Scope of Project: What the Heck Was I Thinking?

After talking with a lot of people and looking deeper into each process, I’m beginning to narrow the scope of this project. Here’s what I’ve got so far (subject to change, but trying to keep it as pure as possible):

Documentation:

Documentation is considered outside of the core art project. I simply don’t have time to make a computer, digital camera or camcorder from scratch!! I’ll barley have time to make the painting and all the tools that lead up to the painting.

Information Gathering:

I can use any means to gather information. There’s experimentation, talking with subject matter experts, books and the internet. I know I’ll enjoy experimentation and talking with experts most, and I’m going to try to lean towards those whenever I can. I’m not trying to go through every stage of human technological development on my own with no help. That would take well over the rest of my life!

Proof of Concept:

To make best use of my time, tests can use modern equipment. If the test result works with modern equipment, I will then do the same technique from scratch to arrive at similar results. Examples: using a mortar and pestle to crush soil into a fine powder (perhaps later done with a hip joint from a deer or maybe two stones) glass jars and bowls to mix materials. It looks like I might have to get into pottery before this project is over. Finding fire able clay will be a challenge…

Location of Raw Goods

I’m going to try to make everything from my local environment, primarily from the property where I live, and my parent’s property in Oregon. For items unavailable in either location, the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia) will be my maximum area to find the items.

Bartering

For items that I cannot create from scratch within five years, it’s OK for me to barter goods or services with others in my community. A good example would be walnuts. It would take me longer than five years to grow a walnut tree and be able to harvest its walnuts.

However, I could barter what is growing on my property now for walnuts. I’ll have plenty of apples and plums come mid summer.

Metal

Smelting is a major technological advance that we’ve made as a race. Primitive smelting is also very hazardous, as the process releases arsenic and other poisons into the air. I’m not going to pollute my parent’s property, or poison my family for this art project, so I won’t do any smelting. So, I’ll try to barter for scrap metal that I’ll rework into tools, loom parts, nails, wire, etc…

Community Involvement
Right now, I’m growing flax on my parent’s property. It’s not like I drive down there every few days to water it. Some processes are going to take many hands to build (like if I decide to make my own kiln, or create my own blacksmithing shop) So, some parts of the project are going to be community based, but I’m still going to try to do as much as possible on my own. As my wife keeps saying “You’re really trying to find the hardest way to do this aren’t you?” My reply: “Well, yes, otherwise what would be the point?”

Quick Update

I've been back from the visit to my parent's new property for a while, and have a whole lot to talk about! So much, in fact, that it's a lot more than one entry. So, for at least the next couple of months, expect a new blog posting weekly by Sunday night. In the meantime, I'll tide you over with links to places that I've visited that directly relate to this project.

K's Nursery
M Graham Paints
Squaxin Island Tribe Museum, Library and Research Center
Fibrefest International 2007 Convention
Wild Rose Fibres

More on each of these places later!

What's For Dinner?

Check out this transfer! I think it looks like a gopher with a peanut in his mouth. Alyssa thinks it looks like a deep sea fish with glowing lure thingy in front of his head. It was made by putting typing paper onto Alyssa’s finished plate of beets and balsamic vinaigrette. Not exactly 100% part of the art project, but thought it was worth a post.

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First Pigment Test

I really, really need to get in touch with local First Nations (Canada) and Native American tribes (US) in the Vancouver and Multnomah areas. Not only do they have a huge depth of knowledge and experience in creating pigments and art, they’ve been doing it for generations using things that occur naturally in the area I’m doing my work.

In the meantime, I’ve tried a few things on my own. Lightfastness is an issue (how resistant paint is to fading over time). I may decide that a few years will be sufficient if I want an expanded palate, otherwise I’ll probably be restricted to earth tones.

By the way, I used M. Graham walnut oil in these tests, which worked out really well. I may end up planting my own walnut tree for the medium!

Leftmost: this is soil I collected from my shoes from a recent visit to my parent’s land. This is the red clay that I hope will be usable as a pigment. However, it got mixed with dust and soil from my basement. Its consistency looks like poo. I got a better collection from Alyssa’s shoes on the right, and it looks a little better. I need to think about how to strain out impurities for more consistency.

Sawdust: This dust collected from the sanding of the wood blocks I made for Ravenna. It’s Tupelo, a nearly white wood. Not only does it not grow lpcally, it makes a terrible pigment. The only use I could see for this would be as a paint extender and drying retarder. It took about a month to dry, compared to a few days for everything else.

Blueberry Pie Juice: Alyssa was cooking, and I stole some of the pie juice! It’s pretty much sugar and blueberries. It worked out pretty well, when used without walnut oil. Only concern here is fading over time.

