Tyler Whitham Final Project

Title:  Naïve Optimism, or:  F*#$ You, George.

Materials (Intentional):  Black Ash Wood, Fiber Reinforced Concrete

Materials (unintentional):  Broken drill bit, Pine Wood, Melamine particle board, Human Blood

Dimensions: 78” X 18” X 24”

Weight: Roughly 100 lbs.

Where to start with this? 

I suppose I’ll start with the moment that this whole thing went rubber side up.   

A little background:  I've been working with a material this semester called Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC).  This stuff is cool.  It's a concrete that doesn't require an aggregate or an internal support structure.  It has fiber glass in it to give it amazing shear strength versus normal cement. GFRC has a lot of really cool properties, one of them being that you can mix it to the consistency of a clay and actually pack it onto vertical surfaces to a thickness of a half an inch.  In order to do this you need to mix the concrete and then wait roughly 30 minutes so that it begins to cure and harden a bit.  Once this occurs you have about an hour to work with it before you reach the point of no return and it cures for good, but within that hour long time frame the more you knead and work with the stuff the more fluid it becomes.  So, you can effectively control the consistency of it by how much you work it.  You can really mush it if you need it to be runny to get into a tiny space or you can just take a hunk of it and without working it at all, slap it right onto a wall and it'll stay there and not run or droop.  Like I said, it's really cool.  Here are some photos from another project that I'm working on using the GFRC that shows how it can be used to pack forms.

So, with that in mind I'll talk a little about my design.  I love George Nakashima's furniture.  I love the natural wood, and the lines and the delicate sense of balance that a lot of his pieces from his Conoid Studio have.  I am also very interested in Wendell Castle's laminated pieces, and how he is able to make a seamless design that is essentially carved from a solid chunk of wood.  I wanted to combine these two design philosophies and make a piece of furniture that was very minimally worked and I wanted it to consist of a single, solid piece from top to bottom.  I also like the white-washed appearance of Joseph Walsh's work and wanted to use that element somehow.  I originally though of using driftwood and trying to laminate it, but quickly realized that in that direction madness lay.  I will come back to the idea of driftwood later though, because check out this piece of wood that I dragged out of Lake Livingston:

 Awesome, right?  No idea what kind of wood it is but its going to turn into a table at some point in the near future.  Sorry, off topic...back to the bench.

Instead, I went to a lumber yard and bought a nice piece of Black Ash.  I then spent the next two weeks trying to get it flat.  I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say this: I lost 6 pounds doing it.  It's the most physical thing I've done in a long time, and it felt like I went into the garage every night to battle this piece of a tree that was laying on my bench waiting to ambush me.  At first I was determined to only use hand tools to do this.  Again, this was an insane idea.  These were my tools of choice for the first week:

Those are my Japanese style saws, hand plane and chisels.  I love these tools, but the guys on YouTube just make it look so much easier than it is.  After a week of fighting with my plane and the wood, I switched to a belt sander, which still made me feel like a gladiator, but I now had a more powerful weapon.  Once I had the wood flat, I started to think more about my actual design, and decided to use concrete fused to wood to make my solid piece rather than attempt any type of stack lamination.  In order to make the two materials appear more seamless, I sawed the plank down its middle to make a channel for a strip of concrete and decided that the concrete would flow from the bench top down into the legs.  I decided on trying to recreate George Nakashima style legs from a concrete form, because I thought it would be interesting to see how using a material that is almost the direct opposite of would change the nature of the piece, and I wanted to see if I could still achieve that sense of delicacy when using a material as chunky and heavy as concrete.  Using a very basic sketch as an idea, I just dove right in.

Despite the use of duct tape, that form was super solid.  Every seam was screwed together with wood screws and sealed with silicone caulking.  The reason that it looks so chunky is that it's a form, so I obviously couldn't screw directly into where my concrete would be poured.  The forms were also tacked to the bottom of the bench using pin nails and the seams were sealed with lots and lots of silicone.  The channel running up the center of the plank was also sealed with silicone to prevent the cement from seeping under the wood.  As you can see, there is a gap underneath the form for the splayed legs and the channel, which would allow the whole piece to be seamless.  The X shape routed into the wood is a channel to be filled with concrete to give it some stability and to help the concrete bind to the wood.  There are similar channels underneath both legs.   So, after triple checking every seam, I mixed my cement.  I started by mixing up a really thick batch, like I described before, in order to block up the gaps underneath the leg forms.  With the thick concrete in place, and my leg forms effectively sealed, I mixed the remainder of my concrete (100 lbs in total) to a very runny consistency so that I could get nice smooth surfaces and ensure that my leg forms got completely filled and had no gaps.  Everything went amazingly smoothly.  It was so easy.  Maybe eve a little too easy...the following took place in my head as I finished pouring the concrete:

