Hello there!
The Red Stone Art Blog has moved to a new home over at www.RedStoneArtStudio.com!
Eventually I will be moving all my posts on over to the new website, but as that's quite the endeavor, let's not hold our breath that I finish that job any time in the next year. ;)
A couple months ago I applied for a call to artists for the 75th birthday of the University of Iowa's mascot, Herky. 2024 marks the third round of statues - and this round will be creating 75 more sculptures! The first Herky on Parade sculptures were placed in 2004.
Unfortunately, I can't give many details until the public reveal of the new sculptures on May 1st, 2024. I'm not even allowed to share my design on paper. But I what can tell you is that I am one of the chosen artists for the project!
I'm keeping track a record of my time and taking progress shots (I forgot to do this while I was working on my lighthouse) so I can write a blog post later on giving all the details!
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I can also tell you that Herky is a big guy! He's taller than I am, although if I'm honest that's no great feat. He's about 6 feet tall and about 4 feet wide elbow-to-elbow.
I picked him up in our minivan, which turned out to be over 8 hours of driving. It was also two days after a 48-hour blizzard that covered the whole state in heaps of snow, coupled with sub-zero temperatures. The interstate looked like a warzone; in one quarter-mile I counted 13 vehicles in the ditch. Most of the wrecks were mangled up semi trucks. It was scary to see, even days later.
Herky and I finally made it home, and Jon was volun-told to help me bring the big man inside. When I was painting my lighthouse, I was able to just work in our garage (which was lucky, because I don't think the round bottom of the lighthouse would have fit through the door.) That wasn't going to be an option this time due to the cold temps, so Herky has to live in my studio for the next two months.
As you can see, Herky takes up most of the room. There's no door on my studio, as we love the daylight that streams in from the sliding glass doors that take up one whole wall of the room. I do have a short flexible gate though, as a psychological barrier to keep children out.
Anyway, every time I walk by, which is often because my studio is centrally located in our house, out of the corner of my eye I see Herky standing in there and it startles me! Even knowing that he's there, he still gets me. It's going to be a relief when he's finally finished and out of the house.
... And that pretty much covers what I'm allowed to say at this point. My girls love talking about Herky (yesterday they kept asking me if I was going to paint his butt.) They would be a lot more excited if I let them climb all over him, but I hope someday when they are older they will be proud of their mama for more than just toasters.
For (some) more information, you can follow Herky on Parade on Facebook, plus there is a website that details the project.
I had heard the name “Lee Shiney” for years
before I finally met him at an art event in Manning, IA. I had no idea he lived
so close, the school he lives in in Arcadia is less than 20 miles from Denison.
Yes, you read that right. Shiney lives in a school.
“As my wife and I have reached the point of retirement age, we jumped off the leap of faith cliff and bought the old school in Arcadia, Iowa to live and work in,” Shiney explained. I had hoped to get a tour of the school earlier this year, but alas life and previous engagements have gotten in the way! Sometime soon, though.
As far as Shiney’s artwork goes, he
hasn’t resigned himself to one medium.
“I’m kind of all over the place, and I don’t like to pick favorites,” he said. “I see things, rather, as dropping into a particular medium, or technique, or whatever, and focus on it, working through iterations, teasing out perceived failures and successes, approaching things with a kind of engineering mentality of breaking things and embracing mistakes until I feel like I’m making some kind of a breakthrough.”
“I really
like that I’m not pigeonholed into one signature style, and within all the
different categories of things I’ve made, I enjoy all the variations within
them,” he replied when I asked if he had a favorite piece. “Things I’ve
particularly liked: ‘Moiré Wheels,’ a kinetic sculpture of 50 interconnected
bicycle wheels that created a pulsing effect that exhibited at the Wichita Art
Museum 2008-2010.” Shiney also listed his “Sequence” pieces, which are a
sectional 60-foot long acrylic on reclaimed pallet lumber with an assist from a
turntable-driven pantograph;
his early “Automatic” series that he worked on over a number of years where he
experimented with slowly spinning canvases and different painting techniques;
and more recently his “Contrapuntalisms” that are encaustic-based collages with
photos and found objects.
Shiney doesn’t have any upcoming exhibitions at this point, and is instead focusing on creating work that makes him happy.
What is he working on
right now? “Designing/building some large rolling easels to hold 6x6 foot
unstretched canvases, and use these to make some really large-scale works.
There’s probably an 8x8 foot option in the future too… I figure that should get
me through the winter.”
“I just spent a few months with my photography roots, but working with iPhone images, manipulated with Affinity Photo, and inkjet printed on an old Epson wide format. Now, I’m taking a break from that and going back to acrylics, experimenting with fluid and pouring mediums, and also using Montana Gold spray acrylics.”
