Art I Made Quarter 2 of 2019

Gosh this was a good few months.

Festivals and Stuff

I wanted to run a tailorshop at a festival, so practiced making insane clothes while drinking. I have worn the skirt many times now.

Really simple construction but easy and rugged fabric.

Mom had these very nice porcelain numbers for her 73rd year and now wanted something big and wood and solid color and outdoor for 74 so.

I cut all this wood so I could play with it.

Here’s how you build an Easy-Up with 2x2 pieces that can fit in the trunk of a hatchback. All 4' long.

Then the fabric goes on top, see.

We had tried to build a desert hare sculpture in December and failed, but Renee insisted we keep the head. I had a free Sunday afternoon and put this together.

It moved to the street where it still lives.

Random street sign washed up on our frontage; made this bench.

Sometimes I see people taking their lunch break here. Foreground is our free box, which now features a whale to hide the dick someone added.

Turned crate pieces into a room. It was a tomb, actually, decorated inside with lots of hieroglyphs in a fake language.

This one is a Renée project.

Painting session lead by Naomi, Andy, and Renée.

Figured out how to make fake books with strange contents.

Ultimately made about 40. Including a bonus round of another 5 specific to another event.

Helping friend unpack, discovered box that almost says friend’s name. Cut sword that does say her name.

Fake video games. They’re really just labels, so the graphic design work was about 3 hours total. Printing and cutting not so bad either.

Helped Gene build Cheese Gate, a large archway imitating Stargate that glows and responds to input from a Dial Home Device.

I copied the technique on leftover pieces and added lights to create these cheese stone light box things.

Testing in my room.

I am terrible at light art, mostly because I don’t care much for it, but this is useful for your home. Placed in a bedroom.

Placed in a bedroom in Laytonville, CA. Note addition of Rolux for more than entire cost thus far of panel. It’s the shiny plastic in the holes.

Put the books in the Easy Up and sold them for car wash tokens.

I have mixed in some real books and reused the book ends I made the year before.

Many people didn’t touch them at all and just read titles, thinking I had somehow collected these books on Cheese Engineering and The Sasquatch Nudes.

The pink pieces also turn into this weird dog creature that went out in May, June, and July. It was biggest in July and most in the way and most loved, but that’s technically Q3.

Mendocino Magic

I moved here for the summer. I’m doing a tour as Designer in Residence at Mendocino Magic and so started making a lot of wood stuff that’s pretty real infrastructure for life. Including signs for a wedding or the property in general.

Finally finished project from last year.

Finally finished another project from last year.

We didn’t get the handrails last time, had to leave on Sunday. So the lumber sat around for a year, some was taken, and I finally made it back to do this and threw on the rope! The rope has settled a bit into proper catenaries.

Redid deck. This is barely art but here’s a photo.

The knife block I made it art though. I mean, I feel that way. Lots of care and creativity and absolutely zero youtube or instructions from anyone. Just made this up.

I just cut spacers and used a lot of wood glue! The idea that everyone would match at 45 degrees didn’t work too well, but I added the foot and used some sanding to get a working result.

Painted this stump.

Wrote this real big, didn’t I?

Tripod signs are a new idea.

Really happy with this frame. The angled pieces were just sitting around the scrap bin.

Free form wood sculptures from pure scrap.

Trash sorting bin.

Visiting town, threw up a big OAK sign on the corner by the hare.

Reflection

A lot of good work happened during this period. Money was going fine and I had an increasingly large amount of free time. Most of my energy went into the books, which is good. But I’m also getting a lot of practice working with wood in a variety of contexts.

Some of my basic concepts going into this quarter were proven very strong, such as the pink 2x2 and the book.

I did get whooped by the rain at one point, which was awful for the books, and the tailorshop never came together (in part due to rain-related delays). Building something strong and walking away is definitely nice, but I did feel like I wanted to experience more of the madness as little crowds pored over the books one after another for the long hours of night.