One of the fabulous things about being married to another artist is that the fever to make things is shared... This summer, when we were up in Toronto, Barry and I were invited to a Fire Festival on Toronto Island where some 200 residents of the island put on a sweet night-time parade swinging home-made paper-coated willow lanterns on long poles to celebrate the height of summer. The parade ended with a lantern-lit shadow puppet show that explained the rebirth of the forest after a lightning storm caused the trees to burn and the animals to flee. Eventually the trees grow up and the birds and foxes reappear - such a hopeful message and a relief in its simplicity. The whole event was enchanting and Barry came away enthused about the idea of making a paper lantern for this year's Autumn Lights Festival here in Oakland.

Lacking a willow tree that he could raid for flexible shoots, Barry made a visit to the cane shop on Gilman Street in Berkeley and came away with some basic instructions from the owner, some spools of waxed thread about the size of thick dental floss and several coils of cane in different diameters. He's been beavering away in his little workshop at the front of our house ever since.

Well mostly... as do most of our projects, this one finds its way into the house a various points. I must say this species of Bumble Bird is quite invasive. There have been several evenings when I've gone to have a bath before bed, only to find my tub full of canes having a leisurely soak there instead! The soaking makes the canes flexible enough to bend around forms that Barry has made using sets of screws on a board. Periodically the "Bumble-Bird" appears in our living room while Barry meticulously binds and knots the thread around the canes while watching the A's or Saturday Night Live (while I knit or lately, stick vinyl on the fern leaves). 

Here are a couple of progress shots. Lighting and "skin" yet to come. Hopefully Bumble-Bird will fly over to the Autumn Lights Festival and get out of my tub once and for all!

​Robin Dean of Oakland first spoke to me about making a piece for her garden in December of 2018... and I'm now trying to finish it for her and display it at the Autumn Lights Festival. Robin says she's excited to be able to see it lit up at the garden and say "That's mine!" As for me, I've once again taken on an almost impossible deadline.

As Robin's back yard hosts a woodland garden, I thought I should make an appropriately shade tolerant plant in glass. I decided on a fern, but in order to light it, I've made hollow leaves upon which to sandblast a fern-like pattern. That way the light will come through the opaque glass and the fern image will be silhouetted against the light. My blowing partner Patty Garrett and I made some sample leaves, and on a couple of them, I masked the glass with blue painter's tape and then used an exacto knife to cut out the leaf motif to use as a resist. It took ages to cut each little leaf. I'd seen a vinyl cutting machine called a Cricut at Michaels and decided to plunge in and buy one! Doing all that cutting by hand would take me til Christmas. (And it's a pajama year, so I have to get out my sewing machine after the Autumn Lights Festival to make 7 pairs for my Canadian nieces and nephews... but I digress...)

I hooked up the Cricut, scanned my fern drawings (with some help from my friend Tara Gill) and I jumped up and down with glee as I watched the little blade cut all the details into the vinyl ... I didn't have to lift a finger! Such a rarity to be doing work without "doing the work"! Of course, once the vinyl is cut there are still several steps to go to prepare each leaf for sandblasting, but I am encouraged!

Look Ma, no hands!!!