Harvey-Sue

We started working on an art space in the garage part of the Chateaux. The original plan was to make a stained-glass studio for kaleidoscope building, but it’s turning into more of a multi-use community art space + music / workshop / earth-shaking venue (We took out a wall between the garage and a mud-floored weird closet space, and built a new floor, which is about a foot higher than the garage floor. oops! A STAGE!)

Here is a”before” pic of the garage, and of the creepy muddy room on the left (I was originally gunna make it a dark-room, but who needs another dark room when there are already so many closets in the universe???

Here’s Norma dressed up as a two-by-four after we tore the wall out and built a support wall:

Dave playing the first song on the surprise stage that came when we put in a floor….

And Kaji showed me how to wire electricity.

I made this one for a friend who’s going through a particularly transitional time of self reflection. So it’s got mirrors in the wheel, which creates a real wild reflection of a million of your own eyeballs looking through the kaleidoscope (the body is a bottle neck). It’s kind of rad.

MP 4|26|13

KH 4|8|13

*Numbers = date made; letters = initials of the first recipient; code’s printed somewhere on each kaleidoscope

I’ve been reading The Gift by Lewis Hyde. For those of y’all who haven’t read it, it starts out reflecting on how capitalism urges us to keep and hoard gifts, but a gift that stays in motion by being re-given takes on a life of it’s own, creating bonds of trust and well-being among communities. I started reading it right when I decided not to sell these kaleidoscopes, and it really inspired me. So, I’ve been giving them away with the intention that they be re-given.

So far, they’ve been going out to my comrades in madness, because their qualities (of light / patterns / color) seem to help me with mine. I’m hoping they can be a token of support through times of lunacy, loss, or rebirth (and a reminder that on the other side of lunacy is brilliance). Then, when the hard times ebb, the kaleidoscope can be passed on to someone else who’s burdened with  the ‘Tock’ of ‘Tick’s’ gift of creativity.

If anyone has any ideas about how to keep track of the kaleidoscope’s journeys, please let me know; I think that’d be really cool.

Here are the first three (numbers = date made; letters = initials of the first recipient).

AP 4 |8|13

KB 4|13|13

AA 4|8|13

In subverting the rock venue / art gallery norm, Norma and I (Norm), have embarked on a project series of “experiences.” The experiences will include guerilla street art, punk shows in weird (public) places, and collaborative “happenings” that encourage folx to question the norm of how art /music is seen and heard.  We’re using it as a chance to be creative about ways we share our explorations of avenues and mediums that are unfamiliar to us (like linolium print making! –make sure you carve words BACKWARDS so that they print FORWARDS) . 

We’re not on social media, but you can send us snail mail (406 N Queen Street, Durham 27701), and we’ll put you on our snail-mailing list. Our first “experience,” The Cicada Table, happened last weekend, and was awesome. There were cicada sounds, info zines, Nag Chamba, and a shit-ton of art.

Here’s a couple lamps and books n stuff.

I told my boyfriend his bday present might be like  a year late cuz I was looking for something that might or might not cross my path (we both love cicadas, so I was hoping to find wings for his kaleidoscope). I was helping a friend move the next day, and found one under his air conditioner, so I was able to finish it  in time for Kyle’s bday. It also has soda can tabs, a praying-mantis slide, and sea glass. The body is a blue glass bottle.

This wheel was made using glass, slides, an hour-glass, and a pill bottle. The slides are of office cubicles and things in them.

In Progress:

I’ve been building kaleidoscopes. I’ve never embarked on such an introverted and tedious adventure, and it’s given me a lot of time to reflect (no pun intended). I love the way that the little machines take something as simple as some colored glass, and turn it into a spectacular feat, just by repeating it a pattern. I’ve been thinking a lot about how a different perspective on something can offer us new appreciation for it, and the patience to be present with it instead of trying to change it.

This one is made out of a turtle bone I found on the flint river with Uncle Vic; a part of a big thread spool; and some sea-glass that Luis and I found on an over-cast day at Stinson beach, north of SF.

Here are a couple made with scrap glass for the wheels and bodies.

This one is another sea-glass one, made with some copper plated hanger wire. It embodies the only red sea-glass I’ve ever seen; I’d hunted for a red piece throughout my entire four-year stint in SF, and never found any. A few years ago Luis sent a cigarette cellophane filled with three tiny pieces he’d found when he was surfing.