How does Shiney title his artwork, when it’s not necessarily made with an end subject in mind? “I’m laughing because it’s something I have perpetually stumbled on,” Shiney admitted. “I try to catalog everything with something like LS23-001 (2023, and work #1 of that year), etc. Beyond that I’ve used categories (Automatic 27), researched titles (The Moons Venus Should Have Had), and even something I called the S5 naming system where I found and printed off all the five-letter Scrabble words (this was years before Wordle, thank you) and randomly assigned names from the list, mostly to thumb my nose at convention. Nowadays, I pretty much stick to catalog numbers.”
“I really just enjoy
making things,” Shiney said, especially when it comes to “’making things that
make things.’ So I have a 2.1 meter turntable that I built years ago that is
still in use for large circle paintings, and several small ones. I make various
extensions and compasses and spray tools that are used for painting. I’ve built
motorized, computerized devices for dripping and moving paint.” He even has an
old Roomba vacuum cleaner that he’s used for random marker drawings! “Mine is a
long list of built and hacked things that help make art.”
What’s an issue or stumbling block you’ve encountered? “Oh, life? How does one try to create consistency, a work ethic, while (in the past, for me) working a job, or now where I’m essentially a maintenance man of a 15,000 square foot school building that we now live and work in? Being able to make art as one’s life mission, and making time to actually do that, is the real challenge.”
Any advice for artists just starting out? “Make art and show your best work,” Shiney said. “Be able to talk about what you do; do not hide behind some notion that ‘art should speak for itself.’ Don’t worry about having to have just the right materials and supplies, look for cheap or free alternatives. Study the masters, including the recent ones…they are giving you permission to do the things your friends and family will question. And creating means actually making something that someone can hold in their hands (thank you Sir Ken Robinson.)”
“One gets to be 70 and
it’s WTF, where did the time go? Where did the life go? If you want to make art
your priority, then do it. And literally shut out the naysayers. You will reach
a point (possibly in terror) where you realize there’s been a lot of water
under the bridge… Becoming what…late middle age??…has sharpened our focus on
what’s ahead. I also had cancer in 2001 which sort of set the stage for finally
focusing at least part of my time on art.”
To learn more about
Shiney’s artwork, check out his website at LeeShiney.com, or follow him on
Facebook and Instagram.
Disclaimer: I don’t know most of the details behind the art in this post. If anyone does know the name of the artist, title, really anything about these pieces, please let me know so I can give credit where it’s due!
There are a number of places that we expect to find art. We
definitely expect to find artwork in galleries and museums, duh, but where
else? How about graffiti on train cars and buildings? Yes, illegal artwork
still counts as artwork. There’s also public art sculptures – some towns and
cities even make a whole thing of it, like the lighthouses
in Storm Lake.
One of my little quirks is checking out the art in non-art places. You know, like the dentist’s office. Not a place you’d go to specifically look at art, but they have it there anyway. My dentist’s office has a bunch of photos of people and animals smiling big toothy grins. Go figure, right? Our hospital has a range of framed prints, from x-rays of flowers to some benign landscape paintings in calming, neutral colors. The artwork in the children’s hospital has framed prints of children’s artwork showing brightly colored rainbows and animals.
In the past year, I did a lot of traveling for my job to a number of banks. Midwestern banks, even, which sounds at first like the art equivalent of eating a bunch of saltine crackers with nothing to wash them down with. And me being me, I always tried to take a moment to take a glance at what they had on their walls. The majority of the art was what you would expect bank art to be: framed geometric prints, probably purchased at a big box store, neutral and metallic colors, yadda yadda yadda. Second most common were “artist-enhanced prints” which are prints that a real person added a few select globs of paint to.
But every so often I’d come across some real gems, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. Like the one above, which was huge and beautiful! I’d like to point out here that my friend Kelli (host of the Moms Who Create Podcast) is 100% convinced that I hate abstract art, all because I don’t like Jackson Pollock’s artwork (for the record, I still defend it as art.) This piece though, this piece really spoke to me. I had a few minutes to wait that day, so I got up close and personal. It was real art! Not a reproduction, but a real canvas covered in paint by an artist’s hand and brush! Just look at those colors!
Another segue here, but hands down the worst part about looking at the art in non-art places is they don’t label the pieces! I try to make a note of any signatures I can find on the pieces, but more often than not there’s nothing there to go on, and the employees don’t always know the story either. What I wouldn’t give for a little printed card to tell me who, what, when, and why!
I was pretty excited about finding these because it was an entire series of around a dozen black and white drawings by artist Joanne Burgeson! They are matted and framed, roughly 10”x8” each. The subjects are different historic buildings from the town, beautifully rendered in ink. What a perfect series to have on display in a local business!
This piece was a happy surprise in a tiny bathroom, and the first painting I had seen while traveling for work that really made me stop and pay attention while I was out and about. I think the signature says “hagstrand”, but it could be “haqstrand”. I did ask the manager what the story was behind the piece, and she had no idea. I told her if they were ever going to get rid of it, I’d like first dibs. Upon first glance, this piece is a clean design of some trees, right? Absolutely. But when I looked closer, there are so many subtle colors, lines, and textures used.
