Work Now, Work Later

Yesterday afternoon I was presented with a surprise project- to mat and frame a photograph before the end of the weekend.  This would be an effort in a good cause, to make the old family home look just a little nicer in an effort to get it sold.  A few examples of my own artwork that aren't likely to offend potential buyers (and I've had my work banned at times by people who feared that) are already on the walls.  This time it's a photo taken on a family trip to one of our ancestral hometowns in Italy.  I was handed the photo and an old frame of matching proportions.  The rest was up to me.

The timing for this task actually wasn't bad, since I was planning to spend the day at the Studio and all my mat cutting stuff has been there for a while.  Plus, I have an old piece in mind to submit to an animal theme show coming up in Belmar next month, and it will require a new mat.  So this morning I brought with me a few suitable pieces of mat board.  Picked one, cut it in two to make two window pieces, calculated and cut the windows.  The results can be seen below, the Italian scene on the right.  The latter will still need to be properly mounted and wired, but that can be done at home.

After a lunch break I went on to my second big task, building a couple of new bench hooks.  Actually I made a few of these last year in time for the fall edition of my woodcut class in Belmar, using some scrap plywood.  With another round of classes due to start next week I decided to make a couple more, but a little larger and sturdier.  I raided the family basement for some old boards (despite 15+ years of building projects there's still a lot down there), and with the help of various vintage tools, built a couple of bench hooks that will be potentially useful for the upcoming class.

Meanwhile, Molly was also around through most of the afternoon, much of that time spent working on the big dragonfly piece that she started a few weeks back.  The quick work of routing is done, so now begins the much longer process of using woodcut tools to carve the surface.  And though hand carving doesn't create nearly as much dust and noise as using the router, she still decided to take it outside today to take advantage of the beautiful weather, as nice a day as any we're likely to see this summer.  Now, you won't see me sitting on a block that I'm carving (for one thing, I don't think I could sit like that if I wanted), but if I was working on a block as large as this, I might be tempted to try.