Beet Juice: This also worked out pretty well, but did not blend at all with oil. Probably that whole “water & oil does not mix” thing. There may be other ways for me to get this color in oil. Beet powder perhaps.

Turmeric: Looks like baby poo. If I can strain out the particles, I may get a decent result.

Rosemary & Cinnamon: Not worth the effort.

OK, back to the drawing board!

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Peanut Butter!

So, I’ve had this idea kicking around in my brain since early college, but have been putting it off until now. It came from a discussion an economics teacher had with us; what’s does it take to make a jar of peanut butter?

OK, when you go to the store, and plunk down under $4 for a jar of peanut butter, you really don’t think much about it. It’s pretty much like anything else you pay for. It’s easy to find, and pretty much looks and tastes the same as the last time you got it (you know, homogenous). Let’s keep this simple and presume we’re talking about all natural peanut butter (my favorite is Adams. I’m not getting any sponsorship for this project yet, but if I did, it should be from Smucker’s Inc. My motto: “You can’t sell out if you’ve never bought in!” Now where’s my free jar of Adams?)

Anyway, let’s figure out where all the stuff that makes up a jar of peanut butter comes from:

COMPONENT PARTS OF A JAR OF PEANUT BUTTER
Peanuts:
From farms, mostly in the South East region of the US. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina. I just found out on the internet that unlike other nuts, this one is not grown on trees. It comes from a little plant that has flowers on it. Cute.

Jar: Ok, obviously it’s mostly glass, but that’s not all.

Label: It’s got a sticky side, a paper-like substance and ink.

Lid: Metal, a rubber inner seal, some sort of anodized coating on the inside, Paint on the outside, with a lovely logo (some sort of offset printing technique, I’m guessing)

That’s about as far as the discussion went in class. But thinking about it, I realized it didn’t stop there:

Not including all the transportation to get all these items into the peanut butter factory and then onto the shelves of your local store, we’ve covered the basics of the component parts. So, how do you make each part?

ONE STEP BACK

Peanuts: Grown

Water irrigation

Soil , fertilizers and/or pesticides often used (natural or otherwise). Soil maintenance, (tiling, cover crops in the winter, all sorts of things)

Harvest, via manual labor or big huge gas powered machines.

Glass: Made from silicon dioxide (sand) and other materials at a high heat in a big industrial factory.

Glue: gelatin (from horse hooves or synthetic sources)

Paper: Trees, hemp (outside of the US anyway), or other things that you can get cellulose out of.

Ink: All sorts of recipes, but dye based inks include solvents. Oh boy.

Metal: Smelted from ore, or recycled from other metal products, again, in huge industrial factories that I tend to drive by on the highways, but never actually get to visit. (I’d love to tour these places)

Paint: Binder, Dilutant, and additives. Binders can be anything from natural oils to epoxies. Dilutants include water, alcohols, ketones, and petroleum distillates. Additives include pigments or dyes as well as thickeners, stabilizers, etc.

TWO STEPS BACK

Hey, this project is about making a painting from scratch, not peanut butter! But, you could say building those tools (tractors, factories, logging trucks, etc) would be a step back. If you keep going back far enough, I believe that nearly everything we do these days derives back to smelting ore, harnessing oil (into fuel, plastics, etc), and creating fabric. No wonder oil companies are so rich! Of course, this does worry me about what’s going to happen we’ll eventually run out of oil…

BACK TO THE PAINTING

So, one idea behind this project is to connect all the processes that are behind a finished item that we take for granted, and consciously realize them. What does it take to truly be independent? What is the best art I can produce when I do everything myself? Actually, scratch that, I don’t think I will be able to do everything myself. I’m planning on restricting the bulk of the materials to come from a small geographical location. Specifically, my parent’s new property. They are in the process right now of moving to 38 acres outside of Oregon City. It’s mostly forested, and has a red clay soil, which I heard things do not grow very well from. Since I’m up in Vancouver BC, I’ll have to do a bit of delegation on some (OK, a LOT) of the things to get this project rolling.

Anyway, my project has to be at least two steps back, most likely more. I’ve already decided that I won’t be smelting my own metal, because

1) It’s very likely that my parent’s land won’t have the necessary ore to smelt copper & tin (to make bronze) and

2) old-school smelting releases all sorts of nasty chemicals, like arsenic, into the environment, and I don’t want to mess up my parent’s property (at least, not that much)

So, I think one acceptable work around would be to grow something, or do something in exchange for some scrap metal, from which I could build my own tools. Any thoughts on this? Please comment on what would be a good starting point!

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