Finding my bliss inside The Shed by moving back and forth between seeding a comics story on one end and tearing apart a reel mower on the other – I have designs for / on that reel – which has, from all the bits and bobs I've found as I dig towards the reel, spawned potentially two-three other metalwork pieces. While words remain elusive, the desire / need to transform the woodscrap leanto out back into my outdoor metalshop is anything but.
current status of various projects in various stages of yaaaay or fuckit
Writing this more for myself than for anything/one to give myself a lay of the land splayed out ahead that I can ignore as needed as I traipse about to wherever it is I'm going.
Writing: abandoned anything and everything that I'd consider aspirational, as in: anything that I hope leads to something else or a "writing career." Working solely on things that I either want to write simply because I want to write them (two short fictions) or that I'm writing for others (a short comic that could become more and a concept album) the latter of which came after I said I was considering being done with writing (cue Michael Corleone, GODFATHER: CODA). Nearing the end of one but have to dive back in on the other: been too long since I've looked at it and don't want to lose the feel for it as much as I'm fearing that I'm losing the feel for it.
Talking to others: my MacroParentheticals newsletter is dead; long live the titularly-challenged "whenever I finish something / feel like it" dispatch. I did the magazine model for more than a decade and I'm worn out. Sticking with this space as my main vessel for comms, as it has been for many years now. Haven't gotten sick of it yet, so I'll take that as a good sign.
Metalwork: I had a lot more fun tearing apart a glockenspiel than I ever had playing it. As for what it becomes, your guess is as good as mine, though pieces of its frame have already shown up. Toying around with some ideas for the keys. I also have a torn-down lawnchair waiting to become something, and a burnt-out recliner frame which has a design for its next life, though I have to bring its metal carcass here first.
Also have a portable welding table to assemble because now people are asking me to come weld things for them.
Cartooning / comics: Informalties - now borderless! – continue, as ever. Want to do another A.A. VOID. Starting to miss the little guy.
Painting: had fun – 15 minutes, to be exact – plan to have more fun. Best guess is that it might become a useful brain-unsticking exercise (15 minute / 30 minute time limit) than a full-throated vehicle of expression.
The Paintshop: The Collection's home and the workout area are complete. Unwanted / needed books delivered to the used bookshop, trash and other detritus either disassembled for metalwork or placed at the end of the driveway as an offering to the belching truck. All that remains is the ripping out of a sink and final clean-up before pool table reassembly and placement. And moving slate. Once that's in, I'll figure out how many more shelves to build.
And a next project. Probably another shelf for K's Botanical Garden set.
Bolt cutters and a glockenspiel make for a satisfying afternoon.
experiment
Wanted to see what I could gin up in half an hour with a single piece of scrap, in this case a mini-trough-planter thing that K hated because it was too shallow for plant life. She’s much happier with these little bug-critters that emerged from The Shed/lab.
weekend's metalwork
Thought this might turn into a creature of some sorts - and it has, I suppose: a tentacled alien of some sort made from a glockenspiel, an adze, and a chunk of fencing bursting out of the base of the piece, a disused plant / gazing ball stand - but this is the first one that feels like it doesn’t have a name or a purpose other than to exist because I enjoyed myself bringing it into existence. I think I’m finding myself creatively in twisted, contorted scrap metal.
Here’s another view of the same unknown construct:
new creature in progress
No clue what it’ll end up being, but it’ll end up being something, probably. Something named Warren, perhaps.
snippy
Been a few weeks since I welded Miggy into existence, so I scrabbled up a few pieces - a shovel handle, an old angle grinder cutoff wheel, a pair of dull old garden shears, and a glockenspiel - and birthed Snippy, a pissed off, antisocial little bird-thing. He’s my most biographical creation yet.
