Layered Stories at Spun Smoke

I've been recently finishing up the last sculpture that will be headed to Patricia Sweetow's for my show called "Layered Stories", Her new space, located in Oakland, at the corner of Telegraph and 25th street in the uptown area, is called Spun Smoke.
This last sculpture was inspired by my trip to the Glacier Divide near Humphreys Basin. The piece is configured similar to a cirque along the crest. The sectional parts, which fit together, depict the ridge line with lake, sky and tree envelope the spatial environment within its cabinet made of Ash burl.

Also in her space, she has asked to have one of my split cane fly fishing rods for sale with one of her scarfs that she's crafted in the window space. It will be fun to see how we mesh our work together.

Paris 2014

Once upon a time I wanted to go to Paris. Selfishly, I wanted to go by myself. Really, so i wouldn't need to negotiate with another the plans of each day. To just go, be there and see. To see great art that I had studied and to know what my art historically was adding to. That was 25 years ago and now with Mary, on our 20th wedding anniversary, I couldn't dream of going by myself without her, let alone with anyone else. I was so glad to have her be the one to go with, everyday we had the same desires and wanted to see all the of the best that art history could show us. Each day there was no negotiating, eat croissant and have coffee, hit the street, see art and architecture, drink wine, eat, sleep. Well we found it all and a few surprise things and never had one low point.

Multiple update and laminating

After a crazy bought of work in my workshop, I finally was able to laminate the 10 reliefs onto the sculptural/book frame work. i used a two part expandable ridged foam to secure the styrene relief to the wood veneer page on both the outside edges. Before actually glueing these down, i sealed the burl veneer thats on the opposite sides with a coat of Spar varnish to seal it from being stained by any runs or residue from the opposite side. The process seemed to work well by stacking weights onto the piece to keep the relief so it would drift while the foam dried. the foam is a urethane based material very similar to Gorilla Glue.

once i'm finished laminating these, i'll begin to start sealing the styrene with some paint and begin to shade it into a landscape like the map elements that i use often in my work.

Multiple Construct 1-5

After returning from my two and half week adventure into the high country, in the studio i feel very inspired to be immersed in all the projects. Without a stutter, like i hadn't been away, I went straight to work mounting the gun blued hinges. after a quick finish sanding and layout of the parts in there right sequence i began epoxying them onto each leaf of each book sculpture. Using 5 minute epoxy helps with to keep the process going at a reasonable pace. after each of the 5 pieces were assembled i could allow them to cure and then edge sand each to an edge square. next, tomorrow i'll head to the plastic shop to buy the .030 sheet styrene and start annoying Bill to gain access to the vacuform machine and produce the 10 reliefs for the outside pages of the 5 unit multiple.

Vacu-forming for a Multiple/1

My artist fishing friend Bill months ago had a great idea about repeating a part of my pieces over again through the use of a vacu-form machine. Last week I finally had time to find and buy the sheets of styrene. We bought a few differnt thicknesses so we could see the level of detail that would be created. After the initial tinkering to get the machine cleaned up and started which had its own learning curve, we were ready to test the first piece.
















After loading the reliefs on to the aluminum vacuum table, with the vacuum pump pulling 30lbs and the gas heaters running full blast Bill was ready to lower the very hot sheet of styrene onto the table and open the vacuum valve. After we tried about four test sheets we could see that the .030 thickness styrene sheets were giving us the best results. Only a slight webbing was occurring in the corners, and the detail that the thinnest sheets were more pleasing.

Now back to Piedmont Plastics next week for 12 sheets of Styrene, then we can go into production....  Thanks Bill!

White-out project.

Organs of a body.
Snow fields existed.
Feeders of a landscape.

Rich bio mass, cascading.
An eco system chain linked.
Dependent on a source.

Dihydrogen monoxide,
Frozen at elevation.
Fluid flowing below.

Solid white opaque.
Fluid clear copious.
Shapes like organs, feed the landscape.
















"white-out" correction fluid on maps and photographs.

In The Studio

Over the summer, I was able to experiment on journal making while I was on the trail. I wanted to explore translating the experience of the landscape into my small daily book. I have often found it hard to commit in the endeavor of Journaling for more than a couple of weeks, I would loose interest and begin working only on larger piece, or sculptures.
My Trekking trips afforded me the focus to work small and intimate. Keeping focused on 1 day at a time, I got to play with different forms of seeing and translating the environment on to the pages.
Now that the summer has passed, I’m excited to take elements from those journals and assemble them into new pieces. One in particular that I’m working on is a series of cut out’s. The shapes are of the snowfields that I encountered from the trail along the JMT. Specifically the snowfields in the Black and White Divide area of the Sierra Nevada Crest. The snowfields here feed a series of lakes, which are the photos that I use as the ground from which I cut out the snowfield shapes.
Below these, are the insects that I collected from the journeys around the vicinity of this landscape. The collected insects are sealed and preserved in small vials of alcohol.
In addition to these Snowfield cut outs, I began working on a landscape book that somewhat chronicles another section of my trek. First, I came up with a visual narrative and then cut out segments in some of the panels to represent elements in the landscape. Eight panels are to be hinged together and accordion or fold together.
I think that some of its panels will be writing from the journal entries and others will be photographs laminated to the surface, maybe dirt from the trail also.

More Still Life's

Recently I have been drawing many of my flies for fishing lately. I like how they transform from a tiny little “lure” to a large object in a still life.
Most I draw are ones I’ve made and some I buy because of their sculptural value.
My friend Kevin tied some pretty cool nymph flies made of the fibers of pheasant tail with a large bead made of magnesium on the hook suspended where the bugs thorax would be.
Using the scraps of euro plywood, I then sand the drawing surface and cut them to size the wood is like drawing paper but really thick and adds its own natural ground to the drawn image.
I need to make about ten more of the drawing to get enough ready for the annual Post-Post card show at the gallery space in san Francisco called The Lab.
I really enjoy getting lost in the structure of the Flies, there like tiny sculptures to begin with. The process of drawing them reminds me of Robert Irwin’s book title “Seeing Is Forgetting The Name Of The Thing One Sees’.”

New Tonka toy to draw

Soon it’s going to be the annual SF Open Studio tour this coming October 25th and 26th . I have been drawing recently, aside from the engine parts and fly fishing lures, some new Tonka truck toys I purchased on eBay.
They’re quite fun to draw and challenging to get their form, perspective and shading convincing enough that the trucks transcend being just toys to maybe the real thing. I guess that is why I am attracted to them as a subject. I remember having many of these very trucks when I was a child and would play with them constantly. I would project my self as a worker or a driver into the inside of the trucks cab and drive them around a dirt pile in the backyard. I would build buildings and pits to a fantasy excavation for a city complex. At the time, it was a way to escape and become someone and do something with out the true responsibility of being it for real. I think that is why I am interested in drawing these toys now, they allow an escape to that place I once could go to all the time and can forget other things around me.