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content copyright 2012, Susan G Holland, all rights reserved.
Susan Holland, of ooothere.com, Silk Purse Products, Holland Art Studio, and other sites.
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"USE A CURRENT PHOTO!" This is recent advice from the ART GURUS at Fine Art Views online:
My friends at this excellent art forum tell me I must put a current photo up, eschewing any "mask", so that people will know what I really look like. Credit: This particular photo was cropped from one snapped by Connie Williams during a campout at Lake Kachess Campground in the Washington State Cascade Mountains. http://about.me/susangholland.artstudio |
Making firsts out of seconds.".a silk purse out of a sow's ear"...
NEWS!
Silk Purse Products
will be setting up the workshop in a nice little corner of Kirkland !
Hooray!
REGRETTABLY, AJ'S FRESH PRODUCE IS MOVING ON TOO...
SO my Silk Purse Items will no longer be available there in Hoodsport!
Stay posted to this site for news of a new vendor in the greater Shelton area.
WHAT THE WINTER DID TO US HERE IN HOODSPORT
BEFORE
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AFTER
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Poor Little Logo Piggie!
The Workshop is Moving away from the Capricious Forest.
ABOUT TIME TO SHOVE OFF
Red Dinghy oil, 8x10",
SGHolland,
Copyright 2011
Shilshole Marina
Packing up all kinds of things here in the beautiful forested corner of Washington State near Lake Cushman. It's a great opportunity to shuffle the deck, so to speak, find things buried that I thought I had lost, and resurrect paintings that ought to be showing on someone's walls. Moving is never easy-- not easy on the achy joints nor easy on the emotions. All the same it is always the beginning of something new and interesting, it seems to me. I am liking the clear spaces and the very neat stack of same-size boxes that contain, so far, a lot of books and one box that contains my very most precious fragile things I keep near me in my personal space here. The mold of my second daughter's four-year-old hand, and the surviving water goblet from my mother's dinner table. Things like that. The painting shown is a re-dux of one I made some time ago at Shilshole Marina in Seattle; the first version was in watercolor and belongs to a seafaring fellow who is my oldest friend. This smaller version was done alla prima with a combination of egg tempera and oils on board. It speaks to me of the small vulnerable but proud little craft which takes its place among the large vessels and has a special duty to do. That it is swamped with rain water and sloshing of wind driven waves doesn't deter it from being boldly and honestly red, and there, and ready!
This little boat owns its character, and I think it is a pretty close analogy of me at this stage. She is still willing to get going but with some weather showing from past journeys.
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This little boat owns its character, and I think it is a pretty close analogy of me at this stage. She is still willing to get going but with some weather showing from past journeys.
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FIRST DAY OF SPRING
V is for Victory. Today is not only the first day of Spring 2012, but it also would have been my father's ninety-ninth birthday!
He would have been very pleased with this V that I carved some five or six years ago as part of a series of Roman Numerals set into a tray (created by my woodworker son) to honor the twenty fifth wedding anniversary of my daughter and her husband.
My dad would also have had good encouragements for me as I dig my way out of snowpack and other issues to get back to work. It has been four months of uphill struggle here. I need the V in front of my face. It can stand for VERY, as well. Very steady...very positive, very cautious, very purposeful, very wise, very much forward and pro-active. Even if it's slow.
It snowed again this morning. And rain/snow mix. The wind is tossing those treetops around like big flexible brooms against the grey sky.
He would have been very pleased with this V that I carved some five or six years ago as part of a series of Roman Numerals set into a tray (created by my woodworker son) to honor the twenty fifth wedding anniversary of my daughter and her husband.
My dad would also have had good encouragements for me as I dig my way out of snowpack and other issues to get back to work. It has been four months of uphill struggle here. I need the V in front of my face. It can stand for VERY, as well. Very steady...very positive, very cautious, very purposeful, very wise, very much forward and pro-active. Even if it's slow.
It snowed again this morning. And rain/snow mix. The wind is tossing those treetops around like big flexible brooms against the grey sky.
The cat periodically holds his ears back to monitor sounds behind him and keeps his eyes peeled forward against intruders, even as he looks for could-be-prey awakening and testing out the hidey-places outside the door. He stays coiled, ready to flee or fight.
