Moo-oooo!

Longhorn

11 1/2″ x 16″

Longhorn cattle are popular in these parts.  One of them is the mascot of the enormous university in my town, but besides that, they have a long history in Texas.

One of my neighbors, H.W. Brands, is a history scholar and prolific author, and here’s what he had to say about the longhorns in his 2010 book, American Colossus- the Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900:

For much of the century before the Civil War, feral cattle from northern Mexico roamed the broad valley of the Rio Grande…. [the cattle] treated the Anglos with the same disdain they had shown the Latinos….Keen of scent, wary of danger, rugged of constitution, the longhorns continued to thrive on the Rio Grande, and they spread up the coastal bend as the Americans and the Indians decimated the buffalo herds that had once dominated the Texas grasslands.

The romance of the longhorn, the cowboy, and the open prairie is so strong that they are recognizable icons world-wide.  Longhorns are everywhere, and when someone commissioned me to make a longhorn mosaic in a tray bottom, I was not surprised.

For those who are curious, I show my steps in making the tray:

After deciding to make the design in stained glass, I sketched several compositions in a small notebook. In the final composition, the face of the longhorn is off-center, which means that one horn disappears off the edge of the tray.  I think it gives the composition motion, as if the animal has pushed its way onto the scene. 

I drew the longhorn design the full size of the tray, then I drew in the cutting lines for each piece of glass.  These lines would become grout lines on the completed tray.  My considerations were to keep a flow going throughout the composition, but without creating rivers of lines which would run completely through the picture and become distractingly prominent.  I also thought about my intersections of glass corners and where those might lead the eye.  And I made the lines in the sky straight, but made the lines in the animal organic and curvy.

I traced the drawing twice, once for a pattern onto which I would fit the cut pieces, and the second time to make a pattern to be cut apart and glued individually onto glass pieces .

Below is what a piece of stained glass looks like with patterns glued on using rubber cement.

And, here I’m checking the glass pieces to see what they look like inside the tray:(This is really just a picture of my impatience, as I check to see what the tray looks like with a picture in its bottom.)

Here is how I really check the fit of each piece:  I put the cut glass onto a traced pattern, then use a marker to draw onto the glass where I need to use the grinder to shave off more from edges or corners.I did not try to make each grout space exactly the same width of every other grout space, nor did I try to make each piece of glass exactly match up with its neighbor.  I like the handmade look of something that is slightly imperfect.  In my world, too much perfection looks machine-made.

Here is the finished tray:

MAC glue is what I used to adhere the glass to the wood, although I had previously coated the wood with a diluted version of Weldbond, to give it extra sticking power.  I chose tobacco brown grout to blend with the walnut finish I had put on the tray.  I also poured a dose of polymer additive into the grout powder when I was mixing it- this gives better adhesion to the glass.  After grouting, I cleaned the glass with dental tools, as all the sky has a textured surface.  After the grout had cured, I coated it with a sealant.

For those of you who are glass-fusers, yes, the dark cinnamon-colored glass is a ‘striker’, and was café-au-lait before I cooked it in the kiln.

And, yes, I do recommend Brands’ book, American Colossus, for giving a sweeping view of how the U.S. positioned itself to become a world power during its formative late-19th century years.  And, no, I don’t read boring history books!

Another Angle

And Where We’ll Land, Nobody Knows

One blog I follow, Quiet: the Power of Introverts, by Susan Cain, provides a reading list each weekend.  Today, one of the offerings caught my eye because it involved creativity.  There is a lot of talk about creative thinking; teaching it to children in school, rewarding it in the workplace, and recognizing it in ourselves.  However, creativity is fragile and easily snuffed out.

Busy-ness will kill creativity faster than anything I know.  This is why a daily walk is beneficial for me- body, mind, and soul.  I can look and listen in the world outside myself and make connections with what I know, what I wish I knew, and what I’ve heard that someone else knows.  There is always a new angle from which to see familiar surroundings, and even in my neighborhood, there are always unexpected surprises.  (I have walked down a street one week, only to return the next week to find a home completely missing from its lot!  That raises all kinds of questions about economics, social patterns, environment, and engineering.)

The photo above is a pile of dead leaves, brought to life by a movement of the camera while the shutter is open.  Such a simple activity, but each photo opens new worlds of meaning to me when I view it on my monitor.

I challenge my readers to click on the link to Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking, read it, think about it, and act on just one discovery or reminder you find there.

Spring is here… or fall…or something…

Scene seen in the ‘hood

This summer was so hot and so dry that any plant not already dead went into dormancy.  Just like in winter.  So, when a little bit of rain fell and the temperatures dropped a few degrees, they thought it was spring, and they BLOOMED!

Who ever sees fruit trees and redbuds blooming in the fall?!?!?

Tex-mex in the ‘Hood

Tex-mex Plate #5

by Lynn Bridge

If I want to eat corn tortillas with butter on them until I feel sick, I go to Matt’s El Rancho in the neighborhood.  When I was a child, it was a small restaurant on East 1st Street in Austin, but the Martinez family eventually opened a much larger restaurant south of the river, with tasteful Mexican atmosphere.