And just for fun, let’s also give a special shout-out to the
orange wallpaper also living in that tiny bathroom. 😉
There is a special exhibition this year at Reiman Gardens in Ames, IA. Glass in Flight consists of 19 sculptures by Alex Heveri and will remain on display until October 8, 2023. Heveri, a sculpture artist from Arizona, has been working with steel and Dalle de Verre glass for over 25 years. "Dalle de Verre" is French, meaning "glass slab." It is a medium similar to stained glass, but the key difference is the thickness of the glass. Stained glass is usually thin, the same thickness as a window pane, while Dalle de Verre is made from thick chunks which produces deeper colors in the art. You can easily see (both in person and in photos) that the edges of the glass in Heveri's series have been chipped - this technique increases the refraction of light through the sculptures.
This was my first trip to Reiman Gardens, and it would have been a wholly delightful experience had we not been under a heat advisory that day! Regardless, our family had a wonderful, albeit sweaty, time there.
The first stop was, of course, the butterfly wing. My girls thought it was a magical place, and couldn't believe how many butterflies were there! The butterfly exhibit has hundreds of butterflies, from 80 different species! I'll admit I've never seen butterflies before that actually looked happy as they flew in and out of the foliage! However, these were not the butterflies that I was looking for.
As soon as we stepped out of the building, we were greeted by blistering heat - I mean, sculptures within the landscape. To my pleasant surprise, not all of the sculptures in the Gardens were a part of Heveri's Glass in Flight!
This stainless steel sculpture by Tom Riefe reminds me of a burst of flames! But the geometric and symmetrical design also reflects patterns found in nature, which is appropriate for the Gardens.
I didn’t take photos of every single piece Heveri has at the Gardens, as ideally you dear readers will get the chance to see them yourselves! The first one I photographed is “Blue Dasher,” a beautiful royal blue dragonfly with clear wingtips. I love that the stand is also a part of the art, resembling a segmented reed or bamboo.
Continuing along the path, we came to a drool-worthy herb garden (pun fully intended.) It’s been a dream of mine to have a small herb garden, and while I did keep an oregano plant alive in a pot for three years, the most I ever do with herb plants is lovingly smell them a few times a week (shout out to Jon, who does 99.99% of the cooking in our home.) Maybe someday, because this herb garden at Reiman was beautiful, aromatic, and huge!
Past the herb garden, we found twin “Pink Amethyst” butterflies. The butterflies were unique among the Glass in Flight sculptures in that their wings weren’t made from glass mosaics but huge slabs of stone! I knew amethyst came in a whole rainbow-range of colors, but according to the plaque for these two sculptures, there are no pink butterflies! How fascinating!
We found multiple pieces like this embedded in the foliage. They didn’t have informational plaques, so I don’t know who to give credit to. Within each larger “frame” were a group of smaller frames with a variety of dried leaves pressed and preserved between panes of glass. An odd little display, but worthy of mention regardless.
The next three pieces were my favorites – this one, “Tailed Jay,” is a lovely emerald-colored butterfly. It has a twisting metal base, with multiple swirling lines and small colorful glass accents. I took a picture from underneath to really express how fun this one is. It can’t be easy to create the flight of a butterfly in metal, but Heveri found a way.
This lovely archway is my other favorite of Heveri’s sculptures in the Glass in Flight series! While I personally have an irrational fear of stinging insects, I know how essential they are to our ecosystems – and how endangered they are, too! This rust-colored arc is composed of many hexagons; some open, some filled with weathered metal, and others filled with amber-colored glass. 3-Dimensional bees with transparent yellow bodies are swarmed all over the archway. A fitting tribute to honeycomb!
Another beautiful piece of art, the third favorite of mine, is a small cherry (I think they are supposed to be cherries, at least) tree made of silverware. The name at the base says “Dale Lewis,” but that’s all I know about it. The sculptor used spoons for leaves, and wrapped fork tines around to hold the “berries.”
Heveri’s sculptures aren’t limited to just dragonflies and
butterflies; this one is a Yellow Stag Beetle! It’s found in the middle of a
feast of mulch and branches, which is exactly what real yellow stag beetles
eat!
At the far end, right next to the Gardens’ iconic hexagonal wood
tower, is the colorful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Bright yellow, blue, and
orange stand out next to the clear and stark black stripes. An excellent
example of dalle de verre, it’s well worth the trek back to see.
It pains me to stop here without mentioning so many, many other
cool artistic features and artworks we saw at the Reiman Gardens that day; from
trained-into-arches trees, farm animals made of peat with flowers for bodies, a
giant gnome, to vine-like handrails and so much more! These gardens in Ames
were absolutely worth the sweat-soaked clothes I had at the end of our trip. I’d
really like to come back in other seasons to see the different displays.
Heveri’s Glass in Flight exhibition will be on display until
October 8th, 2023. I hope you take the time to see it before it
leaves Ames! To learn more about what’s going on at Reiman Gardens, you can
find them on Facebook plus their website www.ReimanGardens.com
is packed full of information.
