner in the Virginia
heat last summer, turns out it is one of the preferential woods for
carving, soft and straight--- the US equivalent of Linden wood in Europe.
And the knives take two swipes on a strop to keep razor sharp-- what a
different idea from the pocket knives of my youth!!
OK, OK, what to do? My children are here for the week, so I encouraged
my 10yo son to make his car (favorite = Jag XS220) and my 8yo daughter
to draw out a design for sawing, while I scribbled out a present for my
mom --- who else hangs woodcarvings but churches, right? and she had
started a new Episcopal church in her small hometown. Although I am not
devout (nor a literal Christian), it is a simplified cross that has
turned out to be wonderful exercise and introduction to relief carving.
It truly shocked me--- the feel of the wood, the deftness of the blade
(great tools can make any bumbler feel effective!) and the design turned
out pretty well, too (for a first timer). A bit ambitious for a first
piece of wood, it is 16 x 28" x 1" deep, the majority of the areas
reaching the full depth, including lilies in the corners--- I'll leave
it natural colored, rough cut (just like someone recently carved it, no
machines!). Sure, A mother likes almost anything done by sons, but she
will put this in her church with pride.
I am very surprised at my reaction to this, in that I may wind up doing
MUCH more of this......
Have I superceded painting with woodcarving? NAW, but have indeed
rediscovered a childhood fascination.......... and all from a
long-expected (but avoided) ArtistsDate. Thanks, Julia!
C>
PS, I then yesterday went to the art supply, spent $65 on casting
materials for same!
I will make cast paper repros of this and my upcoming projects, IDEAS ABOUND.
Whence comes this energy? TAW!
tigerella wrote:
>
> Hi dale
>
> humm, I'm a bit on the overloaded side of that, but glad you took the time
> to post!
> what did you think of eyes wide shut?
> and how did you find the time to post, come on, this page must've taken more
> than half an hour. Didn't you have dishes to wash, kids to put in bed???
>
> just joshing.o
Dale Wambaugh
list and I have nearly 5000 messages since February. I've put a lot of
effort into writing posts for the duration of the 12 week session together--
we are all working our way yhtorugh the book at the same time. It has been
wonderful to have the shared support while working on the tasks. I'm coming
to the end of week 11 now.
The process has been a good one for me, changing habits, building new
skills, opening new things to try. I started a drawing class two weeks ago,
taking me places I never imagined.
Anyway, I write my MP's and another 1500-200 words a day. I'll slack off on
the email at the end of the AW cycle, but I hope to work on some non-fction
projects afterwards. I'd like to start with some local travel and history,
and work my way from there.
--
wamb...@earthlink.net
See http://www.nerdtek.com for computer service, graphics, Web design, and
on-line shopping.
SPAMMERS should write to: junk...@atg.wa.gov
Please also be aware that this account is protected by Washington State's
UCE law which provides for penalties of no less than US$500 for spam.
"tigerella" <tige...@ukgateway.net> wrote in message
news:8dqe3r$p4v$1...@lure.pipex.net...
WingMoose
Are you saying that there's another ng with Artist Way postings? I wasn't
sure what you meant by your post.
I do check this ng most days...not much here. But I do my Morning Pages
most mornings. Been a bit "blocked" lately...but I keep trying. A little
camaraderie and inspiration from others who have been through the same thing
might be helpful. How about some good ideas for Artist Dates? I've enjoyed
the things that some of you have posted.
I'll keep checking.
Marie
tigerella
tell me more aobut this list and how you found it? It sounds really great
and I'd like to know more.
Also, if you are on week 11 that means there is only one week to go. What's
going to happen to you all at the end of next week? Do your friends on the
list know of this group? Could they help turn it into what it's supposed to
be????
now that would be something.
thanks for posting,
jenny
Dale Wambaugh <wamb...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:MO6O4.2496$g4.5...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Craig Luce
A List-serv like that sounds like the perfect way to go, but how would
one have set this up, knowing that the members would have to have been
organized--- who did that? If it is as effective as I imagine, mebbe JC
should put the address in her book jacket? A collective experience like
that would be the best way to do it afterall....
I'd even do it again if that were the case...tho 5000 posts in 4 months
sounds excessive, unless you are doing AW as a writer!! HA
C>
Dale Wambaugh
http://egroups.com/group/pbart. Most of the people there are rather busy
with the mail list-- nearly 6000 messages since 2/2000. And most are
computer challenged, so newsgroups could be strange to them. The mail list
is spam free as well.
--
wamb...@earthlink.net
See http://www.nerdtek.com for computer service, graphics, Web design, and
on-line shopping.
SPAMMERS should write to: junk...@atg.wa.gov
Please also be aware that this account is protected by Washington State's
UCE law which provides for penalties of no less than US$500 for spam.
"tigerella" <tige...@ukgateway.net> wrote in message
news:8ec977$nja$1...@lure.pipex.net...
Dale Wambaugh
way through the book, and the group has made it wonderful. There are some
sad stories, and some incredible illustrations of the traps, monsters,
blurts, and crazymakers we all have lived with over the years. Except for
one person, there has been zero flaming, negative commentary, etc. We start
week 12 tomorrow, and a new cycle will start up in a few weeks. I'm starting
a private group with some of the folk there at the end of this cycle.
--
wamb...@earthlink.net
See http://www.nerdtek.com for computer service, graphics, Web design, and
on-line shopping.
SPAMMERS should write to: junk...@atg.wa.gov
Please also be aware that this account is protected by Washington State's
UCE law which provides for penalties of no less than US$500 for spam.
"Craig Luce" <art...@home.com> wrote in message
news:3909C262...@home.com...
> Dear Jenny and Dale, et al:
>
> A List-serv like that sounds like the perfect way to go, but how would
> one have set this up, knowing that the members would have to have been
> organized--- who did that? If it is as effective as I imagine, mebbe JC
> should put the address in her book jacket? A collective experience like
> that would be the best way to do it afterall....
>
> I'd even do it again if that were the case...tho 5000 posts in 4 months
> sounds excessive, unless you are doing AW as a writer!! HA
>
> C>
>
>
> tigerella wrote:
> >