“Water” is out of the oven and now has a nice blue finish.

Tags: Commission, Process, Public Art

I’ve made some candle holders that mount on the wall (uhh - you hang ‘em on a nail). They are made of 14 gauge stainless steel with a sanded matte finish. You can put one or two tea lights on the little shelf that is sandwiched between the plates.

Here’s a diagram that shows how they are constructed:


And a truly professional night shot, with a lit candle:

Tags: Process

TD manufacturing in Greeley, Colorado prepping the “Water” piece for powder coating. Lloyd from Master Metal Works and I ran out to look it over and correct any flaws (I point out, Lloyd corrects). The metal looks really good. I’m excited that this project is finally starting to coalesce.

Tags: Commission, Process, Public Art

Tags: Process, Stainless Steel

Jafe Parsons got some preliminary shots to me this weekend of the finished "Meme" sculpture. Really, really pleased with this one. I think it is my best work to date - if that statement actually means anything. I oftentimes feel that my latest effort is my best; it takes a bit of time and perspective to get a true sense of how a single work fits into an oeuvre. Yet this does feel like a less tentative, bolder statement of form that is derived intrinsically and exclusively from my current process - the computer as primary tool for sculptural expression.

Tags: Stainless Steel, Process

Assembling the "Meme" piece.

Tags: Stainless Steel, Process

Back from Little Rock, Arkansas having installed my sixth major piece of public art. None of these installations comes off without a hitch, but it seemed like this one was actually easier than some of the others - perhaps indicating that John* and I are actually learning? Personally, I was able to relax a bit more, which in turn allowed me to communicate better with our crane operator and everyone helping us. The elderly crane owner was there (in addition to the operator) and his expertise made a huge impact - but he was very soft-spoken and had the thickest Arkansas accent I'd yet encountered. It took a conscious effort on my part to pause and really talk things over with him in order to comprehend what he was advising. I think I've finally gotten mature enough to shut off the ego and do what's needed to achieve the goal. About time. Also, the Little Rock Parks and Rec guys were there to help us out, and they REALLY did. The strongest lesson I came away with was that we collectively are much more capable and wise than any of us is singularly.

* - John Kinkade, the Executive Director of the National Sculptors' Guild and my dear friend of 16 years. (That's him on the far right above.)

More pictures here.

Tags: Process, Commission, Public Art, Quality

I've been working on some ideas for more utilitarian designs - if you can call a candleholder useful. The first image is the sheet metal shapes as modeled in FormZ.

And here is the first prototype in 14 gauge stainless.

This is (kinda) what it looks like with a tea light candle inside. I made a little platform that sits inside that will hopefully make the thing a little safer - the top of the enclosure does get pretty hot, but one of the unique properties of stainless steel is it's low thermal conductivity compared to other metals. The top gets hot but the sides stay cool.

The whole point of this piece is the pattern generated by the flickering light traveling through the holes, but my low-light camera skills is be real goodz - I could show you the pretty black rectangle I made, but... yeah.

Tags: Process, Stainless Steel

This picture, of Antony Gormley's "Waste Man" burning - filling the air with the noxious smoke of tons of discarded wood - set me thinking. Uh oh.

I understand that part of the point of this piece was to call attention to the massive amounts of waste we in the developed world produce, and to highlight the ephemeral essence of all the "stuff" we strive so hard to acquire. Gormley is one of my favorite sculptors - but this kind of condescending spectacle has definitely lowered his esteem in my eyes. Why exacerbate the very problems you are hoping to solve?

This brings up a point that bugs me no end regarding my own choice of method and material: how to reconcile the obvious environmental crisis-in-progress and my part in it with my (and our culture's) need to create and express. Is Gormley's monstrous cloud of smoke any worse in the end than the unseen multiple such clouds emanating from the iron mine, the steel mill, the tractor-trailer delivering the raw material for MY sculptures? Finding a point of equilibrium that allows one to be in the world without accelerating it's destruction is probably the most profound and important question we all must ask ourselves as we venture into a new millennium.

What do you think?

