Tag Archives: playing with art

Challenging myself and new sculpture video for “Dropping In”

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It has been a tremendously productive past few months, and here is one more result of my decision to create one new piece a week for as long as possible. There’s been a change in plans, but I’ll fill you in on that later. For now, news and video on the new sculpture!

Titled “Dropping In,” I deliberately made an effort to create something different with this one. I’d had a thought around the beginning of the year for a method of creating track that would be rather quick, but also brought with it some limitations. However, limitations always translate into a pattern of thought like this: “Hmmm…I could do that, but that would mean I couldn’t do these other things. Huh. What if I couldn’t do those other things? That seems like a bad thing, but it just means I have to find another way of reaching my goal. If I can’t do X, then…then the challenge is to find a Y that will resolve the issue, and quite possibly be awesome in the process!”

This line of thinking worked its way around in my head for a while. Then “Lunar Walk” showed up on my work bench piece by piece, and I realized it was time to play around with some of those ideas. Turns out they worked pretty well! The sculpture looks really cool and is different from what you very often see with rolling ball sculpture. I enjoyed building it and its function. Even better, when other people got a look at it, they liked it as well. Success!

Once that piece was done I was ready to engage in my idea 100%. I was going to make a bunch of perfectly straight track sections in a whole batch and then…well, I didn’t know what, but there was only one way to find out!

Turns out it really was a challenge. Curves create a certain type of feel. They also allow for gradual changes in depth and speed. I was losing a lot of advantages in some areas, but it just made me more determined to figure out something cool with my idea.

I suppose I could have made my track sections bowed or wavy, but I really wanted to go with the idea of making this piece with nothing but straight, flat track. I could see something in my head that really wanted to take shape. Once I started laying the completed track sections out on the work bench, things really began clicking. The “steps” portion of the sculpture just seemed too perfect, and I was getting excited about the bigger challenge of keeping the track only gradually sloped so that the marble wouldn’t roll too quickly. Anyone who builds RBS will tell you that controlling roll speed at a slow pace is difficult!

When the basic track route was laid out I started welding some of the pieces together. I had no specific frame in mind, but once I started looking at the steps taking shape it snapped in place: strutted uprights! I immediately thought, “Oh, man, now you’ve done it. That’s going to take a LOT more time!” Remember, I was trying to get this piece done within one week. Just building one upright with struts is time-consuming, but here I had the idea for a triangulated piece. That was going to take even more than triple the time it took to make a single-sided one! Nevertheless, I knew the idea was perfect. I couldn’t NOT build it after having seen it in my head.

Hours of work followed. The uprights turned out great, but required a good deal of patience in setup and welding to keep them from warping horribly. The track worked with the frame visually even better than I could have hoped! Keeping the track sections slanted at just the right angle took additional patience and lots of adjustment, but once I had it working it was right on.

I’m very pleased with the end result on this one. I imagine that it is not to the taste of everyone, but I appreciate its uniqueness, and I’m sure there is someone else that feels this one is just right for them. I was also struck with the idea that the open area in the sculpture could be used as a mounting point for an award or a photograph that I could add at the client’s request. I know if I worked somewhere, say an engineering firm, and I was given this piece of art with a plaque affixed to it, I’d be a lot happier than if I got the usual brass and wood plaque from a trophy shop. This is one to remember! Plus, every single person coming in the office would want to play with it! How many other trophies can do that?

As mentioned earlier, my goal has been one new piece a week for several month’s worth of time. I have just received two new sculpture commissions, both of which have me extremely excited! These are larger works that will take some time to complete, so the small pieces will be on hold for a while, but I will continue to update here with other news as I have it.

Thanks to everyone who supports my work. I appreciate your efforts in forwarding my videos and putting up comments on various internet outlets. You help me do bigger and better things!

Letting go, moving on

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So I went to my steel fabrication sculpture class this past weekend, and it was A-FRIGGIN’-MAZING!!!! OMGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! (There will be more pictures and explanation later, promise!)

