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.

Sierra Haiku folio 2014

For the past two years it seems Mary and I have been working hard on the side a day here a day there, squeezing in a set of prints that celebrates our backpacking trip careers along the crest of the Sierra Nevada. Mary and I collaborated together on the imagery, she carved the linocut blocks from either one of my photos or out of her sketch book/journal. the Haiku poetry I wrote while we hiked in the backcountry and was hand set in lead type. In total we made eight prints in the folio and the folio is an edition of ten. Mary printed the whole folio at KALA, a print studio where she has been doing an artist residence. The letter press she used is an old Vandercook SP20.

Symbiosis 2013, things connected

This new sculpture is another conglomerate of elements that are states of symbiosis in nature. Nature being that state or politics between living things in the wilderness that i see and witness. Elements being the flora and fauna that exists and only exist because of one or the other elements in the chain of nature. Today i was doing a little bit of research on a few rivers systems, one being the North Umpqua in Oregon. My friend Melinda who I've been doing some woodworking for highly suggested that I make time to go and experience this watershed since it has such an incredible level of biodiversity and wild state that seems so untouched still and very accessible. After a quick search on the web it looks like its on my visit list for 2014 after Paris and of course it has great fly fishing opportunities. The small cabinet is veneered in Redwood Burl and was a cigar box that my friend Bruce gave me after a camping trip, while the dragon fly inside came off the radiator of my truck when i was on my way home from studying split cane rod building with Chris Raine in Dunsmuir in June.

Mapping the Terrain 2013

This show that i'm in is a really smart survey of current mapping projects artists are experimenting with in the local bay area right now. Located in the Mills building on 220 Montgomery street in downtown san francisco, the exhibition gives generous space to my work as well as others. My works stem out of my personal art practice that starts in the "field" or more like extended journeys into the wilderness, beyond the roads that most people will visit, and even more remote than the average hiker will tempt to visit. Most times it can take me 5 days to reach a valley in the High Sierras, and its not uncommon that 15 to 30 people may even visit these wild places. Two sculptures that i made are in the show, Endo-Biotic Symbiosis and Evolution, are culminations of the wilderness experience. In another display case, curator of the exhibit, Kerri Hurtado of Artsource inc., has displayed many of the research materials i often collect from individual places in the wilderness and my actual pocket sketch books that i use while trekking into the backcountry. Among my sculptural pieces are some really interesting works by Lynn Beldner, Francesca Berrini,Val Britton, Jutta Haeckel, Dana Hargrove, Charles LaBelle, Michael Light and Lordy Rodriguez If your in the downtown area of San Francisco or you know your headed that way let me know and maybe we can meet at the space and have lunch? There's a great vietnamese resturant not far away called Golden Flower.

Endo-Biotic Symbiosis

Ive been super busy since the new year in the studio. New sculptures that seemed to be languishing along on work tables suddenly became clear in how they were to procede. Newly finished is a sculpture Endo-Biotic Symbiosis. the outer sides are styrene forms taken off of tree bark that are monted and hinged to panels. Open sculpture is a narative about the inner dependency that flora and fuana has in the wilderness. The sculptures slip cover is quarter sawn sycamore with a deciduous tree image cut out relating to the trees in the sculpture.

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.