As a thank you to everyone involved in Eagles in the City, and the students and staff at James Whiteside Elementary, Tiana offers you a free download of the song “It’s Our World” which she composed for the unveiling ceremony. Enjoy!
http://www.reverbnation.com/tianakaczor
Please visit my Reverbnation site to download the song.
Go to my “Art” page to see full pictures of the sculpture, and my “Links” page to see the Richmond Review article and photo taken at the unveiling.
Thursday April 23 at the new Vancouver Trade and Exhibition Centre, sponsors and artists were treated to a fabulous lunch, and saw the unveiling of 65 of their painted eagle scuptures. It was great to meet some of the other artists and hear their stories about working on their eagle.
Tiana's eagle at the official launch
Eagles in the City official launch
Today, April 30, was the solo unveiling of Tiana’s eagle at James Whiteside Elementary. More info on that soon!
While my painted eagle is away getting a protective coating I took the time to work out my hours and how much this art piece should be sold for when it goes to auction in 2010. I was curious to find out how much time I took to do this project, but I also wanted to educate people on the value of art.
I worked on this eagle painting project for 278 hours since January 1st. (This does not include my hours of organization in November and December.)
A weekly average of my time is 22 hours/week. So it was a 1/2 time job.
When teaching, my salary was around $29.16/hour. I believe this is an average salary for a professional, a decent amount for someone of my experience. Not an extravagant wage to ask for.
Multiply this wage $29.16 x my 278 hours = $8106.48
The students at James Whiteside Elementary came up with the ideas for the insides of the feathers. If on average they spent 1 hour per drawing and I used 302 drawings and we paid them half of my hourly wage then 302 hours x $14.58 = $4403.16
My wage $8106.48 + student wage $4403.16 = Total eagle is worth at least $12,509.64
In reality I was paid $1000, and bought my own supplies. This works out to me working for approximately $3.oo an hour, and the students working for free. Of course our labour is a donation to the BC Lions Society, but I think it’s important for those bidding on the sculpture in April 2010 to know what would be a good starting bid.
The drawings on paper are by students at James Whiteside Elementary. The painted copies are by Tiana
Today I finished painting the feathers onto the eagle, all 302 of them! Now I am outlining in brown with gold highlights, and the whole eagle will be done by the end of the week. The BC Lions Society will then collect it from James Whiteside Elementary, put a protective coating on it, and return it to the school for the official unveiling on April 30.
Some people who have seen the eagle in progress think that the students are painting directly on the eagle. But no, I am the only one who has done the painting. It has been a fabulous exercise in painting techniques, as I have tried to replicate the style of a few hundred children, from age 5 to 12.
It is kind of sad that my time working at the school is coming to an end. It has been a joy having the students and staff come by every day to watch my progress, try to find their feather ideas, and give me words of encouragement.
I recently had a whole grade 2 class come visit. They had lots of great questions to ask me. Here is some of the information they were interested in hearing about.
The eagle is 7.5 feet high. It is made of fibreglass and weighs approximately 120 lbs. It slips into a metal base that is approximately 50 lbs. I’ve had 1 to 3 other people come help me when it needed to be moved, or flipped, so I could easily work on it. No, I do not work for an art company, I am a solo artist. I can paint so well because I have had lots of practice, and I went to art school. The paint I’ve used the most of is white. I am drawing a map and keeping a list of names for the feather designs that I used so the students, teachers, and family can find them on the eagle.
As of this date of March 9th, I have painted 180 feathers, 6 pencils, 3 scissors, and a ruler on the underside, and 79.5 feathers on the top side of the eagle. Painting always puts me in a good mood because I am using such a variety of colours, and the designs the children drew are happy. Favourite subjects are suns, mountains, eagles, fish (some with big teeth!) rainbows, flowers, stars, and lightning bolts. You can also find on the feathers such things as wolves, electric guitars, a skier, a snowboarder, one panda, a penguin, flames, tornados, 2 erupting volcanos, 2 jet cars, 1 jellyfish, and a meal combo of a hamburger, hot dog, fries, chocolate chip cookie, and a banana.
I’m 3/4 finished painting the feathers. Now spending around 5 to 6 hours a day at James Whiteside Elementary. The students are still enthusiastic, coming up onto the stage to check my progress and try to see if I’ve painted their feather design yet. They are so surprised that I can recreate the styles of the individual students from Kindergarten to Grade 7.
The original unveiling date was April 8, but that is now being changed to sometime at the end of April. This takes a little pressure off me, and allows me to keep a high level of detail on each feather.
Tiana copies the student feather designs onto the eagle, trying to recreate the style and skill level of each child.
One month down, two to go. Will I make it? Apparently it is an ambitious task to paint over 400 student drawings onto a 7 foot eagle sculpture. I am starting to believe the people who have said that. I am also estimating that only half will make it onto the eagle. Sorry kids, I am not a superhero artist.
This is not the first time I have undertaken an art project that entails minute attention to detail. My art, and music, are often more about process than final product. Such as the performance piece I did at Emily Carr College of Art and Design where I sawed apart my Christmas tree and then counted its needles as I put them in jars. Each jar was labeled with the number of needles in it. I believe I counted about 10 000! (which was nowhere near the whole tree) With my music I love to improvise and prefer to play this way over memorizing a song and performing it the same each time. The journey, and the surprises along the way, are what excite me.
The journey of painting the eagle has taken me into a regular routine of going to James Whiteside Elementary 5 days a week. At home I choose a dozen or so student drawings and then when I’m in front of the sculpture I figure out where they might best be placed. Detailed designs go on the bigger feathers. Simple designs on smaller feathers. Each day I spend 4 to 5 hours working on 5 to 10 different paintings. At the end of this project all these little feather paintings will work together to create one big eagle painting.
Working at the elementary school is a nice change from a quiet studio, and I love having the students wave to me as they come into the gym for their PE classes, or stop by the stage on their lunch break to check on my progress. I’ve also had a few classes come to take a look and ask me questions. They love trying to find feathers they recognize as their friends, and hope to see their own. Their comments are encouraging, and fuel me to keep on painting.
After sanding, Tiana washes the fibreglass dust off the eagle.
Better late than never, my Christmas present to you is finally here. We’ll call it a Ukrainian New Years present, since that’s what I celebrated on Saturday with a huge feast and 3 hours of dancing at the local hall.
You can listen to “Frosted Metal” on my ‘Songs’ page. If you would like to download it go to my Reverbnation site, and it’s available there for free.
Thanks for listening, and I always love hearing your comments about my creations, so please write a note to me about this remixed and mastered song. I’ve listened to it so many times that it’s hard for me to be critical.
Hello everyone. Getting snowed in here on the westcoast has been beautiful, but my contact with the outside world has been limited. However, time at home is allowing me to master a song which I wrote last year and you will soon be able to download as my New Year’s present to you. I have also been organizing the 480 student drawings from James Whiteside Elementary. I am so excited to see all their wonderful ideas, and I look forward to painting them onto the eagle sculpture.
Happy New Year from Tiana Kaczor Fine Arts!
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