   "Why did everyone online make such a big deal out of this process?  That went insanely smoothly...I probably did it wrong...I probably poured the legs too quickly.  I bet there's air bubbles in there.  I should check and make sure there are no air bubbles.  How do I make sure there are no air bubbles?  I'll just use this stick."

Remember how I talked about how cool it was that you could control the consistency of the concrete by kneading it?  Poking it with a stick does the same thing.  So, when I jammed a stick down into the form and agitated the concrete to make sure there were no voids, I softened the thick concrete that I had packed into the channel gaps.  I saw the concrete start to bulge at the base, and then the freshly poured, runny concrete burst through and began to flow.  Fast.  I jammed my hand into the gap to stop the flow, hoping that I could hold it long enough for it to reform that barrier, "apply direct pressure!  That's how you stop bleeding!" but I failed to consider the very first and most basic lesson in combat first aid: always check for an exit wound!  I didn't realize that the same thing was happening on the other side, and 50 lbs. of concrete trying desperately to obey gravity isn't going to form up in an orderly fashion to slowly seep through a small gap, instead it bursts right through all of your meticulously placed silicone.  Once one piece of the seal went, the rest followed suit, and there was nothing I could do then but try to catch as much of the concrete as I could with my bucket before it spilled onto the floor.

So, no problem, right?  I've got a big mess, but I saved most of the concrete and my form didn't fall apart, so I'll just try again.  I left a significantly sized mound of concrete around all of the edges so that it could harden and take the place of the silicone that had burst.  I waited for what seemed like an eternity (but was actually only 10 minutes) and started to pour again.  No good, the seal held in a few places, but didn't hold at all around the channel gap.  So I left an even bigger mound in front of the channel gaps, placed a board all along the seam to maintain pressure, waited even longer, and tried again, pouring only a small amount into the form this time.  Still, even with a small amount of concrete the seal didn't hold around the channel gap and it began to seep out.  So, I decided to be patient and I waited 30 minutes before trying again.  

Remember that hour long window I talked about in the beginning?  Once you reach that time limit, you are done for.  The concrete begins to cure VERY fast.  Once I came back from my 30 minute waiting period, the concrete was way thicker than it was before.  I began to pour the concrete into the form, but it was flowing very slowly and was so thick that it was really difficult to work with.  I remixed the concrete with my paddle mixer and it loosened up quite a bit, and I poured a lot in quickly.  The seam held!  I was excited!  I had hope!  But when I went to pour again, the concrete in my bucket was like peanut butter.  I mixed it again, but no good, still peanut butter consistency.  So, unable to pour any longer, I started packing it into the mold with my fingers.  This didn't work well at all, so I used the same stick that caused this whole mess (which will henceforth be known as The Destroyer) and used it, very carefully this time, to pack the concrete down into the leg holes.  After only a few minutes the concrete was the consistency of sticky modeling clay, and not even The Destroyer could pack it in any further.  I did the best that I could with The Destroyer, and packed concrete into the leg holes until it was as full as I could get it.  I knew then that the whole thing was doomed, because there was way too much concrete left in the bucket, and even more still hardening all over the backside of my bench and on the floor of my garage.  It was at this point that I posted that my project was doomed, after I cleaned up and bandaged a nasty cut on my finger that I have no idea how I got...hence the Human Blood in the unintended materials list.

Sure enough, when I took the form apart on Friday morning, the leg piece was so full of voids that most of it just crumbled and the rest was in even worse shape...

 De-molding process...usually a hammer and a crowbar are not required.

That piece of melamine board with the screws in it is still there...probably will be forever. 

One leg section was pretty good though, it just wasn't attached to anything else.

  

After work on Friday I began to chisel the bench out from the mess I had made and spent most of the night trying to get it looking like not a train wreck. This is what I managed to do.

