On March 2, 2019, the Santa Rosa Arts and Culture Foundation, Inc., will kick off their 31st annual Riverwalk Arts Festival along the Blackwater River in Milton, Florida. Attracting about 22,000 visitors, this is one of the largest fine arts events in Milton. Artists from throughout the southern region will gather to exhibit their fine art and heritage folk art in a juried show. Not only that, but art from the youth in Santa Rosa County will also be on display here. Plenty of food vendors will also be available to satisfy appetites and quench your thirst. And a variety of talented cultural artists will perform live music throughout the two days of the festival. Children will enjoy face painting and an activity area designed especially for them. Visitors may also watch artists demonstrating their skills, participate in the 8th annual plein air “Paint Out,” or check out the antiques and classics at the car show.
My piano art has gone to many craft shows over the past eight years, but I’ve never been in an art show before, much less a juried show. I decided to try. So I sent in my application, with the required fee and sample photos of my work, and about a week ago I received a call stating that I had been accepted as one of the artists. Wow! What a privilege! My display table is set up in the living room, and each day I add a bit more to it, filling it out with items made with love and care from old pianos, praying over each one, that it will find its way to the home of a musician/music lover that needs it. I love what I do, and thank God for giving me the opportunity not only to make art from old pianos, but also to share it with my community.
If you live in the area, I hope to see you at the Riverwalk Arts Festival. You will find the details below:
31st Annual Riverwalk Arts Festival
Located in Historic Milton, at Riverwalk Park
Saturday & Sunday
March 2 & 3
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬
Fine Art and Heritage Folk Art
Countywide Youth Art Exhibit
Live Music
Food & Beverages
Plein Air “Paint Out” (Saturday)
Car Show
Artist Demonstrations
Children’s Fun Zone
The Conductor was the first creation ever made under the name Encore! Old Pianos with a New Song.
After spending days disassembling a hundred-year-old Lyon & Healy upright grand piano, cleaning away the dust, and storing the hundreds of screws in a container for future use, I began to move the pieces around this way and that to see what ideas would come to mind. When I held two sticker assemblies together, they seemed to form a man’s body—minus the head, of course.
So I cut the shank off a hammer, sanded it smooth, and voila! a head!
I decided to make him into a conductor because his hands were up in the air. So I gave him a baton (bridle wire).
Next, the conductor needed a music stand. The bottom of the stickers already looked like the base of a music stand with two feet sticking out on either side, so I simply (poor choice of words, I admit) constructed the platform on which to set the music. This platform was made from eleven flanges glued together, plus one extra flange underneath to provide stability. They were then glued to the two flanges still attached to the “coat tails” of the conductor. So the entire conductor was fully assembled before being mounted onto the canvas, although he could not be a free-standing figurine like the Don Quixote I saw in the art gallery in Florida, because he was too top-heavy.
As a sidebar, let me tell you my early process of freeing the flanges. If you’ll look in the photo above, you’ll see at the “feet” that they are attached by a small metal pin. There’s also a bushing around the pin to allow freedom of movement at the hinge. In the piano, the parts need to be able to move freely, but not too freely, in order for the piano to function properly. When they get too tight, you get “sticky keys.” To be honest, I’m not sure what the problem is when they are too loose. Perhaps they fall apart. But in my experience of taking them apart, being too loose is seldom a problem.
So, to get them apart, I pushed one end of the pin with the tip of a tiny pair of jeweler’s needle nose pliers until the pin was sticking out far enough on the other side to grab it with the pliers. Then I pulled the pin the rest of the way out and dropped it into a jar. I’ll probably never use the pins again, but I’m saving them and the springs for the fun of it, just to see how long it takes me to fill the jar with these tiny pieces. (For the record, at the rate I’m going, it may never be filled.)
As most of you know, there are 88 keys on a piano. That means inside the piano, in the action, there are 88 hammers, 88 whippens, 88 stickers (or the equivalent), about 78 dampers (the highest strings don’t need them), etc. But for every set of hammer, damper, whippen, and sticker, there could be 5 flanges. That’s a total of 440 flanges in a single piano! You can imagine the time it took me to push and pull that many pins out of their comfy spots! And let’s not say anything about how tired, sore, and dirty I was when I got finished.
On to the best part….
Conductor (11″x14″)
The Conductor needed a background. So I placed him on a stage with a crowd of listeners behind him and a spotlight which landed at his feet. I’ve made six of them so far, sometimes two at a time, and no two have turned out exactly alike. It’s time to make some more. In fact, the empty canvases are ready to go, and the photos will be added to Instagram as soon as they are finished.
Thank you for joining me on this tour of the studio. I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Until then, I invite you to check out photos of my other work in the gallery. Enjoy the rest of your day!
