Faux Bois Table Base at the Fall Art Tour

Faux Bois Stump after first acid staining

I haven’t been able to blog recently, because for some reason I wasn’t able to upload photographs. This is how the Faux Bois Table Base looked at the Fall Art Tour in October. The brown was actually a black stain, but due to the unpredictability of how acid stain will react to the composition of the concrete, it came out a rich brown. I rather like it, but will be adding black, in order to make it look more like oak.

Faux Bois Stump second coat complete

Faux Bois Step Two

I started the second coat of concrete on top. I had to make it level, first of all, then begin forming the bark around the edges. I had several pieces of oak firewood for reference. There is a sharp contrast between the dark bark and the heart of the tree.

I then began going down the sides. I brushed the acrylic latex compound onto the scored cement first, then began laying on the second coat. I had to use a trowel and press it on; otherwise, it would just fall of the side onto the table. I used clay-sculpting tools to make the furrows, followed by a wet brush.

You can see the first layer of scored concrete on the right, with the furrowed bark on the left. When I had done this much of it, I wrapped the stump with plastic until I come back to layer the rest of the bark. Real bark would be rougher than this. I have brushed the concrete smoother, since bark would compress or crumble, if rubbed, but rough cement would just feel prickly. It seems to me that a rough concrete piece would be undesirable. It may also be difficult to stain.

Faux Bois Stump – First Layer of Concrete

Faux Bois Stump

Faux Bois is a French word for “artificial wood.” It refers to the art of creating structures like furniture, bridges, and gazebos that look like wood, but are really sculpted and stained concrete.

I am making a Faux Bois Bench for my husband’s gravesite. It will be in a forest clearing at the juncture of three logging roads. I want it to be natural-looking, durable and beautiful.

In order to do a practice piece, get the feel of sculpting in concrete and learn how to stain the created bark without overdoing it, I wanted to make a practice piece: a stump that will function as a stool.

First I cut out styrofoam disks with a jig saw, stacked them to a desirable height and thrust two rebar stakes through them to hold them together.

The next step was to layer the styrofoam with diamond lathe, a rigid metal netting that can be hammered to bulge where you want a tree burl or a root. The lathe was wired together in pieces.

Diamond lathe.

When that was finished, I was ready to layer the armature with the first coat of concrete. I used a very plastic mix (at the suggestion of my concrete expert friend, Andy), one part concrete, three parts silica sand, and sufficient amount of acrylic latex mixed with water to make the concrete easy to thrust through the wires. When the negative spaces were filled in, it looked like this (see also above). I scored the surface everwhere to make the second coat of concrete adhere well.

Idol Worshipper

Since I won’t be able to paint for the next couple of days, I’m posting this mostly finished companion piece to my Lady Finger Cake. What I need to still do is paint a few of the guard hairs on Pippin’s coat and work on the curtain behind, toning down the color and painting the brocade with more precision.

Reconstructing my life in the wake of my husband’s death has been pretty all consuming. I am trying to get back on track before the Fall Art Tour, but 2010 will just go down on record as my Year of Personal Disaster. I know I have dropped out of sight painting-wise, but hopefully, as more pressing matters are taken care of, I will be able to resurface.

I will be working on a Faux Wood Concrete Bench this summer. Matt’s ashes are to be buried on our land in Eagle River and I am going to make a place to sit down nearby. A friend, Andy, and I have been doing research about how to do it, as we’re novices. Andy knows concrete though. His business is making concrete countertops. I’m excited about learning to do this and will no doubt blog the process.

Ladyfinger Cake

I began this painting in Matt’s room during the last weeks of his life. I would sit and paint near the window, while he napped. It seems a trivial subject, innocuous, when something so dire was happening in my life, but the fact that there was no “theme” as it were, was helpful. If and when I paint something more pertinent to the experience, it will be later.

Painting is therapeutic to my spirit, probably more than anything, and reduces the stress, but there has been little time for therapy. My life since Matt’s death has been mostly about dealing with the demands of life. It will be my project for the future to carve out the time for activities that renew me.

There will be a companion painting for this one, so that the two will make a diptich.

Dancing at the Harvest Moon

I know this isn’t about art or literature and I haven’t been blogging. My life right now is all about battling lung cancer and its grievous effects. These pictures were taken this past year, before we knew what lay before us. I just had to post them to celebrate Matt and me, our life together and all the fun we’ve had.