Steel Frames

There is no sawdust in my shop, none is allowed.  It is a pretty nice studio/shop/office built over 20 years ago at the far end of my back yard.  I am surrounded by my garden, the little splash pool and about a million flowers.  My shop was originally built as a wood shop, a long time ago when I had planners and shapers and sanders and saws.  I once imported 10,000 board feet of exotic lumber from the Fiji Islands and had lumber and projects all over the place.  Those were inventing days also and I created lots of different stuff from this lumber.
   When I found my interests in steel my tools changed, my shop changed and the sawdust just had to go.  It is just way too much of a fire hazard with the sparks flying around all over the place.
   Now I am into painting but as long as I keep the turpentine outside it is pretty compatible with my metal art and doesn't require much space.  Artists always have to be doing something, some kind of art and painting is a lot less expensive than working with metal.  If it weren't paint it would be beads or clay or cooking.  Some kind of art, something to do.
   I am always after something different.  When I am lucky enough to make a descent painting it is wanting to be in a frame.  In the old days when I had those tools this would be easy in oak or Cherry or walnut or maybe even in my Fijian woods but now all I have is steel.  Light gauge steel tubing is not heavy.  A one inch by one inch piece weighs less than the same in oak but it won't warp or once made into a frame fall apart.
Besides, it is what I've got.
   Once again I find myself experimenting.  What would happen if I did this? or that? and then I do it just to see.  Some of my ideas are not practical at least to market them.  Maybe cool ideas but far too time consuming and the cost of production would be prohibitive.  That never stops me from making the prototype though.  I have to see what one would look like.  Some of these inventions end up in my scrape pile where they age and refine to be cut up later and used in some other idea and other's, the better ones get hung on a wall in my shop where they become inspiration for other projects.  Many times I have taken one of these, way too expensive to make again and made them the center piece to a larger project.
   Some become Christmas presents.  Or just a nice day, the sun is out and I would rather give them away than sell them for less than they are worth.  I never determine value from my prototypes.  They are one of a kind and far too time consuming.  Value to me is what would I charge to make another one?
   One of the values I get from this experience is I learn new skills, new ideas, different uses from things.  Maybe a different way to see the same stuff I see day after day.  That is worth a lot to me and it is the reason I do this.  Of course I make mistakes!  I have a pretty big scrap pile.

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 about 14" x 28"

     I am working on steel frames for the better of my canvas paintings.  From nowhere in particular I get this idea, why can't they be three dimensional?  Yesterday I made a frame and splattered weld blobs all over it for some texture and then added two butterflies to the front side.  There will be a canvas to be painted behind these butterflies.  It is not a marketable kind of thing but it is pretty cool.

I seem to have lost my ability to control these photos so I will stop this here!

More of what I do is HERE

Painting on Ice

   Painting, I know, is an attempt at immortality.  We want to leave something behind stronger than the last breath we take.  We tell stories and share who we are that way but art offers an intermingling of our souls.

I create a piece, some kind of art, and a million ideas run through my head in the process until finally my hands interpret what was in my heart.

   I work with steel and copper when I can find it.  I like their strength, the weight of the piece and with proper attendance, how they can float.  I am often asked, "will it rust?"  As though you are anticipating disappointment from the beginning!

   When I pour concrete the only guarantees I make are that it will be hard.  It will be gray.  It will not burn and no one will steal it.

   Art will age.  Steel will rust.  It is the only quote in the Bible I know.  Concrete will crack.

   I often wonder what is lost in the original when ancient artwork is restored?  The painting could still be pretty but it seems to me, muffled a bit, a covering over the soul.  Some lost artwork can only be identified by fingerprints left behind by the artist.

   I wonder which is critical?  Did the artist really touch that painting?  Or does the painting really touch you?

 copper/stainless steel/copper
58" x 14"

   In either way it is only around for awhile.  It is a shout down a darkened alley.  It could be a moon lit masterpiece but will change with the raising sun.  It is like painting on ice.

 One of eight butterflies

Eight butterflies in flight.  Oil paint over stainless steel.  Copper and stainless steel panels framed in steel, powder coated clear coat.  Lots of fingerprints and no doubt some DNA.  I never work with gloves.

How I make my living is HERE

Off my Island!

   I seriously seldom leave the little island paradise that I have created on a city lot.  I am famous for going nowhere.  I want the mountain to come to me.  I have everything I need here.  All the tools of my trade and a large steel inventory can be found in my 1,000 square foot backyard shop.  I have the penultimate garden, offering a bounty of fruits and vegetables, all surrounded by a million flowers.  Dragonflies, butterflies and hummingbirds visit me daily.  On a hot day I have my little garden pool.
   In my office and in my house I have thousands of books and an out of body experience is only a page turn away.  I can go anywhere and never leave the comfort of home.
   All of this is about to change.  I am going Salmon fishing!

   The Pacific Ocean is an hour from my front door but it is a large ocean and I am going to a different place, a five and one-half hour drive to the State to the North of me: Washington to visit my cousin.

   We are the same age, have been friends since childhood and got into plenty of mischief together as youngsters.  I wonder if he remembers my dad washing our mouths out with soap on one occasion?

Now there would be something to blog about!

   We grew up in different towns, fifty miles apart in similar environments, but often saw each other at Christmas and other times during the year.  We went to college together and took some of the same classes.

It will be a fun week and he has planed a giant fishing expedition on a charter boat with crabbing, bottom fishing and the hunt for salmon all in one long day to be culminated with a bar-b-que aboard the boat.

   He too has created his own island paradise along the Puget Sound where he can gather oysters after breakfast and have them for lunch, and hunt for Thistle berries along the way.  My cousin the home maker, he has won awards for the thistle berry jam at the State Fair!

   I can get lost in my own little town.  I have no sense of direction.  Up until now this has never bothered me because I have no place that I have to be.  I think I have always been that way.  Even in my youth when I was a traveller, hitch hiking all over Europe, people would stop and offer me rides, asking where I wanted to go?  "With you, your direction," was always my answer, I had no destination, no place I had to be.

 My latest "painting"!

   So I bought a TomTom!  That GPS navigational thingy tracked by three separate satellites.  Someone will know where I am and tell me where I need to go!  Ah, this modern era.  I am entering the 21st. Century after all.  I still don't have a cell phone though!

What I "do" is HERE

The Worst Gift I Ever Gave

I will put in the mail today.  Apparently this stuff is difficult to get and I have "my sources"!  I certainly hope it is never needed, never
ever needed.  The situation in Japan is getting a little worse and I am
not sure how they measure a little.  I feel so safe yet so isolated on
this side of the Pacific, but you never know just how the winds will
blow.  The Earth rumbles and moves about without anger and we

 too much will damage your thyroid, not enough might kill you

get squished like little bugs.  It is the way it is, life is precarious.  It is fragile and we are but visitors.

 About the size of a postcard but a little heavier

So, my friends, this is on its way to Canada and you can blow me snow kisses and I do so hope you will never need these.

On a Happier Note, I made two of these, although different, of course! I will borrow them for an "art show" but they have homes. One goes to Pamo, my favorite cartoonist of all time, who instigated this idea of exchanging art, what an honor, from her home to mine!  I actually enjoy the idea even when it makes me feel a bit like an interloper, of having my art stuff scattered about this world.  I feel like an everywhere man, my art is all over the world!
The other one, the match to this piece really belongs in Florida.  A copper background because she is full of life, like the rays of the sun beaming brightness. The rose because she is a gypsy girl and the butterfly because she was once a cacoon and is now finding flight!  So, I need an address for that? Care to send me one?
Two Blogs in one day, don't miss the earlier one!