Everything and everybody seems to be looking to the days ahead with curiosity, caution, maybe a bit of fear, but with intentions to survive and triumph. I am packing up my stuff for what will be a move to a different world than this; it's a happy-sad thing, and I am not kidding myself about the amount of work it will be. I've moved, after all, three times already in the past four years. SIGH. It would be so nice to lie back in the sunshine and forget all about things for awhile. But...
Everything and everybody seems to be looking to the days ahead with curiosity, caution, maybe a bit of fear, but with intentions to survive and triumph. I am packing up my stuff for what will be a move to a different world than this; it's a happy-sad thing, and I am not kidding myself about the amount of work it will be. I've moved, after all, three times already in the past four years. SIGH. It would be so nice to lie back in the sunshine and forget all about things for awhile. But...
Beauty and the Beast.
Snow Melt at the Cabin.
This video will show what there is to love about this place, but also what is making me move elsewhere soon. An hour ago I took this video from the little porch of the cabin. Right now we are having more serious snowfall...not just the re-snow that happens when the canopy releases accumulated snow. It is going to snow again tonight, according to the weather advisory for this area. My car is parked about a quarter mile away near where they plow the roads. I will probably have to tote my cat down to the car in a pillowcase tucked inside my jacket to get to the car and head up to Seattle area where my grown kids live. That's where I will be looking seriously for my next lodging and work place. I have had plenty of beauty in the past year, but the beast part has worn out my patience.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it..
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That's my story, and I'm sticking to it..
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SAILING ON WITH OWL AND PUSSYCAT
IN THAT BEAUTIFUL PEA GREEN BOAT!
The show is over at the Civic Center and next week I will be picking up my work and bringing it back into circulation..
NOTE The Owl and the Pussycat are in my head, with sketches and ideas coming through. If you remember that the owl is nuts about the pussycat, you will know that they are on a pleasure trip with a nice jar of honey and at least one runcible spoon.
The work will run about $200 with Owl and Pussycat included.
NOTE The Owl and the Pussycat are in my head, with sketches and ideas coming through. If you remember that the owl is nuts about the pussycat, you will know that they are on a pleasure trip with a nice jar of honey and at least one runcible spoon.
The work will run about $200 with Owl and Pussycat included.
NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW
About the ARCHIVED DAILY NOTES PAGE
My main site has become invaded with daily groanings and sighs, talk about the weather and the cat, and ailments and moving plans. Spring cleaning sweeps out the winter dust. (link not active yet)
2012
PLANS AND PURPOSES
We have a brand new year! What will we do with it? There are some long-term moves being considered and some short-term projects afoot right now: Read on!
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more about Susan Holland
Paintings and Bowls On Exhibit at the Shelton Civic Center! Now through mid-February 2012! Come See!
Leather Handled Vase, a Silk Purse Product.
Turned wood with four piece leather handle.
Bamboo Boat, a Silk PUrse Product. Bamboo root carved and lined with an aubergine gloss finish.
THE PEA GREEN BOAT for The Owl and Pussycat, a Silk Purse Product. Mango wood carved vessel with carved and painted outside and magical irridescent inside. ( SEE LINK BELOW for Lear's poem.)
About Silk Purse Products:
The Items above are part of an ongoing business that uses "culls" (discards for reasons of irregularities, damage, discoloration, or otherwise unacceptable flaws) from a bowl business elsewhere. Susan Holland rescues these bowls and re-works them to make original art pieces. No pieces are the same-- all bear the history of their wood source and their peculiarities. It is an exciting challenge to integrate the "flaw" into the new piece as a feature! Susan sells these items in local shops and at the Shelton Farmer's Market in summer months. They are also available on Etsy.
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Feathers, a Silk Purse Product. Turned mango wood with carved and colored feather motif.
TORNADO, a Silk Purse Product. Turned mango wood with carved and painted storm motif and irridescent interior.
LEANING TREES, a Silk Purse Product. Turned mango wood with carved and painted exterior.
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LARGE HARLEQUIN ABSTRACT, Original Mixed Media Painting on archival paper.
WEEDS AND FROST, An original egg tempera and oil painting , small format
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THE WATERLINE AT POTLATCH, An original egg tempera and oil painting, small format
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The heat pump is chugging away and the cat is burrowing under the wool blankets in his bed. The whole effect calls for COLOR! Colors are running wild in the studio!
THE PIPELINE -new news
PAGES and DISCS .. new mango bowls.
