I'm soaking wet and my hand can't find the soap. My little green tea lemongrass soap remnant has gone AWOL on me. The water continues to pour onto my soapless body. Uhhhhhhghh . . . out of the shower to grab my hand soap from the sink. The worst has happened. Like fingernails on a chalkboard . . . big footstep-puddles strewn across the floor. I close my eyes and desperately will myself back into a hot shower reverie. A quick dry off and out to work.
After work and dinner. Interneting.
Pnut - "Wooooooo! Wooooooo! I finished another clock. Come take a look."
Me - "Wow . . . it's really. . . nice. . . My soap! That's my soap!"
"Yeah, isn't it perfect?
I can't get past it. I just want my little soap back. I loved that little soap.
"Cool. It's cool. I like it. Crazy idea. Good stuff."
To make matters worse my Mom fell under the spell of number 58. Soon after discovering the origin of the 'fat green washer' ("It looks like a stone. What is that?", my Mom asks) she bought it. She bought my little soap. Now I have to put up with seeing my little soap imprisoned whenever I visit my Mom.
It's hard not to get involved in art when your toiletries become incorporated into works.
The sick thing is that I know someday I'll get it back. I know it's wrong, but that's what I think about.
Hang on little soap. . . i'm still here. Don't dry out on me. I'll come back for you.
Showing posts with label RR Plates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RR Plates. Show all posts
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
*Freight Bearing Clocks (A Found In Vermont Post)
The clocks are pure genius to me.
The dichotomy just smacks you across the head. Wall clocks are generally made out of fragile, cheap materials that are light and finished in a way that makes them appear opulent and heavy. Faux metal; Faux finished; Faux. Paula's clocks are anti-faux. Everything that looks heavy, worn, rusted, sharp or dangerous is exactly that. That's why her art makes me giddy. In an age of digital trickery, giclees, photos, painted still-life's, Paula gives you the thing itself in all of it's impractical glory. There is a distinct, subtly powerful beauty to objects that are presented directly without being filtered. Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and most sculpting are subjective interpretations manufactured by the artist. Found objects have lived their own life. They survive a life of purpose before they're appropriated. An object brings an entire story with it, often ingrained in it's surface. You're forced to study something that you would choose to ignore in a different context. Hey, I like, even love work in all of the mediums I've mentioned (I live with a 90 inch oil painting hanging 1 foot above my bed . . . unframed so it won't crush me.) I'm just obsessed with the entropy that the physical universe imposes on man made objects.
Working with found materials does have it's drawbacks. If you want to add a tree to a nature scene in a painting you pick up a brush, mix a few colors and paint it (uh, yes I've worked color and I am aware of how much I'm minimizing the process here). Say you want put a clockworks into a piece of found metal. Just drill a hole. What if it doesn't like being drilled? What if you start drilling and your drill bit melts. Off you go to the internets to find out what you're doing wrong. The first thing that you discover is that whatever kind of metal you got, you need a drill bit made out of something harder than that metal to get through it. So you have to know what you're drilling through. There are basic metals - aluminum, copper, iron. Then there's steel. It's got a bunch of different metals in it (mostly iron). In fact there are like 7384 different types of steel when you take into account how it's processed and made. So what metal is harder than most steel? And more importantly how much does it cost (my brain could only throw pictures of diamond tipped bits at me) There are a few options. Titanium, cobalt, tungsten . . . cobalt - sounds like something that would power a Star Trek phazer. I don't know, maybe this isn't all that exotic, but it hits my surrealistic funny bone.
The first assembly step for Paula's clocks is to bore a hole into 1/2 inch thick cast steel with a cobalt drill bit (we still don't know it's composition and the hardness varies drastically from plate to plate. I think the foundries just used whatever was cheap and available). Horrible screeching noises and a wave of vibrations push the smell of burnt industrial cutting oil out the basement and up stairs. The first time I hear this my limbic system sounds the alarm bells of impending mechanical death. My higher brain functions frantically flash scenes of heavy machining tools hungry for human bones to rip into and pulverize. Icy sweat springs from my pores. Once I'm able to fight off the paralysis I sprint downstairs and push open the door to the workshop. My freaked-out stare is met with an annoyed glance from Pnut. I creep back upstairs.
Now, 2+ years later and I'm peacefully surfing the web amidst the odd screech, thump or curse. The building process continues - patina, texture, color, positive and negative shape all meld together when a piece is completed. Sometimes it seems obvious once it's done. Most of the time my brain gets poked in its sensibilities. Paula has become a reluctant fabricator. I have become the occasional research assistant and frequent prodder. The RR plates have opened up an entirely new universe of possibilities to me.
