Earth House Studio: Plaster Poetry

 Grit Grrls: Diary of the Dangerous What is it about climbing 50 feet up in the air?  Slithering around scaffolding.  The film reels continue to roll in this dangerous and beautiful world as a woman plasterer.  Are you sure you can handle the highs and lows?  Lug those buckets.  Wear thick skin.  And mud those walls like you mean it.  "Skyspace" Olympic College, Bremerton, WA 2017

This is my treatise to wall treatments!! It's been 15 glorious years as an earth-plaster professional. Hands, fingernails, and pant legs....caked and crazed with all sorts of pigments and aggregates. Wear and artifact from the layers of my steel hawk mirror...tall ceilings, narrow planks over stairwells, dead tired moments, and tales of great victories! Over this time I have applied the earth. Clay, lime, marble, and sand have all spoken to me as the materials I respond to with creative intensity. My senses are delighted. I will admit my bias. I love things from the earth. AcryliCKS and plastic stencils have no place in my palette. "Skyspace" 2017 Olympic College. Bremerton WA  When I receive a new client inquiry, how do I determine the right earth plasters to use? Creative bias + knowing material properties is the formula for successfully specifying the "right finish for the right space."  It's important to know the differences between finishes whether you

 Story-telling: Part One Over the years, my hands have explored a brilliant spectrum of surfaces, textures, and forms. They have dove into emotion, action, and reflection. All of it spawning from story. My first encounter with art-making came to me at 7, fresh out of my last hospital stay with asthma. That day, I went back to my safe place, where I would always wander. With just some metal clips, sticks, glue, and paper, I had my first kinetic sculpture..other-wise known as a windmill. I still have no answer to my parents for where I came up with the idea. Perhaps artists are simply mediums for materials.  Recently, my work has found itself discovering a higher intent...that the purpose of art-making is simply to tell a story.  In the world of plaster artistry, I often get calls from clients who are going through an important mark in their life..a birth, a graduation, a desire to have beauty after tragedy. It's always an honor to create. Starting in one room and going to the next.

 Once, our hands were tools. Grabbing twigs….twisting, turning tight. Imprints on clay cave walls were a message.  Today, we have the ability to use our hands to create and connect. While our thumbs might evolve into nicely knobbed cell phone gadgets, we have the power to change that. There is time to still use our hands to find our own gifted voices and to be completely wired into our community, in the most primal analog way. Humans are wired to touch, our hands long to press and reveal the texture of experience embedded within. “Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” - Leonardo da Vinci