The Habitat Project has left the studio

 The very last day before the Habitat Project goes to its "forever home."

Raising the Roof on Home

By Susan Hensel and clients of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity

Hope. Optimism. Generosity.

The clients of Habitat who worked on this project filled the room with their excitement about building houses and creating safe, secure homes for their families.  They were filled with pride in their work , great optimism and hope. They generously contributed their time and talents to this artwork, creating a “crazy quilt” of home.

Fabric decorated with fabric paints, dyes and machine embroidery

Second panel coming down

The Last Grommet

Laying it straight

The 2 panels are loosely rolled up together

Dale observing the roll

Marcus and Gideon observing the roll

I'm the short human

Out the door they go

And into the car, ready to travel to its forever home tomorrow.

A few delays...but still working

There have been some delays on the Habitat front due to their move into the new building.  The grant writer and the architect did a studio visit to day to consider the size of the piece versus its designated location.  I hope to have it installed in a couple of weeks.  Tomorrow I will measure the metal rails and the eye bolt locations for the architect.

Part of my proposal was the making of an artists book for the Habitat Library, documenting the people and the process.  That was delivered today.  It really is cool.  It's an Apple book, printed from iPhoto.  The colors are rich and lovely.

And the people are glorious!  

BUT...see the next post for the other book I ordered and continuing work on other art!

We are officially AIRBORNE!

The first half of the project. sometimes thought of as the bigger half, is off the wall and hanging free in the studio.  It was so exciting to see it in mid air.  While there is still tweaking to do, probably mostly on site, it is pretty much how I imagined it could be.

Here are the exciting videos of Marcus and John moving the work off the wall and pivoting it into storage position.  

"Storage position?" you ask.  The piece will cover 16 linear feet when it is completed.  I do not have 16 linear feet of wall with sufficient height to make this piece.  So, we decided to pivot at a 90 degree angle to the pinwall so we can compose in relation to the existing panel.

 Here's the view of the hanging from the sewing area.  And then, a photo of the layout of the second half beginning.
None of this would be possible without the help of my assistants:       Dale Kennedy who has worked with me on and off for years.  He helps me figure out the logistics of putting things together.          Marcus Larson, neighbor, friend, tall, master gardener and artist .          John Mitchell, neighbor, friend, tall and kind.There is a theme here...I like to hire kind, tall men to climb tall ladders;-)

 

Getting pretty wired...

We tightened up the design today and began wiring it up!!!! It is so exciting!  That is Dale, manning the grommeting machine and Marcus is pinning the design more accurately.

We loosely wired one section and removed it from the wall to see how it moved and how the light passed through.  It moved way better than I expected and I love seeing through it to other "stuff."

This Marcus, my neighbor, a member of my dog's "most favorite human" club, a master gardener, an artist in his own right.  AND, he is TALL!  He can reach even farther than Dale can, and we have always teased Dale about his "freakishly" long arms.  We haven't needed to climb the ladder today.  But by tomorrow we will need to climd I am sure.

Here is a photoshopped version of the design at the end of this workday.  The left side of the photo is actually on the wall, the right side is virtual, as I hope you can tell.  Otherwise my wall sure is odd!

Feeling somewhat composed

I am still sewing and dyeing to beat the band, but there is enough done to begin composing this radically large thing in earnest.

Dale came over today and started the process.  He pinned up 4 compositions in all.  We determined that we want to group by shape and size; worked with how to have a focal point; determined that there are key negative space issues to keep track of....and other things.

He will return tomorrow and we will compose more then.  Tonight I embroider.

Composition 1

Composition 2

Composition 3

Composition 4

Polar Vortex does not slow us down

As the wind began whipping outside the door, piling small drifts of moister snow than we've had to date,  9 hardy people came to the Textile Center to make more squares for the Habitat for Humanity artwork.  Tomorrow the output will enter the dye pot and begin the trek toward completion.

Composing on the wall

I'm still waiting for a new grommeting die and the final yardage.  I swept the studio.  I napped.  I read.  And then I began composing.  I decided I could not comfortably wait for all the modules to be grommeted.  I needed to get a move on and see what could be done with these houses!

So, late today, on the 8' x10 ' pinwall, 1/2 the width of the final piece, I began pinning.  The first basic idea is to form a sort of house shaped area with the "face" modules.  Not all the modules are made yet.  They will be completed by late next week.  But I decided I had enough to begin composition studies.

Then I began to play with connecting squares of color.  I had determined that a broad swath of color, like a road or a tree branch, as I had shown in the blog before, would be far to prone to humidity changes and would more than likely warp like the devil with season changes.  So, back to working within the grid to see what can be done to both settle the eye and stabilize the  piece.  I'm not liking my solutions yet, but that is why I scheduled a full month for assembly and problem solving.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?

This is GOOD NEWS!

The crimps have arrived!  This is a modest, quite small bag of goodness: 1000 #2 crimps normally used for framing.  Such a small thing, but without them, the Habitat for Humanity piece would remain in pieces!

