Galleries are Closing...

The Art Galleries all up and down this valley I live in are closing their doors, one after the other, like a cold wind is coming. I have had my "stuff" in a couple of them and know they are run by caring and dedicated people. They are expensive to operate. The lease on the building, maintenance, employees, wine and food for opening nights, it all adds up. Most artists hate the process of selling their own work, haggling over dollars, reducing their art to a value per hour.

We need the enthusiasm of the gallery operators who can put the artist and client together.

Artists are hit first, hardest and longest by a recession. There is no room for art when the cupboards are bare and money is dwindling. We lose the galleries and some good artists because of this recession. They will find other things to do, putting their talents on hold. Survival becomes an issue.

I like to support artists in the little ways that I can. I buy nothing from China; I am not a good customer of Walmart. I buy cards and calendars and prints and hand-crafted items from artists who make these. Sometimes it is just encouragement. I think an artist might make $5 from a $25 calendar. I like to think that I encourage a dream.

The KEY to All My Sites is Here.

My Garden

This time of year my garden is in hibernation, wearing its winter coat. I am left with my imagination of what is was and already I am thinking of Spring. My garden is my best art and begins in my greenhouse when it is still cold and muddy outside, far too wet to work the soil.

My greenhouse is one of the first things that I have ever built and it is the perfect size. It is situated to catch the most sun and on cold nights can be heated with only a 60 watt heater placed under the concrete benches, absorbing that heat to share with the plants. The greenhouse is only eight feet by twelve feet but I can grow 150 tomato plants and that is far more than I require.

I have flowers everywhere and don't even know their names. Forty years of gardening and I never got to know them that way. I know what they like and I give them lots of attention, wonderful potting soil that I make myself and nutrients from the sea, kelp and crabmeal, fish from the ocean. I might give them names but never in Latin, always "Suzie" or "Betty" or

"Linda", names I can pronounce.

My garden is walkable, there are no straight paths. I have resting places, benches here and there that I have made, encouraging the visitor to pause. Take it all in and slowly. Metal work, of course is everywhere. Supports for the vines, art for the tomatoes, something just there for no reason at all.

My Garden Photos can be Found Here

My Shop, My Island

View from my shop.

Walnut tree and a look at my shop.

Working on a Bench. Working on a Gate.

Twenty foot single gate in my shop.


I have lived in the same house since 1972.

I have had the same phone number, a land-line, since 1969. I paid $8,375 for the house. It was a "fixer" house and about 900 square feet on a very large lot, about one-third acre. Over the years I fixed the house

making it about 2,200 square feet with a little "granny flat" attached. About 20 years ago I built my studio in the back yard. It is about 1,000 square feet and sits in the far corner of the property, not disturbing the flow of the sun on my garden. Every morning I walk the 100 feet or so, across my stone bridge, coffee in hand, to "go to work". I don't pretend for a second that this is hard. It is not like work at all. It is what I do.

My Other Blog is Here.

Alice

"How does one become a butterfly?" She asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much

that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." Thank you, Constance, for reminding of this

"Alice and Wonderland" quotation.

As we get older we are less inclined to give up comfort for adventure. Risk becomes an essential element in the equation of living. No matter our political persuasion, we acquire things and become conservative. This may not be all bad. It could be nature's way of providing a stable nest, that roost to come home to. It is limiting though, a self imposed boundary, lines we are fearful to cross.

My Other Blog is HERE

They say there are one hundred hookers in Hollywood for every movie actress, for every thousand guitars sold, one might find itself on stage. The fear of failure overpowers the desire for success.

The worst word in the English language is "can't", can not, and the second worse is "won't",

will not. I am hoping that this New Year, 2011 that is upon us, will be a positive year, that our Resolutions will accept the challenges ahead, that we can shed our fears, find strength in ourselves and value in the friendships we have made. Maybe we can do it a little different?

Food As Art

Christmas dinner is over and I took some photos along the way.

These are the ingredients for my Mandarin Turkey Stuffing. For those of you who tried it, I hope you liked it.

My other Blog is Here

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I just wanted to say Thank you and I am so glad to have met you all. Merry Christmas and I know that 2011 will be such a very good year! I enjoy reading your blogs, they give me inspiration and ideas and intermingling your life with mine. I am honored and flattered that you read my blogs or even give a whit about me. The world becomes smaller with this sharing and it is comforting to know, although so far apart, we are on this road together.

