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.

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.

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.

Poly-Hedron Cabinets

I put a final coat of spar on both of the PolyHedron cabinet a few days ago and decided it would be a good idea to take some pictures of them before starting to make the leather closer straps for the doors. I took some close up images of the interior tree elements with the appendages of paper hedrons and legoscapes.

Mappa burl cabinet with trout images for interior Tree Trout.

Sapele veneer cabinet with Lego condo scape for the interior.