The large block thing is part of another bench I'm making, but I appropriated it to put this bench on as it looks better than the bucket I had under there when I was chiseling and sanding all the concrete off.  I actually like the way it looks, so this is the direction I'll go in when fixing this bench in the next few weeks.  It will eventually have the remaining leg section removed from the bottom and the wood will get a few coats of tung oil.  There's also quite a bit of gouge marks from the concrete removal that I need to plane out, and the silicone sealant needs to be removed from the wood around the channel, but I've been sanding most of the night and morning, so this is how it's going to stay for now. I don't even want to look at this thing again for at least a week.

My take away from this whole experience is actually positive.  I've learned a lot of lessons, and I'm certainly not done with wood working or working with this concrete.  I've got quite a few projects in the pipe that I'm going to start with next week.  The next one I do will have no concrete though...I'm going to make a walnut table out of another awesome piece of driftwood I found...

That's black walnut.  That I got for free.  From a lake.  I'm still amazed at my luck on this one.

This semester has really got me thinking about wood.  It's really an amazing experience to work with it, because the nature of the material has to be considered at all times.  You can't make a cut without first considering the direction of the grain and selecting the right saw.  You can't just buy wood and build something with it immediately, because it moves, and shrinks and expands as the weather changes, like it's breathing.  You have to be very aware of not only what you are doing at the moment, but also what the wood will do in the future.  It's not like anything I've ever done in the past, and I'm excited about doing more.  I've got an ever growing stack of drift wood in my garage, much to my wife's chagrin, and I'm going to build a solar kiln in my backyard to dry it all into usable lumber.  I've glad I had this exposure to craft, and really enjoyed the history and learning about the influences crafts have on American society.  It's not something that I had ever really thought about before, which is funny, because I was once an archaeology major and I know how much you can learn about a society be looking at the way it makes things.  I have studied a ton of old pottery shards, but for some reason I've never applied that same thinking to modern history.

Thanks everyone!  I've really enjoyed this class and I'm looking forward to working with everyone in future classes!

Exploring the Wheel by Paige Gates

In the book Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, I found inspiration and a common bond with the artists who found their way to their craft later in life. On page 203,  “Beatrice Wood seemingly had nine lives, or at least that many identities, over her 105 - year existence.” She took her first throwing class at 47 years old. Four years later, she had a solo show. I also am drawn to her teaching style of emphasizing imagination rather than technique. The textile artists: Lenore Tawney was 47 before she devoted herself to weaving, Claire Zeisler was 59 years old when she had her first solo show and, “her best work was ahead of her”, are also inspirational to me. As I age, I discover I want to make art as Zeisler did, “solely to please herself.”

Once I came to the conclusion, I am not too old to learn a new trick, my mind was set to grasp the skill of throwing. In the process, I hoped to gain more knowledge and experience of clay. My basic knowledge before this semester was mostly self taught and just enough to stay one step ahead of students grades 1-8. I joined a ceramics class at our local community college and began my journey.






The journey on the wheel started with me observing others working. If I could watch someone, then attempt to throw, I had better results than starting right away on my own. Once I discovered my need to copycat, I hovered over a few very talented artists as they worked. Finally after some failures, I succeeded in making a few vases and jugs. I learned to love the patient process of trimming the vessels with the rhythmic spinning and the small spiral pieces of clay separating from the shape. This was very therapeutic for me. I was ready to attempt my final pieces which would be covered casserole dishes.

My desire to throw a bowl with a lid was based on my need to make functional ware. I wanted to create a dish I could use to cook, serve, and store. Warren McKenzie’s statement supported my wish to create function with his statement on page 219, “It (functional ware) is not a limitation, but instead a framework and support which frees me from the pressures of fashion and the excesses of technical skills as an end in themselves.”


I was immediately drawn to Karen Karnes’s Flame Proof Casserole Dish, 1957 on page 220, because of the low broad shape for easy serving, easy cleaning and the twisted ribbon handle. The twist, winding and organic shape is similar to shapes I have used in my jewelry. Once I successfully formed two casserole dishes, I researched the artists’ techniques of glazing and decoration from our book. While trying to decide how I would finish the casserole dishes, I experimented with my other wheel thrown pieces. Firing them in a wood kiln, high fire, and low fire

3" x 5" Wood fire, Apple Green Celadon Glaze

7" x 5" Wood Fire, Inside glaze and lip Alfred
White, natural outside

                 

3" x 4.5" High Fire, glaze unknown

 




 

Once again, Beatrice Wood and her glazing and firing caught my attention. I hoped to create the luster glaze she used, but I couldn’t copy her technique of throwing mothballs into the kiln because I shared the kiln with other artists. Since I chose a high fire glaze, I have had to wait to fire until there was enough work to fill the large kiln. Anticipation! Again, Anticipation!  

