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I was pretty busy today. Only got to shoot on the way to work. I like this whole angled thing, though. Kinda makes the drive to work look a lot more exciting than it actually is. I’m going to have to keep that little trick in mind.
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I do so love these. Anyone who has been hanging around here for a while knows that I love these things. Rolling ball sculptures. They’re pointless. You put a marble at the top, and it rolls down to the bottom. It doesn’t accomplish anything useful, not in that “We have work to do! Money must be made! Mountains must be leveled! Paper must be shredded!” However, they’re just friggin’ fun as all get out.
I haven’t done a lot of work with these lately. Seems like RBS building and reading have taken a back seat recently. I afforded time for this one a few weeks ago, however, during the Masterpiece in a Day event, which, I just realized, I never did fully devote an entry to, so you’ve not seen this thing until now! My apologies. I’m sure you were all chomping at the bit.
Any rate, here it is! It looks a little different than it did on the day of the event. I spent the evening tweaking it. I recurved the legs so that they sweep in toward the base more. This makes it look a little more groovy, plus the base I’m going to make for it will be able to be cut smaller. I also fixed one major support issue. When I first built it the thing was very wobbly. After looking at it for a while and playing with it, I realized it would benefit from one support piece in a strategic place. I made one up and installed it. You can’t even really see it in this photo, but it reaches from the bottom of the first spiral down to the very beginning of the third spiral.
What really surprised me was just how much of a difference this made. I mean, I knew it would help, but had no idea how much! It stands about as solid as any frame of copper could possibly do, even better than I could have planned. I should have been an engineer, you know it? Friggin’ architect. Look at that thing!
Well, it’s base-makin’ time for this bad boy. Since I basically threw it together in six hours, and it’s missing a lot of the refinements of one of my usual pieces, this one is going straight to my 3-year-old nephew. He’ll think it’s cool, and I won’t lay awake at night wondering what someone will think of it.
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Today’s blog post is brought to you by the numbers 1, 2, and 3, and the letter “M.”
Here’s another look at the triangle stuff my friend Jem and I are working on. I actually cheated. This is the half that I worked on all by my self for several hours on Sunday. Jem was way ahead of me on her half, and I was feeling like I was holding things up, so I took some time to play catch up. It still sort of looks like I didn’t do much, but there’s more color on the page, so I’ll call it good for now. I kind of like that little purpley squiggle thing, yes I do. Go me and my attempts at color blending.
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Darrell invited me over to his place on Saturday to do some art.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“Oh, same thing as last time, I guess,” I said.
“Well, how about we paint?”
“Um, okay, but I can’t paint. The last time I painted was in high school.”
“It doesn’t matter. First we’ll go to the art store. I need to pick up a few more basic colors.”
When we got back from the art store he says, “I have some already, but I needed a few of the standards.” He then proceeds to upend this big plastic bin full of all the colors you see on the floor. “Some?” Okay, Darrell, if you say so.
“What should we draw on?” he asked.
“Um…poster board or paper or something?”
“No…I have some plexiglass.”
I was beginning to sense that Darrell’s line of questioning was more playful banter than any real need for input from yours truly.
Ninety minutes later we had what you see here. I still don’t think I can paint, but it was fun. Darrell is very accepting of my limited skills, which is awesome of him. All he seems to require is the willingness to dive in and give it a shot. He told me I have to come back and finish it with him later. So, no, to answer your question, it’s not finished. Hopefully some of what I did will look better when it is finished, and, no, I have no idea what it’s supposed to look like, which is sort of the fun of it.
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I was going for something on this one…and I don’t know what it was! Probably to really make this picture start to look like anything I’d need a flash. This poor guy stands out there almost every day and directs traffic in and out from a busy school parking lot, and today he had to do it in the rain. He may show up here again, though, because on some days he’s a lot less boring than the rest of my drive.
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There’s this one little section of road that I pass through every day on my way to and from work. It’s so sharply curved you can’t even call it an S. It’s literally two 90-degree bends, one right after the other. If you’re heading north on the road, this is the left turn you have to take. Note that the view is somewhat obstructed here by a Honda. Not that said Honda is not on the road. While I do understand the allure of off-roading, I’m thinking that a Honda passenger car was probably not the best choice for this endeavor.
Honestly, folks, this intersection breeds more accidents – see the arrow signs? See the shiny guardrail? You know WHY that guardrail is shiny? Wait – you know why PART of that guardrail is shiny? It’s because only a few weeks ago someone else decided that simply hitting the ditch was not good enough, and they went through it and took part of the guardrail with them.
This happens far more often than I can count. I’ve been making this drive for over a year now, and just about every other time it rains or snows or freezes or it’s perfectly sunny even someone decides to use this section of road as a National Highway Safety bumper testing zone. Let’s also not forget the one day when some semi driver thought he had come up with some sweet back route, drove down this way, got here, and went, “Oh…I can’t make this turn…and I can’t back up…and now there’s a school bus behind me…and…oh…damn.”
Aside from any sort of finger pointing or whatever, I really just think it’s kind of funny that people repeatedly fail to slow down enough to make this curve. Doesn’t even look like this guy even tried to get it turned left, just like he went, “Well, goin’ over. Guess I’ll just meet it head-on!”
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This. This is fantastic. This is an admittedly rather lame pic of something fantastic. Maybe I’ll revisit this in the future and try to come up with some good lighting and whatnot, but I wanted a shot of it, and in the limited time that I had available, the dining room table worked as well as anything.
