Just added some high-end chains to the jewelry page. The chains are entirely hand-made using techniques perfected by jewelry artist, David Plumlee. I found a copy of his book at the local library, and decided to give "chaining" a try. My pieces are made from either aircraft stainless steel, or titanium. I may add tungsten to the line if I can find a reliable source for the wire. The prices of each piece vary according to material and construction time.

I've decided that it's time to paint another Neoplastic abstract, or to be specific, an elementaristic abstract. De Stijl founder, Theo Van Doesburg believed that using diagonals added a visual dynamic that is lacking in the traditional Neoplastic compositions(think Mondrian). Van Doesburg refered to this off-shoot of the Neoplastic asthetic as "Elementarism". Although I love Mondrian's composition and execution, I am in complete agreement with Van Doesburg on this point, and prefer to follow his asthetic. In the spirit of recycling, which is typical of many of my projects, the above digitally rendered image(sans web addy)will be painted on a 5'x7' matchstick bamboo area rug that was to have been thrown in the garbage this afternoon. I have an identical area rug, which was to share the same fate, waiting in the wings for another project.

Thanks to Mr. Rex Fermier for mentioning the problem with the King Crimson post imagery. I uploaded them in bulk, and didn't bother to see if the photos were clickable. I wasn't able to fix the links html in the posts below, so I reloaded them as larger images.

In The Court Of...

I've been listening to British group King Crimson for over 25 years. Several months ago I decided to do a cubist portrait of lead guitarist Robert Fripp. I did an image search of the web for reference material, finding nothing of value, but I did stumble upon the website of his sister Patricia Fripp. I e-mailed Ms. Fripp requesting reference material for the project, not really expecting an answer, but she did reply. After several e-mails, Ms. Fripp sent me photos of her brother and I begain work on the 1st rough draft.

Titled "Show Of Hands", this sketch was a test bed for the idea of rendering the final sketch on a collage of King Crimson cover art. I scavenged the album art images from the web and used a photo editor to stitch them together. I printed the collage art backdrop with my inkjet printer, and glued the images to pieces of scrap cardboard. Rendering the sketch was straight-forward as I had taken care to make sure the edges of the paper were securely glued to the cardboard foundation.

With an idea of the hand positions sucessfully executed, I started work on the second draft, titled "Face The Music". Construction of the collage backdrop was the same as the previous draft, and this rendering was without problems. I had been sending e-mails of the drafts to Ms. Fripp, and she seemed to be quite taken by the idea of incoporating the album art into the sketch. At this point I had decided to construct the final collage on a 30"x40" primed canvas, and add an extra layer of visual interest by scattering tablature across the surface.

I had fixed the collage to the canvas, and had begun the charcoal sketch when I was sidelined with the 1st sinus infection, then walking pneumonia and kidney stones. After I had recovered my strength from the 2nd sinus infection and bronchitis(following that), I e-mailed Ms. Fripp that I was ready to start back with the portrait.

I spent most of Monday working on the sketch in the yard, using the rough drafts to fill in the face and hands.

I finished up by adding the cubist shading around the edges. I brought the sketch into the living room and after scrutinizing the portrait throughout the night decided that something was terribly wrong with it. I couldn't figure out what, but I decided the sketch was a total failure. Tuesday morning I added the title, "Flash Point Of Reason" and played with the shading a bit, but I became increasingly more despondent. I sent Ms. Fripp a rather frantic e-mail, voicing my dismay, I probably sounded like a lunatic, but artists are given to bouts of eccentricity when things don't go as planned. It was at this point when I decided to seal the surface of the sketch, to prevent anymore repair work, or OVER-repairing as I am accustomed to doing. As I painted the gel medium over the sketch a miracle happened. The moisture from the gel pulled the printer ink to the surface, making the album covers and tabs more prominent. The added visual texture was exactly what was needed to balance the cubist shading, the piece was redeemed in my eyes.