I have learned so much this past year and in sharing my cancer story, my art story, my life story with you, I have been allowed into your stories. They have grown and we are getting better at telling them. In a way it is all the same story, yours and mine. Told at different times and different vantages, we are all seeking the same thing. We have become friends and I know if you find it you will tell me.

While we wait we hunt. Maybe that is the story. The journey itself and there is no end.

Each time we are so close the goalpost is moved. We anticipate its position only to be fooled.

Life becomes what to do with this trickery. We learn laughter and appreciation that they were only little wounds after all. We get up, dust ourselves off, and do it again. That is the Human Spirit and it is found all over the world. I know, you have told me so.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Mixing My Blogs!

I have two Blogs, this one and the other one. The Cancer Blog is the other one and is supposed to be that story. The story of the Hero who almost doesn't make it and is constantly getting deeper in trouble before he miraculously escapes just in the nick of time, running off into the sunset with his sweetheart. This Blog is suppose to be about Art, so really it can be anything I want. They overlap. A book within a book. They are both story telling. There is a commonality to them. So, you want to hear my "Faith healer" story? It is Art, I promise.
This all happened over thirty years ago when I was very sick. I never knew what was wrong with me. I developed diarrhea like you wouldn't believe. It was like water, about twenty times a day, and all through the night. I lost over twenty pounds in a very short time. I have forgotten every single detail. I did go to my doctor who preformed a lot of tests on me, drinking barium, x-rays, lab culture stuff, the whole lot. He couldn't find the cause and wanted to do experimental, exploratory surgery on me! I told him that I really needed to delay that decision!
I was put on a diet of eating stale toast. I would toast the bread and leave it on the counter and eat it the next day, plain. That is a diet for constipation but it didn't work. This all went on for at least ten days with no improvement. I drank lots of liquids and they ran right through me.
A friend of mine is a Rosicrucian and I am not really sure what that really means. He stopped by one day and wanted to take me to a friend of his, a Mr. Dumount. He was also a Rosicrucian and had been so for years and years. He was an old guy in his late eighties. I went to the bathroom before we left and upon arrival at Mr. Dumount's house. Watery, watery, both times!
He lived in a small nondescript house on the edge of a nearby town. I remember sitting in his living room and talking about his rock collection and his explaining to me that the Earth was alive.
My friend had told me lots of stories on the way to his house. Mr. Dumount could levitate. He could hold a light bulb in his hands and turn it on. He had a book in his living room full of signatures of people that he has helped over the years. People who arrive in crutches and left on their own. I told my friend that I didn't believe in any of this. "You don't need to" he said, "he does."
After about half an hour of small chit chat and using his bathroom twice with my watery deposit, we went to a back bedroom with a little couch and I was told to lay down. Nothing weird here, I was fully clothed and he was standing over me. He never touched me. He began with his hands at the top of my head and ran them slowly, about three inches from my body, all the way down to my toes. This whole thing took about twenty minutes and the sweat was pouring off his brow. He said nothing but was very intense. His sweat was dripping on me.
When he was done he said he was very tired and needed to rest and would I please sign his book on the way out. I am thinking sure, this was a waste of time and could I please use his bathroom before we left!
This is the part that is unbelievable. Totally inexplicable. Weird. I used his bathroom and everything was normal!!! For the first time in almost two weeks I had a normal crap! There was no gradual improvement. It was instantaneous.
He would take no money although I offered it to him. Just to please sign his book. It would have been nice to have known him while I was fighting cancer but he must be long since dead. I think.

The Art in Cooking

There is a ton of Art in cooking and you get to eat the presentation! Edible Art. I love the smells and even the mess it all makes. I like a little flour on the floor. I love the food part of these Holidays. Today I am simply posting what I get to eat!

Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have a recipe from Nieman Marcus that was originally purchased for $250. e-mail me and I will give you this recipe! slate@earthlink.net they are "the best".

I love the smells and taste of home made bread!

Sausage Rolls, my all time favorite!

My other Blog is HERE

New Year's Resolutions?

I feel as though I have been given one more opportunity, one more chance to reinvent myself. I have survived that cancer thing. I almost got run over by a freight train, but didn't.

