shedporch gallery

in

I’ve had a few people ask to come by and see my metalwork, but, thanks to my blind spot / cognitive dissonance when it comes to selling / sharing anything I make, I never considered having a spot where my finished pieces could live, beyond scattered around the house and / or terrorizing the neighbors. So, my Saturday project of taking an unused part of The Shed porch and turning it into my own little gallery. Idea being that if people want to come see pieces, I’ll curate a collection for them on this grid. And the air conditioner. As usual, all made from scrap wood. Pardon my filthy floor. P.S. if you’d like to set up a time to drop by, email me and we’ll figure something out.

Project: Pondio (table addendum)

in

Was worried that I’d be staring down another rained-out day of zilch, but managed to finish the Pondio table. With the exception of two boards, the entire thing is made out of the pergola my grandfather and I built (and that K and I were married under) that I took down to make way for Pondio. The original paint and stain and gunk remains on the inside of the piece. Pleased with how it turned out.

buffalo measuring

in

Today at least is going to be spent flapper-disking the next big metalwork project which has now morphed into one and a half metalwork projects (ad has made the project that it was going to be become something else entirely further on down the road) because, as Brad Bird's favorite axiom goes, Use every part of the buffalo. This one's going to push me further into woodworking, for which I've yet to find a genuine, visceral love: if (my ignorance-fueled iteration of) metalwork is more like cooking, throwing ingredients into a pot to make something new and tasty, then woodwork is more like baking, precise measurements required to make the pieces fit, measure twice cut once, stir stir stir. Then again, 3D printing is very similar to baking – I do, after all, jestingly refer to my printer as an easy-bake oven. I guess it's not so much that I dislike woodworking (I don't, not at all) but that I don't find it as harmonizing with the type of creativity that makes me feel whole. I admire those that do it well and make beautiful things with it, but I get far more creatively turned on by seeing a rusty spring than I ever could a beautiful piece of timber: both have their place but the latter requires a creative vein which I've yet to tap into.

glockbox

in

An odd little experiment in metal and (scrap)wood: I’ve had a glockenspiel among my possessed oddities for a number of years, and, as the sound offends me, I never touched it after having to play it in high school. But, since I’ve stumbled into metalwork, I lusted after a purpose for the keys beyond a harbinger of bleeding eardrums. Enter: angle grinder, cut-off wheel, and decades of pent-up instrumental loathing to separate the keys from the frame – pieces of which found new life as part of Snippy and the weird tentacle creature – which culminated in… the keys being unwilling to weld together to form anything.

But I had, over the past month since my failure to create anything from them, been moving the keys about in a sort of hypotonic glitch-art way, attempting to find something to build from them. Yesterday, I figured it out: instead of making one piece, make a way to continue fiddling about in hypnotic glitchy fashion. And lo, from piles of other failed wood projects was birthed Glockbox. Can still remove the keys and reorder them as I please, but I’ve been fiddling with the pattern in the video above for most of the morning. Rather proud of this experimental little oddity, the best solution I’ve come up with so far to a deeply annoying vexation. Having far more fun with the glockenspiel in this form than I ever had with that instrumental monstrosity in my previous life.

record cabinet

in

After a colossal failure a few weeks ago in vinyl storage / record cabinet construction, I used the remnants of that monstrosity to make one that I'm rather proud of today. Had the idea this morning, spent the day building and painting, listened to great music at the end (Nik Bartsch's Ronin's SPIRAL). Along the way, figured out Lon's final evolution which, should weather cooperate, I'll shepherd him tomorrow. Yep, I’m proud of this one (as, it seems, is John Mastodon).

botanical scrap shelving, corner glitch edition

in

The past weekend’s efforts at scrapwood Lego Botanical shelving were a rousing success, so much so that K asked me to make more, with an upgraded challenge: corner shelving. So I did my usual method (build first, measure later, hammer in pieces that don’t fit) and scrabbled together this effort. K was thrilled and excited to build more Legos, and I was rather pleased with the glitchy effect my total disregard for measurement lent it.