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.

It’s actually been over a week since my last post and a lot has taken place since then.  Probably most important among the changes, I’ve rename the project from “Of fence” to “Trellises.”  When I first conceived this venture, I was looking at the three pieces to be grouped and moved together as “a sort of fence.”  As I began constructing the three trellises, however, I came to see them less as a connected unit and more as individual entities that need to move on their own.  Hence, the fence has ceased to exist and the trellises have emerged.

Another reason for the renaming:  a trellis is usually a free-standing structure which supports fruit trees or upon which vining plants climb.  Not only are the trellises I’ve constructed meant to stand on their own (at least I hope they do, literally and figuratively), but they are also the structures which will support my painted canvases (the fruit of my creativity?).  Additionally, trellis is an appropriate title since I am erecting three structures and the word trellis derives from the Latin trilix which is a shortening of tri- (three) and licium (to warp thread).  Some parts of the three trellises have been bent or warped, so I’m honoring the spirit of the word.

Other things that have taken place:

• The trellises have received an initial coat of paint (except for the copper tubing, which I will help to acquire a patina).  Additional banding will be added in the palette I will be using for the canvases.  I’ve chosen the palette from the paint I’ve wiped on a t-shirt I’ve used in some of my other art.  Here’s a cropped scan of the t-shirt.

• The grid has been devised.  I started with the aerial photo from the Johnson County appraiser, did an outline of the house and trees and then added 5’ x 5’ segments in the major areas of the yard.  Originally, I was going to grid the yard in 4’ x 4’ segments and locate the trellises using the corners of the these squares as the beginning points.  When I decided to treat each trellis as an independent actor, I reconsidered how to site them.  Unless I find that this regimen does not work, I’m still going to use a random number table to find the squares (numbered from 1 to 28) where the trellises will be erected.  For the orientation, I’m going to spin a compass and see which way it points.  So if it’s showing SSW, the trellis will be sited within the square pointing south-southwest.

• The front yard has been laid out for the grid. 

• Canvas panels have been cut.  The edges of these will be sewn to keep them from fraying and grommets will be attached.  I’m taking Suzanne’s sewing machine to the Singer store today to see if they can unlock the case.  The sewing machine is probably sixty years old and in one of our recent moves, the key, which was attached to the handle by a cord, was lost.  The keyhole is a round opening with a square slot into which the key fits.  I tried opening it with a variety of Allen wrenches and a file with a square end, but to no avail.  The trip to the Singer store is imminent.