Amélie moule: mars

14 avril 2014

Et voici les nouvelles d'Amélie en moulage, édition de mars... bonne lecture!

"How have you been?

It feels like such a long time since I last wrote to you...  Maybe my little holiday in the US prior to the Chicago conference has something to do with it.  Traveling solo, visiting old friends, reconnecting, New York, Indianapolis, Chicago, overnight buses, peanuts for dinner, long walks, soar feet... feeling free... it stirred a lot of things inside.  My mind has been a little out of focus since then and I've somewhat lost track of time...

I remember a particularly unexpected moment of bliss, waking up on the bus in the middle of the night just on time to see Philadelphia's nightscape slowly unfold before my eyes, as if it had been waiting for me, tall and beautiful and calm, and for a minute everything felt in its right place.
And so this month I've chosen a piece of music which, to me, echoes that moment :

(Side note: Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen.)

Workwise, Chicago meant meeting people, buying tools, finding inspiration and new ideas, but it also meant missing almost 2 weeks in the studio, so I haven't been quite as productive as I normally am (... still, no regrets!).  I've mainly focused on finishing pieces and resuming a variety of ongoing tests.  The tests I won't talk about right now because they will likely be at the heart of my work for May and I want to keep you in suspense til then.  (Hehehe...)

I will, however, talk about the two pieces I've finished, for they leave me a bit perplexed.

First there's the lady-and-octopi piece of course, which you know well by now.  It was already almost finished back in January so essentially all I had left to do was clean it up and give it a lot of loving coldworking care - which I did.  The final result, I must say, looks very much like what I had imagined, and reveals a level of technical control that I didn't even know I had.  There are tons of little things in that piece that I'm happy about.  And yet... somehow I'm not feeling the love.  Despite all the time and care I gave to that piece, it leaves me rather indifferent.  And I really don't know what to think about that.
Perplexity, stage 1.

The other piece, the feet vessels ("Learning to fly"), is the opposite.  I love that piece.  It's so delicate and light, airy almost... there's a sensitivity and a tactile quality to it that I really like.  I feel like it's very "me", perhaps more so than anything I've done so far.  And yet... I feel almost embarrassed to admit that I like that piece.  It's super (too?) simple, it's full of technical flaws, and nobody except me seems to find it particularly interesting.  And once again, I'm not too sure how to interpret that.

Perplexity, stage 2.

So as you can see, this past month has left me questioning myself a lot, and my work too.  Which, I'm sure, is a perfectly normal and healthy thing for an artist, but still an uncomfortable place to be.  With only one month left to my scholarship, it'll be interesting to see what other stages of perplexity I'll go through and what'll come out of it all.
Hopefully being off balance is just a clumsy way to take a step forward?

A story to be continued...

Take care,

Amélie"

Amélie moule: janvier

18 février 2014

Mesdames et messieurs, voici les dernières nouvelles d'Amélie en moulage!

"How have you been?

You know when you look at your schedule, and every day and every evening is booked for weeks and weeks to come, and your to-do lists just keep getting longer and longer (yes, lists with an "s"...  I am a compulsive list-maker).
And then something gets cancelled last minute, and you suddenly find yourself with an accidental free evening ahead of you.

... Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Pajamas, fleece, big woolen socks, couch, music, chocolate, hot tea.

The perfect setting to reflect back on January and send you my little update...

So as to perpetuate the tradition, let's start with a bit of music to set the mood :

So, January...
January has been... tentacular, if you know what I mean!
I spent most of the month working on casting my wax sculpture of the lady with 2 octopuses.  A challenging project for sure, which has taught me some very valuable life lessons.  Such as :

  - a good, solid formwork is a very reassuring thing indeed

  - GOD does plaster set fast (... but you know that story already)

  - panic is futile

  - 25kg is heavy, ask for help

  - plaster: hard ; plaster after firing: extra hard ; glass: breakable ; tentacle: gone ; ....... damn.

  - unbeveled glass chips, really easily (and irreversibly, for that matter)

Oh well... you learn!  And isn't it interesting how mistakes often bring about new ideas?  (Well, with a little help from you guys.)

Here are a few pictures of the piece as it is right now.

It still needs quite a bit of cleaning and coldworking, but so far I have to say I am very, very pleased with the result (especially considering the plaster pouring incident).  The piece has beautiful luminosity, it didn't devitrify, there are almost no bubbles (?!!) and not a single draw...
Now all I need to do is remember to be that extra careful while handling and coldworking it, and everything should be fine.

... Or maybe more like extra extra careful.

And while my sculpture was being cast, I made garlic bulbs (for the piece I sold to the city of Montreal).  Fifty of them.  F-i-f-t-y.  From A to Z.

Ask me how fed up I am with making those...
Still, better than working in an office hey!

I also made a few quick test-moulds to blow into, which I used last week actually.  It's something I'd wanted to try for ages, and it turned out to be great fun!  I am definitely going to try that again.  I don't have any pictures of the blown pieces, but here's what the wax models looked like.  (And I'd never realized I had such big feet.  Couldn't fill the mold all the way to the top when I blew into it, with 3 gathers!)

It's been interesting working on a big piece and on small "just-for-fun" projects all in the same month.  Very Yin-Yang.  I found it to be a good balance for me actually.
You learn a lot through both, but on different scales and in different ways.

So, note to self :  the fun stuff is important too, girl (on top of being fun!), remember that.

Well, I guess that's it for now!

Until April...