I had never heard the word ‘Tex-mex’ until I was well into adulthood, and here’s the reason why:

When Diana Kennedy wrote The Cuisines of Mexico in the early ’70′s, she told Matt Martinez, Jr. that she only wrote about authentic Mexican cuisine, not ‘Tex-mex’.  He had never heard that word before, and he decided to use what was supposed to be a derogatory term to his advantage, calling all his restaurant food Tex-mex.  This story came straight from the pages of Robb Walsh’s  The Tex-Mex Cookbook.  I like that scrappy attitude, taking what someone thinks is not worth time or the printed page, and turning it into an asset.

Tex-mex Plate #5

This Mexican food plate contains all the usual suspects: glass, glass, and more glass, and now I’ve added the colors of the Mexican flag for its border.  Ready for lunch?

Las Tortillas de Maíz por Favor

Tex-mex Plate #4

by Lynn Bridge, with ceramics by Roberta Mitchell

To continue with passages from The Tex-Mex Cookbook: a History in Recipes and Photos, I give you a quote from Robb Walsh’s chapter entitled”The Myth of Authenticity”:

In the early 1900s, Europeans were the highest rank of the Mexican caste system; next came the Creoles, or criollos, colonists of supposedly pure European blood who were born in the Americas; then mestizos, people of mixed race; and at the bottom were the natives or indios.

This piqued my interest, since, as a child, I was vaguely aware of a similar caste system in the Mexican-American culture with which I interacted often.  However, I had no concept of how discriminatory social practices were in my part of the world, with the most native, or Indian, of Spanish-speakers coming out with the short end of the stick.  Walsh goes on in this chapter to quote an article by Jeffrey M. Pilcher, entitled “Recipes for Patria”:

Mexican leaders of the nineteenth century hoped to build a modern patriarchal nation based on Western European models.  Cookbooks provided a valuable means of indoctrinating women into this new order by emphasizing European dishes and disparaging Indian foods…Corn became a symbol for disorderly and unsanitary elements of society such as street people and backward villagers.

Could this be the reason I love corn tortillas and masa so much?  Is it my disorderly and unsanitary nature coming to the fore?

detail of Tex-mex Plate #4

When I made this plate, I was thinking of verde (green) sauce, but, also, I was thinking about how complementary colors, such as green and red together can make each other stronger in feeling.  This plate contains several ceramic elements from the hand of my mom, as well as all the forms of glass I love so much.

The Spread of Tex-mex

Tex-mex #3

by Lynn Bridge

Back to the Tex-mex theme again- a connoisseur of Tex-mex cuisine has ordered three plates from my studio.  Not one is edible, but they all look as if they should be.  I feature one of them today, along with a quote from The Tex-Mex Cookbook by Robb Walsh.  A little gem in the “Leb-Mex” sidebar on page 181 of this amazing book reads:

Many people are surprised to find Lebanese-Americans cooking Tex-Mex, but it’s actually an old tradition.  Mexico’s Lebanese immigrants have been responsible for lots of Mexican food traditions.  The most popular tacos in Mexico City, tacos al pastor, for instance, are made on the vertical roasters that the Lebanese brought to Mexico to make shawarma.

A little aside:  right around the corner from my neighborhood is Phoenicia Bakery and Deli, another Lebanese-Mexican blend which was started here in Austin by immigrants from Beirut.  This is where you go for Middle Eastern ingredients, as well as those from Europe and Mexico.  The bakery carries both Middle Eastern and Mexican treats.

Tex-mex #3

For those who wonder about such things, I covered a ceramic plate with thin-set cement and embedded all kinds of glass objects; some purchased, some cut, some constructed, and some formed in my glass kiln.  This plate also holds a couple of pieces of natural jade, as well as an ordinary stainless-steel fork.  Yummy!

More Than I Imagined

You Are My Sunshine

When art goes out into the world, it is up for interpretation by whomever sees it.  The interpretation may or may not be anything like what the artist intended, but it bonds to the art as if it were glued.

Following is a happy example of how art can become greater than itself in the eye of an imaginative viewer:

After you left I really examined your piece and pondered it.  I love the title- “You are my sunshine”.  This is the meaning it holds for me:  it’s through the shattering of our self (the broken bits of mirror) that our heart is released to love, bringing warmth and light into this fragmented world composed of multitudes and nations of people (like the particles of tiles grouped by their hues).        -Susan Crites

I was enjoying making a mosaic out of miniscule tile, blending one color into another, and then my friend sees it and transforms it into something greater than itself.  Amazing!

Cat’s Out of the Bag… or “Would You Buy an iPad Bag from this Woman?”

Handmade iPad bag with cat motif 

copyright by Lynn Bridge

If you read my last post, you’ll know I am fretting over whether or not I am treating my iPad as a doll, and whether or not I’m having a religious experience when I use my Apple product.  Worries based on preliminary scientific research, of course.

