I've been finding myself thinking about and arguing with a lot of my friends about this lately, and I wanted to put out a couple of links for a couple of folks...I really think this is a major transformation for manufacturing and designers and is ultimately going to revolutionize how product design is created and marketed. Check these out! In particular Ponoko...a New Zealand company that has been getting a lot of attention lately. Here's a link to a feature article about them published by Inc. magazine:
 
                     http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091001/the-future-of-manufacturing.html 

Here's Ponoko's actual website:        http://www.ponoko.com      

One more link to a company called CloudFab. Here's their manifesto:

             "CloudFab is a new online marketplace that provides engineers, designers, and hobbyists access to a network of job shops who provide fabrication and prototyping services (currently 3D printing).

The latest player on the scene of distributed manufacturing networks is CloudFab by GearHeadz. Currently in Beta testing stage they seek to democratize access to 3D printing with a fairly broad range of processes seemingly at their disposal ranging from Fused Deposition Modeling, through Selective Laser Sintering to Direct Metal Printing. Their site also has a concise run down and comparison of the processes available. Their terms of service are transparent with no commission taken for orders under $100, which to me indicates they are pitching less towards the prosumer/maker market and more towards the engineering side of things? but maybe not, check out their manifesto..

In the beginning, humans fashioned all their possessions with their own skills – ones they learned from their community. Over time certain members specialized in the art of making things – thus began the age of the artisan. Trade specialization increased to the point where each trade became a science. These tradesmen began to develop all kinds of tricks to make their tasks easier – the industrial revolution began. As they further automated their tasks they vastly increased the efficiency of production – thus began the age of mass production.

This trend toward automation continues in our time, however there is a storm gathering in the distance. A storm that will wash away many of the paradigms of the past and bring us back to some of the roots of our humanity. Techniques that were once only available to a select few are coming within the reach of all of us. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, the ability to shape your own reality increases. This democratization of innovation allows nearly anyone with an idea to solve their own problems and realize their own dreams – thus begins the age of mass customization.

These trends are all culminating to form the perfect storm of achieving these ends. A vast reservoir of spare capacity exists waiting to be tapped by latent demand. Digital fabrication techniques now allow us the standardization and consistency to remotely produce unique, high quality parts and devices. The internet allows us all to share files, tools, and techniques that foster innovation without requiring vast sums of money. All of this – and at the same time the population is growing tired of mass produced goods that only superficially connect with them and their lives.

At CloudFab, we believe strongly in this movement, and so we’ve developed this platform to enable those with the fabrication equipment to share their machines with the greater public. We hope our service will be one step towards the goal of truly personal fabrication. Now the journey begins.

It will be interesting to see CloudFab’s part in the personal fabrication and mass customization storm along with the likes of Ponoko, 100kGarages, Thingiverse, the list grows..




 

Reasons I love the Northwest:
- The Bad Things. My new favorite band. Check them out! 
- Listening to KEXP while stuck in traffic on I-5 and actually being disappointed when the traffic starts moving again.  
- channels of deep crimson maple cut into the deep green pine of the mountains.
  - the way the frosted top ridges melt into the autumn colors.
- Chocolate martinis. The Wild Ginger.   Anything with wild mushrooms and brown rice. YUM!
- White caps and furious grey clouds on the Puget Sound, with the ferries serenely passing by...
- Driving along Diablo Lake by Colonial Creek in the late afternoon sunlight.
   - Driving in the middle of nowhere and suddenly picking up a really great radio station that is going to   
   exclusively play gypsy jazz and Django Reinhart for the next hour.  And then it snows. <siiiiiigh> Bliss.
- Ross Lake turquoise blue with Mt. Hozomeen, the old ancient Buddha, peeking out from the mist.

I made it back from Seattle by dinner time yesterday. It was a beautiful drive, but by the time I bounced my way down the dirt road that leads to our house, the golden interior light from our house was a welcome sight. I could smell the smoke from the chimney as I crunched up the path, and the anticipation of the warmth from the fire was delicious. 
             
                   The Pilchuck annual auction, as anticipated, was an amazing event. Set-up went smoothly, and it was lots of fun to see old friends from over the summer. The auction itself is an incredibly lavish affair, and it was hard to not feel intimidated by the pageantry of it all. I got teased for looking scared and downing my first two glasses of wine rather fast. But really, this is a major fundraiser for a really magic and truly unique place, and as such, a celebration of everything that makes Pilchuck and art-making so great. So I bucked up and in the end had a GREAT time. AMAZING art, amazing glass collectors and art supporters, great food, and for a great cause. And I got to wear sparkly red heels too. It's like Disneyland.