5.5" x 8.5" High Fire, Blue to Brown

Inside glaze Leach's White

4.5" x 8.5" High Fire, Red Shino

In conclusion, I would say my journey with the potter’s wheel has been successful. The most difficult part was not knowing if the pieces would survive the long firing and how the glaze would look, but also the uncontrollable element was healthy and freeing. Because the designs and shapes on the casserole dishes were spontaneous and flowed in an organic way, I acquired the same emotion with the firing process. As Ron Nagle was quoted on page 329, “You gravitate toward whatever moves you and then you run with it. It was all intuitive….I’m attracted to the format emotionally. It’s appealing to me on a real dumb, basic level.”

Armor For My Memories: Part 2

While we were reading the text this semester, I was naturally drawn to the ceramic work more so than the other mediums because of my own personal connection to the medium and process. As such I started the class thinking my final project would be ceramic wares of some kind, in my usual style, maybe with a new glaze to try something new. I threw some vessels and pulled them from the bisque fire, but I couldn’t help but feel like I should do something new, something entirely different.

I started a large painting of a bird’s eye view of the Llano river mid-way through the semester in oil on a 4 x 6 canvas that had been staring me in the face for months. While it was nice to look at it lacked personal dept. Now I don’t primarily identify as a painter, however I do a fair amount of painting during the school year so even this large homage to the Llano didn’t feel like it referenced the text enough. I wanted to try something truly new, and I wanted to re-evaluate the Art work in the text not as a potter, but as a student of new mediums for creating.

As I mentioned in a response earlier in the blog, I took a group of students to the Fort Worth Modern last month and saw some Frank Stella work that was very sculptural in its use of wood panels and levels. These pieces owed more to the woodworking craftsmanship than the layers of paint on top. I was drawn to this, and I revisited much of the wood work, and even the textures of some of the jewelry work in Makers. Here is a list of works that I was specifically drawn to after finding new perspective.

Alma Eickerman. Sterling Bracelet. Pg. 271.

Miye Matsukata. Cuff Bracelet. Pg. 274

These works have textures and varying levels that was really appealing to me. In my ceramic wheel work, texture is of great interest and importance.

Wharton Esherick. Staircase. Pg.171

This woodwork more than any other in Makers stood out for its organic qualities, something I try to feature in my ceramic sculptural work.

Lissa Hunter. Old Soul. Pg. 467

Rebekah Laski. Broach. Pg. 445

These pieces were appealing because of the way the framed objects of importance and had a quite narrative quality.

So with this new view on the work, and a desire to get away from the comfort of my preferred medium I decide to reinterpret the large painting of the Llano.  I wanted to incorporate the variety of levels found in Eickerman and Matsukatas work while borrowing the subtle aesthetic narrative of Hunter and Laski’s work. Lastly I wanted to work with wood, not only because of the Stella work and the Esherick piece in Markers, but because I have long wanted to try wood working at a creative level.

This is the piece that came out of all of these influences.

        

      

The image of the Llano is a reference to my time in Junction, how it has helped me grow as a person and a maker.

I hand forged the nail two summers ago, during a visit from a metal smith to Junction. I frequently used the head of the nail to press into my cups, bottles, and vases. I used a clear epoxy to affix it, with some level of apprehension. If I attached it permanently to the piece, I would no longer be able to use it in my pottery. I had another nail I forged that same summer but it wasn’t as well crafted. The temptation as to simply use this lesser quality nail, but I decided it was time to retire the original nail and move on.

The Rock below is a piece of flint I found near the river hunting for native american spear and arrow heads. It felt like a tiny version of a monolithic sculpture, like something Jun Kaneko would create. I like to collect small items like this from places and times of importance in my life. Sometimes I use them to press into clay, but last summer I toyed with the idea of building a display for them with clay. This is an extension of that concept.

