Show prep: Blue Arrow/Black Mountains

Over the weekend, I finished up some details on a few pieces I will be putting in our exhibition, opening this friday. The "Blue Arrow" piece now has a black permanent base, and the "Black Mountains" piece does as well. The latter is suspended a short distance above the base on three anodized aluminum rods, giving it a floating look. It is the prototype for all subsequent painted metal pieces. I have two more works to finish and then I start packing it up!

Silver Wall Wall joins the ranks of the finished

This is a big step toward having everything ready for our show opening on the 19th of this month. I was able to dedicate much of this weekend to the task and I finished it about 1/2 hr. ago. The final large goal is to finish the last limestone piece in time. I have a feeling I'm going to have to ask the gallery folks to reserve a pedestal for it and deliver it on the day of the opening, giving me a few extra days to complete it. In addition, I've got 3 or 4 more pieces that are going to require a bit of work to make them presentable, but that seems less daunting. The dimensions of the silver wall piece are: 7ft. 3" high x 19" wide x 14" deep. Each section is 2" thick and the piece weighs an estimated 5-10 lbs. It is made of galvanized steel held together with around 200 steel screws with washers.

Solid Geometry #5 is done

This stone is now finished and ready for our show opening in a bit more than two weeks. I had put off working on it as long as I dared, needing to spend the studio time on metal pieces. Last week I decided it was time to finish it and that took about 6 hours.
I've named this one S.G. #5-Five Rhombohedrons in order to avoid confusion in the title even though S.G. #4 is still not finished.
Confusing, huh? This is one of the last limestone pieces I'll be doing for a while since my interest in alabaster is growing stronger.

Arrow piece nearly done

This aluminum piece is nearly finished - I've just got to construct a proper base for it. Even with a piece of granite mounted in the bottom, the footprint is too small for safety and a medium wind would blow it over. The dimensions of the arrow are: 61" H x 13.25" W x 4" D. It is all aluminum held together by 200 galvanized steel screws. Like previous pieces of this type, it is painted, roughed up with coarse steel wool and clear coated. Next up: finish the two stones that are waiting . . .

Oops!

Well, here's some useful knowledge. I used to work with 2-component urethane foam, and although it achieved 30 times it's original volume, the action was all over in less than 5 or 10 minutes. I'm here to tell you the insulating foam you can buy in a can is different stuff! I foamed the interior of my aluminum piece pictured above because the seams were starting to separate. I thought that the foam would adhere to the aluminum and hold the piece together without my having to add screws or rivets. I knew there was going to be trouble after a couple of hours because the stuff was still increasing in volume - I should have scooped it out then. By this morning - well, you can see in the right photo that it spent much of the night getting bigger and bigger. It has stopped now, but it pushed out the sides and separated a couple of the seams so the piece will never be right again.
Guess I should have done a bit of testing . . .

New aluminum piece

I realized it's been a while since my last post when it was time to go pick up my alabaster piece because the 64 ARTS Exhibition had ended! That was the subject of my last post, which made me think of the maxim: Time flies like an arrow – fruit flies like a banana. Speaking of arrows, they were the subject of several pieces of mine in school - long ago - and my newest aluminum piece revisits that symbol. In the photo above, it is up on a table where the dogs couldn't knock it over while I photographed it. When finished, it'll feature a weighted base that will enable it to stand upright without visible support. It will weigh 5 lbs. or less, but the internal weight will be about 10-12 lbs., making it quite stable. This will also be painted and abraded, like my other recent metal works.

New metal piece is finished

I decided to paint the wall piece with a red oxide primer. Then, after roughing up the surface with really coarse steel wool, I applied a final coat of clear, satin-finish enamel. As I said in a previous post, this is a test piece and I used really thin-gauge aluminum, but I feel that it is a success and a good starting point for a larger piece with heavier metal. This piece, titled "Red Wall", is 12" high by 38" long and weighs just over 3 lbs. – very light, but very rigid as well.

Ready for paint . . . umm, maybe not . . .

I finished this metal piece yesterday and am now faced with the question, "Is it done, or not?". This usually does not surface in my work, but this piece is made of such thin aluminum that the surface is somewhat distorted by some of the screws, and I also dented it in a few places during its construction. I'm either going to have to rough it up overall - a prospect I don't find too appealing, or I'll paint it and then abrade edges, screws, etc. with coarse steel wool in the manner of my piece "Armored Low Rhombo" from two or three months ago. Most likely, I'll paint it. After that is done, I'll post a final photo. Then, I've got to get back to the stones I was working on before I got the idea for this piece.