Remember that post from a couple of days ago with the cute little lady holding the Eko bass? That was the day of the guitar show, the day I wandered around looking for…something. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, although I was hoping I might find a replacement for my 80s Fender Telecaster. Yes, I could have kept using that same guitar and not suffered an physical ailments or infirmities, but I wanted something different. At the very least I knew that if I didn’t replace that guitar I’d have to put another pickup in the bridge position, because the stock one was lame.
I didn’t have my heart set on anything, really. I didn’t go there with a handful of cash, shaking and babbling and just dyyyyying for new gear. I went with the knowledge that, if I did come across something, I could make some trades or sales of my current gear and make something happen. I knew two guys who wanted to buy two different guitars of mine, so it seemed like a pretty good idea to make two things into one thing. How often do you have two buyers lined up like that, anyway? Seemed like a good opportunity.
I got to the show, and wasn’t inside the building more than fifteen minutes when I ended up at the booth of the vendor who was putting on the show. He had a nice 2002 reissue of a ’52 Telecaster. It looked gorgeous, and my bandleader/guitarist was there to act as pro counsel on any possible purchases. I took it down and looked at it. Price wasn’t too crazy on it. I could afford it if I found some more stuff to sell. I was sitting there goofing with it when a mutual friend appeared from out of the crowd.
“What are you doing?” he asked me with some surprise. (I’m never really seen with a guitar.)
“Trying out this guitar.”
“Are you thinking of buying it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m selling mine. It’s out in the car.”
(In my head: “Oh, reaaaaaally?”)
I knew that guitar. It was “the red one.” My friend is always buying/selling/trading one thing or another. He’d picked up this red ’63 Telecaster Relic about a year ago. The first time I saw it I thought, “That’s one damn cool-looking guitar.” I’m not even that into red, it just looked good, and I’d heard him play it, and it sounded good. Plus, he always buys good gear, so I knew this wasn’t some whack job that had issues.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, I went out and looked at it, and my bandleader stopped his conversation with my friend at one point while I was noodling to tell me, “That’s a really good guitar.” I took that as a sign that I would have no regrets in buying it, but I held off. My friend suggested I go through the building and look at all the other stuff just to see if there was anything else I liked. I did, and I found one other thing I liked…except that it was a custom color green ’71 Tele, and it was priced at a for-me-staggering $8,900!
After I left the show I called my friend. “I’d like to buy your guitar,” I said. “And if you don’t need all the money today, I’d like to get it right now.” Lucky for me, he didn’t need all the money that day. He brought it over straight away. I think I’m starting to see how people can get all moony-eyed over their guitars. This thing rules! Just looking at it makes me want to play!
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Tuesday night, and it’s time for Jem and I to draw! These sessions are becoming something that I really look forward to, and I can’t even explain exactly why that is. Part of it is simply the activity itself. I like drawing these sorts of things, free form designs. Part of it is that I like the way Jem does stuff. She uses tons and tons of color, bright stuff, and that’s pretty much why I started doing these things in the first place. Her designs and the tones she uses in them are very positive.
I’ve also noticed that when we do this I seem to lose track of time. Jem has said the same thing. If anything is going wrong or bothering me, I completely forget about it for two or three or four hours. I can get lost in what we’re doing, which is pretty awesome.
I think, too, that I like the social aspect of it. When I do the sculpture stuff I do it on my own. There’s a lot of just me sitting there in the basement looking at something. It’s very gratifying, and I love the results, but it’s really nice to have someone sitting there going, “Oh, crap…that was the wrong color,” or “Hey…that looks better than I thought it would!”
Tonight we ended like this, with all of the drawing done, and just a bit of the coloring started. See how clever we were? We cut the paper at an angle. Craziness! The idea is that this will be a paired work with both triangles mounted in the same frame. Kind of a different way of doing things, makes you think differently. I was working on the blue part, and it took forever for me to do just that little bit. It turned out okay, though. Slow, but good. Can’t wait to make more progress!
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I’m still goofing with this, trying to get it right. I wanted a car in front of me, gives the shot a good focal point. This…eh.
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Doubtless you’ll be as breathless and excited over this one as I am. These three seemingly inoccuous blocks of aluminum have tremendous potential, at least they do for me. They’re tools to be used in the making of rolling ball sculpture. These were designed by the sculptor Matthew Gaulden, and constructed in conjunction with his machinist. These hold 1/8″ wire when building an RBS, and Matt says they cut down his construction time by 20%. Building these sorts of sculptures is very time-consuming, so any way to cut down some of that is welcome, particularly when it’s an annoying detail like getting track spacing consistent. Personally, I’d rather spend my time developing some new track element, like a lift that’s shaped like a ferris wheel or something. Track spacing? Not exactly my idea of ultimate creativity.
One side note here: They don’t make copper in 1/8″ diameter. These clamps are to be used with steel wire. This means they have to be welded isntead of soldered. Previously, everything I’ve done has been soldered copper. I have a crappy little welder with which I have cobbled together one or two things. This is effectively a move toward making some construction changes. I don’t know when you’re all going to see some results, but it occurred to me that sitting around thinking about how I didn’t know how to weld my sculptures was not getting me any closer to being able to weld. This, this is a step forward. Stay tuned here for details on how I manage to botch my welding in the future.