Cicadas are a'coming!

When the sun shines, make hay!  Or so goes the old saying.  Here in the world of gourd enthusiasts, that even does for cicadas - the 17-year eruption that is taking over the area!  Now, what to do, what to do?

Those Crackled Apples know what to do!  When those flying dive-bombers expire, the wings are popped off and used as embellishments for all kinds of gourd projects!  One patch member who teaches in the local school system included cicadas as part of the class's research data collection - everyone spent 2 days collecting cicadas, counting, categorizing, producing t-scores, and z-scores!  Jars and jars were accumulated and afterward patch members worked to salvage the wings.  [Yes, there is a DC restaurant cooking and serving a cicada sidedish - supposedly they are high in protein - but we just couldn't swing our inventiveness that far!]

More Repetition...

Here's another example of repetition as a design foundation, a tree.  Still using the same tips of a simple wood-burning tool purchased at a big box store, this is what was produced.








Using the chisel tip, a long line was burned on the surface of this piece of gourd scrap. A line next to the first one, and then one next to that one. They are not measured, or equally spaced.  Some extended out like fingers, some longer than others. There are more lines at the bottom than at the top - in fact, the upper lines have very few side-by-side line sets. Most of the repetition happens toward the bottom.

The tip was changed to the leaf-shaped one and those marks became the repetitive burns. Over and over before using markers to color in the shapes (more than one version of a color for variation).


The spray-on seal adds the gloss.

Repetition can be a foundation...

We're back in the saddle, gourd-wise that is!  Let's talk about techniques. There are a lot of ways to decorate a gourd, to paint a gourd, to put a rim on a cut edge, but are the thought processes before putting pen, wood burner, or paintbrush tip to the surface to do the decorating?  What is the mindset leading to an image?

One way to approach the plan is through repetition. By repeating an action, over and over, a broad overall pattern emerges.  Time passes and the focus allows the mind to wander in a controlled way. For example (let's do one here, and post other examples in the days to come), use one part of the wood burner, in this case, the butt end without a tip screwed into place.

Once the tool was hot, it was randomly placed on the backside of a small bowl-shaped gourd. Over and over it made marks on the gourd until time passed and the overall pattern began to look like a turtle shell!  The burning continued until the whole surface was covered. Two colors of green Sharpies scratched in some color areas and rubbing alcohol was dabbed on with a Q-Tip to blur the greens together (the alcohol makes the marker ink bleed and blur).  Once dry the shell was sprayed with a gloss sealer.


All this from one burn mark - repeated over and over.  Adding holes around the edge gives the artist space to sew a rim before adding legs. Cutting and sanding for the neck led to another idea for adding a bobbing head.

AND, none of this was in the plan when the first mark was made!  That's the beauty of repetition. Start with a mark and keep going until the pattern itself presents the plan.  It takes time, and trust, and the willingness to not be in control.




A lesson for life perhaps?

Painting Gourds, But in Another Way!

Sheldon Taplet - check this fellow out! An interesting bit of art news for you to check out – Sheldon Tapley. This sill life painter includes gourds as part of his still-life work. This one, Dance, is just one example of how he incorporates gourds into art. When you visit his website you are met with Two Gourds, but continue to the still life pages and see all the ways he paints canvasses with images of gourds. Gourds as objects of beauty! https://www.sheldontapley.com/still-life

Dance by Sheldon Tapley

Another Artist in Residency event completed!

This year, 4 of the Crackled Apples stepped up to be in the Discovery Museum studio as part of the Museum's Artist-in-Residence program. They made birdhouses for a chapter fundraiser and helped the children make small projects once a week and especially on First Friday events in town. Thank you to the Crackleds who stepped forward in this important outreach project!

There was a LOT of eye candy for visitors to
the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum!

The Gourdacious action at the Discovery Museum!

Check out the article about the Gourdacious Dappled Apples doing an artist-in-residence gig at the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum in Winchester, VA....in The Gourd! [the magazine for the American Gourd Society].  Yay!!

Early Fall in the Garage

The Crackled Apples are in the garage on Wednesdays, looking into new projects and perspectives surrounding the concept of gourds. One of the biggies has been combining time and gourds, in this instance hourglasses and gourds. One of the more interesting (read that, weird) incarnations has been the flip-hourglass made with light bulbs from Dollar Tree. The glitter has been thought over and done with sand, but it is fun to see the options.  Clearly, the angle of the hourglass wall is critical as is shown in the plastic ball hourglass supported with gourd scraps. The angle must encourage the downward descent of the particles or they just sit and have to be jiggled.

 [garage background music is by Kenny Rogers - a nice surprise!]

Keep moving through your days Crackleds, keeping rhythm and time with the seasons! 

The next big project day is luminaries on the 14th; the perfect project for when time passes and the days get shorter!