On another topic, I was pleased to receive the "Best of Show" award last evening at the "64 Arts" Exhibition at the Buchanan Center in Monmouth, IL. The winning piece was the alabaster "Sound of Ice", the same piece that won the grand award at the Galex Exhibition here in Galesburg a little over a year ago. It is shown above.

What I did on summer vacation

Seriously, there is no summer vacation - this is what I got done this weekend. Lori and I both had a rather amazing creative spurt this weekend so we hit it pretty hard. I did the limestone piece in about 2 hours and I think it's a seminal piece. It's only about
6" in it's largest dimension, but I just had to sketch this out. Already, the next iteration is forming in my mind. The aluminum piece is one I started last week, but only barely. It also represents a new technique that holds great promise. I've been looking for a way to make medium-sized pieces from aluminum and have them be light in weight, yet rigid enough to hold their shape. This is the first of that type and the structural elements do just what I expected and hoped. It is about 38" long but I think I can use this method to make structurally sound pieces two to three times this size. I used inexpensive aluminum that is quite thin because I was unsure about the outcome and didn't want to use the good stuff, but I will on the next piece. This one will probably be painted and roughed up a bit.

Working inside

We are having some new windows installed in our home so due to traffic through my outside studio, I've moved my two current stones to my inside one. This also gets me cool for a while which coincides with the hottest weather we've yet had. Another advantage is that my metal studio is right outside the stone-working area and I've got a couple of metal pieces in the works too. Above are a few photos of the most recent piece, currently known as "Solid Geometry #6". As you can see, I've started the refinement phase, to be followed soon by finishing.

Set 'em up

After today's session, I decided that Lori's suggestion to stand the piece up on end was a good one, and it is shown that way in the photos above - a nice option in work that does not feature recognizable imagery. I've found in working this stone intuitively that the pace of the work is much faster and more fluid than in following sketches. So, this has been a good breakthrough piece for me. Most of its forms are now nearing completion so that I can move into the refinement phase.

Another 2 hours today

I'm still proceeding in an intuitive way on this piece - without any kind of plan - but in looking at the photos, I can see that there are too many competing forms. Something's going to have to go. I'll probably continue with it in the current way for another day or so until all the forms are fully realized and then decide how to slim it down and make the balance a bit less static. This block was, until about 9 years ago, part of Bateman school building here in Galesburg. When the school was torn down, I harvested several pieces of limestone, not knowing what to expect. It has turned out to be a really nice stone to carve and I picked this piece out to serve as a demo stone for our open studios event over the weekend. In the photo on the right, the original quarryman's marks are still visible. I assume these were meant for proper placement at the construction site. The school was built around 1900.

More sketching

I was able to get three hours of work done on this piece today before my hands said, "ENOUGH!". Since I've been comparing the work on this piece to sketching in stone, I continued at a rapid pace today, hardly stopping to think. When I did though, I spent the break examining the piece from different angles to be sure where a form would emerge on the other side so that I didn't carve off anything I'd need later. The concept is now clear to me and a couple more sessions should get me to the finishing stage.

What? Another new piece?

Yesterday, Lori and I had an open studio event, and around 35 people arrived over a 5 hour period to tour our respective studios. It was tiring but fun and inspiring as well, and in the course of the afternoon I was able to demo my old way of carving stone as well as the new, power-assisted method. Before the event, I moved my current piece to the indoor studio and used my crane to place a different piece of limestone on the carving bench. Today, I thought I'd just use my grinder to cut off enough stone to make it possible for me to lift it off the bench to get it out of the way. As I began to cut off pieces of stone I started to get interested in the emerging forms (I actually half expected this to happen), and after 2-1/2 hours of work with the grinder and pneumatic hammer I arrived at the stage you see above. I'm anxious to get back to it tomorrow because in this piece I have realized a goal that I have set recently: to blend my former intuitive way of working with the speed allowed by the power tools. Today's effort felt a lot like "sketching" in stone!

All forms are realized

I've got maybe one or two more hours of work that will occasionally involve the pneumatic hammer, then I'll be done with it. Comes a time when subtlety rather than power is needed. I'll get back to this piece on Monday, hoping to have reached that point. Then it'll be some hammer & chisel work, then rasps, files and sandpaper, in that order. This piece, "Solid Geometry #5" could be nearly finished by next weekend.

Intermediate stages

In the last two days of work, actually amounting to only 2-1/2hrs. of carving time, I've taken the piece into the middle phase. That is, all the major forms are now visible and I'll spend my time refining them and resolving plane and vertex issues. The photos also show a new refinement to the stoneworks: a port through the wall big enough for air and electrical lines that allows me to close the back door and keep the dust out of the garage. Well, most of it . . .