My Dear Readers
The first weekend of March I will be at my very first juried art show! That said, the next couple weeks will be dedicated to the studio, with less time given to my blogs. Some posts are scheduled, and I’ll check in from time to time to respond to comments, but please excuse me if it takes a little while. Thank you so much for reading! I’ll be back!
Each week I intend to participate in a photo challenge, just for the fun of it. I’ll spread my horizons, not sticking to any one challenge in particular, and soon I’ll create an album to collect the photos.
For my very first photo challenge, I’ve decided to do Cee’s Flower of the Day (FOTD) challenge. However, I’ve chosen a very special flower for the first photo from this blog: the Yellow Hammer. There actually is a variety of rhododendron called the yellow hammer, but this bunch was “grown” in my studio. 🙂
The green part in the center of the felt came to me that way, but I colored the remainder of the felt with a yellow color wash, and then had to carefully prevent it from shrinking as it dried. If they look dirty, it’s because they are about 100 years old, and at the beginning I was cleaning hammers with a nylon brush. Now I clean them with a wire brush, which works much more effectively.
This particular bouquet has found a happy home overseas, but I will make more as soon as I can find the right vases in which to put them.
In 2010 my children and I drove to Lakeland, Florida, for my grandmother’s funeral. The trip took us directly past my birthplace. At the time of my birth, my dad was in a Navy school. We left that place when I was one week old, and I had not been back since. So I decided that on the way home from the funeral, we would stop in this little town and see the place where I was born.
As it turns out, a typical Florida rainstorm slowed our travel down to a crawl, and most of the places of business were closed by the time we got there, including the museum of history. But the art gallery was still open. My sons were not interested, so I left them in the parking lot to play in the remnants of the rainstorm (now a drizzle) while my daughter and I checked out the art gallery. In the gallery we saw some amazing things, but the most pertinent part to this story is the figurine of Don Quixote mounted on his trusty steed Rocinante. Why? Because it was made from piano parts. I was intrigued, but I couldn’t afford to buy it, so I took a photo of it. I have no idea what happened to that photo, but I logged it in the back of my mind somewhere…..
About a year later our church burned down. We lost the entire sanctuary, and all the rest of the building was destroyed by smoke and water. Someone kindly donated a very old Lyon & Healy upright grand piano to the church, but it would have cost thousands to restore it, and the pastor preferred to put that money toward a new piano. So he announced, “Whoever can take it can have it.” Suddenly I remembered the figurine made of piano parts, and I knew this old piano had a purpose, and that I held the key to unlock it. Thus it was that our family became the happy owners of that beautiful Lyon & Healy.
The Lyon & Healy manufacturing company was established in 1864, and by tracing the serial number, I’ve been able to determine that this piano was made in 1906. We spent several days disassembling it, then cleaning, separating, and sorting the pieces. Right away ideas began to flow of things I could make from them. I would hold the pieces in various positions and let my imagination soar. Like finding shapes in the clouds, I saw people, giraffes, and chickens in the piano. I also saw circles—lots of them… and flowers, and music….
As the business continued to grow, I realized that I needed a logo. I had a vision for it, and I called on my children to help me bring the vision to light. My daughter Mary Beth drew out the first sketch. Then Matthew embellished Mary’s original idea, and I took what the two of them had formulated and put the finishing touches on it. (Bobby’s field of expertise is in moving the pianos. That boy has the strength of Samson, and I thank God for him.)
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Click on the circles for captions…
Matthew brought the Steinway to the storage unit
The hardest part is getting the cast iron frame out without destroying the beautiful soundboard.
Another piano came to the storage unit
Mary Beth helps me at craft fairs (when she is not at college)
Mary & her college roommate Danni helped me this past fall.
These are ready to be “dropped” so we can get the frames out.
His initials are forever carved in my piano workbench.
We did a lot of this disassembly on site because the piano was very heavy and the wheels were broken.
Two pianos have been “dropped” onto mattresses on the driveway so we can get the frames out.
Bobby, Matthew, and Dolly — my piano movers
It was heavier than it looks, but my Marine handled it well.
Many Florida craft shows are held in the sunny outdoors
“Harnessing the Energy”
The story continues, as I have used nearly every piece from that first piano and have reclaimed twelve other old pianos besides… and counting. Truly there are still a few songs to be played from these old pianos. It has been a rewarding and enjoyable task to find them and deliver them to you. I make creations of my own imagining, and I do commissioned work as well. If you have an idea for something unique for yourself or a loved one, let me know, and I’ll see if I can make it happen for you.
As a teen I had a sketchbook in which I would draw with ordinary Number 2 pencils. I drew pictures of stuffed animals belonging to my sisters and me, of the Tennessee mountains as we traveled through on family vacations, and of my friends. I also copied pictures from magazines…. I still have that sketchbook.
