Erin Erskine Internship 2018: Week Seven: Epoxy, Comparing, and The End.

Well, this will be my last blog.

That’s right, this is the last week of my internship. But don’t worry not my last day working with Dennis. I’ll be continuing to work with Dennis for the rest of the summer.

This week continued as the same.

I had helped Dennis clean a table and a few buckets from the epoxy they used last week. I also started painting the other side of the new hanging piece. Then continued sanding for “Twist #10”. Dennis showed me a different way to handle the pieces while sanding, which made things a little easier for me. I was starting from the edge then work my way to the middle. He showed me that if I start from the middle to the edge I have more control and would be able to see more of what I was sanding. That has helped a lot with maintaining a more cohesive size to be compared with the other layers.

On Tuesday I spent time using a hand-held router. Dennis showed me how to set up the router and which way I need to move the router to cut properly. I was cutting out shapes that had only been partially cut out by the CNC router. It was simple once I got used to it. After cutting them out I sanded the edges. I did have to put the set of shapes in their right order. Of course, the system isn’t 1,2,3,4, etc. It starts with -3 and goes to +4 and there’s no zero. Also, it’s not numbered with a number but with circles going either up or down to indicate the positive or negative number. It was a little confusing, but I figured it out.

With Wednesday and Thursday, I got the job to clean the metal spinner for the sander. To get the glue off before Dennis places a new sandpaper on. With cleaning alcohol and a scrubber, I got it done. Then with “Twist #10” I started comparing each layer to each other. Some layers are thicker in some areas and thinner in others. This is probably the toughest thing that Dennis has had me work on. With the new way of sanding the layers, sanding and maintaining a similar size. Unfortunately, there is a pile forming that are going to wind up as test pieces because their past a point that’s fixable.

Dennis showed me how to epoxy the shapes together and we did two sets of those. Using epoxy is a handful. The process needs two people to put it together. A person that has been working with epoxy for a while could probably do it by them-self, but it is easier to do it with two people. One person to mix the epoxy together because there are different ingredients to make it. Then someone to start spreading the epoxy on the wood. The ingredients to make epoxy prevents us to make a lot at once, due to the chemical reaction that happens, if there’s too much epoxy in a jar the epoxy dries faster.

A few epoxied pieces waiting to be sanded down.

Dennis colors his epoxy red so that way a viewer can see the red line between the wood. Dennis likes that detail in his work along with seeing the grain of the wood through the paint.

After epoxying the shapes together on Thursday, I sanded the edges of the hanging piece to get the paint that went over the edge and then used a sharpie to color it black.

Then just like that, I have finished my internship. I learned a lot through these past seven weeks. I worked in a medium that I had little experience with and the tools I had little to no experience with and now feel not just comfortable using them but I’m more comfortable to use the medium and tools in more creative ways. I got to see a side of the art world that’s hard to learn about in a classroom. Things like, how a studio is run and what goes into maintaining it. I got to see other options for workspaces. I learned about Nextfab, which is a way for me to have access to some equipment after I graduate. I got to meet wonderful artists like Katee Boyle, Lauren E. Peters, and Bruce Garrity. I got to visit Stan Smoklers studio, unfortunately, he wasn’t there the day we visited.

Having this internship this summer has also helped me stay busy working on my own art. Being in a studio almost daily kept me thinking creatively and motivated me some nights to go and paint something or think of ideas for projects and do sketches.

I’m glad I will be able to continue working with Dennis for the rest of the summer. Even though the internship is done I still have the rest of the summer trying to learn as much as I can.

Thanks for joining me on my summer adventure.