I'm documenting some of the process hsitory of bowls on a little free website called Yola. Here's the "Pipeline" link. I like the website offering, by the way. Try it if you are interested in DIY web work.
http://susanhollandsworkshop.yolasite.com/
Fern Vase: The ferns grow where the wood is checked. There are three ferns on the repaired natural fissures in this vase.
This is available at AJ's Fresh Produce in Hoodsport for $60
MORE THAN TWICE RESCUED!
The spalted bowl that just didn't appeal.
The Rescue:
This upright bowl came from a piece of root wood that was speckled in the most unfortunate way by spalting. (This clearly was why we found it in the discard pile where I get my raw materials.)
When wood grows in moist soil it can accumulate plant fungus spores from the earth that produce green or brownish stains in the growing wood. Often people seek out spalted bole-wood, but this particular piece looked less beautiful than one would wish...actually the green streaks made it look dirty! Not what you would wish for in a bowl. No one did wish for this poor bowl. It was set out at various venues with our Silk Purse Products, and though it was perfectly sound and a great shape, no one liked it enough to buy it. So this week I grabbed it out of my collection and made a special project of making it into something really interesting. Hopefully others will find it as keepable as I do. At the right you will see what I call the Land Trees Stars Seas Bowl.. not quite done, so I'm daring to put ti up before I know it will keep its current state. But even if it doesn't, once neatened up and with a hard varnish finish to preserve it, it is lovely to look at just for the fun of how it was made. The search for the right colors to keep this earthy in nature, but also enjoy the remarkable natural wonders of stars, sea, earth and trees, took me to natural pigment aqueous suspensions from Rubelev. I augmented the blues and red tones with undersea green and some yellow tones. I mixed metallic elements in for shine. |
 Dremel grooves and wood burnt accents give the bowl texture and a design. The Minnesota pipestone color (earth) is perfect for the bottom-most facets of the carved shape.  Waxed with beeswax, the grooves were deepened with a carving tool, and a gritted bit used to make "millions" of stars in the inner "sky". The "sea" was in the wood...the beautiful grain asked to be ocean.  The trees whose trunks march around this bowl come into leaf on one side. This will be worked on some more with detail-- it is nice, but still not finished. Once I have made it "sing" I will put a good coat of varnish on this piece and a good price as well. |
Alas, I will not be at the Farmer's Market This Time Around.
BUT DEFINITELY GO THERE...IT'S WONDERFUL!!
Some nice features of the Shelton Farmer's Market
It's always fun when the four-goat team comes to the market pulling a wagon for kids to ride in. These gentle creatures are happy to do their many rounds for their able owner and handler.
The Color! The Yumminess! ORGANIC CARROTS!
Harvest Festival happened on September 1st this year. We enjoyed a day full of special events including the goat rides, a raffle every half hour and the wonderful Celtic/Aradian dulcimer and fiddle music I love so well.
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 The Flying Dog Farm sells pork and beef products and their mascot sports a fashionable hat! (Keep an eye out for a slicker hat when the rains come!) |
 Tom and Jesse of the Pedestrian Interference Band |
Carved "Shells" Can Go
All Kinds of Places!
This one is called "With The Grain, "for obvious reasons.
The grain sends repetitive incised marks in whirls and eddies all over the surface of this shallow dish.
Sometimes the grain leads me into a scene, like the trees shown below, and other times leads to fantasies. The process is rhythmic, like music or dance. Even the sound of the spinning bit is pleasant to my ear when I'm engrossed in finding the story in the wood.
The grain sends repetitive incised marks in whirls and eddies all over the surface of this shallow dish.
Sometimes the grain leads me into a scene, like the trees shown below, and other times leads to fantasies. The process is rhythmic, like music or dance. Even the sound of the spinning bit is pleasant to my ear when I'm engrossed in finding the story in the wood.
What to do with a graceful Camphor wood board with curved edges?
I have a stack of these in my newest group of finds at the
Silk Purse supply source.
Camphor has a distinct s sweet fragrance that keeps giving and giving. I am not excited about this for food prep, but it is a nice sort of fragrance to get wafts of from a closet. Like a toy closet or toy chest, maybe?
There's a birthday coming up. I applied my scroll saw to one of these boards and made a not very easy (i.e., adults will be challenged and the birthday honoree is not a kid any more) jigsaw puzzle! The puzzle is made difficult by lack of straight edges, lack of square corners, and I have purpsely mis- matched the finishes on each piece...on both sides!
Silk Purse supply source.