I once fell sixteen feet off a Church roof onto the concrete below. No soft landing there, and I went on to have lunch! I put my hand into an electrical panel and was thrown clear across the room and got to laugh that one off. Years ago, remind me to tell this story, I was sick beyond belief and the doctors could not even find out what was wrong with me. I was tricked into going to a "faith healer" (I have no faith like that, or at least didn't at the time) and was cured instantly! Seriously. Ten minutes later I was in perfect health after a two week bout with I don't know what. I was supposed to be dead when I was two years old and my brother saved me with animal crackers! Saved by cookies! That is a true story too although I don't remember it. I am sure there were lots of roads I could have taken, maybe even started, that had I travelled them would have been my doom.

I have liked Art all of my life but didn't "do art" until my fiftieth birthday. No near death experience there except that I gave up a successful construction business that was killing me.

One day I just woke up and threw it all away, deciding if I weren't to do it then, when was I going to do it? When would life be perfect and really allow me to do what I wanted? There are two problems with this reasoning: defining "perfect" and knowing what you want.

I am thinking, for my New Years Resolution, on both these blogs of mine, I will investigate

these two issues for me: perfection and knowing what you want out of life. They will clash like school girls but maybe end up dancing like butterflies!

Success

If you believe you can't soon enough you won't be able to. Faith is the beginning to everything. It is the second step that is most difficult, the allotting of time. So often we assign this task to others. The doctors make the appointments and we will be there. The television show we like to watch is at eight o'clock and we will be waiting. The alarm clock goes off and we will get up and adjust our day to meet the expectation of others. When I decided at fifty years old that I wanted to learn to weld I had to get up earlier. It is true that practice makes perfect.

Time becomes an empty vessel we are eager to fill. The trick to doing art is to rearrange the clock, reset your priorities and save time for yourself. Be obligated to it. A good friend of mine built a yacht and sailed around the world. He knew that this was a daunting task that few could achieve and demanded of himself only two hours a day. This is a discipline he made manageable

in small increments. Two hours a day, even when he didn't feel like it. Especially when he didn't feel like it. It is this beginning that is difficult. Once started his two hour dedication would stretch and I have seen him working by flashlight late into the evening.

My Professional Steel Site is HERE.

Garden Painting

There are no rules, no order to things,

nothing translated, nothing to say.

No loss of meaning, no meaning at all.

Not hindered by history

nor confinement of words

No unnecessary things.

Nothing to remember,

nothing that is lost.

No thing to be found.

Red because I like it and choose it

and want it to be. Green because you expect it in a garden

So it will always be there.

Black is what is missing and will never appear.

No Rules, Nothing to Say...

I am not a painter but "I slept at a Holiday Inn last night"! I am just having fun. I give paint a will and watch in amazement what it can do when out of the tube. I have ten store bought colors and that is confusing enough. They can become anything. I prefer to paint on metal where the colors aren't sucked into the surface and disappear. I like them alive and moving, mixing or not, going this way and that way. They become what they want, what they need to be, what they have always been.

I admit that I stand back and have a look and always feel a bit pretentious when I do this.

I think artists need to do this, find what is missing and what is too much. I think there are stories within a painting, a vocabulary of color, translations in design. A visual language

My Website is HERE! lots more paintings!.

"A Candle Loses Nothing...

...by Lighting Another Candle." What a great quotation and I have no idea who first said it, making it all the better. Gifts should be free of expectations.

A lot of artists are secretive with their creations and won't share their methods, their recipes,

the way they do things. Color on metal, a particular patina can be a difficult process. It used to be a crime, punishable by death, to teach metallurgy or anything about the metal arts. A good sword was tempered by thrusting it into the stomach of a willing slave. It is difficult to get good help these days.

I like iron work that stops traffic or at least slows it down. The choice is to appreciate this art and wonder who made it or to drive on by without giving it a thought. In a shared gallery space

one good exhibit is not enough. The tempo is set by peoples' expectations. I want everyone to be their best and the crowd to move slowly.

I have been copied, sure, but more often I have raised the bar and given motive for other metal artists to do their best. Not so much better than I am but better than they were. I love the transition from being a fabricator to becoming an artist. It is an honor when they show me their work.

My Other Blog is Here.

