Here are a few photos of what happens to painted canvas when it is subjected to wetter than normal/cooler than normal summer weather.  Also, an addition of a spiderweb that fits just fine.

All three trellises have finally been assembled.  Here are photos of the completed structures.

Tomorrow is the day to move the trellises to their new positions.  I’ll post photos of those views.

The other day, Suzanne and her mother and I spent the afternoon at the Nelson-Adkins Museum.  At one point, I was looking at the big Franz Kline the NA has in its new Bloch wing and my mother-in-law asked me what I saw in the painting.  Now, these days, mostly what I look at is technique.  How did the artist create the image?  How did she apply the paint?  What sort of brush-strokes did he use?  Did she change her mind about parts of the canvas?

I pointed out to my mother-in-law a couple of area of the Kline that looked like they had been painted over, white-over-black, and I showed her which brush stroked looked like they had been applied first and which one were done later.  I don’t know if Kline considered some of the over-painted areas as mistakes or simply a change in direction, but I know that occasionally, I make a mistake in my art.  For example, I made a big one right off the bat in siting my Trellises.

My plan for locating the three trellises was to use a grid of my front yard divided into 28 5′ x 5′ squares.  On paper, it looked correct, but when I developed the grid on the ground, I used 10′ x 10′ squares instead of 5′ x 5′ squares.  So, my first trellis was ten feet off.  I realized what I had done when I started to site the second trellis, but I made the decision to leave the first one in the wrong spot; after all, I am nothing if not flexible with this project and it will make the flower/bulb/shrub beds in that area a bit more serendipitous.

Here are some photos of the trellises in situ.  Click on a photo for a larger view.

I’ll have more photos of canvases installed in a few days.

I promised to show some photos of my progress in getting the canvases painted.  Here are a few shots of the process.

I first prepared the canvases by covering them with gesso and then began painting.  I’m using my dogs’ room since it has a nice linoleum floor that cleans up well and they don’t seem to mind having their space intruded upon.

After I completed one of the canvases, I tried sewing the end together on the machine, but as I indicated in an earlier post, I ran into a problem with the thickness of the material.  So, I’m stitching them by hand at this point.  After the sewing is completed, I add grommets at the corners to attach the canvas to the trellis.

The three trellises have been installed, though without much canvas.  I’ll be adding the canvases over the next several days.  The problem with the sewing machine slowed me down.  But the three structures went up today; I’ll have photos tomorrow.  It was exciting to actually do the siting of the pieces, calculating the square locations and finding the orientation.

I’ve been painting a lot over the last few days.  Listening to Phillip Glass and John Adams has put me in a Rothkovian mood, with a little Franz Kline and Alexander Calder thrown in.  I took some time the other day to do some reading…  a short biography of Alexander Calder.  He’s long been a favorite of mine.  Back in the 70s, I bought a signed-in-plate print of one of his pieces for $60 from American Express, of all places.  I recently saw the same piece offered on eBay for $850.

Last night, I started to finish off one of the canvases I completed on Monday.  I stuffed it with plastic grocery bags and tried to sew it closed, but the four layers of canvas were too much for the sewing machine and the needle bent and broke.  I suppose the fact that it was probably at least forty years old had something to do with it.  I went to a fabric store today and bought three heavy duty needles, manufactured for denim and canvas, so we’ll see how they do.

I’m going to be installing the trellises tomorrow, with a few of my canvas panels.  I spent some time putting together a table with the randomly-selected squares in the grid and will do the orientation selection for all of them later on today.  There are fourteen weeks between now and the end of the project.  I’ll be moving the trellises every two weeks.  There are 28 squares in my grid and with a total of 21 locations for the three trellises, so the odds of some repeats were pretty high.  As it turns out, seven of the 28 squares will be used twice.

Tomorrow, I should have some photos to include of the trellises in place.