My wife gave me a pair of old garden shears and said she wanted me to make something with them so I stared at them off and on for a few weeks until this hit me yesterday. Added the base (I’m thinking it was the top of a bit of farm machinery exhaust), designed and printed the lampshades (used magnetic USB-C bulbs for the lights – a wonderful thing for making lamps with reclaimed metal), and took a wild creative swing with the red paint. Worked out well, I think.
End of summer break inbound; whereas everyday felt, for the last eight weeks, like Saturday, now they feel like Sunday. And so it goes, through the next few weeks. Things in process:
Final Shed transition from writing space with tools to full-on industrial art workshop. Metal and pictures and words oh my.
Moving rocks around nuPond. New footpath in the works for optimal gill-baby viewing.
Drawing little things for a zine, maybe. Words eventually, again.
Reading: WE ARE WATCHING, by Alison Gaylin; LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY, by Diarmaid MacCullough
Watching: PARADISE, season one.
LISTENING: On a BRMC binge.
PLAYING: ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY replay on PS5 because my brain can handle only wanton awesomeness and occasional quirk; BALATRO and MARIO KART WORLD on the Switch 2.
Toying around with new metal ideas, though I might wait for the blazing heat to fuck off to work on something bigger.
I was halfway through this latest character when I figured out how deeply I was inspired by Jason Aaron and Mahmud Asrar’s brilliant BUG WARS series. So I rolled with it and ended up with my own original denizens of Slade’s yard: Hank’s the (bug) explorer, Frank’s his (slug) steed, all birthed from old tractor parts, plenty of nuts and washers, typewriter bars, and, in Frank’s case, an old boot jack my wife gave me.
A companion piece to an end table I made awhile back. Used old barn wood for the base, a part of a jack stand, and sheet metal. The light source is a usb-c chargeable bulb that turns all sorts of pretty colors.
A tribute to my grandfather, who was, as per his request, buried with a stick figure drawing I did of the two of us standing together when I was five or six. Wanted to bring that drawing to life, to dimensional permanence, in metal. The anvil base was on his end table in his sunroom, the rest of the piece was made from pieces of scrap metal I had laying around and manipulated into the desired form. I think – I hope – he'd be pleased.
Things I've done the last few days:
Removed a dead lilac and replaced with a sweet almond.
Designed and printed a fucking adorable plant pot.
Drew a new comic that I was thinking about posting but might hold off and see how many I do and make it a zine.
Made a new metal piece; presently printing / prototyping plastic component.
Shed more skin as my latest tattoo continues to heal.
Fought hordes of C-virus infected in RESIDENT EVIL 6 which is a rather good time.
Bought a pressure washer and cleared off some of the house and yes ok fine i probably bought it to tide me over until POWERWASH SIMULATOR 2.
Removed big monitor from shed since I don't really need it anymore. Which I’ll probably need sooner rather than later since I just said I no longer need it.
A friend of ours has decided to start raising backyard chickens so I made her a tiny metal chicken. Did I ever think I would make a tiny metal chicken? Not particularly (I thought my chicken-making days were behind me because I mean, how do you follow Cluckhead?) but here I am, adrift in my “tiny barnyard friend” phase and glad that I can contribute something to her backyard endeavor.
Latest Shed-friend, a re-do of one of my earliest pieces and another chance to combine 3D printing and design (the thought / word balloon) with metal (everything else). Most of Squibs was, once upon a time, a plant stand, chainlink fence post, a wrench, and a glockenspiel frame.