Camphor has a distinct s sweet fragrance that keeps giving and giving. I am not excited about this for food prep, but it is a nice sort of fragrance to get wafts of from a closet. Like a toy closet or toy chest, maybe?
There's a birthday coming up. I applied my scroll saw to one of these boards and made a not very easy (i.e., adults will be challenged and the birthday honoree is not a kid any more) jigsaw puzzle! The puzzle is made difficult by lack of straight edges, lack of square corners, and I have purpsely mis- matched the finishes on each piece...on both sides!
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My honoree will find this colorful side as confusing as the other one. Here it waits for varnish to dry. I used rubbed acrylic colors and added some dark accents and deepened the borders with a touch of brown or ochre to give an antique toy effect.
Meantime I am reworking the words on an old hinged wine gift box from Bordeaux to indicate vintage and ageing of the recipient instead of the wine! It's a family joke kind of gift, but would be a fun gift for any occasion. Anyone want a customized puzzle for a person who deserves something unique and treasureable? $95 will induce me to do it. :) |
 2 sided cypress puzzle
© Susan G Holland 2011
Collection of CE Moore, Kirkland, WA |
SOLD
Yew and Copper handled fir bowl with incising.
© Susan G Holland 2011
YEW HANDLE BOWL Newest item ready to display. Well, I will add two small brads to double secure the handle, but in the meantime, what you see here is what someone will get. The bowl has a copper wire looping through the chunk of local Washington State Yew wood and fitting into slots in teither side of the V shaped opening where a check used to be in the wood. thisi bowl inspired major surgery, and I am liking it very well now.
Wood burning accents the carved parts. This will be a lovely piece for someone. And someone is looking at it as I write!
Wood burning accents the carved parts. This will be a lovely piece for someone. And someone is looking at it as I write!
TRIBUTES TO SPECIAL PEOPLE
Jo, my patient and smart assistant as Silk Purse made its first ventures in 2010 into the public eye, is a true stand-by friend and a wonderful driving force for this business. Jo has moved on to her first love, gardening and landscape, and now lives in Whidbey Island (that lucky community!) May the sun shine and the rains fall in just the right order for this wonderful woman!
Jo, my willing and able Sales Rep in the Shelton, WA area for my first year of business. Dear to my heart and such an asset to Silk Purse Products
 SOLD incised turned fir vessel
© Susan G Holland, 2011 Spiral Mango Bowl with carved textureThe wood grain of a very exoticly marked vase leads to burned repetitive strokes setting off the ocean-like shapes.
Repetitive rocking strokes with a parting tool also move in a sort of swirling current in the Mango bowl at right, giving a sensual texture that takes the eye around the bowl., |
 SOLD Textured Mango Wood vessel © Susan G Holland 2011 SMOKE AND CHIPS
This is not about campfires. Or ranches. It's about the studio where new raw material is being pushed around with woodburners and chisels. (And masks and goggles.)
All around the workshop are ideas, with their beginnings sitting in them or on them..reminders to me of what I had thought I might do with them. Then, when napping or sleeping at night I suddenly have a great idea, and that is what makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and get to work. |
LABOR INTENSIVE is Worth It!
The Rutabaga Drum (in process)
© Susan G Holland 2011, and ff.
And so is experimental.
The construction you see at left is a work in progress...and has been for well over a year.What do you do with a fabulously marked vase that has a badly cracked neck and mouth? You cut its head off, I decided, and did just that. Wow...now I had a wonderful semi-hollow rutabaga. I found out things about the vases I have been rescuing from the discard pile from this globe shaped turning. The insides are really rough, and fibrous. The wood is not hard, but that makes it more difficult to carve and the knots of root wood make it complicated carving.What you see at left is what I look at when I wake up in the morning. It stands all stringy and weird on the speakers in a corner of my sleeping room (really not a whole bedroom, but that's another story), and makes me smile. Yes, it's unfinished (like a lot of stuff in my life) but it's so graceful and full of texture and mystery. The bottom is the "rutabaga" that I have hollowed out until it makes a nice sound. Then I smoothed off the top where I had cut off the vase's head, and drilled holes in it. Twelve holes.I then cut the bottom out of a root wood dish and fitted it into the top of my rutabaga.When I was sure it fit well enough, I soaked a piece of leather -- a nice springy one-- and stretched it across the top of the dish, clamping the overlaps to stretch it tight, and set it aside. When dry it made a rather nice drum sound, but there was plenty of stretch left in the leather, so I took an awl and needle and waxed linen thread and made drawstrings to tighten the re-dampened leather even tighter over the top of the dish. This process is more or less still going on! I had no idea how stretchy leather really is!But in the meantime the challenge rose up about connecting the drum head to the globe that was its sound box. Thongs. Yes, it does work, but the number of holes in the leather is not compatable with the twelve holes in the rutabaga. So that is where it is sitting right now, with a cattywompus arrangement that will make a drum sound if I hold it just right.What is that thing on top? I wish I could say it was a sound control flapper or such, but really it's only a mango wood bowl I particularly like, but which looks best when you view it from below. It seems happy up there on my drum head, and so my sculpture du jour for the time being...the three units together...sits there making me smile as I open or close my eyes in bed. Does anyone else like this? Never mind. The learning I have done, and the enjoyment I have had may be the best part of it, and I'm keeping it, and playing it now and then too!