To paraphrase a line from Isaac Asimov's Light Years, "No one likes to advertise their mistakes". That being said, the above picture was taken just before the application of the gel medium, while I was gripped by dispair. The photo below was taken after the gel medium had dried to transparency.

Ms. Fripp was to meet her brother Thursday and she was going to show him the pictures. I e-mail her the above picture Wednesday morning mentioning that Mr. Fripp could have the portrait if he liked it. Thus far I have yet to receive a reply from Ms. Fripp, or her brother.

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I received an e-mail from Ms. Fripp this morning(Mother's Day, May 11th), her brother enjoyed the photos, however he is too modest to have artwork of himself hanging in his home. I can relate to that, the only self-portrait I have, or will ever render is hidden in my "rejects" closet. Although the sketch looks exactly like me, I hate it, and would never hang it anywhere in my house. Anywho, I have offered "The Flash Point Of Reason" to Ms. Fripp as a gift, I would feel most honored to know that the portrait is hanging in a Fripp household, where it truely belongs. If I can frame the 2 seriously bowed rough drafts without destroying them, I will hang them in my office.

I've been working on the cubist bust this morning. Constructed with slabs of recycled Cassius Basaltic, to which I added several squares of TP for workability. I neglected to add a mouth since, as legend has it, the Golem is incapable of speech. This is symbolic of the creature being the imperfect creation, of an imperfect creation. Once the clay has hardened a bit, I will carve the appropriate Hebrew lettering into it's forehead(s). If the piece survives the firing I may cover it with spray paint instead of glaze, the piece will be titled, "Man-Made Man".

I haven't spent much time working on the visual arts. In the past 3 weeks I have had 2 sinus infections, walking pneumonia, and passed 4 kidney stones. I did work on a commission some, and finished the Dada collage, "Post-Nuclear Mother's Flashing Manifold Through The Psuedo-Crucification Of Sound." The other Dada collage "Hubcap Head's Voodoo Banquet Of Malnourished Skanks."(see mixed media page) was finished shortly before my first sinus infection. The cubist bust of the Golem of Prague remains unfinished, I would like to work on it today. I also want to melt down some Blackened Voodoo beer bottles to use as a blank for a bowl project. I've spent most of my time in bed, or on the puter composing Dada poetry and my Dada Manifesto. I'll try to post a pic of the Golem sculpture later.

Haven't posted in forever, got too many projects in the real world to contend with. I've been sidelined for several days with walking pneumonia. I was working on a cubist bust(not Peter Max), a cubist portrait, and 2 Dada collages. I've also completed my Dada manifesto, several Dada poems, and I'm working on a surrealist short story. The Dadaist and Surrealist projects are playing tricks with my subconscious. My dreams are changing to suit my artistic endeavors. Last night I had several surrealistic dreams, which for most people dreams are totally surreal, but my dreams usually involve ordinary events in extraordinary locales. Theses dreams were rife with archetypical imagery juxtaposing strange backdrops, the epitome of surrealism. It was... unusual. Perhaps I can pull a short story out of that jumbled mess.

Just spent the better part of 2 days updating the website. I switched the pages from a floating layer format to tables, I like the cleaner look. Also add pages for cubism, and jewelry. Since the holidays, jewelry sales have slowed enough for me to actually have enough stock to photograph and post to the website. I should also have more time to make posts in this much neglected blog.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF PETER MAX!!

Was doodling on a piece of scrap paper last night and I am very much interested in doing a cubist bust of Peter Max, in Cassius Basaltic clay. What I need are hi-resolution pix of Peter's head, google images got me next to nada. The official website has no contact info for his business office, just the online store. I guess I'll have to get creative.

The Cobb Lane Gallery showing was last night and it went quite well. Networked with people in the local art scene, made some glass and pottery sales. The pieces will be on display at the gallery for the rest of the month. I'm hoping the window panels will attract business into the gallery. Monday, I will start cleaning up the mess in the studio, probably a 2 day job. I'll start back on pottery at Imagine(Wednesday), maybe do some pinch pots in the studio if I get that area cleaned up enough.

