Make-Your-Own-Radium-Girl Collages and their Makers!

The January 24th Gallery Crawl at Future Tenant yielded some fantastic collages and art by visitors. Here are a few examples, and some photos with the Make-Your-Own-Radium-Girl creators!

Check out the next image for what's really inside this girl's head....

First batch of pictures from Gallery Crawl at Future Tenant!

Part of the first table, with information about me and
Hannah Höch, the inspiration for "Make Your Own Radium
Girl" activity!

Michael snapped a picture of me at the activity table before the gallery
opened.

My Mom makes her own radium girl here!

Caught the awesome producer JakeisRain in action as
he mixes music.

The excellent C Street Brass performed live in conjunction
with JakeisRain (you can see him ducking down to adjust
an amplifier.

Folks working at the Radium Girl table...and a great crowd for the music!

Folks, working on radium girl collages, filled
all the tables.

The man with the baseball cap (center) also made a radium girl, and later
asked me to "pull his finger," when a sequin stuck on it. :-)

Michael, looking very handsome, at Gallery Crawl

The Radium Girl installation by night!

Stay tuned for images of visitors' Radium Girl collages! They'll come in the next post!

Radium Girls Exhibition at Future Tenant Gallery, Pittsburgh!

Hooray!! You've seen me talking about it for months as I completed pieces for the show. Now, the "Radium Girls" window installation is now on view at the awesome Future Tenant Gallery! It will be on display from January 14th through January 25th at Future Tenant, 819 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On January 24th, it will be part of Gallery Crawl, and I'll be doing a Make Your Own Radium Girl collage demonstration, using the works of German Dada artist Hannah Höch as a guide.

Below are some pictures I took of the installation process. Thankfully, Michael was able to come with me. He made the armature on which the pictures hang. I couldn't have done it without him!

Just arrived and moved the table into the space.

Unpacking all our goodies....

Taking the bubble wrap off the ladies here....

Newspaper clippings and graphic novel text are up! Time to set the table....

Masks are up, radium-colored cloth distributed, green rope light stretched, teeth scattered across cloth, and
explanatory text is in front. Michael is putting together the armature. Hey, nice shadow, Savannah.

The Radium Girls banner is up, and Michael is putting the numbered drawings on
the armature with wire ties.

Another in-progress shot....some of the masks look a little distorted here for some reason.

Before we added the black curtain in the back.....the graphic novel pages are in the front
window now, too.

From the side.....

With the black curtain! All done!

And a 3/4 shot of the window.

Frost on the inside of our windows....

Believe it or not, we have frost on the inside of our windows this morning. In fact, it's 9 below 0 and has been all morning. Tonight, by 9 p.m., we'll get up to 8 degrees, but that's it! I dig me some winter (it's my favorite season of the year). But this cold is a little too bitter for me.

Frost inside my kitchen window, just above the sink. Every window in
the house is like this!

Also, in addition to the half-dozen other projects I'm working on, I've started this. I have a vague idea of where it's going. Still steering to get there.

The Women in Water Painting Progresses!

Remember painting with the red sky? You can see it again here:
http://american-soma.blogspot.com/2014/01/happy-new-year.html

She's getting a series of underpainted layers, as shown here...

....and here....

A shot of the entire studio right now....

The armature for the exhibition and ....

Today, Michael built me an armature for the drawings that will appear as part of the
Radium Girls installation, which will be on view at Pittsburgh's Future Tenant Gallery
(819 Penn Avenue) starting January 14th. The top will hold the banner (below)--which is
slated to arrive tomorrow--while the bottom-most rungs will secure the
12 drawings that will narrate the very basics of the Radium Girls story....here,
we've just spray painted the PVC pipe a satin black....

The framed drawings that will be secured on the armature Michael built for me.

And the awesome Radium Girls banner I made at Vistaprint. It's supposed to
arrive tomorrow. And it's so much more beautiful than my own sad,
sad lettering attempts.

Happy New Year!

Underpainting has been started on the new Women in Water painting!
What, a red sky? No, no....it's just the underpainting for the sky. You'll see,
I promise!

Teeth sculpted out of polymer clay and covered in glow-in-the-dark paint,
all for the Radium Girls installation, which opens on January 14th at
Future Tenant Gallery in Pittsburgh!