Day TEN - Wednesday

FINALLY!   A full work day!  Just time spent on getting our 5 required projects finished.  AND our little keepsakes for the party on Thursday. 

One of my final project books included the little fired clay piece that we did in collaboration with the clay class.  It was the inprint of a fern "disguised" as a tree.

The other one is a folio to hold watercolor paper.  I made the paper, but it is NOT good watercolor paper.  Maybe I can use it as sketch paper.  Anyway, it was fun to do and looks pretty nice.  We have our final critique and "art show"  on Friday before we leave the Island. 

Day Eleven (Thursday) - Clean-up, Tear-down Day

This is a sad day . . . today we tear down the pulp vats, clean up our areas and prepare to go home.  Always such a bittersweet day -- we have done so much and grown so close in such a short period of time.  It is going to be hard to say goodbye tomorrow. 

Trudy got ALL of her firing done - quite a feat, considering all that she set out to do.  She has already set up her large water feature installation for the show tomorrow.  She is going to haul it all the way home to California to install in the garden of her new studio. 

After we finish cleaning the studio we put the finishing touches on our projects then head up to Sally's "condo" for our "social hour".  We nosh on goodies, have a few giggles, then exchange our keepsakes.  And we sit for a combined "family portrait". 

Day Nine - Tuesday, 28

Another beautiful Beaver Island Sunrise to start the day. 

 We have a guest lecturer, Tim Barrett from Iowa University, who is a world reknowned papermaker, paper researcher and who, co-incidently, is a Beaver Island resident (when he is not in Iowa). 

Trudy's raku bowl comes out of the kiln and is drop-dead gorgeous.  The colors and luster are amazing.

Day Eight - Monday -- FIRST CRITIQUE DAY!!

Today was our first critique in papermaking class. Sally gave us all a "container" and we had to make a book out of it. Very cool assignment and very cool results!!!

This is the way mine finally turned out.  I was pretty pleased with it - it went from a little jewelry case to a book that tells the story of being an undiscovered treasure trunk of virtues.  Deep.

Trudy is rolling right along with her clay projects.  She is making a water feature for the garden outside her new studio.  It is quite a project! 

Now she is also making some cast slip jewelry that she plans to raku fire.

Here is the "gang" doing what we do BEST - THREE times a day . . .  EAT!!  And this is a sunrise photo that Tru took down at the water's edge, braving the hordes of mosquitoes. 

Day SEVEN -- Sunday, July 27

This is supposed to be a "day off', but (of course) there is WAY too much to do to just slack off completely. The about half of the two classes have gone back to French Bay to hike, so it is pretty quiet around the station. The high school biologists are still here, so the computer lab is full to bursting. I am going to finish blogging then head up to the condo to work on one of the TWO projects that I have due tomorrow. No rest for the Wicked . . . . or for Glinda . . . . .

Yesterday - DAY SIX - Saturday

Remember Tom Hanks at the end of "Cast Away", pleading desolately into the empty sea "Wilson?  Where are you?" 

I found him. He is in a tangle of underbrush on Beaver Island, all wrinkled and weathered, but safe and sound.

Here we are making our second handbound book.  This one employs our handmade Paste Paper to make the cover, and 12 individual groups of pages, all stitched together with a decorative "Coptic Stitch".    

 

This is my "Coptic Stitch" book. 

WAY BEHIND ON MY BLOGGING!!! . . . .

Yesterday we woke to a blazing red sky sunrise - any sailor will tell you what that means.  By afternoon the clouds got serious and we had a whopper of a storm that rolled across the island to the mainland.  But after that we were treated to a spectacular 180 degree FULL RAINBOW, with rays of sunshine slanting through it.  It was even double for a minute on one end.  I couldn't get a full shot, but I pieced it together from two.  It was quite an event!

Earlier in the day (before the storm) our class made a quick trip into town to the hardware and grocery stores (AND the Toy Museum and Art Gallery for EARRINGS!!)  I walked from halfway and took these shots of "around".  Remember the movie "The Birds?"  these guys were the stars of it, I think.  There must have been 100 of them following the Fish Smoker's net truck all the way in from the harbor.  They were screaming and yelling because they new their were fish in the tubs in the back.  What a hoot!!

Day FOUR

I am really starting to feel the time crunch. I don't see how we (I) am ever going to get done all the things that I want to do . . . .  . 

 

I made some really neat paper out of all the local flora I gathered up between the condo and the classsroom - purple thistle, Queen Ann's lace, ferns, leaves, berries, yellow flowers, grasses.  Put them all in a blender and whirled them up and added them to a paper pulp.  The result was a beautiful pale green paper with multi colored specks that smelled like new mown grass!  Wonderful.  I called it "Beaver Island Blend".  Also made a really nice one out of all my tea dregs blended together.  It also smells great!

Trudy's crew had their first raku firing.  They fired in the fibreglas kiln with the propane burner, then smoked the pieces in cans full of burnables ono the beach.  Nice smoky results.  This is the same class I took a couple of years ago (only there were NINE people in the tiny lab then!  Now there is only a very comfortable five!)