When working with clay I will at times take bits of trimming or the clay you scrape off a bat after the pot has been wired off, then attach it to the piece it came off. I like the contrast of the smooth trimmed pot and the rough abandoned scrap. I found myself doing the same thing with my wood scraps. The vertical line of triangles that the nail sits on, as well as the small shelf the rock sits on, are all the scraps left over from the many miter cuts made during the creating of the piece. The red-orange vertical slats of scrap wood are the results of trimming and fitting the panels. I left a couple of the pencil measurement lines on these pieces to future reference process. Some are sanded smooth, some are left raw to reveal the texture, to show the ripping of the saw.

The 3 circles on the left side are a reference to the impression the nail head gives to leather hard clay. The three repetitions represent my daughter Grace, my wife Rebecca, and myself. In the past I have used this triad motif, but the change is size here is more a reflection on the phases of my life, of time and it’s affect on memory and even place. How the two are connected. The same for the slow gradient change of the orange-red scraps. I thought about how each time I went to Junction it was different, because I was different. A slow almost unnoticeable change, like the water of a river cutting away at the earth to form a canyon.

I left lots of raw wood unpainted and opted to forgo stain. The natural quality of the wood is something I wanted to keep, and even highlight in areas like the right side panel and the raised triangles. It is hard to see but there is a thin channel of coppers and golds, of Payne's grey and prussian blues between the raised river and the right side triangle and circle panel. I left this thin vein of the base board to have a section feel almost submerged, as if hiding under the other surfaces. The colors a nod to the fuming pieces I made in Junction with James. The glitter and gold with much owed to Beatrich Woods luster glazing pg. 203.

Overall I am happy with the piece, and I have really enjoyed working in this style melding my love of texture, process and natural beauty with painting and wood working. I am going to do more work like this in Fredricksburg when I take a painting class this summer. I was half dreading the idea of a Graduate level painting studio, but now I am full of excitement and anticipation.

As for things I need to work on. My craftsmanship. Not all of my miter cuts met up flush, you can see small gaps on some edges, especially the bottom left. I think a lot of that comes down to practice, experience, and possibly resources. I made all the cuts by hand, and hand sanded to make some things fit snug. A laser guided power miter saw will almost certainly be my birthday gift. I also want to invest in some quality hand planers, and a small table top belt sander.

 I welcome any and all comments and criticism. Thank you all for your time, post, responses, and insight this semester and I hope to see you in Lubbock and F-Burg in 4 short weeks!

Shelbi Reichenau Final Project: Self-Portrait

        I am a product of my experiences. I am created from a mixture of genetics, a blessed upbringing, and life experiences, I have become an artist. Like a recipe, many ingredients have played a part in my final product. I did not choose my family but was blessed with one filled with strong women. I did, however, choose my life-path. This path was influenced by my upbringing along with multiple factors. The people I have met along the way combined with my experiences, like Junction, have played a significant role in the person I am today and this art piece. This is my self-portrait. I will not go into detail about every piece of imagery found on these plates but what I will do is tell you more about the influence this class has had on creating this piece.

Born in Junction, these plates are the product of the last firing in the soda kiln at Junction. I cannot help but feel like these plates have a ceremonial feel about them beyond the typical creation. They are extremely special to me. They mark the end of an era and I might add the end of one of my favorite life chapters. When thinking about these plates I knew I wanted them to be plates to display rather than eat off of. The majority of my pottery is utilitarian and I have struggled with ways of incorporating my painting and photography into my artwork. These help accomplish those desires while still conveying the meaning I wanted. We saw in our book many ends to crafting eras. Programs that ended and couldn't continue on but the artwork from those programs lived on. I wanted the same for these plates.


When thinking of imagery I felt like I needed to have something special on these plates. I reflected. I thought a lot about myself as an artist, more specifically as a potter.  I felt like I needed to pay homage to Junction while turning these plates into a self-portrait piece. Junction has had a huge influence on who I became as an artist and person. I would have never even gone if it weren't for Future encouraging me to go in undergraduate. I met my love there, clay.  Along with Junction imagery, I wanted to highlight the other ingredients of my self-journey.