Playing with Wood, Leather, Brass, and a Knot!
Leather and Brass on turned fir vase with driftwood stopper. © Susan G Holland 2011
What do you do with a vase with a large "check" in its side? A check is a natural crack that occurs as the wood is seasoning or being kiln dried.The crack is not going to get worse, and it asks for a glamor treatment! Leather and metal are lovely with the rich burly wood of a root. I am playing with layers of alternating "wings" moving down the crack, and have added smaller ones to tiny fissures on the other side of this vase. The fabulous knot came from a recent trip to Lake Kachess. With a matching leather stopper cushion, this will make a beautiful piece of art. I'm still working on this. I will make the pieces of leather larger and more sculptural. (for more on how my bowls are brought from "throwaways" to marketable products, go to WOOD in the menu to left.)
THE FINISHED "LEATHER FERNS WITH DRIFTWOOD STOPPER" VASE see it currently at AJ's in Hoodsport
Find a Chunk of Teak and Grab it! It's Big Foot!
BIG FOOT .. a reclaimed teakwood chunk made into a handsome vessel.12 x 15 x 2-1/2 inches in size, this piece shows off the royal grain of teak in its polished interior bowl. How handsome is that?
SOLD
SOLD
  SOLD
© Susan G Holland 2011 |
Contoured Mango Wood Vessel with Sea Motif
The bowl to the left was sold at the Shelton Market this summer. It hopefully is giving its owners some joy as it gave me while it was sitting in my own environment. The word SOLD is a good one. It's what sustains my workshop. I am grateful to the many people who have made my 2011 move forward positively, even in the face of a poor economy. I love that I can make affordable art for people. Artists never really get paid by the hour. And they often find that the nicest things they make are the result of a lot of time put into "false starts." What you see may be the second, third or fourth generation of an idea. With joy, I thank the people who keep loving what I make and who buy the work of my hands. Susan |
www.thebloghollandart.weeblyc |
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Plans ahead for small format alla prima paintings available framed or not.
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 Charcoal drawing : Joseph's Head
Coming up in a couple of months or sooner! |
A brief History
art began at age five and never stopped, and hollandART Studio has followed me wherever I go, including here to Shelton, WA. Economic downturns in the US spawned Silk Purse Products, to bring some employment opportunities. SGHolland Art Studio is for sharing of wealth learned in a lifetime of art making.
HIGH POINTS: GEORGE SCHOOL, Newtown PA (1956) ............. it changed my life enormously! TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, Philadelphia PA (1959) Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Arts, Elkins Park Campus - Walter Annenburg Competitive full tuition four year scholarship! ....the beginning of the rest of my art life, and still very much a part of who I am today. VALLEY FORGE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY (now part of Newtown Square Christian Academy), PA, where I headed up the art department and taught for five years. ... I learned that children are the most wonderful artists there are!  CELEBRATION, designed just for
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artist, truthteller, seeker, teacher, student, grandmother, friend, mom, and sharer of a big life full of wonderful schools, jobs, and amazing experiences.
 Credit: Photo by Den Patera, Issaquah, WA
my all time favorite POEM
I think this poem gives more information about me than I could write, simply because I have chosen it as my all time favorite. It is a gem by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS.
~.~ Pied Beauty GLORY be to God for dappled things-- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. contact form/guest list/ forum request
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All artwork images on these pages are copyright S.G.Holland, all rights reserved unless otherwise credited. Silk Purse logo design by Tim Sheppard , purchased and used by permission. 3 Americas design by Ansgard Thomson, used by permission.
