Brigid's Reeds

Right about this time every year, I am just getting recovered from the school year, and starting to break into my summer routine. I am looking forward to a patch of days a little more relaxed, and a little less hectic, than when I am racing to and from Providence and keeping up with all that school and a large art room packed full of kids and supplies entails. I closed the door to that room on Friday night with a large sigh of relief, most things clean and put away, mostly organized for the Fall...and went immediately home to sleep for 12 hours.

This is typical.

The renewal started, quite magically,  this weekend.

Sunday morning found me and Steve out by the side of the highway cutting reeds from the drainage ditches where they flourish for all my summer Brigid Cross making.  Steve snapped these photos, and I just love them.  I am soaked in gorgeous green.

It was a perfect June morning, soft and cool. and, as we pulled away from the gathering spot, a big red-tail hawk swooped right in front of the car, delighting us with her power, offering a great show of her beautiful tail. It was like receiving a blessing. 

These reeds are actually called 'soft rushes' and are a smaller relative of bullrushes. They are an invasive species in southern Rhode Island. In a week or two, the highway grass cutter-types (in Ireland, the 'hedgers' would be out) will trim these reeds right down to nothing and I would have lost my chance to cut them with their dear little blossoms still intact.

 These particular plants get nice and fat in this sunny roadside location.

In Ireland, the rushes grow in all sorts of boggy areas nearly everywhere, are a bit stouter- and would have grown up and bloomed before now!  Traditionally they would be used for bedding, sometimes to thatch the old-style cottages, and of course for Brigid Crosses; the very first rushes up in the earliest stirring of Spring would be used to make them on Feb. 1. The only place I've seen soft rushes grow the same way is in some boggy spots out on Block Island.  Last March, out for a St. Patricks' Day ceili, Sorrel Devine and I cut some while on a morning walk on the west side of the island. The rushes were well grown, even that early in the Spring.

The little blossoms, usually trimmed away,  I include with my crosses, my own signature touch.  I'll be hosting a couple of walk-in classes in Brigid Cross making at the Catskills Irish Arts Week and at Goderich, Ontario's Celtic College this summer. You can find my Brigid Crosses at LauraTravisCarving on Etsy.com.

soaking rushes in hot water to make Brigid Crosses

Technology and Stone Carving

In my efforts to up my game these days, I have taken on a RISD CE certificate course in Digital Video and am wending my way through the second class of the trajectory- The Art of Making Movies.

It's an enthusiastic and younger teacher and group. I'm only worried I can't really drive back and forth to Providence to spend days and hours collaborating on projects. Fortunately, I have been given permission to use my own camera, a Canon ZR 800, as long as I can set it manually- possible, but only up to a point.  I'm bringing it to class tonight, but not after having to shoot the first assignment! It's a one minute story edited in camera.

I decided to shoot based on getting up in the morning and going to my studio.

Here's the rough take:

Shaping the Summer

A couple hours of video yesterday for the upcoming Networks RI events. I am delighted to discover that there will be a showing November 6 at RISD's Metcalf Auditorium in Providence of all the artists' documentary videos.  Richard Goulis is shooting ALL of them this year. I marvel at his ability to remember things we said earlier, left off at, as we work out the remaining footage for him to edit into the finished piece about me. 

He filmed me whacking away at a larger slab and creating a rubbing on cloth. The hammer was too loud and drowned out my voice. 

I am looking forward to seeing the other artists' videos at least as much as my own! 

I updated all my on line stuff today, starting with my own web site, trying to be a good little internet-savvy art person. I've got all my summer classes lined up; one next weekend, May 21-22, at North Kingstown Rec Center, soapstone carving, pretty much all adults I guess, and a nice, small group. Only my second time with this organization, so very much looking forward to it- and it is nearly sold out already. 

The Blackstone River Theatre relief carving class is next up, June 25-26, with the newly reminted Blackstone River Theatre Summer Solstice Festival slated for the weekend before. (I'll be setting up a little spot there, but mostly will be helping around the stages.) I love working outdoors in The Grove, where I was able to install four figures and a slab sculpture over ten years ago now. There's always lively discussions and enjoyable personalities on hand for this class. Lots more on all their classes and activities at riverfolk.org.

I'll be trying to get lots of works done in the studio between the BRT class and the following road trip, which is always a real hum-dinger. The Catskills Irish Arts Week, July 10-16 is a huge undertaking involving over 300 students and 50 or so instructors, and I am going to do a relief carving class mornings, AND help out running the stage every night (!) It's a do- not -miss gathering for those devoted to Irish traditional music and dance, and I will greet many long-time friends there and have an intensely enjoyable if exhausting week.

A couple weeks later I am off to Canada to teach relief carving and Brigid Cross making at  the Celtic College and to show at the Celtic Roots Festival, to convene with my multiple friends, colleagues and fellow artifact-obsessed artist pals, hear some great music, enjoy some dedicated students and swim in Lake Huron!  Wanna go? Check it out here: www.celticfestival.ca . 

large work created by students and myself for The Celtic Roots Festival site

gathering limestone pebbles on the beach at the lake

Big Table

Here's Alan Bradbury delivering my new (old) table he helped me salvage from the trash at Hope High School. I've installed it in my studio and slapped some stone slabs on it, trying out new rubbings on cloth, and just generally kicking it into gear....and high time too...only a few weeks until the summer season rocks into play!