Tags: Process, Quality

I've finally had some time to break away from the Water & Power project. What do I do with the time? Design more sculptures, of course. OCD, anyone? I need to update my How? section to reflect the new tools I've been using - I've moved away from SketchUp and into fromZ for modeling. FormZ is a much more powerful tool, but it's burdened with a commensurate bump in complexity. I still spend more time wondering what the hell is going on rather than feeling confident in the necessary procedure to do what I need. This confusion has actually been a subtle prod to more creativity - playing without understanding can bring you back to the "Beginner's Mind" that breeds newness and breaks habits.



I just couldn't shake the impression of one form aiding the other to float overhead - like two ballet dancers in a pas de deux. This was rendered in Maxwell - I'm a rank amateur, so am excited about the potential quality renders looming on the horizon.

Tags: Process, Stainless Steel

Good thing it's a leap year. I'm amazed, as I normally feel like Feb is the longest, nastiest, darkest, most miserable month of the year - and it went by so fast, I barely noticed it.

Anyway, managed to ship the "Together" piece off to Little Rock.

Tags: Commission, Process, Public Art

Making good progress now. The base portion has an extra layer of steel sheet attached to it - to set off the main sculptural form visually, and to allow for easy replacement in the event of damage. I drilled all the holes in the 3d model so their locations will be built right in to the cut sheet metal, plus it makes for easier documentation for the fabricators. (You can't really make out the holes in this image, but there are 20 holes in the face we're looking at here. Each penetrates through the outer gray layer, the yellow layer, and into the structural steel.)

Tags: Process, Public Art, Commission

I'm finally getting the virtual model of the Water & Power project squared away. Pictured above are the structural steel components that will hopefully hold the sculpture upright in the Colorado wind.

Tags: Commission, Process, Public Art

Making art is a very personal process that oftentimes borders on mental masturbation. Maybe that's why I like it so much >grin<.

Creativity can be seen as a dialog you are having with yourself, with the dialectic centering around finding balance between your own skills and the qualia of the medium your dealing with. For me, there is a fine line between craftsmanship and fussiness - perfection is an idea, not a reality. If your work is exclusively about dotting i.'s and crossing t.'s, expressing nothing more than "look how good I am", then it's appeal to an audience that is not you becomes pretty limited. Striding the razor's edge between craft and expression can be seen as the fundamental struggle of artistic endeavor. I have learned to trust my eyes and my hands to produce that which I see in my mind's eye - but I've also payed a price physically while developing that trust. Both wrists and my right shoulder are permanently damaged from pushing just a little harder to get that piece done. Growing older and becoming more involved in large Public art projects have forced me to outsource the fabrication of the bigger sculptures, with a commensurate loss of control. I'm still learning how to make this new process work.

The above pictured piece, "Together", was fabricated by Master Metal Works here in Fort Collins. They've done a good job - but not as good as I would have done. That's the crux of the issue: surrendering just enough control to get the work done without sacrificing the overall quality of the sculpture.

Tags: Process, Public Art, Quality

I finally had the motivation to get professional photos of some of my recent small pieces. Happily, I happen to know a guy who is both a brilliant photographer and interested in my work - enough to want to work a trade. As I was importing the fruits of his labors into my computer, I realized that each and every image was beautiful. Thanks, Jafe.

Take a look:

There are more in the "Small" section.

Tags: Process, Quality

I'm currently reading "Mind Wide Open" by Steven Johnson (his most known work is "Everything Bad is Good for You"). It's subtitled "Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life". In it he cites the work of researcher Joseph LeDoux, who has found that the experience of danger actually follows two distinct pathways in the brain - one conscious and rational, the other unconscious and intuitive. The second pathway, dubbed the "Low Road", ends at the amygdala, which basically specializes in emotional response. This bifurcation is why you will find yourself suddenly frozen in place when you glimpse a very snake-like branch on the trail, before your cortex is able to analyze the much more high-resolution signal it receives and conclude that it's not a threat. It's very much a matter of bandwidth - the amygdala gets a very low-res version very quickly, while the cortex signal is slower but richer in content. Other studies show that our ability to apprehend the emotional states of others is handled much better by this brain sub-system as well - your immediate, intuitive reaction to someone's facial expression is much more accurate than the one settled on through your cortical deliberations. First thought, best thought.

