hen I first saw Stacy Annon's work it was in a little gallery in Tacoma
across from the Tacoma Art Museum, itself right next to Dale Chihuly's Museum of Glass. Ok, it's not actually Dale Chihuly's Museum but it features his work and he sometimes works in the hot shop but you get the idea.
Called BKB & Co. it's really a fun, high class place run by a couple of really nice ladies. And they have a lot of beautiful, wearable art that's accessible and affordable.
By the way, there is a place just down the block, and I mean down - watch out for the train - that serves the very best scrambled eggs and bacon IN THE WORLD! He cooks the eggs with a steam wand from an espresso machine. It literally takes 12 seconds for the fluffiest, creamiest scrambled eggs...but I digress.
Stacy had a couple of gourds in the case at BKB and I was looking at them for a long time. They were colorful and smooth and looked very pleasant. That sounds a bit strange but I really got into the shape of the gourds that was symmetrical but not really regular. The colors were vivid and I just really enjoyed them.
Stacy carves, paints, and burns on gourds and many people do but I like the bags, or purses, or carrying cases, or well...gourds you can put things in.
Here is a perfect example. Click on the image to see a larger picture of it. The ginko leaves are hand carved (well, I guess they would be, wouldn't they) and then the texture is burned in with a "Razertip" wood burning tool. The color is applied with inks or dyes which accounts for the translucent nature of the color.
Stacy says that each leaf can take a half-hour or more to do. Assuming that the pattern goes all the way round the gourd, there has got to be a couple of days just making the leaf design. I had to look twice to notice the tiny dimples in the upper half. they add a subtle but cool dimension to the piece.
But look inside. It looks like some sort of liquid metal or something. I think it looks like the surface of the sun in those pictures from NASA.
The pink edges are done with dyes but Stacy tells me that the lining is tissue paper. At least it starts out as tissue paper. She lays it out flat and applies the color to it. Jackson Pollack is smiling I'm sure. The paint has ground mica in it and that is where the lustre and metallic look comes from.
By the way in the photo at the right Stacy is supporting the paper lining on the Orbital Artists' Easel. That is a new product developed by Grip-All Jaws. At the time this is written in the Spring of 2011, we are just getting it to market. Look for information on it's own web site and on the Grip-All Jaws blog on Facebook
Now, ideally, we would like to get Stacy to maybe do a tutorial on this technique for us so we could share it with you. There seems to be more to this that slapping some paint on some paper and stuffing it into a hollow gourd. Check out her page on the Washington State Gourd Society site.
Thanks to Stacy Annon for sharing her fine work with us. If you are in Tacoma, down on Pacific Ave., The Museum of Glass is right there, The Tacoma Art Museum is streetside, check out BKB & Co. and look for Stacy's work. Then stroll down the street for some heavenly scrambled eggs and bacon.