The fan is new too - a 24", three-speed pedestal fan for only $97.00! It allows me to work outside for extended periods of time (the stoneworks is on the south side of the property) at temperatures that would otherwise limit my working time to about 10 minutes per hour. With the fan on low, I hardly notice the heat. It helps, of course, that carving stone is rather absorbing.

Short session today . . .

Just an hour of carving today, but decent progress. I'm still consulting the sketches at this point, but less frequently. I feel like I've got a good mental image of the final piece and that makes for faster work.

Much progress today

Two postings in one day . . . and just hours apart. The photo above shows the stone as of this morning, and then again two hours later. First I covered the neighborhood with a layer of limestone dust using a cup grinder, then I went after the piece with the pneumatic hammer and a flat chisel. I'm thinking about three to four more hours should get the stone ready to start finishing. It has taken a mere 9 hours so far – in stark contrast with my last stone, a white marble piece that took 170 hours (including finishing processes).

Update on Solid Geometry #5

Well, I missed a few posts, even though I took pictures. The above photo is how the piece looks after yesterday's session. At some point, you just have to stop thinking and take a chance. I don't think I've removed anything critical to the concept – yet! Headed back out there now to enjoy working outside on an absolutely beautiful day.

Power!

These two photos show progress that is very rapid compared to what I'm used to with just the hammer and chisel. The single photo shows the stone after one hour of work with a diamond-blade grinder and pneumatic hammer and tooth chisel. The double one shows two views of what I did today in two hours with just the pneumatic hammer and again, the tooth chisel. It's true that the finishing stages will be just as slow as before, but I'll sure be able to get to that point more quickly.

What IS this stuff??

The above photos show work on a piece of stone I picked up in Montana, outside Chico Hot Springs. I had high hopes for this stuff because there is a literally endless supply - free for the taking. Well, my diamond blade would cut the stuff just fine, and the diamond cup wheel did a good job of shaping it, but after that, the rest of my tools were completely ineffectual due to the hardness of the stone. I did a little research and found a geological summary of the area with a map and here's the description of what I was working on. "Dacite and dacite porphyry (Eocene) -- Pink to light-gray, fine-grained dacite, and feldspar-hornblende dacite porphyry". The bottom line is, this is an igneous rock similar to basalt and I'd need carbide-tipped tools to work it. Since finishing would be equally difficult, I think it's time to forget about it and move onto the piece of limestone in the picture, which has been patiently waiting for some attention for a couple of months!

Addition to the Metopia series

For the latest metal piece, I thought I'd try some galvanized steel flashing I had in my shop. It's quite thin and I had to strengthen one of the edges with some heavier material which is actually more expensive than aluminum sheet, which surprised me. The finished work is 40" x 10.5" x 1.75" and again, weighs just a pound or two - haven't really checked. This last is one of the appealing aspects of this sheet metal work: they look quite substantial, but will hang on any small nail without trouble, and they
are easy to transport and ship - unlike the stones.

The above photo sequence shows the process of getting a 200lb piece of limestone up onto the carving bench. This was March 31st and the weather was great, but I didn't take advantage of a beautiful April since I was busy working metal. So the stone still awaits. Since then, I've sawed off the top third of the stone since I didn't think a carved piece could survive being that thin relative to its length. I'll start on this soon.

New metal piece, May 16th

Here is a piece I finished just today, one that took about 4 times as long to finish as I expected. It is painted and then abraded, and by showing a photo of it before painting, I expect many to say, "I liked it better before the paint!". Too bad 'cause it's my piece and I wanted it painted! Seriously, the bare aluminum was not consistent with my idea for this one whose title is, "Armored Low Rhombo". It will be mounted on a 1/2" thick, small square of MDF. Dimensions: 15" x 15" x 4.5". Weight: 1lb. 11oz. I thought about hanging it on the wall, but trying that out revealed an interesting phenomenon: The shape began to lose visual volume and became an unusual perspective representation of a cube, losing much of its "object-ness". The effect was compelling, but again, not what I was interested in achieving. So, the piece will be displayed horizontally, as though hovering close to whatever horizontal surface it sits on.

New metal piece

This piece, "Post-Structuralist Dilemma #2", is a reprise of a piece I did in 2008 that happened to sell immediately. I've been wanting to work with the forms and structure of the first one because they are still of interest to me after a considerable time. It has a core of 1/2" MDF covered with steel and features details of brass and copper. An aluminum-covered board holds it all together, though most of that component is not seen. Size is 26" x 6" x 2". I wasn't sure if the steel was going to work out for this type of piece, so I started small, hence its modest size. I think I can use steel, building on this experience, to make some larger scale works.

