Friday, July 4, 2008

Of Complications and Metals

Been in Northern California for awhile...been hectic, crazy, poor, and am pretty sure that my superpower is to make electronics die in my wake.

Here are a few glimpses at what I have been up to on my productive days.


I started doing lost-wax casting, which is way too much fun. This is a sampling, hopefully new pictures soon. Made a handful of larger pieces in bronze and lots in silver--some very very small pieces in silver that'll have images soon I hope. Above is a bronze handlebar mustache with a stand. About four inches long.
Mustache sans stand.
A rather large cicada pendant.
This piece is about one and a half inches long and some what heavy, I can make smaller, but the weight and size were somewhat important on this guy...he's a big bronze bug.
Currently worn on a string around the neck of a coat-rack friend of mine.
So...a smidge too much bronze in the crucible on this try...it was an experiement and frankly, still pretty happy with it.
Ummm...so half a frog you say...?
a Coqui, for a friend...hope he wasn't planning on a whole frog...I know I wasn't.
A large silver tardigrade, about an inch long--that's huge for silver so you know...
An assortment of Japanified sea critter charms. Anemone, tunicate, crinoid. All a little under a half inch tall...quite a lot of detail on these folks. And I made some much smaller silver blokes too.



I had been working on a gallery show for awhile, and here are the images of some of the pieces--they have not yet found a home...umm...interesting complications with that one...but anyway... So they are still searching for a home...and may get abandoned as I must now set off against...first stop North Carolina and then...ending up mid-August in Chicago...exciting but scared shitless...

the image above is the three finished islands as of when I last photographed them...there is just a little more work needed on the unfinished large island. They are made with salvaged wood, stained and sealed for a dark, slick, wet look and the forms are done with wire mesh, sculptamold and then sand while still wet. They then receive another coat of sealant so the islands are actually touchable...they have a really interesting texture because of how the sand was sucked and fell into the wet sculptamold. All the figures are done in ceramic, with oil stains, and articulated using wire to combine their moving parts. There are 80 completed, all different, with many different forms and moving parts. Sort of a trip to make...

All the islands sitting in a...clump. Two still show their skeletons underneath.

It is I...on the dome floor, busily building more fisheaters.
A close up, there is a plant, and then a figure with a moving periscope and one with a working chain.
More little fellows...if it looks like a piece can be removed or moved...it most assuredly can...the average is four moving parts, a few with less and a few with more.
A better view of a smaller island
The project also has many little fish done in the same process for the fisheaters to eat, there is also an mountain, a puddle, some rocks, and more plants. As this show may end up shown in a damn field somewhere and photographed unsure if it will get the remaining fisheaters (23 which are already kiln-ready greenware and about 60 more planned and mapped) and two large trees with individually attached leaves...