Accidental Art

Much of life is accidental, could have gone either way or not at all. On my other blog I tell of stealing a ring from the Lake Gods and that is perhaps the first time I had a sense of power.

Artists are always doing this, defining things; we capture and confine, duplicate and interpret.

It is not enough to see and just be. We want to create and become a part of it all. We want to put our art into things and us into the art. We are after something.

Not all of it is by design. The first dripped paint was an accident. I make do with what I have

in my metal shop. I like scrounging, finding different uses for common objects. I love shapes and patterns if they are not too repetitive. I like to create the unseeable, not thought of things.

I may accidently find something but when I put it into my art it is on purpose.

One Hand Clapping!

I live in these, they are my friends. I sleep with them on. These are rabbit fur-lined gloves and I take them off for the bathroom and while on this computer otherwise I wear them all the time.

My hands never feel good, always as if I am stirring a bucket of cut glass. It is the prize I won with my voodoo chemo-therapy that cured me from cancer! I am a winner and have this neuropathy in my hands to remind me of the whole ordeal, my cancer battle!

One doctor says that in eight years they will heal themselves, another says that in eight years I will have gotten used to it. In the meantime I am not waiting. If I do nothing they hurt and if I use them they hurt. The gloves help a lot.

So I am returning, doing what I like to do, painting a bit and I have some welding ideas, things I need to be doing. It is part of who I am. To have a good day I need to stand back and say, "I did that!" So soon you will see some iron wok on this site!

Pick a number, any number...

I paint on just about anything except canvas. I don't have any canvas. My shop is a metal shop and my first choice would be copper. I love what paint does on metal. It is not absorbed, won't stay where you put it and has a will of its own. It wants to become something. When I run out of copper sheets my next choice would be stainless steel. It never rusts allowing me to put the paintings outside and it has a sheen of its own adding an element to the painting.

This time of year I like to paint on kitchen foil, what this "3"

is painted on. The depth is in the material already and I use these paintings to wrap my Christmas presents. Yeah, if you unwrap a present properly with a bit of eagerness the paint will flake off. It is still a pretty package under the tree.

My Other Blog is Here

I don't have a style

No style at all. This is my second oil painting and it can be representative of whatever you like. Call it what you want to. I am discovering that this art painting stuff is a bit like poetry. I write 'em you read 'em and find your own meaning!

Modern Art is color-coordinated. Will it go with the couch? Do I need to repaint the walls? Can you make this in Blue?

Some where I once read that next year's popular colors are found in French underware this year!

I think I need to go to France and do some research on this.

I paint with the colors I have, ten of them, that's enough. I am limitted by my ability but not my vision. I know what I want to do, just don't quite know how to get there. In the mean time I am playing and this is the poetry I am doing today.

My Other Blog is HERE!

Painting with Oil

Well I turned 64 and received oil paints for my birthday so I had to play with them! This is my Very First Oil Painting. It is on metal, of course and now with my others' lives a quiet life only in the computer. I am happy, I have found a new toy!

It is a Small World

I do admit that I love the Statistics part of this blogging world, especially the World Map.

Countries turn Green when someone from there looks at your blog. It is a greening of the world and people of artistic persuasion can check in with each other. We are not alone by a long shot.

Your art may be different from mine and in fact because of the nature of artists, for sure it is.

We are all trying to make something, express a joy, uncover a tear, find beauty in the common

or wonder at the unusual.

It is easy for America and Canada to turn green I have a lot of friends on this continent but I am acquiring others! Australia turns green and countries in Europe and Nepal, India, Pakistan and Russia! I don't know you by name unless you leave a comment but I know of your visit and that we are kindred spirits, always hunting for a little light in the dark and a friend with whom

to continue this journey.

Thank you all who visit and especially those who stopped long enough to say "I was here".

Muse?

I have lost that Drive to create art and am not sure if or how I will get it back again, or what form it will take. I wonder what "Art" is, why it drove me before to create the physical out of

dreams and visions that I have had. I still have dreams but now they are swirling dervishes of language and I am dreaming in color. I don't know where to take this or whether it will go anywhere, but it is a bit like the steel, lumps of iron in my shop, wanting the heat from the fire, pounded on my forge until they become what was always within them. Art.