The dichotomy just smacks you across the head. Wall clocks are generally made out of fragile, cheap materials that are light and finished in a way that makes them appear opulent and heavy. Faux metal; Faux finished; Faux. Paula's clocks are anti-faux. Everything that looks heavy, worn, rusted, sharp or dangerous is exactly that. That's why her art makes me giddy. In an age of digital trickery, giclees, photos, painted still-life's, Paula gives you the thing itself in all of it's impractical glory. There is a distinct, subtly powerful beauty to objects that are presented directly without being filtered. Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and most sculpting are subjective interpretations manufactured by the artist. Found objects have lived their own life. They survive a life of purpose before they're appropriated. An object brings an entire story with it, often ingrained in it's surface. You're forced to study something that you would choose to ignore in a different context. Hey, I like, even love work in all of the mediums I've mentioned (I live with a 90 inch oil painting hanging 1 foot above my bed . . . unframed so it won't crush me.) I'm just obsessed with the entropy that the physical universe imposes on man made objects.
Working with found materials does have it's drawbacks. If you want to add a tree to a nature scene in a painting you pick up a brush, mix a few colors and paint it (uh, yes I've worked color and I am aware of how much I'm minimizing the process here). Say you want put a clockworks into a piece of found metal. Just drill a hole. What if it doesn't like being drilled? What if you start drilling and your drill bit melts. Off you go to the internets to find out what you're doing wrong. The first thing that you discover is that whatever kind of metal you got, you need a drill bit made out of something harder than that metal to get through it. So you have to know what you're drilling through. There are basic metals - aluminum, copper, iron. Then there's steel. It's got a bunch of different metals in it (mostly iron). In fact there are like 7384 different types of steel when you take into account how it's processed and made. So what metal is harder than most steel? And more importantly how much does it cost (my brain could only throw pictures of diamond tipped bits at me) There are a few options. Titanium, cobalt, tungsten . . . cobalt - sounds like something that would power a Star Trek phazer. I don't know, maybe this isn't all that exotic, but it hits my surrealistic funny bone.
The first assembly step for Paula's clocks is to bore a hole into 1/2 inch thick cast steel with a cobalt drill bit (we still don't know it's composition and the hardness varies drastically from plate to plate. I think the foundries just used whatever was cheap and available). Horrible screeching noises and a wave of vibrations push the smell of burnt industrial cutting oil out the basement and up stairs. The first time I hear this my limbic system sounds the alarm bells of impending mechanical death. My higher brain functions frantically flash scenes of heavy machining tools hungry for human bones to rip into and pulverize. Icy sweat springs from my pores. Once I'm able to fight off the paralysis I sprint downstairs and push open the door to the workshop. My freaked-out stare is met with an annoyed glance from Pnut. I creep back upstairs.
Now, 2+ years later and I'm peacefully surfing the web amidst the odd screech, thump or curse. The building process continues - patina, texture, color, positive and negative shape all meld together when a piece is completed. Sometimes it seems obvious once it's done. Most of the time my brain gets poked in its sensibilities. Paula has become a reluctant fabricator. I have become the occasional research assistant and frequent prodder. The RR plates have opened up an entirely new universe of possibilities to me.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
*Walking The Tracks (A Found In Vermont Post)
We walked a lot. Along a moonlit stream accessed from the parking lot of a mental hospital. Wooded paths discovered by motorcycle.
In late October we decided to camp out at a 'rustic' camping spot marked on a state forest map found archived on the web. We arrived at the end of the access road to find that it terminated into a heavily rutted logging road. A brief exploration on foot confirmed that the campsite was there, about a quarter mile ahead. An hour later and we were unloading firewood out the camper and lining a mud trench behind the vehicle. Backing out and leaving felt like a wonderful idea. Thanks to Paula's ingenuity of well placed logs, rocks and curtains (oh God, my original interior Westfalia curtains . . . ) The Dumpster managed to extract itself after some unseen scraping and bending. Paula began referring to the Westy as 'The Dumpster' at some point during that trip. It was actually fairly tidy inside. Pnut was referring to the exterior shape and that fact that it felt as if it would just overwhelm itself at any moment bounding downhill on country roads. As with most observations like this her gut was right. It did weigh nearly 4,500 lbs between its steel bulk and various added contents. Which isn't so bad until you consider that it sits on 14 inch wheels. Most small passenger cars use 15 or 16 inchers now. Even on mildly steep roads it handled like a wet diaper.
