Author Archives: Tom Harold

They just can’t be straight!

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I find it kind of impossible to do certain things with sculpture. Aside from the first one I ever did, none of them have had support legs that were straight. Every one following that first one has had curved legs. They just look nice to me like that, and they seem to fit with the feel of the curves and the motion of the marbles. These were the same way. I could have knocked them out in no time flat if I’d made simply straight pieces, but I spent an evening bend things up. I just…can’t…make them straight! NO!

Will it roll?

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I have been asked whether I play with these things when they’re done, and the answer is yes. However, I spend a LOT of time playing with them during the build process. This is one of those times. I had a bunch of stuff clamped in place and I was rolling the marble through seeing if it would get from one spot to the next without falling off and rolling under the water heater into a small collection of sawdust and cobwebs.

So uncomplicated, it’s ridiculous

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You’d think I’d have all kinds of crazy tools and whatnot sitting around to help me make these things, but such is not the case. What you’re looking at are the basics of what I work with throughout the construction process. Those clips with the black bases – those things are very important! It really would be hard to do a lot without them. Those are called “third hands” in the biz. Model makers and crafters use them to basically just hold stuff still while it’s being worked on. You’ll notice a couple of pairs of Vice Grips, which I don’t mind plugging here, because they generally are made of awesome, although here they are performing the rather mundane task of simply being heavy and holding one end of the sculpture still and upright while I goof with other stuff. I use them for their intended purpose quite often, however, when soldering things in place or bending wire. The other tools just amount to various kinds of pliers, a hammer, wire cutters, and some soldering tools, maybe a few large clamps on occasion. Oh, and let’s not forget the all-important Sharpie marker. I use that thing ALL. THE. TIME. I sometimes think it’s one of the most important tools I have. This stuff isn’t fancy by any stretch, but it gets the job done.

It’s rather simple, really.

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Want to make endless loops and turns and bends and ramps of wire? Take a long piece of wire, bend it into a “U” at one end, and how you’re started! Just, you know, bend it some more. Or, really, if you’re into minimalism, I guess you could just go with what we have here and call it good. I tend to complicate things a bit, though. I’m weird like that.

Solo Spiral Sculpture Completed!

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I had a long weekend this weekend, and I used it to my fullest advantage – I did art work! The idea for this series of small sculptures has been brewing for months now. It’s actually part of a meme from Facebook, and I think I accepted the challenge sometime back in…July? August? After that I had a lot of other projects in the pipeline, but didn’t let go of the idea. They were going to be *really* simple, but then I asked dad if he could whip up some wood bases for them to make them a little nicer. Yeah – I asked a fellow perfectionist to just whip something up. Right! It took a few months, but I think that it was well worth the wait. He made them waaaay nicer than I had asked for! Thanks, pop!

So dad did some awesome bases, but I was still caught up with other stuff. I did manage to bend up some initial elements for the sculptures a month or two ago, just some basic spirals. Finally, however, I was able to get down to the business of actually assembling them once Christmas had passed. Thanks to the long weekend I managed to finish this one.

Here is the first from a series of five that I will be doing:

solospiral2

As you can see, it’s a rather simple design. Just a basic spiral. It’s a little hard to add much more to something this small, but I tried to do something fun with the ending ramp. The path dips sharply coming out of the spiral, and by the time the marble reaches the end it has built up a good bit of speed. It reaches the upright portion and tries to climb right up it, runs out of steam, and falls back on itself where it comes to rest in the bottom of the “U.”

solospiral3

Above is a fun view of things and kind of gives you an idea of the roller coaster feel it has when it finishes.

solospiral

For a simple piece I think it turned out pretty well. After finishing it I immediately started on another one. I hope to have it completed by the end of the week! I just love finishing projects. It’s so counter to the way I used to live my life where I’d start something, get discouraged, shelve it, and then feel bad about the whole thing. There were some things about this sculpture that didn’t fit my idea of the perfect piece, but I managed to let go of that stuff and just be okay with it. Pretty kickass.