Well the Moss Rock Festival has come and gone and the Cobb Lane Gallery showing is in 3 days. I went to the gallery yesterday to hang the glass panels and set up some pottery. I made the clips on 3 of the panels too short so I'll have to replace them before the show. I am totally exhausted, the shop is trashed. It'll take a coupla days to clean it up enough to get back to creating art. I've been doing glass non-stop for months. I'm ready to get back to clay, but there are some experiments that I want to try with glass. Maybe I can alternate between the 2 mediums... yeah right.

The cola bottle disk that I was going to pull out of the kiln 2 days ago(as a bowl) shattered on the ramp up. I decided to omit the extra step of fusing the bottles into a disk before hand and took a chance on arranging the individual bottles in a circular pattern inside the woks, praying that they would slump and fuse into place. I tried this a few months back and had a lumpy mess. This time my efforts were rewarded with success. The resulting bowls are almost to my liking. The center bottle needs to be a little smoother. To remedy this I am adding an extra 5 minutes to the soak(at 1460F). The bowls are wobbly, but I'll add some clear rubber feet to them as needed. Due to the extreme variations in thickness these bowls can ONLY be washed in cool water.

This past week has been major hell. Nonstop problems, the new credit card machine we got last week won't dial out, and killed the phone line for several hours. My mp3 player died Sunday night, yesterday I broke a finished panel... I'm a damn clumsy fool. The Moss Rock Festival is 3 weeks out, and it feels like I'm losing the race. On the upside, I met Mary Susan, art coordinator for "Avondale's annual "Art In The Park":

http://www.artinavondalepark.org/

We hit it off and she invited me to display at their festival, which is the 27th of this month. I'd love to do it, but all of my resources are dedicated to Moss Rock and Cobb Lane. I may set up my field easel in the park that day, I WILL attend a charity auction at the Imagine Gallery after the festival. I'm soooooo damn exhausted. I'm working on cola bottle bowls and paper weights. I'll post pix of them tomorrow. Time to hit the sack.

Loaded 3 more panels into the kiln last night(destined for Cobb Lane). These have elaborate cut lines in the center panel. The tape was needed to keep the glass from sliding out. I drew squiggly magic marker lines on the panels before cutting them, for obvious reasons. The magic marker ink should burn out(I hope). The astute observer will notice that the panel is being fused on split shelving. After an exhaustive search I was unable to find a supplier that offers 1-pieces kiln shelves in 29" diameter. Thru experimentation I found that I was able to seal the seam with regular drywall mud. I haven't had any problems with the mud sticking to the float glass, at temps up to 1600F(thus far). Any residue on the glass washes off easily with a scrub brush and soapy water.

I was also able to get 4- six packs of cola bottles loaded up, using any kiln shelf I could find. These are about 1/2 the size of the larger panels(11 bottles), and will have mason stain included. These will be for sale at the Moss Rock Festival.

Also for sale at Moss Rock will be the "Van Gogh ears", necklace pendants made from old light bulbs. Each bulb will yield 2-3 pendants. These will be loaded into the Frankenskutt after lunch.

Just finished working on another panel. This one is made from the frame supplier's glass. Picture frame glass is about 3/32" thick, so for the typical project I use 3 layers of glass. This gives me 2 extra surfaces to paint, or provides a barrier between the outside panels when I don't want the colors to blend. In this instance I have broken the center pane into multiple sections. As with the other panels, I will only heat this glass to tack fusing temps. If all goes as planned the cut lines will still be visible inside the finished piece.

