10 of 52 'VILLAGE SMITHY '

'VILLAGE SMITHY' (28 W x 51 1/2 L x 5 1/2"D) week of October 19th

‘Village Smithy’ is really a further investigation following ‘Orange Nugget.’ I feel like this direction will show itself again before this project is over.

9 of 52 'CLEAN SINK'

'CLEAN SINK': (23 3/4 L x 20 W x 5 1/2" D) week of October 12th

When I work in my shop I have a ritualistic cleaning before I start each project. I sweep, put tools in their place, shop-vac and straighten up until I feel like I have achieved a blank canvas. This process, for me, clears my head and readies it for the task. Throughout my project I will take time every now and then to sweep. Sweeping for me is like looking into a reflecting pool. The motion relaxes me and brings me into clear thought. Depending on how my work session is going I will either do this a lot or never, but usually when the floors are saw dust free and time has passed the potential to redirect my strategy is in full effect or heading there soon.

The end to this ritualistic maintenance arrives when I finally wash my hands. Once that is accomplished my studio session has usually ended. Often, my hands are filthy and they take a couple good lathers to clean. What happens when my hands are extra dirt laden is the lather from the soap captures all the dirt and grease. Exactly what it should do; however, when no more water is running to rinse away the extra huge amount of foam, lather it eventually dissipates and leaves the sink completely coated in the same dirt and grease which was on my hands. My wife Julie thinks I never wash my hands and this is what happens. For this I always get the “you need to wash your hands more often.” Followed by the “you get to wash the sinks and while your at it wash the toilets too.”

8 of 52 'MADERA VIEJA'

'MADERA VIEJA': ( 10 ¾ L x 17 ¾ W x 6” D) week of October 5th

As a kid, I was obsessed with dinosaurs. Because I related volcanoes with dinosaurs…. lava rock was the shit. My childhood buddy, Chad, had a good collection of rocks. A bit of pyrite, some fools gold, petrified wood, the average kid’s big rollers of a rounded collection. I remember his uncle sent him a chunk of lava rock. The idea of this rock and to actually hold this rock was to say the least a transcendental experience. I remember gently palming this basaltic lava and being completely floored by the idea that, this, was around when dinosaurs roamed the earth….simple deductions and assumptions, but all the same I was in awe of this rock. Shortly there after we moved to Bend, OR from El Toro, CA where my ideas about lava rocks shortly turned from lava rock stoke to hoe-hum lets break out the legos.

Since then, my appreciation of the high desert has grown and now jewels like 1000+ year old juniper trees that mark the landscape like prehistoric bones have become my lava rocks. Twisted and contorted, old growth juniper is a direct reflection of the environment it inhabits. Isamu Noguchi always talked about nature being the best artist. I couldn’t agree with anything more.

Madera Vieja is set into a frame that was found in Palm Springs. The background is MDF with laminate. The wood is old growth juniper. The brackets securing the wood are 1/8” flat bar steel.

7 of 52 'SENTINEL'

'SENTINEL' (18L x 15W x 2 ½”D) week of September 28th

Back when I was in college I collaborated on a few art projects with my friend Hunter Caputo. It was my senior year and we had this class, which dealt with sculpture in a public arena. At the time I was taken with Jean Claude Christo and his monumental installations. One project we collaborated on was a massive cardboard wall where Hunter and I worked to procure the materials, permission and concept which yielded a 6’ high wall built from cardboard boxes measuring 36x24x36”. The location we chose for this installation was the PSU park blocks. A city block in Portland rounds out at 200’, which landed us at about 1000’ of cardboard double stacked. We stayed up for two days straight building the wall, repairing the wall and fielding questions and complaints. We started late on Sunday night and by first light Monday we finished construction. It was beautiful. Straight as an arrow and contoured to fit the slight rolling downhill, the installation glowed with the pail purple light of the early morning; giving it something more than the individual parts but charging the whole with character and presence. This memory is the treasure before our works eventual demise 24 hours later.

I remember people’s reactions being intense but remember one interaction in particular, which really set the impetuous for Sentinel. A professor approached me and asked if I was responsible for this mess. I told her I was and started telling her what the whole project was about. Before I got into my sentence she started laying into me with a ferocious spiel about how irresponsible I was and how I was the cause of global warming. I was pretty exhausted at this point and realized she would never accept any other point of view so I checked out. I watched how furious she looked with her red face and waving finger and BLA! BLA! BLA! which came from her all knowing mouth surrounded by ugly lipstick. What the hell am I talking about?

Sentinel is set inside a funky frame which I have no recollection of procuring. Composed mainly of MDF, laminates and hemlock.

6 OF 52 'ORANGE NUGGET'

'ORANGE NUGGET' (8" L x 6 1/2" W x 2" D) week of September 21

I was in LA this past week. Can’t say much else about this one.

Orange Nugget is slammed into a small frame with an orange powder coated sheet steel backing which rests 1/4" behind the 1/8" frosted acrylic top sheet. The old growth juniper section is sunken into the top sheet.

5 of 52 'GRAND TOURING'

'GRAND TOURING' (82 1/2L x 29 W x 3" D) September 14th,2009

I am on vacation currently and will return to fill this section with insight.

Grand Touring is composed from two hollow doors from an old art piece. Both panels are sanded down slightly for an antiqued look. The Racing stripes are painted with oil based enamel paint. All this rests underneath 1/4" of table top resin. I hand sanded the resin's high shine finish to defuse light hitting the surface. This makes it easier to read the depth of the surface without competing with glare. Basically this gives the stripes and the surface beneath the stripes tons of depth.

4 OF 52 'LAKEWOOD BALL'

'LAKEWOOD BALL' (14 3/4 L x 18 W x 4-7"D) week of September 7th

For as long as I can remember there used to be a Denny’s here in town. The building had this late 50’s look with an exaggerated, jettisoning roofline and walls of glass, which faced east so to capture all the morning sun. It was a classic, old school, space-age diner. In my opinion, this building was a historical jewel, a building that talked about the optimism of the time. I watched as Denny’s closed and the building sat vacant for about a year. I had so many great dreams about how that building could be turned into a killer diner by some design savvy, hip foodies. But as luck would have it, Denny’s gets leveled and a piece of shit fast food joint goes up. Now in it’s place stands a monstrosity of a stucco box with some weak architectural embellishments meant to give the impression of a stylish, HEALTHY, higher end dinning establishment. What a sham.

My Grandparents used to love telling the story of when they lived next door to “Denny.” They lived in a nice So-Cal neighborhood, nothing pretentious or over the top by any means. They where blue-collar folks who used their ingenuity and hard work to get their dream. Long story short, Harold (aka Denny) used to live it up. A nice fellow, who’s pool wound from the inside of his house to the outside. A fellow who worked hard and played hard till all hours of the night until my grandfather had to go next door and ask for them to tone it down. I always pushed for more descriptions of “Denny’s” house, the feel, the style, anything to help complete my picture of the space with that pool! I never came away with those details so I’ve latched onto the house in the Peter Sellers movie “The Party,” to complete my image of Denny’s house.

Today, there are loads of cars causing traffic problems because everyone wants to try this novelty of the newest fast food restaurant in town. I like to think they’re lining up to ask how they could have leveled such a great building.

Lakewood Ball is set into the same frame as Summer Cooler, a two for one bargain never to be had again. The body of the piece is MDF with two colors of laminate applied to it’s surfaces. The structure is poplar and teak ply held together with screws and brads. This piece has a different look from every angle.