In a Corner of my Shop

is the last one standing and it dries just fine there, guarding the Ornamental Iron and providing a sense of color to my otherwise metal shop. I have some in my house too

but they are always the fifth or sixth

upon the copper, painted one on top of the other in quick succession.

I like them in my shop as they quickly gather dust giving them an antiquey feel like they might be worth something. They offer proof and acceptance for my clients: "yes, I am an artist" and "no, I don't work on cars"!

I have had my art in "real galleries" and I like to believe it is the kind of art you can talk about and I like to believe that as you leave the gallery you could identify

which among the colorful pieces were mine and you can! Mine is on metal!!!

Mostly I "do art" for fun, for presents to others and it allows me to charge that "art tax" to my welding work, how I really make my living!

My other Blog is HERE

My Paintings Don't Exist

Except in this nether world of cyberspace. They are mostly painted on metal, copper when I
am lucky enough to find it and most recently on tin roofing shingles. I use acrylic paint and the
cheapest brushes I can find. I always do the background first, blotching paint here, dribbling it there and hitting the whole thing with a roller, preferably an old, used roller half cleaned and thrown on the shelf. I don't want to mix these missives just distributed them equally. The background is always a mystery to me and helps me determine the
central focus or at least I like to think it does. It
is all done wet because the metal doesn't absorb
the paint as canvas would. It is alive and has a will of its own; it is going to be what it does! When it is done I take pictures of it and then, still wet, I hit it with the roller again, creating a new background and I get to start the whole process over again! Sometimes I can get six paintings from one piece of metal.

This one is an exception, my Trumpet Vines on canvass. It is about 2' X 3' and done on the canvas of a window shade.

And this is where I do it, the welding table in my metal shop!

The Art I Make

Oregon Ducks!

Well, how about them Ducks! The University of Oregon Football team has done it again! Ten for Ten and now Oregon is on the map. No one knows where Oregon is. In my European travels when I mentioned Oregon the closest anyone

came was Northern California? Oregon is as far West as you can get without getting wet in the Pacific Ocean. We are blessed with over 300 miles of coastline, all open and public beaches, nothing is private; you can explore it all. I live in Springfield, the town adjacent to Eugene, the U of O, home of the Ducks. It is an hour and a half to the coast, mostly a nice two lane road through the coast range, a road cut through the mighty Douglas Fir.

The other direction, driving East, I am an hour away from the real mountains with their snow capped peaks and majestic views. This is skiing country; the roads are narrower and windy and as you get higher in elevation the Douglas Fir give way to Pine, the main forests of Eastern Oregon.

Portland is our only Big City with over a million people and most of us live in the Willamette Valley between the two mountain ranges. Eugene is at the southern end of this valley, our "big city" of just over 100,000 people. It is the home town of "Nike", you might wear their shoes!

It is a great State, now famous, "Home of the Oregon Ducks"! If you ever get close, stop by and I will take you Salmon fishing!

Artists Without Opinion

I am noticing the same thing on blog after blog: Shouldn't we get tired of "nice painting, love the colors, beautiful texture"? That is so easy to do these days and with computer editing

we can make six paintings out of one! If the goal of art is color coordination to the matching furniture there are a lot of us indeed! I confess I like art with an opinion, an artist's interpretation of this world we live in. That is the reason I really look at other's work, look at the comments made and even look at who is commenting. I want to understand the artist behind

the canvas, dig as deep as I can, I want to know what they are trying to tell me. To me that is understanding art. I have seen really, really well executed works, landscapes for instance, that are almost flawless in their presentation and I know they will never "become famous" because they are too pretty, without a single proud tree in a dieing forest, no pollution, no clear-cut logging areas, not a single curious thing to wonder about. Pretty picture, nice job, good work!

The few of us that dare to create a discussion either in our blogs or comments to others are met by silence. If artists, people with energy, emotion, and insightfulness are silent there is little hope for this world. Artists who "hide their light under the bushell" will never be found.

My current laugh in our absurd world is the cruize ship that went adrift off of California, stranding almost 4,000 passengers, requiring them to eat cold food and fresh salads for almost three whole days! In a world where half its population goes to bed hungry every night these passengers have acquired an adventure of a lifetime, and a return of their ticket price and another offer of a free cruize! Is life Grand or what?

Conversations with a Friend

I visit a friend of mine about once a week and he checks up on me too! I would like



to introduce him HERE



to you, you will enjoy



knowing him. We became friends almost instantly



about 20 years ago when I was lucky enough to have him working for me. He is "an old guy"



now and like me retired



from the construction industry. Ill let him tell his own stories but hope they will include how he met his wife who was also working for me, and the story how the two of them built a yacht and sailed "around the world" for five years or so, and his latest story, building high end hand crafted



guitars and mandolins. None of these reasons are why he is my friend. He is a crafstman and if he were building doghouses he would do so to perfection. His guitars are art because he makes them art.



It is all a little bit nuts of course and only works because he doesn't count the hours and loves what he is doing. When I visit him he will explain where he is at on his project, let me admire his craftsmanship and then offer me coffee and act as if my visit is the most important thing in the world! He is one of those few friends that we acquire in life who could give a true eulogy at your funeral but has the gracious sense not to!

They are open and honest and listened to converstions. We solve the world's problems and share our own. His name is EDWIN and you will like him too.

Only So Much Money

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves how the world works. Governments that continue to print money only devalue it. So in a stable government there is only so much money available. If you don't have enough you borrow it. Our National Debt now is pretty big, about $45,000 EACH! The interest on this debt represents $4 of every $10 that the government collects in taxes. ONE of the things that has gone wrong in our economy (there are many) is that money is NOT being circulated. The richest 2% are wealthy beyond most of our abilities to count, controlling almost 50% of the money. This would not be a bad thing if they spent it but one can have only so many yatchs and private aircraft. This "trickle down theory" although maybe not fair has worked to a degree in the past providing jobs to the boatbuilders, their repairmen, the sales people, etc. ALL of these tradesmen down the line paid taxes and in turn bought smaller boats and took their families on vacation, bought Christmas presents, etc. This further provided more work to others. The problem is when one has too much money to spend and they just sit on it, often in banks in the Bahamas, causing it to no longer trickle down!
Henry Ford paid his workers enough so they could afford to buy that which they were making. This system worked well so long as 90% of the money available went to 75% of the people. That hasn't happened for awhile. To get the economy "back on track" you need more than a living wage job; you need a surplus, enough to buy and keep this game moving along.
The "2% that control 50%" need to start spending it before it is taken from them. Revolutions never happen when times are getting better.