I Own Some Stocks...

I admit it.  I own a piece of America.  I am a very small part of the "Corporate World"

   Several years ago I thought it might be fun to buy into the Stock Market.  I am not talking a lot of money here, I am not that kind of guy.  But I had a good year that year and was willing to invest $5,000.

   I did a little research and now realize that I should have done a whole lot more.  I want to explore my reasoning with you, why I put it where I did.

   I could have put it into Apple Computer and bought their stocks at $200 a share.  That would be just 25 shares in a technology I knew nothing about.  It seemed like a lot of money in an already topped out market.

We had a chip manufacturing company in our city.  They came here with huge promises, lots of money and tremendous tax breaks.  They built the biggest building in our city and demanded 20% of our water and 20% of our electricity, a necessity in their operations.  Both were rerouted to them along with street improvements

and other infrastructure developments.  It was a huge project taking over three years to complete.

   I think they hired about 500 people and paid them good wages although the top management was from Korea.  The building sits vacant now with overgrown grass.  Streetlights that still work on roads that go nowhere.

   The computer business can change over night.  I think the whole operation moved to Thailand in one weekend.  The building sits empty as sort of a monument.  It has a huge parking lot.

   So that was all scary to me and I didn't want to invest in computers, although Apple sells for close to $400

a share today.  I could have doubled my money!  It is funny.  Apple Computer has more money than our Federal Government!

   I did look at Gold.  In tough times of economic insecurity Gold has been the standard of investors.  When all collapses around you gold always raises in value.  You can possess gold, take it with you.  Hide it in your underwear.  I think one needs to be a pessimist to invest in Gold.  I have faith we will get out of this economic mess and come to our senses.  I had images of being beaten and my gold stolen.  Nothing seemed "right" about that.  Betting on gold was betting on disaster and "winning" meant wanting things to get worse.

   I wanted to invest this paltry sum in something I believed in and knew a little about.  I wanted some potential of course.  This was a business venture and I wanted a profit.

   I couldn't invest in anything that damaged the Earth or frankly, anything that helped the Arab World gain more wealth.  If there is a God I would hate to sit at His knee and discuss how I destroyed His garden!

I had no interest in oil even if it trippled my assets.

   I wanted something that could be reused, recycled, regenerated, born again, over and over.  Something that cleaned up this planet.  I am thinking that if we ever get our act together we need to build.  Major Public Structures can put millions of people to work.  That is how the Pyramids were built or the Great Wall in China.  Our own infratructure, our roads and bridges have not been significantly improved since the 1960's.

You can't build anything without steel.

     More steel is created through recycling than through mining these days.  Refridgerators, bed springs, old toasters and automobiles and the stuff bought last week at Walmart gets recycled into new steel, becomes rebar and structural steel.  Maybe a bicycle.

   There is a Schnitzer Steel Yard in my town and I see the pile to be recycled gaining height every day and then it disappears, loaded up in box cars to the steel mill where it is melted down.

   This is a huge company with yards all over America, starting with a guy and his horse drawn cart in Alaska over a hundred years ago.  It is an American Story and I liked that.

   It has been a roller coaster, going from $25 to $50 to as much as $117 per share and now about back to $50.  It will grow with America or fall by the wayside with us.

   I choose to keep it. 

In Progress

 So this is a sculpture in progress.  It is about five feet by seven feet and four feet tall, except the lady who is six feet tall.  The pots will be cleaned and repainted and planted with cascading fuchsias. I am building it for a juried art competition for a gallery show in September.  The Theme is recycling/reuse and I think this will be appropriate. It is made of 100% scrap.  The center support is a huge muffler and the twisted steel, stuff I found, rusted and thrown into the scrap heap.  The flower pots were once porcelain over steel light fixtures from an old school gymnasium.
    If this doesn't get me into the show or if it doesn't sell, it will look great in my garden!

The lady is far from finished.  She needs a hat! and arms, of course

with lots of bracelets and jewelry, and fingers with rings!

The eyes are ball bearings, tossed for their imperfections.

The eyebrows are bicycle gears, ears are washers and earrings

are stainless steel logos from a motor home company that went

out of business.

The child is pretending to be holding this whole display up. He is happy with his strength!

I really agree with the philosophy of this show.
All this stuff was found at my local recycling scrap steel yard and all of it was on its way to China.
Ground and bailed for their reuse so we could buy more stuff from China!  It would be so easy to stop this process!  Just don't buy junk, that is all it would take. A philosophy of quality. The satisfaction of knowing that whoever made what we bought did it well and sold it at a fair price. Easy to say but difficult to do because deep down inside we want it cheap.  Funny about that.  We get what we pay for.
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.

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

One Week Challenge

Here is a challenge for you! Could you go a week without buying anything imported from China? Check the labels, this is a lot more difficult than you might think. What is our urge to buy junk? I think it should be a law that we have to spend a day at the dump just to see what gets thrown away: almost

everything! What are your thoughts on this?

This grape cluster is made from scrap steel and ball bearings

on a copper backing, all found at the dump!

Broken Art

I have a collection of broken garden tools and other collections from gears and auto parts and random bits of metal that I occasionally find. Last week a client was touring my garden and studio and saw my garden tool scrap pile and commissioned me to create a garden gate from the salvaged

pieces. My first welding project in three months and it was wonderful for my soul but hard on my hands!