Maybe it is the economy. There is no excess money to purchase what I make and without sales I can't continue. Maybe it is the neuropathy in my hands. Everything I touch is like stirring a bucket full of cut glass. The steel does call for me but only offers pain.

I always start my tomato seeds in the greenhouse on April Fools Day and my garden is always my best art, creating a total environment that is really me, an island, my island in this narcissistic world we live in. That is four months from now. Plenty of time.

My Other Blog is HERE!

A Little Piece of My Heart

.....literally! Most of my art is in steel and I cut myself all the time, leaving my DNA on each project I make. Now I wear gloves because the Neuropathy in my hands won't allow closer contact. I never wore gloves before the cancer, always wanting to get as close to my work as possible. I mostly weld vertically, my pieces tacked to a steel frame in my shop, much as an artist would paint. I like to weld a bit, adding this or that, and stand back and have a look. I like that perspective and the idea that I am making one huge giant picture. I like to touch what I am making, feel what it needs to be and create as I go along. I can get lost really easily while I am in my shop working on these pieces. Time stops or floats or zaps by in an instant. It makes no difference, it is not part of me. Who I am and what I do is in each piece I create and as it goes from my house to yours, you are litterally taking a piece of me with you!

My Cancer Free Blog is Here!

My Art is Temporary...

even what I make from steel will suffer the passage of time and succumb to the elements, rusting into the earth from which I found it. Like ice sculptures they will exist in memory only and then become a dream extinguished by the morning glare. I know that. It is an artists' futile attempt at immortality, creating something larger than life. Leaving behind traces in the sand to say "I was there"! I saw it and loved it even if I didn't understand it all.

My acrylic art is even shorter lived as I make no pretence of saving it at all. My paintings are photographed and transformed into the digital world of cyber space. I don't know what happens to them, looked at by others, maybe copied like stolen kisses, or glanced at and forgotten. They are lost loves into a nether world, out of reach and out of control or persuasion.

I keep them or copies of them like love letters in a box. They become a part of my diary.

They are experiences not captureable, a flicker in time. Sometimes I look back on them with amazement, astonished at how close I came. Other times I realize I have a long way to go. And all the time, pleased with myself for keeping a record, never timid, always shouting: "I was here and I did that!"

My other BLOG is HERE

Learning a Discipline...

.....takes discipline. Every failure I have had in my life was because I quit. Every missed opportunity was an expectation that the doors would open easily and I could sail through.

I was fifty years old and had never seen a welder when I was given one, a thoughtful gift from a friend. The whole process I found fascinating from the beginning, mixing molecules from one piece of steel into the other. It is not like glue, not stuck together at all, but becomes one piece, some creation that you made. I fell in love with it. I have an obssesive nature to me when I really want to do something and knowing the reasons for my past failures, I was determined to succeed.

You can learn to weld in about five minutes but to get good at it takes practice and about 2,000 hours, that is about a year. You learn to make the little swirles, heating one piece and bringing it into the other, and you practice this to the point that a final grinding and polishing is not even necessary. And then there is the fabrication part requiring a welding table, jigs and guides and clamps. Finally there is design. There are a lot of ways to build the same thing and you learn that design is not just a pretty added on element, but like a truss, adds strength and integrity to the piece. I never read a book on welding but acquired a lot of them on design and its function in the metal arts.

My other blog is HERE

Painting into Lonely Hours

I don't do that! I do like the early morning hours, that quiet just before dawn. I like to see the sun rise, be the first to hear the birds

sing and see the promise of the new day, but I am not an isolated artist hunting for salvation or meaning in a paint brush. I paint for fun. I find laughter in the colors and because I paint mostly on metal, I seek to discover the will of the paint. It doesn't stay where put as on canvas; it moves about, blends or not, obliterates itself, or quite strikenly becomes something completely

different from what I had imagined. It is alive.

My other Blog is HERE.

I make the things

I have. This cabinet is made from old growth douglas fir that once was siding on an old school.

I salvage it before it could be in the junk yard, offering it a new birth, a chance to continue.

A lot of what I make is from scrap of one sort or another, certainly my steel creations were once something else and I even paint on scrap, whatever I can find.

Butterflies Are Free!

I did not make a calendar this year. I am not sure why the dates have to change from year to year, Christmas is always on the 25th, my birthday remains the third day in December, everything should remain the same!