In high school I continued to draw a little, but photography became much more important to me. A dear friend gave me my first “grown up” camera, a Pentax ME Super. I read the manual from cover to cover and took hundreds of photos, keeping track of my settings in a spiral notebook so that when the film was developed, I could see the impact the settings made on the shots…. I still have that camera.
While photography was my passion, I did not necessarily see it as my calling. Several teachers greatly influenced my life, most of them English teachers, so I went to college to prepare to join their ranks. In 1992 I graduated with a BA in English and began teaching right away. As I mentioned yesterday, most of my teaching career was invested in the teaching of Spanish, algebra, and music. Spanish was my minor, algebra my hobby, and music my other passion. 🙂 Oddly enough, I taught English only one year—my final year in formal education—and I must say that eighth grade class was my crowning joy.
In 1994 I married a handsome sailor whom I had met at church, and by 2001 we had three precious children. I loved teaching—pouring my life into the lives of my students—but there wasn’t enough of me to go around, so in 2006 I left the traditional setting for good to teach my own children at home.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine offered art classes to the homeschoolers at our church. My children all signed up, and my friend let me audit the class as well. In Art I, she introduced us to drawing in 2-point perspective, charcoal, pen and ink, 2D and 3D wire sculpture, clay sculpture, color pencil, acrylic, and watercolor. My fascination with art was reawakened. I was drawing again, and painting now too. And I learned that color pencils are not just for children!
My first color pencil study, “One of a Kind,” on red Canson paper
That same year our church hosted its first craft fair to raise funds for teen mission trips, and my teacher/friend and I rented a table together to sell her paintings and my photographs. I created a line called Scenic Scriptures, in which I combined original photographs with Scripture verses. I presented them in a variety of sizes as prints—mounted, matted, or framed—as well as trinket boxes, trays, greeting cards, and refrigerator magnets. I made a small profit, but more importantly, I made a big impression on many friends who encouraged me to continue learning and developing in the area of art.
Many of my photos come from the gorgeous mountains of North Carolina and Virginia.
For four years I sold my art at craft fairs, and slowly a vision grew within me of doing this full-time. At the time, I was spread pretty thin, with my time and attention divided among several responsibilities and ambitions. But I had a burning desire to paint and make piano art, so I took steps toward that end. Slowly I phased out the Scenic Scriptures and devoted all my time to making piano art. This was not because I didn’t like the work with photography, but because that field is already saturated, and precious few people are making art with pianos.
“The Conductor” was the first piece I ever created from piano parts.
All my plans and dreams came to a screeching halt, it seemed, when in August 2016 my husband received a job transfer. After 35 years in Virginia, we were moving 900 miles away to a place where we knew almost no one. I was sad to leave my dear friends and church family, but happy for the chance to make a clean break from my other endeavors so I could focus more fully on art. The first few months were dedicated to settling in so the feeling of transition would not hang around indefinitely, and then I got busy with my dream of having a prosperous art business.
The transition proved to be more difficult than any of us could have imagined, and the dream nearly died. Between confusing state regulations, insufficient workspace, and tuition payments for three college students in private schools, the demands seemed more than I could handle. But it was not too much for my Abba. The Lord graciously showed both my husband and me that it was He who gave me this vision and the ability to draw, paint, and create things. I can do nothing less than give it all back to Him with a heart full of gratitude and faith to believe that He will meet all our needs according to His riches in Glory. In spite of many obstacles and setbacks…. by God’s grace I still have the vision!
My website has been around a few years now, but for the past few months I’ve been transitioning from another host to WordPress. This is now my very first post on WordPress, the first of many, I hope. And you, I trust, will be one of many to join me on this journey. Unfortunately, I learned too late how to move my content from one to the other, so please bear with me as I painstakingly rebuild my site from scratch. 🙂
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
So who are you, and what do you do?
I’m glad you asked. My name is Angela Rueger. I am a daughter of the King of kings, having accepted God’s free gift of salvation through the blood of His Son Jesus Christ at the age of 21. Everything else I do is colored by my relationship with Him. Additionally I am a happy wife in my 25th year of marriage, a mother of three college students, an artist, a writer, a tax professional, and a caregiver to a dog, a cat, and a turtle. The dog and cat belong to two of my children, but the turtle is mine.
Over the next few days I’ll pull back the curtain little by little to reveal a little more about who I am as a writer and an artist, and then I’ll also introduce you to my art, including the story behind my smiling piano logo….
Thank you so much for stopping by. I look forward to many more visits!
The Conductor was the first creation ever made under the name Encore! Old Pianos with a New Song.
Encore! Old Pianos with a New Song 