The 2nd panel for the Cobb Lane show was supposed to be praiseodenium yellow and zircon-encapsulated bright green with bronze mica(included). As you can see there is very little difference between the green and yellow. I may try adding a little French green, or celadon in the future. I was expecting the green tint to be a bit more obvious, the raw material looks more like neon green.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday(spare me the over-the-hill jokes). Being 40 is no different than being 39. I refuse to allow my life to be quantified as a 2(or 3)digit number. Anywho, on the positive side, I got a new phone(AT&T 8525) and a Sierra Wireless Aircard 875, for my laptop. That means that I have a truely wireless connection to the internet, via my AT&T account. I don't have to connect to a cable, or dsl modem, no wifi, or lame ass dial up. Any area that has 3G coverage can provide access to the internet. I'm posting this blog entry from the kitchen table, using the aircard. It's not perfect, I've had to reconnect the aircard a coupla times, and reboot the puter this morning, but nothing in life is without some hangups. The airphone connection appears to be faster than the dsl. With the dsl, I was pulling double bandwidth by connecting to the modem both wirelessly and with an eithernet cord. We decided to purchase the aircard(and service) so that I could do wireless credit card transactions at the Moss Rock Festival, and Cobb Lane show. On the glass front, I went to the frame supplier and purchased 40 sheets of glass yesterday, the majority being 16"x20" which is the largest size rectangle that I can fit in the L&L kiln. I also have enough coke bottles to fill the kiln 2x. I also picked up 3 boxes of scrap glass from Overton Frameworks, which I'll fuse with the glass that I purchased yesterday, since Overton's glass is from the same manufacturer.

Panel 1 has a branching pattern set against orange and violet, with bronze mica inclusion. I took the liberty of mixing the pigments directly on the glass. It gives the piece a watercolor effect. The entire surface of the piece has tin-bloomed, which was unexpected, but I like the effect. It has a satiny, iridescent sheen when viewed in full sunlight.

After years of searching(when I remember to), I finally found some Hebrew fonts and a very basic MS keyboard setup for the task. Now I can do proper Hebrew calligraphy on glass. I just assembled a star of David blank(sans script), and I've pulled 4 of the Cobb Lane Gallery pieces out of the kiln. I'll post pix of them after I fill up on java juice and pandulce.

I just finished painting 3 glass panels, the larger ones are for the Cobb Lane Gallery Showing(Nov 9th), the smaller blank is for the Moss Rock Festival(Nov 3rd-4th). The Cobb Lane Glass will be left flat, I'll probably make bases for them. The Moss Rock piece will be slumped into a bowl mold. I'll be using the newly acquired art glass to make pieces for Moss Rock since the Festival's theme includes art made from recycled materials.

Many, many thanks to Linda S. of Gardendale. She saw the article in the newspaper and e-mailed me about some art glass that she wanted to get rid of. Linda had been doing stained glass for many years, and walked away from her cutting table. There are dozens of 1/2 and 1/4 sheets from Spectrum, Uroboros, Kokomo, and Wissmach. I'll have to self-fuse it all, some of it will be woven, most of it will get some surface design, and I've come up with an idea that I can experiment with(using smaller scraps).

Laverne R. of Indian Springs had seen the article in the Birmingham News and sent word thru a coworker that she had some scraps of stained glass that she wanted to get rid of. I called her and she said that she would leave the glass for me(at work). I was expecting a few panes of glass... yet right. Good thing I cleaned out the trunk of my car a coupla weeks ago. There's about 60lb+ of glass, some of it is VERY old. Since I don't know the manufacturer, I can't use it in any warm glass projects. What I can do is use it in pottery, or maybe make some jewelry out of the more elaborate embossed pieces. There are even scraps of lead came in some of the boxes. I haven't had a chance to go thru it yet, so I don't know what color palette I have to work with.

Well, I've been wanting to add a blog to the website, to make things a little more interesting. Art can be very stodgy and boring... Hmmmm, at least the veneer of art can appear that way, the actual process of creating art can be anything from routine to insane. I'm still working on trying to integrate the blog into the main website, which means tweaking the basic blog template in MX04, testing it, then editing the html code in the actual blog, and praying that I didn't screw things up too badly. Over the next few days you can expect anything good or bad to happen to this blog. It is here to stay... I hope. Time to go edit some html...