            Plus Cosmopolitans. Did I mention the Cosmos? And chocolate. And this really simple delicious squash soup. Sheesh.

The live auction raised over $900,000 for the school, which is incredible generosity. My piece did well in the silent auction, and I was thrilled to actually meet the couple who were the successful bidders. As I've said before, that Coyote piece is very very important to me, and it was an incredible boost of confidence to have it received so well. It was really the first piece in a series where I began to move away from strictly functional vessel-making and re-connect with art-making and content in my work. It was an incredibly silly, serious, joyful experience making that piece, and I couldn't be more happy with where (and with whom) the piece is going. I don't very often get the chance to meet the people who acquire my work, and it's always a treat. Thank you, again! !!

Speaking, incidentally, of my utter social ineptness, I want to thank Heather Ruhl for coming with me as my lovely date for the evening and being SO supportive and a bit of a buffer for me. And also have a pre-auction dress-up party with me, with nail polish. And shoes. Hooray! Love you sweetie. Here's a picture Jay MacDonnell took of us at Pilchuck this summer.

More leaf pictures. Because I can. They really were pretty amazing on the drive back.

I attended the first meeting of the Twisp Public Development Authority today at the old Forest Service Complex. What an incredible, exciting dialogue! For those of you outside the Methow, the Town of Twisp acquired an old forest service property, which consisted of a large campus of buildings, offices and housing. Here's what the PDA has to say:
 
                  " The Twisp Public Development Authority was chartered by the Town of Twisp, WA and is a partnership with the Methow Valley community that fosters and promotes economic vitality, local agriculture, arts and culture and innovative educational opportunities. We work with individuals and groups to advance sustainable practices...Like many rural areas in the modern world, the Methow is experiencing the growing pains that come with the expansion of a service economy. Housing is scarce and expensive, office space is limited and at the same time the cost of living is increasing. Exceptional arts groups, civic enterprises and a thriving organic agricultural environment are all constrained by slow physical growth in Twisp, at the heart of the Methow Valley.

The Twisp Public Development Authority Complex is ideally situated to correct the current trend and to assist in the development of a healthy, multi-faceted economy. "

          You can read more about the project, including a great blog, at:  http://www.twisppda.org.

In essence, the project has been divided into several sub-committees: Green/Innovative Technology, Agriculture, Education, and Arts & Culture. I am serving on the arts and culture subcommittee, and I will be attending a larger meeting later today with the other groups.

What we're interested in initiating is: an incredible space including freelance artist workspaces, rental facilities for ceramics, glass, metal and textiles; an educational center; and artist residency programs. In other words, a program very much built around the model of a Haystack or Penland, but with the addition of a year-round artist community working space. Other suggestions today: filmmaking and performance space, a digital media lab...cross-desciplinary spaces, in which for example textile artists could network with farmers who sustainably raise sheep and goats for fiber...apprenticeships....classes. This is so exciting, and I am so thrilled to be part of the core team that will see this thing to completion.

        I can't wait to here the ideas that the Ag people and the Green people came up with. I think ultimately there will be a lot of cross-over for all of our ideas, and it has the potential to reinvent the local economy as well. Twisp is already known for its extensive arts culture...but this next step is huge.

         I'm still playing with the idea of returning to school next year for my Masters degree in Arts Administration, since so much of what I do at the Confluence as well as my experiences at Pilchuck have made me really aware of the difference that non-profit arts groups make in the lives and work of artists as well as the amazingly potent impact they have on the culture at large...this project that I am now embarking on only strengthens my resolve to pursue this.

                The possibilities are filling me with euphoria and heady enthusiasm. I'll keep you posted on where this project goes!...next blog post, I'll talk a little more about the next body of work. I'm still at the sketching stage, but I have some really exciting ideas about what is next!

         

I almost forgot to tell everyone: the Pilchuck auction catalog has just been published on-line. Here's a link to my piece in the Red Section:

http://www.pilchuck.com/events/auction_catalog_2009/item.php?id=3028

They do a really nice job with the catalog, and the photography of this piece is spectacular! (Thank you, Aristides Pappidas!)

