Sorry for the long break between posts. Lydia and I have been in the process of buying a house and moving. We are getting settled in now and I have some time to work on art projects again. Lydia has been making some really cool sculptural lamps. I stole some of her materials and made a cat!
I’m using a new image browser to show my pictures. Let me know if anyone has any problems with it.
I have been playing around with some wrapped wire forms. If any of these look like some of Lydia’s work, that’s because she taught me the technique. Her pieces remind me of flowers, seed pods, and other organic shapes. Mine are based on sea creatures, mostly jellyfish and squid. (sea creatures along with wings seem to keep popping up in my work, im not sure why). I have sold a couple of necklaces and people seem to really respond to these so I think I will continue making them. Some of them will be for sale in our online store whenever I get it working. Here is a sample:
I made this first one for Lydia. The inside is silver which has been cast in a mold carved from a Cuttle fish bone. The bell is wrapped silver wire.
More progress on the ship piece. The waves move now! I need to tone the motion down a bit, but it pretty much there. Ive added a spring which keeps the chain under tension. This seems to work much better then the spring links I had previously been building in to the chain. Ill move on to building the boat next. I think I’m going to build a new ship rather then re-use the old one. My original solders are just too messy.
(Its a large-ish video so it might take a little while to load.)
Here are a couple of my current projects:
Sea Ghost
David asked me about this piece a while back so here’s an update. One of my early mechanical pieces was a of a ship sailing above a turbulent sea. I had first set out to see if I could create a believable wave motion. After a few different tries I found something I liked. The design allowed me to add the secondary action of a boat on the surface of the waves. The finished piece was pretty cool but unfortunately this was before I learned to solder properly and the copper tubing I used was not quite rigid enough. After a series of breakdowns and some rough handling during a move the piece collapsed. I don’t think I ever got a photo or video of it intact. Well, I’m currently rebuilding it with brass structural pieces instead of copper and a few design changes. Currently its about thirty percent done.
The waves have been retained from the original but everything else is new.
I first started thinking about a machine which raised and flexed a mechanical set of wings while watching a really great documentary called The Life of Birds.
This first piece Flying Machine No.1 is more of a proof of concept prototype than a finished piece. At the time I was still learning to solder as the sloppy joins show. The piece is made of copper wire and tubing and stands about 6 inched tall. Sorry about the poor quality, my digital camera isn’t the best…
Here are a couple of fish I made in Lydia’s ceramic class at the Da Center for the Arts. I havent really used ceramics before. Here I was playing around to see what the medium is like. The first is a city growing tumor-like out of the side of a dead fish. I used a high grit heavy body sculpting clay. The glazes are low fire.
I made this piece for the Metals in Motion exhibition held at the Oakland Museum of California by the Monterey Bay Metal Arts Guild of which I am a member. Here is an excerpt from the artist’s statement I wrote for the show:
This Flying Machine is the second out of a continuing series that explore human manipulation of nature. They honor nature by mimicking its beauty, yet mock it with their obvious artifice. Here the user gives the long extinct fish flight. It is absurd and futile yet beautiful. At once a part of and apart from nature, like all human works.
I’m working on shooting some decent videos of my mechanical sculptures. You don’t really get he whole effect without the movement. For now here are some photographs shot by my brother Kushal on the roof of his apartment building.
I made these mobiles back in 04. They are made from basswood and painted with acrylics. At the time I was working as a Prop designer on My Life as a Teenage Robot. You can see how the art deco and 1920′s cartoon influences of that show spilled over in to my personal work.