We built stuff! We cut stuff using FIRE!!! There was an oxyacetelyne setup and a plasma cutter and a MIG welder! It was awesome! I will post pics soon as I’m able. I built about half of a rolling ball sculpture in three hours. Yes, shock and surprise there, right? A bunch of people looked at it and were like, “What…is that?” One guy in particular kept looking at it. I’m wondering if he’s not going to start thinking about building one. He had this funny look on his face, like he was really considering something.

This whole welding thing – it was just so great! My one or two meager efforts at stick welding in the garage gave me some familiarity, and the practice of soldering actually prepared me for some of processes used in welding, so I was kind of online already. But the whole thing, just – it was incredible! I have been told, and I believe it’s also in the Artist’s Way, that when you’re really tuned in, when you’re really doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you forget all about everything else around you. Time flies by and you don’t even know it. You become terrifically focused on what you’re doing.

That’s exactly what happened. I was wholly drawn in to it. On Saturday we basically learned how the shop works. On Sunday it was, “Have at it!” day, so Saturday night I went home and took the steel rods I’d bought earlier that morning and I bent them up into spirals so I could spend my time welding on Sunday and not bending stuff. I was working on it without even being there! Then when I got there I got so into my work I didn’t even realize I hadn’t taken a picture until the instructor told is it was time to start cleaning up. I was all the way into it. It was the greatest thing ever!

But what does this have to do with letting go, you ask? Moving on? Well, the experience with welding was so awesome, even the parts where I screwed up, that I’m now clearing out anything around my house that I can find that I don’t need so I can buy a welder! From the outset of this whole rolling ball sculpture exploration I’ve wanted to weld, work with steel. Actually, I still have pieces of scrap metal, old car parts, that I cut up expressly to build a sculpture with. However, I realized not long into the project that I was taking a huge bite, and not sure I could chew it. I scaled back to copper just to get my feet wet. My feet are fairly soaked now, and this welding workshop solidified my suspicions from years past: I WANT TO WELD STEEL! I NEED TO DO THIS!

I know what material I want to use: stainless steel. I know what I want to do with it: build rolling ball sculptures. I need precision and detail. For this I need a TIG welder. Well, I could get by with less, but I’m not going to hamstring my efforts by getting what *kind of* works, not when I could pool resources and get what I *know* is going to do exactly what I need it to do.

At first I was just kind of desperate, like, “Ahh! I must get one! I don’t know how!” Then I went, “Dude, you know how much they cost, and you don’t have that kind of money….damn.” Then I went, “Hey, there have got to be one or two things lying around the house that you don’t want or need anymore. Maybe you can put enough of them together to make ends meet.”

So I started looking, and I was surprised at what I found. I dug through my back hall and found a bunch of music gear that I either never use, or use so seldom that it’s probably best that I just let go of it. It’s all going on Ebay here shortly. I already put a little bass amp on there, a practice amp, and there are a couple more old tube guitar amps that are probably going to go up as well. I may have already sold one of them to a friend, sans Ebay. Cheaper for both of us!

I’m on my way. I’m letting go of all kinds of stuff that I’ve been holding onto. It’s time to turn that over into something that I can use and enjoy today. They say that the things we own can end up owning us, that we can become trapped by things, stuff. I know that in the past I haven’t sold these things because, “Well, I might want to use it someday,” or, “But what if I regret selling it a year or two or ten from now?” Well, what if a year or two or ten from now I go, “Man, I really wish I’d bought that welder ten years ago. Just think where I’d be now if I’d started back then! Why did I wait?”

If I’m not using these things, someone else should be. They were created to be used, not to sit in a dark corner. I’m putting them back out into the world where they can be enjoyed…and then I’m going to purchase something that *I* can fully enjoy today, right now!

Keep trying

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Here are some more efforts from me on the caricature “monster car” drawing style that was typical of shirt and decal designs of the sixties and seventies. To the left you can see a couple of examples of the sort of thing I’m aiming toward. This stuff was first popularly made known by a guy named Ed Roth, although it had been going on in one form or another for a few years prior. Roth was the guy that put it out in the public eye on a wide scale. Later on Roth concentrated on building his crazy show car creations like the Mysterion, and he left the shirt design in the capable hands of guys like Ed Newton.