Art Deco Pull Toy

Another pull toy is finished. This one's a 6" cube with art deco encrustations. I like the appearance of the rivet-less construction (although I like the rivets too), but one of the internal braces came loose while I was attaching the wheels, hence the two rivets on one side. So, the next one may feature really small screws to make it structurally sound. This piece, except for the wheels, is all aluminum.

Near Miss

The "Near Miss" in the title above refers not to my assessment of the success of the piece, but rather to it's tentative title. This is a piece I finished today, after about 8-9 hrs. of work. It features rivet-less construction, and will be left unpainted. I like the simplicity of the forms and their appearance of solidity and weight. Actually, the pieces weigh roughly 2oz. apiece and, together, measure 26.25" top to bottom. I plan to continue with this style for a while, simultaneously developing more adult pull toys.

It's black . . .

Well, my paint experiment turned out well - it looks pretty much like I envisioned. This piece was spray-painted flat black and then abraded with some very coarse steel wool. A spray acrylic enamel top coat was then applied and should offer good protection. Just today I've bought three more colors of spray paint bringing the total to five, which gives me an adequate palette for future pieces. More to come soon . . .

On to the metal!

Some of my friends have been pointing out to me that I haven't posted anything for quite a while. Well, I've been busy cleaning
my metal shop so that I could actually work – and here's the result. I'm thinking of this as sort of a prototype for a series vaguely
evocative of mountains. I've not been too concerned about the finish of the aluminum on this piece because the next step is to spray paint it black. Yeah, FLAT black. Then, I plan to mess with the surface with abrasives. Painting should happen tomorrow, followed by roughing it up and finally a satin clear coat. We'll see what happens . . .

New marble finally, COMPLETELY finished.

Well, it's finally done. I've got all the little details that were bothering me ironed out and I've oiled the surface. I was given a piece of marble by my friend Ralph to use as a base. It had been outside for a long time, judging by the weathered surface, but that surface was perfectly porous for darkening it to contrast with the white marble. Now, on to aluminum projects!

Exhibition update . . .

Breaking news – my piece, "Metopia #2", an all aluminum piece shown here, as well as the stone that has been the focus of this blog since last October, have both been accepted into the national juried exhibition, GALEX 44. In addition, my piece, "Solid Geometry #2: Watch for Falling Rock" will be be shown in this year's national juried "Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition". Interestingly, my alabaster sculpture, "Sound of Ice", which won the grand prize in last year's GALEX - was rejected from the Rock Island exhibition. HA!

This piece is finished . . . Solid Geometry #3: Falling Rock

After logging over 40 hours on this stone over the last 10 days, I'm very happy that it's finally done. This will be my last post for a while due to the fact that I've got to do some clean-up in my metal shop before I can begin preparation for an exhibition in November. I'll most likely work on metal sculpture till the weather gets nice enough for me to start my next stone in my outside studio. I'm a bit tired of the dust at the moment. Anyway, two views of the finished piece are shown above and should enlarge by clicking on the photo. I'll be sure to post some photos of my first aluminum piece of 2010 as soon as it's ready.

And now . . . the other side

It was time today to get the other side resolved to make sure there were no alignment problems. The top of the piece is light enough now that I think the forms near the bottom are strong enough to support the piece through the rest of the carving process. All of the shapes are in their final form now and all that remains is refinement of about a third of the shapes and then finishing. I'm right around 90 hours on this piece now, and expect to be ready for finishing in another 10 hours or so.

Outdoor studio in January

This is why I also have a carving studio inside.

Shaping up

Starting to get some of the forms near a finished state now. Final finishing will involve both dry and wet sanding and then oiling the surface of the piece, imparting the desired buttery mat finish. So far, right about 75 hrs. The minor debacle described in the previous post has been resolved and can be seen in context in the photo above.

oops!

Stone is an extremely unforgiving medium. I'm reminded of that when I pull a stunt like this. I was working on side "A" shown in the photo above and yeah, I got it nice and smooth. But in doing so, and focusing on only that side, I cut off what should have been a projection of form "B", based on its thickness (not visible in this photo). Once it's gone it's gone, so I was faced with two choices: 1. cut off more of form "B", shown at "C", so that the missing corner would fall inside of the form of which side "A" is a part, or 2. Glue a piece of scrap stone onto side A at just the right spot and carve it into the needed shape. Since option 2. would have compromised the integrity of the whole piece, the choice was easy - if unpleasant. It meant that in order to have a consistent width of form "B", I'd have to carve out a fairly small triangular area "D" - time consuming but certainly possible. As the photo shows, this is what I chose to do. So, outside of the piece actually breaking into pieces at some point, accidentally carving off something I'll need later is the greatest pitfall. Vigilance!