Field testing my ultra-light pochade box

"Bluebell Hopyard," by Carol L. Douglas, framed and ready to head out the the VB Brewery, where it will be for sale. $300.

Yesterday I wrote about buildingan ultra-light pochade box. When it was finished, I immediately took it out and field-tested it.

My pal and student Catherine Bullinger has wanted to paint at Bluebell Hopyard all season. This isn’t just a passing fancy: she and her husband run the VB Brewery in Victor and are committed to buying local supplies where possible.

Hops are tall and thin, kind of like my husband.

My back has been bothering me, so I elected to paint sitting down (which I only do infrequently). First mark in favor of the new easel: it works well from a seated position.

Hops are the weirdest darn crop. They have leaves like figs, are related to cannabis, and are perennial. The seed cones have been used to flavor beer since the 11th century.

The seed cones are what give the bitter overtones to beer.

Their bines grow up long, long supports—I would guess they grow 15-20 feet in the air. When the air is still, they stand like temple columns or Italian cypresses, but as soon as the breeze picks up, they dance. Finding a composition that caught the essence of their character was a challenge.

As we painted, the wind picked up. I have a tripod stone bag from my Guerrilla Painter easel, but I never needed to use it—the easel presented less of a sail surface than I expected.

Look at this beauty working!

My only complaint—and it’s manageable—is that the clip left a big unfinished area on the left side of the canvas. I corrected it easily enough, and I think I will use a different method of clipping next time.

The way I had it clipped, the left side needed work when it came off the easel.

The whole thing, including the tripod, fits in my frame backpack, which is a great advantage over my prior easel. Although I thought I’d miss the larger mixing surface, I think the 11X14 area worked just fine.

I will take it to Maine with me on Saturday, although I’ll have another easel as a backup.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Making my own super-lightweight pochade box

The finished project, more or less.

Last month Johanne Morin and I painted together at Kaaterskill Falls. She had an efficient, lightweight easel, and her pack was so easy to manage that I begged her for information on how to make one for myself.

The primary parts of Johanne’s easel are a Saunders 10519 Recycled Aluminum Snapak Form Holder and a Promaster T525P carbon-fiber tripod. I purchased the former from Amazon and the latter from eBay. Johanne also used a pochade-box mounting plate from Guerrilla Painter but since I didn’t have time to track it down, I improvised with a block of hard red oak.

I’m not experienced working with aluminum, but my brother Robert was in town yesterday. He helped me assemble the easel. This is how we did it:

This is what the Saunders 10519 Recycled Aluminum Snapak Form Holder looks like when it arrives.

We used a pair of pliers to remove the pin holding the long aluminum inside cover.

The other extraneous piece, inside the box, is best cut off because it shares a pin with the main hinge. Here we used a Dremel with a cut-off wheel.

The female flange adapter for the tripod was countersunk with a 1" bit.

Then the hole was drilled and the piece cut down to size.

Countersunk and glued.

Pilot holes drilled through aluminum and oak.

The wooden block was dimpled with a drill to accommodate the screwheads. But here the flange is on the wrong side. If the collar faces the aluminum, screwing it tight on the easel locks the whole assembly. (We realized it and turned it over.)

Don't have a die to countersink the aluminum? Use one of those stupid screwdriver bits that came in a kit—one you'll never, ever use.

After we screwed the base plate in place, we needed to put a wire holders on the left in lieu of a support hinge. I have a gazillion d-rings for picture frames, so we used those, and popped them in place with a riveter.

Works just fine, and picture-hanging wire is great for holding it open, but I hate that glare.

So I masked and sprayed the inside of the box with red primer.

On the left, my current lightweight wooden pochade box and on the right, this aluminum box. No contest!

My investment for this project:

Used Promaster T525P carbon-fiber tripod: $163.43 on eBay.
Saunders 10519 Recycled Aluminum Snapak Form Holder: $35.27 on Amazon.
Female flange adaptor from my local hardware store: 75¢
Four 6X½ flathead screws: 44¢
One 27/64 drill bit: $9.88.

Tomorrow: how it works.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Who sez art doesn’t pay?

The Concert by Johannes Vermeer was one of 13 pieces, worth $300 million, stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990. This was the largest art heist in history and remains one of the great mysteries of the art world.

I came across this factoid in a dumb novel recently: art crime is the third most lucrative criminal trade, after drugs and weapons. The FBI estimates the trade in stolen art and antiquities to be $6-8 billion annually.

This ought to come as no surprise when Christie’s and Sotheby’s together turn over about $11-12 billion a year.

These statistics don’t begin to address the dollar value of the estimated 650,000 pieces looted by the Nazis in Europe. The value of that work is, simply, incalculable.

Poppy Flowers by Vincent van Gogh was stolen from the Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt in 2010. The same painting had been stolen from the same museum in 1977, but was recovered ten years later in Kuwait.

My studio assistant, Sandy Quang, is finishing her MA in Art History. Like all liberal arts majors, she’s worried about getting a job, since she’s internalized the message that art careers don’t pay. But that’s nonsense, as a recent kerfufflewith President Obama pointed out: arts graduates are both working and satisfied with their jobs. After all, sellers need art historians to authenticate and research their product. Furthermore, ours is an intensively-designed world. From our cars to the pens in our hands, everything we touch must be both beautiful and symbolic of our values. That’s all the work of artists.

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt van Rijn is another painting stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist of 1990. These paintings have never been recovered.

It’s no surprise that, when there aren’t enough precious works of art around, people will either forge or steal the stuff they want. But that should tell us something about art—it’s neither meaningless nor valueless. The vibrant criminal art economy tells us that art matters.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.