On my unscientific research journey, I have carried my device in several bags designed as purses (what we call ‘em in Texas), pocketbooks, handbags, or small carry-alls.  I have been studying ease of access, protection of the iPad from scratches and bumps, weight and clumsiness of the bag, and convenience of the pockets in which I carry my stylus and screen-wiping pad.

Before spending a lot of time manufacturing one of my fancy 3-D floral designs or abstracts, I decided to make a bag with simple decor, and field test it in order to check my theories about the perfect elements of an iPad bag. Also, I had in the back of my mind the possibility that, if the bags turn out to turn heads, I’d go into production and sales.  And, I wouldn’t want to make anything, especially not hand-made one-of-a-kind equipment, that was flawed.

I pulled from my stash some unbleached muslin and some polyester batting and set to work; measuring, cutting, and drawing the lines for machine quilting layers together, for surely, my iPad needs iPadding.  I raided my embroidery floss box and came up with sepia for sketching a cat in thread.  (Yes, loosely, you are seeing a portrait of my cat, Lucy.)  I cut off the bottom of a sleeve from a silk jacket I liberated for very little cash from a local used-clothes warehouse; that’s what I used for lining.

Good thing I tested the bag!  It looks charming, but I found a lot of flaws in the design, including the tie closure, the placement of the interior pocket, and lastly, the wash-ability (silk print is NOT colorfast, even in cold water).  After stripping out the lining and putting in a new one, completely washable this time, and re-positioning the interior pocket, I am well on my way to design utility.  However, the ties remain, and will continue to annoy me.  When I want access to my iPad, I want to pull that sucker out in a big hurry and start sketching or writing or searching.

I love to use my iPad for sketching-on-the-go, and in places where messy charcoal, ink, paint, and graphite simply don’t belong.  You might know from my post “Win-Win” that I look for models in places where folks crave cash for the simple pleasures of electricity, food, and bus fare.  Below is an iPad sketch of a model in just this situation.  Bonus for me is that he is a real history buff, so he regaled me not only with his own history, but some of the Romanovs, a favorite topic.  Anyone in the market for a good research assistant?

Mr. L. by Lynn Bridge

Religious Experience? Or Handy Tool? (It’s in the Bag.)

My son graciously informed me that when brain scans were performed on people thinking of a religious experience and brain scans were performed on subjects thinking of their Apple products, the same area of each brain lighted up.  As one who considers matters of cosmic importance superior in every way to the machinery of our lives, this was disturbing news.  I try not to dwell on the implications, else I’d never get any work done.

I considered buying an Apple iPad2 for the purpose of carrying a back-lit and compact portfolio of my work.  But, that alone was not enough to push me over the edge to buy a product many consider an extravagant toy.  The deciding factor for me was the availability of apps for the iPad which would allow me to make a photo of a location and sketch a design for a mural or sculpture on that photograph, on the spot, modifying the art while consulting with a client.  Yes, this is a beautiful thing for one who aspires to cover the world in mosaics.

Being a ‘creative-type’, my mind dwelt on the possibilities for iPad carriers.  Commercial ones abound, but I thought that perhaps I should make my own design, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that, yes, indeed, my brain is still working.

Since the native Texas ‘Passiflora incarnata’, or Passion Flower, is blooming in my back yard, I thought I’d start with a floral number.

Passiflora incarnata

iPad cover design by Lynn Bridge

Using my ArtStudio app while sitting at a doctor’s office waiting for my appointment, I sketched this idea for a shoulder-strap iPad cover.

This feels a lot like decorating my iPad, which feels a lot like decorating a doll, who is always a stand-in for a person.  Does this mean that I am really designing doll clothes for my iPad?  Another disturbing thought, and related to the religious experience/Apple product study.  What do you think?

Win-Win

Miguel

by Lynn Bridge

If you keep up with the posts on this blog, you’ve already seen this image in “Overlooked”.  This face was drawn from memory using glass powder applied to glass, then fired in the kiln.

I enjoy inventing faces in my imagination, too.  Sometimes I draw faces from the edge of the pool of humanity- ones close to swimming in the waters of another species. 

I never get bored watching ‘us’ in all our variety.

In recent weeks I’ve been drawing specific people from life, and always I choose people who really need the extra cash.  As I tell my models, “My sketches won’t look exactly like you, but they will resemble you.”  And, I get to study the details of what makes Sam ‘Sam’, or Marie ‘Marie’.  Perhaps the best part of my drawing sessions is asking my models about their lives.  I always turn up interesting stories from interesting people by asking a few questions.  I have found artisans, chefs, and history buffs this way.  Surprisingly, my models seem to enjoy their modeling sessions, too. Sitting still and focusing on one thing for awhile isn’t easy, as you know if you’ve ever tried it.

My drawings, though not finished or even accurate in proportion, will be modified from the original person yet again as I turn them into drawings in glass, then into mosaic art.

iPad drawing  by Lynn Bridge

A beautiful, young face.