Here's the only picture I have of my piece in the Nordstrom's window. I wish I had a picture of the ENTIRE window - they paired these pieces with the most beautiful earthy-golden dress. I might be able to shake some trees and find a friend who took a picture of the whole thing...

Update: Got one! Thanks, Lynn!!!

As I write this, sipping coffee and gazing out the window at the first snow visible high above the valley floor, a magpie is teasing out chickens...perching in the tree and then ever-so-casual, touching down on the ground. At which point a rodeo ensues...feathers fly and squawking ensues, and yes, nothing really can make a wholelotta outraged noise like a chicken. The snow is so beautiful, and the chill in the air this morning as I skulked around in the dark made my wool sweater and fuzzy boots feel soooo good...but there's always a moment of feeling unsettled when the cold comes in. We depend on wood for our heat, and this time of year I always get a cold panic - do we ever have enough?

          The magpie is back, picking at an old deer hide hanging in the tree. I guess he probably feels the same way with the cold coming on...It's so hard for the animals here. It really does get down to negative twenty-five, and some years it's felt like we always had four feet of snow.

              

I spent the last few days in the garden with Rob, trying to put away as much as possible. All the red tomatoes are canned, and I'm making pickles and chutney with the (many, many) tomatoes that hadn't ripened yet. I also tried to make pickled peppers yesterday. Here are some pickles below:

I can't believe how nest-oriented I am right now. I think that goes with the fall, somewhat - all your energy is directed inward to some degree. It's a symptom of the colder weather, and you see it in animals too. Even plants pull their energy back from leaves and fruit to keep the essence alive. Fall as a result is such an introspective time for me.

                

The show opening went well. I was excited to debut this new body of work. All these pieces were created while I was working at Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA, from the end of April until mid-July...the ideas started last winter however. I began with a series of hourglass forms...it's a good exercise, to practice a new form over and over, and to a degree that's all I was doing...tweaking the proportions, exaggerating the waist...We started experimenting with a series of hourglasses that were no longer transparent, that had a mirrorized outer surface. So the line of thinking went: what are the implications of an opaque hourglass, one in which you can only infer time's passage? What are the implications of seeing your own image in that hourglass, distorted as the form swells and tapers? I carved some lenses into the surface, creating another layer of optics and distortion...they began to have this really nice tension between exteriority and interiority.

            I use the idea of the vessel as a metaphor for the body a lot in my work. So here's what we ended up with:

They feel really nice in the hand...and they have a lightness to them, sort of humorous...sort of lost. And this idea of the hourglass stayed with me, and it became the basis for the whole body of work, this idea of time passing...As a research tool, I use word etymology and myth (very linked subjects) to generate different ways of thinking about an idea...and so I did research into the root of "chronology". Here's some of what I found:

            

In Greek mythology, Chronos (Ancient Greek: Χρόνος) in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Modern Greek also means "year" and is alternatively spelled Khronos (english transliteration) or Chronus (Latin spelling).

Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god. Serpentine in form, with three heads—that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. He is not to be confused with the Titan Cronus.

He was depicted in Greek mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel.  Often the figure is named Aeon (Eternal Time), a common alternate name for the god.

Chronos is usually portrayed through an old, wise man with a long, gray beard, such as "Father Time." Some of the current English words whose etymological root is khronos/chronos include chronology, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle.


                   Ananke, she became a piece in the series too...the idea of hourglasses became formally linked to this feminine form...to fertility...Here's the lynchpin of the series:

...This piece is called "Shakti"...the feminine principal...
We paired her in the show with this painting:

I watch the magpies as I write this. Putting a body of work together, it's a little like what they do...scavenging ideas and images...picking on detritus looking for something shiny.

                       We're starting plans for the new show in the spring. I'll be showing with three other really talented artists: Cheryl Wrangle, Sue Marracci, and Laura Karcher. Cheryl and Sue are both painters, and Laura works in three dimensions...very fragile Japanese aesthetic, handmade paper and wood, and light. Lovely. She's doing these things with old 30s and 40s era car hoods that I sort of love. It's an interesting mash-up. The suggested theme at the moment is: Deepening the Wonder. Here's the poem it's based on:  (by Sufi poet Hafiz)



Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.

_____________
Impermanence is the word that keeps jumping out at me, and I think it's the word I'm going to seize on to design the new work off of. Stay tuned...