I’ve always enjoyed art like that, but never figured I could hack that. These days I don’t much care if I can be the best, at least not enough to stop me from at least trying to have some fun with it. These are pretty amateur efforts, but they are still fun, and it seems that the second and third drawings are slightly better than the first, so there may be hope for me yet. I may not be another Ed Newton, but maybe I can at least get to the point where someone looks at the picture and goes, “Cool…what kind of car is that supposed to be?”

Squiggles – done!

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I love finishing stuff! I so used to not be that person. It’s nice to not not be that person anymore…if that makes sense. I hope to finish something else this afternoon. (Yes, you will hear about it later. Why would I keep the art-y goodness away from the blog?!) Here’s the gallery on the whole thing. You can click on all these to enlarge them.

I finished it Saturday morning 3/21/09 at about 10:40am. I think I spent about two weeks of free moments here and there working on it. I’d guess a rough estimate of between fifteen and twenty hours in it. I don’t know if that’s bad or good time-wise. Regardless, I had a good time doing it. I hope I have some time to do stuff like this. I’ve already seen a friend of mine get out some of her old work that was a bit similar, stuff she did twenty years ago. It’s nice to spark interest in others. I’m kind of hoping she gets a little crazy and takes off on some new designs. This is the same person who I hope winds up making some custom marbles for me for my sculptures.

I’ve received a bunch of feedback from folks on this project. Thanks very much to you who have commented here, via email, or however. It’s nice to get a little reflection from others on this stuff I’m goofing with.

Stay creative, kids.

More with the colors

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As I mentioned previously, I’ve been doing some experimenting, some playing around with drawing. The interest in colors first came out when I did some work with the Artist’s Way, one of my Artist Dates where I goofed around with crayons and markers. My friend Darryl inspired me to take it a step further when I saw some of his really awesome colored pencil abstracts. He then very generously moved me further towards carrying things out by giving me a bunch of colored pencils. I started, got really into it, bought some more, worked on it more, bought even more pencils, and now I have some additional progress to show you.

Fun stuff, huh? It’s kind of hard to do work like this, because part of my brain keeps telling me I’m screwing around and that this isn’t “real art.” This is the part of my brain that’s always telling me that, no matter what I’m doing creatively, it’s not valid for some reason or other. The reasons vary, but they’re generally along the lines of “You’re not good enough.” I realized last night that the fact I’ve managed to get so far along on this little project shows how much progress I’ve made in not letting that little voice get the best of me these days. In years past that voice was sufficient to keep me from even starting most projects.

It is almost scary to note that, after years and years and years of not allowing myself to do anything like this, I now have two complete rolling ball sculptures (soon as Tina finishes up that awesome base for the second one, anyway), I’ve written 86K words of a novel, and I’m able to finish little fun drawings like this one. This ability to finish things, this is – as far as my own personal growth goes – huge stuff. I’m extremely grateful for it. You know what happens when you become able to finish things? You finish them, then you can feel good about them, show them to other people, share your work, your self, your life. It’s incredibly powerful.

Something else kind of wild that has crept into this little exercise is what appears to be some kind of learning process. I thought I would just basically be scribbling on a piece of paper, goofing off with pencils, randomly assigning colors here and there with no cause or concern for the total outcome. Yeah, I think that went away when I left the first pencil. Not that I’m incapable of just letting myself go and not freaking out about the outcome (thought that’s harder to do when I’m really tired, so I try not to do this unless I’m rested), but I’ve noticed that I’ve been making conscious decisions about this apparent random display of color. Sometimes I’ve chosen colors that I think will go with each other well, other times I hope that they won’t match at all, that they will clash, or that they will blend almost seamlessly. I can’t really help it. It just happens. Sometimes I just go, “….ummm…I think this needs to go there,” and I don’t even know why, but I picked that color, even if I didn’t know the reason for it. When you’ve spent this much time away from embracing such things, having them come out at you is kind of scary. Exciting and fun, but also kind of scary. I didn’t know I thought of things in this way, that I had these preferences, or that I flat-out enjoyed the hell out of this stuff so much. It’s really fun!

