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.

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.

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!

New Drawing 6-2-2012

here is a new drawing i finished today.

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.

Hedron-scape drawings

With scraps from the photos.
Shapes used for Polyhedrons.
Shape forms which are elements of the cabinet sculptures.
Saved or added, left over arbitrary parts.
These recent drawings, formations between the drawn drawn and photo.
Fragments of images from treks in the wilderness.
The incorporation of watercolor to define the landscape.
The high sierra rock and its own geometry in striation and fracturing line.
Contours in a map defined by the rock.
Waterways defined by the topography.
Flora and fauna defined by the landscape.
The Landscape as elements.
Each linked and defined by one another.

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.