This year, for Christmas, I bought my wife the most delicate and precisely drawn Calendar:

"A Fantasy of Butterflies and Flowers" created by

Constance Widen, a South African (yes, she is a lion!)

Canadian (yes, she is a butterfly!) and Internationally known (I am privileged to know her and call her my friend!) Artist Extrordinaire!

The wings are different is the first thing I noticed! These are not computer generated mirror images but hand painted in pastels, imperfect to perfection, the perfect Chrismas gift, a wonderful addition to the kitchen wall. My wife will love it!

Most Amazing Calendar

These are my tomatoes, nurtured from seed,
talked to everyday and perhaps the best Art
I do. They have been magically transformed
through the clever talents of my friend and
fellow artist, R.C. deWinter, to become the
most amazing Calendar. Brazenly, I am plugging her HERE! For the gardener or Kitchen Gourmet
there is no better Christmas gift. Twelve wonderful photos that have become art, a piece
of my garden, a little bit of me and a little bit of
"Gina". They are wonderfully produced as a large Wall Calendar. I hope you enjoy it.

Snow Day!

I am playing Hookie today!

Links within Links

I am still learning this computer nether world of cyber space. I am sitting in my office
of my studio, in my backyard, on this eight year old machine. That is antique in computer time.
It was "top of the line" at the time. I spent $2,200 on it and bought it for my daughter when she went to college. It is so v e r r y s l o w and I can watch Youtube seven seconds at a time, a three minute segment can take 15 minutes! Typing is fast though and I have thousands of pictures on it, truly a space age tool.
I learned everything with the crash and burn method and thought people really cared about me! I got e-mails from all over the world, from pharmaceutical companies in India
(how did they KNOW?), naked Russian college students wanting to be pen pals, Nigerians wanting to share their wealth with ME, how lucky can you get, and so many free offers I would have to build a warehouse to store them all.
It cost me $500 to fix my computer and get all the crap out of it but it is like tuition and I learned a valuable lesson. It is not "free", I don't know anyone in Nigeria, the naked Russians are men, and I have photo editing from six different suppliers. Anti-virus programs like to fight each other! I no longer open ALL my e-mails.
I do have Websites though and a lot of them. If you get bored this week and want even more of what I do, want to see my garden, my big art and little stuff, desire an education on Ornamental Iron or are surfing for ideas, HERE THEY ARE and, yes, there are links within links which will take you to eight or ten other sites, all mine. I am thinking of deleting them soon and starting all over again but I'll leave them there for a week or so.

I Don't do Book Reviews

but I want to mention to you the BEST book I have ever read! The Author is an obscure,
obscure to me anyway, African born white girl/woman/lady/flyer, challenger to life, a pilot when women couldn't smoke who wrote only one book. The Title is "West with the Night" and her name is Beryl Markham. You can get a used paperback from Amazon for 4 dollars and it is worth several hundred times that amount. She could write about engine oil and make it a wonderful story. Read it for the language, the painting of words, her descriptions, the expanse of Africa in the 1930's, her ultimate success and crash landing her plane in Nova Scotia.
You will carefully choose every single word in everything you write for the rest of your life.

If you throw it away

I will find it. More of the world's steel is
produced from scrap than from mining iron ore.

A lot of the art I make is from reused steel as I find it, put it into a different shape and give it a new life. Virtually all of what I make is from recycled steel, formed into new bars and sheets from items discarded. Foreign markets take most of it. We buy crap from China, discard it to the recycle heap where it is crushed and bundled like cord wood, sent back on a freighter to begin the process all over again so we can have cheap imports! Pretty funny, huh?

I go to these scrapyards often to circumvent this process, hunting through this flotsam and jetsam, this continuous stream of steel, much like fishing. It is what I do.

My other Blog is HERE

Dark Matter

All of my paintings are not light and colorful, but I admit most of them are.

I have 12 store bought colors, all acrylic, and several very cheap brushes. I mostly paint on copper or steel because I have a lot of it in my metal shop but yesterday I found hiding in the corner, a sheet of aluminum and thought I would try that. This is a mixture of paints and grinding and a little shop dust. It lived a happy and short life and then I ground it off, to be lurking in my computer, like a virus, waiting!

My Other Blog is HERE!