"fond brun"
Any good cook will have and use leftovers. A traditional french kitchen has a pot of "fond brun" literally "brown bottom" - made from bits and pieces added to the pot that bubbles away on a quiet corner all the cook's life. The liquor is used in making sauces. Leftovers go either to the pot or the pigs, which end in the pot anyway.
Any studio has such a pot where bits and pieces quietly bubble away until "Voila" a work has need. Cases-in-point are the three pieces "Giraffe, Three Trees, Full Moon", "Fish", and "Dancer" whose codependent geneses I will now try to explain.
"Giraffe, Three Trees, Full Moon"
In mid April I asked Karl Muench to cut and assemble from a wide red oak plank the pieces for the back of my "Two Arms Chair" Left over was a nice piece with knots;
Leaving Karl at James Fryer's Gallery 3, I stopped of at Ed Wilson's. Ed and his daughter, Abby, were discussing an end-of-term project for her class with Tim Glover at Houston's School of Performing Arts. She needed a plank. I intended asking Ed to even up my leftover anyway, so, Abby might as well have a piece. She's happy. I'm not unhappy.
Back home, bubbling away, were used self -blocking plastic strips cast-offs from last year's 4th of July fireworks. I had a whole heard of giraffes. And, one was of the right size in relation to knot-hole/moon and knot-holes/trees. Voila! The sauce only needed a deft hand and the work was done.
"Fish"
"Fish" was born from the need to experiment with the materials; stone, plastic, and glue; I intended using for "Dancer".
The stone comes from the failed first footing for my "One Legged Table". The material, not suited to the task, broke under stress. Into the pot with three pieces of sand stone predrilled for bolts and levelers.
At Crossroads Market where I go for coffee and conversation, press is delivered in bundles tied with plastic strips. The delivery-boy cuts and discards the strips. While he ranges his wares I watch the cauldron at his feet. Among the bits and pieces I pulled out "Dancer".
I'd asked James how best to glue the plastic to the stone. He in turn asked Karl. Karl suggested, but prudent James said, "Experiment first".
Back home I'd a small oval piece of sandstone and leftovers of plastic. Laid out on my worktable the bolt hole caught my eye. They, hole and eye, recognized one another. If hole becomes eye, plastic cut and glued, becomes the means of locomotion how-be-it only to the nail on the wall. Et voila! The research for a technique becomes a work in its own right.
"Dancer"
"Dancer's" body, as I've explained, came from the floor at Crossroads. She hung on the wall of my studio for months waiting her landscape. The original idea was to use the whole plank for her. But, Abby's project cut short mine. "Giraffe" was more appropriate to a moon lit savanna, anyway.
While working on "Giraffe" bubbling away were other North African landscapes. "The People from the Sea" in their migration from Egypt across the Sahara left pictographs engraved and/or painted on sandstone. Et voila ! My pot contained sandstone.
Thus the cross fertilization of serendipity, attentiveness to possibilities, and the boundary pushing of "what ifs" made of one project five; Abby's one that mutated my one into three, and now, this fifth, a text.
Summary
As a summary I would like to cite the Yiddish folk tale "Stone Soup
Ingredients
One glib tongued beggar
His water
His stone
Mix with
One gullible population
Their fire
Someone's pot
Another's salt
Her potatoes
The farmer's carrots and
The butcher's marrowbone
Makes
Soup and a stone for reuse.