This made me wonder if a person's predilection toward more sketchy, painterly artworks isn't somehow tied to this neurological phenomenon - we tend to think of it as a "gut reaction", but could it be that this is a function of the way our brains work? It's interesting to note that as we grow more knowledgeable about art, we tend to value works that embody a more spontaneous, less fussy visual style. Is this because we learn to trust our amygdala and depend less on our cerebral cortex - and it's greater complexity? To me, the whole purpose of art is to convey something universal about an individual, internal emotional state - what better part of the brain to utilize than the one that specializes in emotion?

Tags: Creativity, Process

I did a small commission for a woman who was heading up her own real estate group - "Blue Moon". It was a fun experience, as I haven't done any smaller works like this, where client interaction is taking place just like on the bigger projects. We played around with different designs until finding something we both liked. This is what we arrived at.

Click on the image to see more of the chronology of the design.

What does this have to do with leftovers? The Blue Moon piece included a crescent of silicon bronze, which my laser guys don't keep in stock - I had to buy a full 2 ft. by 10 ft. piece. Needless to say, I had a lot of leftover material. (A-Ha!) I've always really loved the volumes and shapes of horses, so I thought I'd just quickly model something up - a horse head - to use up that bronze sheet. It was mostly just a lark, I didn't really intend to come up with anything too special - but I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

There is an area of discoloration that occurs adjacent to each weld, called the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ), that can include gorgeous reds, blues, and purples - I've always loved that stuff. On this piece, I decided to just let it be, to not cave in and grind the welds back or do anything else to obscure them. Bronze is 95% copper, which is highly reactive to environmental acids and chemicals, so you have to seal it somehow in order to keep it from changing colors. Clear powder coat to the rescue.

Tags: Bronze, Stainless Steel, Process, Creativity

Been working on maquettes for a project I'm a finalist for. It's been in the upper 90s - perfect weather for bundling up in thick leather and melting metal. Time to separate the men from the... other... men... who are smart enough to come in from the heat.

Tags: Process, Proposal, Public Art

After struggling for days - literally - trying to get a computer site model ready for a proposal, I finally figured out what needed to happen. It sucks when the best course of action is either to half-ass the job or spend money on YET ANOTHER piece of software. So far my experience has been that it's much more difficult to do professional work with hobbyists tools (so, yeah, I bought the damn software). Now I'm gearing up for my first exposure to Rapid Prototyping. I think I'm just about ready to send files out for quotes. I rewarded myself with a bike ride and some goofing off with my camera.

This sculpture has been at this stage for a few months now. The guys at the laser cutting shop must have a had a tough time getting the cut parts out of the stock, as the metal shows quite a few dings and gouges from their efforts. I should have rejected the parts, but they were stacked together so I couldn't really inspect them properly. It turns out that my unfolding on this was erroneous, and the fabrication was a huge pain in the ass - you wouldn't think it would be big deal, but each of the faces you see is actually supposed to have a diagonal bend across each one. Just 1/64 of an inch out of planarity, and the design almost didn't work. Lots of clamping, prying and cursing to get the edges to line up even near appropriately. I need to decide if I want to cover up those dings and gouges by grinding them out and powder coating it an opaque color, or if I want the process to be transparent to the viewer by just using a clear coat. Hmmmmmm.



More pics here.

Tags: Creativity, Process

This series of pictures shows how a mold is pulled from a clay original in order to begin the casting process via lost wax. I painted a LOT of rubber and tossed THOUSANDS of pounds of plaster back then. Dan Ostermiller was a good guy to work for - he knew how to have fun and didn't take himself too seriously back then. His career took off like crazy at about this time, and he had some problems adjusting, like any guy in his thirties who suddenly had people clamoring to buy his work would. More complete descriptions can be found here.

Tags: Process

Oh, shit. I suck at sticking to stuff. Except making sculptures. For some reason, I just keep doing it. This year marks my 20th year of it, in fact. I made my first casting (that word almost makes me barf - it's like a shot of cheap tequila) in 1987, and went to work for Dan "The Man" Ostermiller in 1988. I've dicked around with tons of different modes of expression, but the one constant has always been sculptural form. I think I might dig out some old photos and scan them, do a sort of egomaniac's retrospective right here. Stay tuned.

Oh, and the attached pic is a fabrication shot of the "Upholding" piece for Paramount, CA. Scheduled to be installed on the 20th of this month.

Tags: Commission, Process, Stainless Steel