Oh, and as for it being goofy and a waste of time? I had my stuff out with me last Saturday when I met up with some friends. One works as a graphics producer. She saw the drawing and said, “Oh, that’s cool. You should send that in to a company for a design. That would be good for, like, a border on a paper plate or something. They do that on spec. You send it in, and if they like it, they give you a thousand dollars and…” My eyes kind of glazed over after the words “give you a thousand dollars,” so I need to revisit this subject with her. Nothing at all may come of it, but I have at least learned from that short bit of conversation, that the world does reward creative people for their work. Not all the time, and not always equitably, but it does happen, and right now I sure could use any sort of income from all this output! You’ll be sure to hear about it if anything more happens.

In another small but significant bit of news, I finally went over to the welding shop yesterday after my dental visit and gave them that little gear and shaft that I need to have turned down. They said they couldn’t do it, but the great news was they were able to give me the name of a shop that could, and it turns out the shop opens at 7am and it’s kind of on my way to work. If they can do it, this place would be ideal, as I would be able to drop off and pick up things without having to lose time from my regular job. I hope to stop in there tomorrow and see what I can see. If this flies, then you’ll finally start seeing progress again on my motorized RBS! Woohoo!

Stay creative, folks. You will be rewarded.

Colors, colors, colors

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I love color, lots and lots of color. I don’t think you’d ever know that by looking at me personally. I seem to kind of confine it to doing art work, at least for the time being. When I have the opportunity to exploit it, I do. Here’s a little something I’ve started working on that shows my tendencies to occasionally indulge in mucho color usage.

Exprimenting with colors and lines

Exprimenting with colors and lines


Fun stuff, huh? I started on this maybe a week or so ago. I started small – this is a little sheet of 5″x3″ notepad paper – because I just knew I’d wind up doing something rather ridiculously detailed, and if I didn’t do it small it would take an interminable amount of time to finish. Well, that and that fact that I’d seen someone else’s work like this, and his stuff was so awesome that doing anything larger than this seemed kind of impossible. What can I say, I guess sometimes it’s best to start small. It worked for the sculpture stuff, didn’t it?

I had some help on this. The guy, Darryl, whose work I’d seen, really is talented. So much so that I looked at his work and went, “Woah. Awesome! No way I can do that.” I couldn’t stop talking about it, though, and every time I saw Darryl I mentioned it to him. He responded by showing up a few times with examples of his work for me to see, and one time he added. “I have a few of the color pencils I used, some extras. I’ll bring them out some time.” A few weeks later he shows up with not five or six pencils like I’d assumed, but over fifteen! Tons of colors! I was very grateful. I thanked him profusely, took them home, and immediately almost immediately became afraid of them and put them in my drawer.

Darryl, the next several times I saw him, asked if I’d been working with my new pencils. For a while I told him I was really busy, which was partly true (see rolling ball sculpture posts), but after several more weeks I finally just said, “Man, you’re stuff is so cool I’m just afraid that mine is going to suck.” The next time I saw him he handed me a drawing of his and said, “Here. This is for inspiration.”

That pretty much did it. I put the drawing on my desk where I could see it every morning when I wrote. That action kept drawing on my mind and made me realize I needed to get the pencils out where I could USE them, so I got them out of the drawer. Not long after that I looked at one of the many note pads scattered about my house and said, “Okay, I can do this. I can do this if I start really small.”

Most of the work on the drawing has been done with me standing at my kitchen stove, pencils scattered all over the place. It’s nothing groundbreaking, no masterwork of hue and design and concept, but it is pretty fun, and what I learned in the Artist’s Way is that I need to pursue creative activities that make me feel good, no matter what the actual output is like. This may pass quickly, or morph into yet one more thing that sucks up my free time. Whatever the result, I need to follow my gut, which right now basically says, “Play around with squiggly lines and a bunch of different colors. You need to do that.”