What do I do with this stuff?

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This is how it starts: a piece of wood, a spiral, and a leftover part from a harmonica. You just put them all there on the table and then wait for some kind of genius to strike. I don’t know if genius has ever struck me, but I do end up making stuff. I’ll take what I can get!

Affects and Side Affects

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RAM chip, chord book. Totally related, right? Well they are, sort of. Here on the blog where we are all about creativity, it’s no surprise that both of these are linked to my creative growth. Well, that, and I ordered them both off the interwebz, if you need one more obscure way they’re related. I know the mail media link is a thrilling one, but let’s put that aside and look at the whole creative thing, since that’s pretty much why I write on here all the time.

The RAM I hope is going to be a huge help with my photo stuff. You’ve no doubt noticed that the photo posting has slowed until it seems as if it has stopped altogether. It has not, I assure you. I’ve still been taking photos (almost!) every day. I have all of them either on my hard drive or on my camera. However, processing all those photos gets ridiculously time consuming, particularly when I have over a hundred to go through and I want to switch back and forth among five or six of them and pick the best one. Right about the time I start doing that, the virtual memory in my lappy kicks on, and then everything…slows……..to……….a………….crawl. It can take me two hours just to pick through ten photos. Granted, I’m a perfectionist, but the slowosity of my hardware isn’t helping things any.

Enter my brother, who informs me that the whole slowness thing is caused by this virtual memory issue, and that if I got more RAM I could whip through dozens upon dozens of pictures as well as run iTunes, Word, and my web browser all at once and never have a hiccup. This sounds like more than a good deal to me, so I only kind of reluctantly shell out money I don’t really have to get this stuff which should perform what is really an invaluable function: that of making my creative efforts more easily accessible and enjoyable. This is pretty key stuff, as in the past I’ve hamstrung creative efforts by trying to get by with the minimum. Then I’ve been unhappy with the results, and then I’ve called the whole thing a failure. I’m pretty much done with working against myself these days, and I realize that my creative efforst are important enough and valuable enough that I actually DO deserve to spend money on them.

This sort of thing – purchasing the RAM – is the sort of side-effect that working toward a goal has. I didn’t set out to update my computer when I decided to take more pictures, it’s just something that has come with the territory. I didn’t set out to learn more about how my computer operates, but it happened. The same thing was the case with my outboard hard drive – just happened as a matter of course. It’s really interesting to see how all this stuff comes about when I pick up on something and go after it.

The same sort of thing has happened with my drawing stuff. I started with a handfull of pencils that a friend had given me. Now I have a whole box full that I’ve bought for myself. I also have a sketch book and some regular lead pencils for other types of drawing. I’ve been hanging out a lot more with a friend of mine, because she likes drawing. I’ve been noticing visual art more and taking a greater interest since I started drawing. There are some other projects in the works related to this subject, and I hope I’ll have some other developments to report on in the coming months. It looks like I’m going to learn matting and framing in the near future as well – not that I planned on that, it…just happened. I think there’s a trip to the art museum coming up as well related to “refilling the well” as the Artist’s Way puts it, and that will be an outgrowth of all this drawing stuff too.

The guitar chord book – well, that’s kind of obvious, now isn’t it? I…didn’t really plan on buying that, but they guy who is teaching me things, he said that’s the book he first used over forty years ago. I wanted to learn a few things, so I’m going to give this a shot. Working on guitar stuff has led me to listen to music differently and led to new conversations with new people. This interest was also responsible for my nephew getting a ukelele from me for his birthday this year, in a weird sort of related twist. The people who are being affected by my interests are not just me, which is a cool thing to note. (If my nephew ever ends up on Youtube singing Jason Mraz tunes, I’ll be sure to let you know.)

Now, off to work on some photos or guitar or whatever the heck else…