Following the wake of the rustic camping incident our adventures stayed closer to home. Shortly after arriving in Vermont Pnut rented an apartment in a dilapidated building about 500 feet from a set of active train tracks. A couple of times a week we would head out on long walks down the track bed to access hiking trails. Paula would take her small digital camera to snap a few close-up shots of tree stumps, roots, boulders, or freight cars along the way. Later we'd fire up the computer and look at the photos like unwrapping presents.
At some point Paula started collecting railroad fishplates or sleeper pads, er . . . these:
A year or so later we got to know a local sculptor who had lived in the area his whole life. He mentioned that he had always seen potential in the RR plates, but just never figured out what to do with them. Searching the internet at the time, I was only able to find a couple of artists that had gone beyond experimenting with them. The plates have severe limitations. They're made of 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick cast steel. That mostly means that they're shockingly heavy. And hard. What I have seen made out of them are smallish table sculptures that weigh nearly 50lbs, functional anchor points for structures and a massive multi-ton sculpture of a bull that's decided to bury itself by stubbornly sinking into the earth. Every one of these creations are welded together. Pnut doesn't know how to weld. Thankfully, neither do I. She wound hemp through their cast holes. Wired car parts to them. Eventually she started winding wire through the holes to create a hanging system. She used them as little canvases. Little 6 X 10 inch, eight pound canvases. Pnut had found her talisman. Soon an entire world would reveal itself through this medium. These little plates unlocked a flood of design instincts in Paula that continues to stun and inspired us both to this day. Just writing about it is enough to tweak my body into sweaty anticipation of what might be brewing in the concrete floored workshop humming below my feet.
In late October we decided to camp out at a 'rustic' camping spot marked on a state forest map found archived on the web. We arrived at the end of the access road to find that it terminated into a heavily rutted logging road. A brief exploration on foot confirmed that the campsite was there, about a quarter mile ahead. An hour later and we were unloading firewood out the camper and lining a mud trench behind the vehicle. Backing out and leaving felt like a wonderful idea. Thanks to Paula's ingenuity of well placed logs, rocks and curtains (oh God, my original interior Westfalia curtains . . . ) The Dumpster managed to extract itself after some unseen scraping and bending. Paula began referring to the Westy as 'The Dumpster' at some point during that trip. It was actually fairly tidy inside. Pnut was referring to the exterior shape and that fact that it felt as if it would just overwhelm itself at any moment bounding downhill on country roads. As with most observations like this her gut was right. It did weigh nearly 4,500 lbs between its steel bulk and various added contents. Which isn't so bad until you consider that it sits on 14 inch wheels. Most small passenger cars use 15 or 16 inchers now. Even on mildly steep roads it handled like a wet diaper.
Following the wake of the rustic camping incident our adventures stayed closer to home. Shortly after arriving in Vermont Pnut rented an apartment in a dilapidated building about 500 feet from a set of active train tracks. A couple of times a week we would head out on long walks down the track bed to access hiking trails. Paula would take her small digital camera to snap a few close-up shots of tree stumps, roots, boulders, or freight cars along the way. Later we'd fire up the computer and look at the photos like unwrapping presents.
At some point Paula started collecting railroad fishplates or sleeper pads, er . . . these:
A year or so later we got to know a local sculptor who had lived in the area his whole life. He mentioned that he had always seen potential in the RR plates, but just never figured out what to do with them. Searching the internet at the time, I was only able to find a couple of artists that had gone beyond experimenting with them. The plates have severe limitations. They're made of 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick cast steel. That mostly means that they're shockingly heavy. And hard. What I have seen made out of them are smallish table sculptures that weigh nearly 50lbs, functional anchor points for structures and a massive multi-ton sculpture of a bull that's decided to bury itself by stubbornly sinking into the earth. Every one of these creations are welded together. Pnut doesn't know how to weld. Thankfully, neither do I. She wound hemp through their cast holes. Wired car parts to them. Eventually she started winding wire through the holes to create a hanging system. She used them as little canvases. Little 6 X 10 inch, eight pound canvases. Pnut had found her talisman. Soon an entire world would reveal itself through this medium. These little plates unlocked a flood of design instincts in Paula that continues to stun and inspired us both to this day. Just writing about it is enough to tweak my body into sweaty anticipation of what might be brewing in the concrete floored workshop humming below my feet.
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