Larissa King

Someone recently asked if I put anything on my sculptures to prevent rust.  I said that I didn’t.

“But they’ll rust!” she said.

“They might,” I shrugged, and considered taking them all out and hanging them from trees in my back yard and letting them rust even faster.

The truth is that some of them have developed small rust spots over the years.  When they’re hanging and you’re standing on the floor looking up at them, the wire just looks black.  But up close, there’s a bit of this sort of thing going on:

After some investigation, I decided to give Rust-Oleum’s Rust Reformer a try.  The local stores only had it in spray form, and I wanted to brush it on, so I ended up having to special-order it.

The bottle carried the usual warnings about not getting it on your skin or in your eyes, which I am sure is a good idea.  It didn’t smell horribly toxic, which I realize doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t give you eyeball cancer, but I like that it won’t stink up the studio.  Straight out of the bottle, it was pale gray, chalky, and not too thick.  When I started brushing it on, it developed a pale bluish-green tint and I worried that I had made a mistake, but 5 minutes later it looked like this:

I had a hard time getting a good photograph of it, but the rust is now black, black, black.  Preventing rust is something I still probably won’t put much (or any) effort into, so it’s good to know there’s something I can do about it when it shows up.

(Rust-Oleum did not pay me to write about their product.  I’m writing because I tried it and was pleased with the results.  If you have a slightly rusty steel object, and you want it to not be rusty anymore, I’d say that Rust Reformer is probably worth trying.)

Last week I picked up my girls from Attleboro.  The museum took excellent care of them, and I’m so grateful.  It makes me feel like it could be fun to do another show someday.  I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment, but I am thinking about it a lot.  I hope the next one is a little closer to home.

Mim gave me the poster from the show!  I hung it outside the door of my studio.

While the girls were away, I finished another one (no pictures yet – I’m still not entirely happy with how she’s sitting on her hanger).  It feels a little crowded in the studio now.  I’ve been dealing with the discomfort by doing lots of yoga in the front room.  After yoga, I almost always get the ladder and move the girls around some more.  It has been a week and half, and I’m happy to say that they are finally starting to settle into their new configuration.

Next open studio will be October 4th, 2013.  I’m hoping to have even more new work completed by then.

I wasn’t going to have an open studio in May.  I had thought that the studio might feel barren, with four of my girls in Attleboro for the month.

But!  I finished a new sculpture recently!  And I hung a bunch of other stuff on the walls!  And I’m really enjoying it, so I thought I would invite you to enjoy it with me (before June, at which point the girls will be home from their field trip to the museum).

Friday, May 3rd, 5-9pm

Tip Top Building

85 North Main Street

White River Junction, VT

Yesterday I drove down to Attleboro to deliver some of my work to the museum for the upcoming show, and I had a big moment of squee when I saw the sign in the parking lot.

I was anxious about dropping off my girls, but my knees stopped shaking when I met Mim (executive director of the museum) and saw Adrienne’s work in the gallery waiting to be installed.

Now I’m just super-excited about the opening (Saturday April 13th, 2 to 4).

I’ve got postcards!  Let me know if you want one.

The screaming has stopped, thank goodness. Words are coming back.

The last few weeks have been a productive time for me in the studio. This current work is only very peripherally related to the recent rough patch, but it has been a huge comfort to have something to keep my hands busy.

I’m excited to get this piece finished and photographed, so that I can share it and then move on to the next thing.  The next thing is always calling me.

I am having, to put it mildly, a not-so-great month.  Every cell in my body feels nauseated.  I want to scrub the inside of my head with a toothbrush.

Earlier this week I spent some time in the studio with the BIG Sharpies that a friend made me buy recently.  I don’t have much to say about this piece, except that making it did help me feel marginally better for a few hours.

Someone asked me about the color scheme.  I tend not to use a lot of color in my work.  That’s just not what it’s about for me.  I do like red, though, especially when I’m feeling as feral as I have been this week.  Also, black and red were the only colors they had in the crappy little store where my friend made me buy the BIG Sharpies.

I’m going to be in a group show at the Attleboro Arts Museum.  With CW Roelle and Adrienne Sloane!  It’s a little scary to be letting my work out of the studio, but I’m delighted to be in such good company.

I’ve been doing a lot of this sort of thing lately.  Prints, on canvas, of a flattened wire sculpture.  Heavily embellished with permanent marker.  In my mind, they are not Art as much as they are ritual objects.  The process always ends up being much more interesting and useful to me than the product.  This particular one (which I call “the quilted air”) was an attempt to gain some perspective on the events of the last eight months as they reached an overwhelming Stress Crescendo around Christmas.

One of the major things that happened last year was that it became increasingly obvious to me that I needed to sell the Copeland Block to preserve my sanity.  Owning that building had become like wearing a giant cosmic “KICK ME” sign.  I succeeded in selling it last month, which continues to be a huge relief.  There’s some grieving to be done too, though.  Cleaning out my office was like finally saying goodbye to a beloved eccentric aunt, and there are relationships with former tenants which may not survive this transition.

The brain re-wiring continues.  It’s hard to talk about (even to my therapist, often).  Last spring, I took an 8-week course in Taking in the Good.  I got so much mileage out of it that I signed myself up for something called Awakening Joy, which starts in February.

While I was in the middle of Taking in the Good, I read an article on a genetic link to PTSD.  Apparently some people have a bit of genetic code that corresponds with increased emotional memory retention.  I was not at all surprised to find (thanks to 23 and me) that I am one of those people. I’ve started thinking of it as my secret superpower. (I’m also resistant to noroviruses!  It’s turning out to be a pretty awesome time to be me.)

I just sold the Copeland Block.

I have no words for how much of a relief it is.

Wire, wool, bone, plastic and turquoise