IT'S OPEN STUDIOS TIME AGAIN!

Today was the reception for the big Open Studios Art Tour Preview Exhibition. Hundreds of arts and crafts enthusiasts and artists filled up the Santa Cruz Art League gallery and lobby, and it seemed there were hundreds more outside for the food, drinks, and entertainment. A good time was had by all! (The picture is me with my "Luttrell Harp" at the reception.)

My wife and I had a lot of fun seeing and talking to all our old friends and meeting new ones. It's a great event to catch up on everyone's past year of shows and new works. It's also a great place to network and learn about other shows and galleries, and even to get inspiration for new works. Just talking to other artists can trigger ideas.

The Open Studios Art Tour is the first three weekends in October. October 4-5 is for South Santa Cruz County, October 11-12 is for North Santa Cruz County (my area), and October 18-19 is the Encore Weekend for the entire county. (I'm open for Encore too.) Calendars/Artist Guides, with a map showing the locations of all the artists are available at many stores and galleries throughout the county. To find out where to purchase the calendar, or buy over the internet, go to the Santa Cruz County Cultural Council website at http://www.ccscc.org/. Be sure to visit the Santa Cruz Art League to see the Preview Exhibit, and you can see examples of nearly all the Open Studios artists. For Art League hours and directions, visit their website at http://www.scal.org/.

Then... come and visit me, see my studio, and purchase a fine piece of musical sculpture!

I'm Artist #234 in the Calendar/Artist Guide, at 147 Sacramento Avenue, Santa Cruz, California. My location is just off West Cliff Drive, just three blocks from Natural Bridges State Beach. Follow the big green Open Studios signs.

The pipes, the pipes are calling...

The final Chapter House instrument is in progress! All of the Westminster Abbey Chapter House wall painting instruments I've done up to now have been stringed instruments, and for years I've been threatening to build the last one, a portative organ.

I started out by making three test pipes, all that sounded very nice. With that success, I then went on to make 20 more pipes of various sizes. This last week I completed the pipe chest, the segmented box that all the pipes fit in, and I'm just starting to fit the pipes into the holes.

So far, this has been about a three month project, and will probably run over a year, since I'm researching pipe organ theory and construction as I go along. It's a fun project. Stay tuned.

At our home, alongside the Monterey Bay, May is a month of opposites! The weather can be sunny, warm, and fragrant with the scent of flowers and blossoms one day, then foggy, cold, and windy, with only the scent of the heater and wood dust in my shop the next. I can be getting a lot of work done one day, then wondering where the time went and why I didn't seem to get anything done the next.

But in retrospect, I see a lot of new work on my walls and shelves.I completed four more mini-hog nose psalteries, so I have six to take to the Bellevue, San Francisco, and Sausalito shows later this summer.

I also completed another Germanic Rote, a lyre in the style of the 6th or 7th century one found in a warrior's grave somewhere in the Black Forest. It's of highly figured flamed maple (sometimes called tiger maple) and black walnut. The pegs are maple with doubled faces with square tops for a tuning key. I created a carved tuning key similar to ones used on old Saxon-style rotes. It also has two faces.

Because of the two faces on each peg and the tuning key, I call this piece "Janus". Janus was, in Roman mythology, the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings. He was always shown with two faces.

I've only seen one example of the Black Forest rote in old books, and the actual one was reported destroyed when the museum was bombed on World War II. The Saxon style of rote, on the other hand, has been found in many burial mounds in England, from the 1800s up to the most recent, the Prittlewell rote found in 2001. You can see both styles of rote on my web site at http://www.cooginstruments.com/Rotes.htm.

I have been carving quite a bit lately. Besides all the faces on

"Janus," I've been carving a lot of folk art pieces, mainly spoons and spurtles. These are all salvaged and scrap pieces of wood I can't use on musical instruments, but they are great for tasting and stirring implements. These are a few I just completed. There are around a dozen more on my workbench.

As you can see, even though I have days when I feel like nothing's getting done, things are getting done. Today, I voiced and put together five more pipes for my "Chapter House Portative Organ." I'm also getting ready to bend some wood for a new dulcimer, and carve more on my "Rebekulele," a combination of medieval rebec set up and played like a ukulele, an idea that came out of my fertile (some say rotting) mind last year.

Enough for now. It's late and I still need to play a little computer solitaire.