Much of my research in my MAE have been on feminism and it's role in pottery which is why I chose to focus on female figures in this self-portrait. All these women, family or not, have affected my artistic and personal development. I wanted to create a self-portrait without including images of myself. I felt like paying tribute to my past was the best way to show who I am in the present. We were asked in this class to think about how we would want to be represented in a book like we read. I would want my influences to be recognized while talking about who I am as a potter. The imagery is filled with the things I would want to be highlighted. You will see pictures of my grandmothers, mother, Future and my favorite artist Beatrice. These women were teachers and artists. All these women play specific and significant roles in the development of my artistic abilities. You will also see hand-written family recipes, glaze recipes written in Junction and a sketch I drew in front of the last wood firing in Junction. Everything that was layered on top of the photos was handwritten and scanned in from either my personal sketchbook or my families recipes. Recipes are something passed down from generation to generation whether they are for food or glaze. Recipes are important to me. Something I enjoyed learning about while taking this class is the massive amount of tradition involved in craft. The recipes symbolize my personal traditions along with the traditions I plan to continue.

I chose to display them with plate hangers because it speaks back to my upbringing in a house filled with antiques including plates hanging on the walls. Side story, my grandmother collected state plates from places she had visited. They were displayed in my house growing up and eventually passed on to me. Hanging plates as decor is nostalgic to me. This is her on the plate on the left. I made specific choices when placing each person on their plate. My Grandmother on the plate with all the soda ash was a very lively and colorful person. She would have loved the texture and colors on this plate while my other grandmother (the right) was more traditional therefore her plate is more conventional.

I feel like as a whole I am pleased with the final product and the overall outcome of this class. This piece is sentimental to me and was developed during a semester I had many personal struggles. This class along with my independent study have allowed me to reflect on my personal artistry. This class has also given me the chance to learn more about craft as a whole and where I fall in that world. I hope to carve myself out a place in the craft world while always remembering to thank the ones that came before me. I am who I am because of them.

A grown man cried tonight.

Catastrophe.  Of the highest. F#%*ing. Order.

My wife is asleep and it's too late to call anyone, so I'm going to vent to y'all instead.  I just ruined my project.  Over 100 hours of work...poof.  Like they never happened.  I was working with concrete, and a beautiful slab of black ash wood that I have been planing by hand, and sanding and chiseling for weeks.  There was a rupture.  It was bad.  And then it got worse.

 I'll post pictures as soon as I'm not too upset to think straight.  I know I can salvage some of it, but it won't be what I wanted, what I've been working towards for,weeks.  I feel like throwing a tantrum.  Thank you for listening.  Now, I'm going to bed.  To cry into my pillow.

P.s. I'm not really going to cry, but I thought about it.

Final Project: Michelle Guerra

Final Project:

Mixed Media/ Acrylic Paint on wrapped canvas

24"X36"

 (Final Project: 24"X36" Front View)

(Final Project: Close Up, Details)

(William Morris Wallpaper)

I was inspired by William Morris’s wallpapers.  When I think of old homes, particularly Victorian, I visualize these gorgeous facades that invite people in.  Inside, one could usually find that floral fills up the walls, making you feel like you’re in some beautiful garden. 

I love old homes, adore them and I dream having a gorgeous garden (even though I don’t have green thumbs!).  In the first chapter of Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, I remember being taken away by the background of Morris & Co. wallpaper.  William Morris was extremely exact and a perfectionist and was known for making his wallpapers with quality and craftsmanship.  He not only put color and pattern into peoples homes, he started this movement where aesthetics became very important when it came to the inside of your home.

 Print making is one of the most unforgiving processes I have ever experienced, so trying to figure out how would I create something influenced by his work, I thought outside and figured I would paint mixed media onto wrapped canvas. 

The first thing I did was finding an old canvas that I would recycle.  I then thought, what medium would I use that would create a repetitive floral pattern?  Lace kept popping into my head.  I dug up old laced material I fortunately already had in my room and carefully cut them into patterns and tried to fit and balance them onto the canvas till finally I was satisfied.   With the patterns in place, I then used acrylic gloss medium to paint onto canvas.  After a day of drying, I started to paint the background and slowly made my way into detailing.  I realized my mistake was painting after adding my lace and it took me way longer to paint around and get everything covered, leaving no white.  In the end it made me more focused and I learned to add shadow and highlights to my roses in painting, which was a real challenge because I don’t paint and if I draw, I almost never add any color! 

When hanging it up on my huge bare wall, I see that it adds some amazing color to the living room.