This is an empty spool.  It seems somehow momentous to have used every living centimeter of a 1000 meter spool of thread!  Fortunately I had another spool of color #407 on hand!

This is a box of T-pins that I will use to compose the hangings.  It is a suitable use of t-pins leftover from my gallery days and an influx of around 100 more t-pins.

And THIS is 26 more modules awaiting grommets. (total so far = 131 modules) Dale drilled the holes today.  But, alas and alack!  We could not begin grommeting because I chewed up the upper die trying to learn how to efficiently use the machine the other day.  It seems that I applied TOO MUCH FORCE.  The grommets installed after this INCIDENT of TOO MUCH FORCE, installed with chewed-up-square holes.  Hmmm.  Maybe that is why I had sore ribs at bedtime last night!  A new set of dies is already in the mail!

Now...we await the new fabric from Spoonflower.  They are running late this time.  Maybe MLK holiday put them behind schedule.

110 modules and counting

There are now 110 completed modules for the Habitat for Humanity Project!

I finished 31 face modules today.  They aren't actually all faces.  There are some cool ones of working hands.  These modules were created using photos from Habitat for Humanity.  There are photos of clients, volunteers and working hands.  I posterized the photos in Adobe Photoshop,  made 12" square compositions and sent them off to Spoonflower.com to make printed fabric.   They are ready to go, except for the grommets.

More Spoonflower fabric should arrive this week.  I also designed more fabric with text about home, using some of the shared thoughts of clients at the workshop last weekend.  It will make 18 modules.

The next twenty modules have been started, using client designed fabrics.  The purplish fabric is the client fabric.

A stack of 40 12.5 inch squares were cut  last night, shuffled and assembled into striped squares this morning.


I took a break  last night and today!
Last night  I spent time at the spinning wheel, smoothing out my rough edges with soft, pure angora.
This afternoon I went to a marvelous show at the Minnesota Museum of American Art.  It was a fiber show, "Repetition and Ritual".

This evening I cut and shuffled the squares again  and cut 40 pieces of featherweight pellon for assembly tomorrow.

All of this is to say, by the end of the coming week, I should be up to 148 modules, with or without grommets.

Getting close!  I figure I need 160 modules to do a good job.  The client fabrics from the upcoming workshop should complete the job.

WOW!  I think I may be on time after all!

My schedule was to complete modules by the end of January and spend the month of February assembling  and problem solving.  Dale and I did a lot of prep work for that last week.  He has been my "go to guy" for years when I have big projects.  He will be gone most of February, but I am feeling confidant that the assembly will proceed well  with the preplanning that we did.

Still waiting for the crimps, though.

Isn't she lovely on a Friday Night?

It's Friday night and I am tired!  

But, isn't she lovely?  

They are all lovely! Portraits of the clients and volunteers of Habitat are peopling the modules now.  

The stack of 31 photographic modules is ready for the drymount press and then serging.  

But, pardon me while I exit the studio for a bit.  A very good glass of wine awaits me.  If it does not cause me to take an impromptu nap, I will return to press them into permanence while I watch episodes of SHERLOCK on the iPad;-)

Twelve hours a day

It looks something like this in my studio, twelve hours a day!

Today's completed work...except that today is not complete

By 3:30 today, Dale had grommeted the four corners of...I don't know.  You count!  I think it is around 70 modules, give or take a few.

I decided that all of  the photos of people will be done in the twin-peaked house form  and all of the text in the iconic single peak form.  I pinned up a couple of mini-compositions....thinking about whether there will be a diagonal  swath for the eye to rest upon.  Don't know yet.  When the rest of the fabric with text comes from Spoonflower, and I make it up into modules, then I will be able to decide.

Tonight is Project Runway night.  Will I be able to watch it in the studio?  We'll see about that, as well;-)

Testing for assembly

The Habitat for Humanity project is huge!  It is, in essence, a "beaded curtain"  that will act as a permeable wall between the cubicle space and a gathering space. It will be approximately 16 feet wide by ten feel tall.  Each of the modules will link to others around it using nylon coated picture wire and crimps.  If you have been reading the blog, you know that crimps have been a problem.  I have located appropriate crimps and they should be here within the week.


Dale Kennedy and I did some testing of the assembly concept using mat board.  Mat board had about the same weight and density as the cloth modules.  Putting the modules together was fiddly, but it worked well.  The pieces have the movement I was looking for.

    The grommets and the grommet setter have arrived. In order to have a system that was less likely to injure us, I had to go with a larger grommet than I had at first intended.

  The grommet setter will help prevent extreme tendinitis.  The other option for setting grommets is a set of pliers.  Not only would that be extremely hard on the arms and hands, but it is inconsistent, leaving misshapen holes and insecure fastenings.

Dale built some placement gigs to assist in grommeting.  Many hands will likely be running the houses through their paces.  These should help "dummy-proof" things.

Here is the first stack of houses, with grommets.

The next step is figuring out how I want to use these fabrics.  These are made from photographs provided by Habitat for Humanity.  They are full of happy clients and volunteers.