Take care,

Amélie"

2013 Karma

2 janvier 2014

" Cher Karma,

C'est moi, Amélie.
Écoute, je sais qu'on est très occupés tous les deux et qu'on a rarement l'occasion de se parler, mais là c'est la nouvelle année et puis, ben... je voulais te dire merci.  Je t'ai mis un sacré gros contrat entre les mains en 2013 avec la fin de mes études et le début de ma vie d'artiste professionnelle, et franchement, t'as géré.  Les bourses, les honneurs, le prix François-Houdé, l'acquisition d'une de mes pièces par la ville de Montréal... je n'en demandais pas tant!
Je présume que c'est ta façon de me dire que je suis à ma place.

J'en prends bonne note.

Bon, après ben, c'est sûr qu'y'a jamais rien de parfait.  Pendant qu'on travaille à fond sur ma carrière toi et moi, c'est ma vie personnelle - et amoureuse surtout - qui en prend un coup.  'Tite année ben plate.  Mais j't'en veux pas, je sais bien que c'est pas facile de la trouver l'aiguille dans la botte de foin, même pour toi.

Ou alors c'est ta façon de me dire qu'y'est pas encore temps.

J'en prends bonne note aussi.

Pour 2014, si tu voulais me faire un bon mix de verre, de voyages et de belles amitiés, je serais comblée!
Dis-moi, Lisbonne, ça te brancherait?

La bise,

Amélie "

____________________________________________

" Dear Karma,

It's me, Amelie.

I know we're both super busy and we hardly ever get the chance to catch up, but it's New Years and, well, I just really wanted to say thanks.  I gave you one hell of a challenge in 2013 with my graduation and the beginning of my career as a glass artist, and you totally nailed it.  Grants, honorable mentions, awards of all kinds, I even sold a piece to the city of Montreal... I mean, you have outdone yourself!

I guess that's your way of telling me that I'm on the right path hey.

Roger that.

Well, of course not everything's perfect.  While we're both working overtime on my career, my personal life - and more specifically my love life - is paying the price.  The past year's been pretty lame in that respect to be honest.  But I don't blame you, I know the needle in the haystack is hard to find, even for you.

Or maybe that's your way of telling me that the time's not ripe yet.

Sure, Roger that too.

For 2014, if you could just give me a well-balanced mix of glass, travels and friendships, I'd be very content!

Hey, how about Portugal maybe?

Take care, 
 

Amelie "

Amélie moule: novembre

17 décembre 2013

Chers lecteurs, voici les tant-attendues péripéties d'Amélie en moulage, édition de novembre!

"I hope this finds you well!

I've been meaning to send you my little November newsletter for a while now, but I've been caught up in the Xmas crafts fair and down time has been scarce lately...  The fair is a mentally draining experience to say the least - as I'm sure you know.  Today I took a much deserved day off, slept 12 hours, went for a walk in the fresh snow, watched an old Italian movie, cooked 4 different things, ate like a pig... and now next on my list is you, finally!  (And then next is a glass of wine.  Or two.)

Let's start with some entertainment, shall we!  This month my choice of music actually isn't about the music at all, but about the video - an old classic that I just recently discovered and totally fell in love with.  Pure burlesque, weird and fun and vintage and sexy and awesome.  Enjoy!

(Wow... it just dawned on me that I like transvestites and sumo wrestlers.  No wonder I "can't find the right guy"!!)

Alright, enough with handsome men in corsets and suspenders... let's get down to business.

As hectic as November was schedule-wise, I felt very relaxed when I was in the molding studio - which is somewhat unusual for me - and I think it showed in my work.
My main goal for the month was to come up with a piece for the "Emerge 2014" contest.  And I did.  And I'm proud!  Here it is:

It's been a really fun piece to make I have to say, which pushed me to try a bunch of new things including flower pot casting (... was about time!).  I was rather sceptical at first when I saw that big brown block coming out of the mold, but coldworking worked its magic and it came out nice in the end!

I should get news around mid-January for the contest, so fingers crossed...

Quick aside: waterpiks are AWESOME.

For the rest of the month, I mostly worked on finishing a wax sculpture that I'd started back in July, depicting a woman and two octopuses doing, erm............ stuff.  (But nothing to worry about hey, I didn't come up with that idea myself, I took it from a famous 19th century Japanese woodblock print.)
It's a fairly complex project, with tons of assembled elements and tentacles all over the place and Japanese text in the background and fine details and undercuts everywhere...  (Why oh why am I doing this to myself?)  But, once again, it's been fun, and I'm delighted to see it almost finished.  Hopefully I'll be able to cast it in glass by the end of January.  In the meantime, here are a few pictures of the wax model, along with the original woodblock print:

And just because I know that spacetime can be curved, I decided to squeeze in a third project in there and finish my garlic perfume bottle (the one that failed back in September).
And I'm so glad I did.
It turned out to be such a weirdly attractive piece...

"Love the ugly child", as you often say! 

I think the best thing about November has been that, perhaps for the first time since I started working with glass, I felt like I was in control - technically and emotionally.  And that, to me, is a turning point.  Of course I know there are plenty more tough and frustrating moments to come (it is glass, after all), but I feel like I am finally starting to build up some artistic self-confidence.

So, you know... hallelujah and all that!

And on that note... time for my glass of wine!

Take care, and have a very happy holiday season,

Amélie "

No bra day

14 octobre 2013

Et souffler du verre sans brassière jusqu'à minuit et demie un dimanche soir.
Oooh yeah.