And what are the Side Projects?

The darling side projects are:

A Decipticon logo pin as a birthday present for a friend,

A commision for a Jupiter Pendant with the possiblity of more in the,

 

Student Sale which is happening in early December for which I have to prepare my summer production pieces for.

Well, one bit on the main project for jewelry. It will be an extremely tight schedule but I hope to smith a small toy drum for what else, the toy project in jewelry. Observe sketches! 

 

 



Since I don't want to keep filling the ending musical noise video with just various iterations of video game back ground music lets have some random Japanese animation from 1933! The plot as far as I can gather is that a Fox (disguised as a samurai) and a Tanuki (with his father) try to outwit each other in an abandoned temple. I do love classic old animation and, hey look at this bonus remix some one made about old cartoons.

 



 

And from there I guess I am obliged to post Disney's infamous Silly Symphony from 1929, The Skeleton Dance.

 



I'm going to have to stop myself before I post the entirety of early animation history here.

Science Fiction Flashback & Studio Blah

While prowling around the internet recently I found out that the Star Wars concept artist, Ralph McQuarrie, had passed. It's interesting to look through the images of his work and to find out through the article that he was responsible for much of the Star Wars aesthetic. It also hadn't occurred to me that Star Wars does indeed have its own distinctive aesthetic as compared to other sci-fi franchises. Perhaps it's because I was more of a Star Trek kid?

Nothing thrilling happening on the studio front; my love-hate relationship continues in ceramics, the details are driving me up the wall in CAD, I'm doing super secret things in jewelry and finally finished a piece in metalsmithing. My nested vessel went from this:

To this over an all too short spring break:

During which time it gained the title Sea Flute and coincidentally resembles this lamp at ARTISANworks which is a take off of Maryling Monroe's white dress in the infamous photo of her standing over a street vent.

I swear I made Sea Flute before I even saw the lamp, I guess curving, flared forms are in now? For anyone who missed it my thoughts on ARTISANworks can be read here in last week's post. Ciao until the next project lurches towards completion!

Working Artisan Works

Last week was a lovely spring break and an excellent time to go exploring one of the well known art "galleries" near my hometown. ARTISANworks is its name and selling art is their game sort of, more on that in a moment. Several people have told me how amazing this place is and that it's the greatest art place ever with so much to see  and something new every time you look.

Thus the exterior and interior of the front lobby to ARTISANworks. Yes it would be difficult to spot the place if they hadn't painted the building teal, yes the entrance isn't very obviously delineated, yes it is that dark inside, yes there is that much stuff around and some of it is not artwork.

You are at least allowed to take photographs and I have here the "safari" set up next to the front desk, the main event room (I think it's called vertigo heights on the map) and then at the end of some hallway where you can see an example of one artist's work which is to reproduce items in wood. In this case its a ford truck from the 20s or so....

Here it's a four foot pencil sharpener next to the actual object peeking out on the pedestal to the right. I don't know who the artist is exactly, since much of the work is unlabeled or not clearly labeled. Rather frustrating when you want to know who did a particular piece and quite a problem when you have art ranging from Terry Gilliam-esque clouds to full on paintings and sculptures mounted/hanging from the ceilings much like these:

There are also artist's studios around the building from which you can deduce who is where on the pecking order based on size and location of their space. But, on this particular weekend no one was actually at work in them. Speaking of studios, ARTISANworks feels like someone took an average studio with all the nicknacks and interesting junk artists tend to keep around their work spaces and expanded it to encompass a whole building. It results in stuff ranging from as big as a working firetruck from the 60s down to decades old bottles of developer chemicals from Kodak.

The sad truth of the matter is that certain people's jewelry benches here at the college have more interesting things on them and they have the bonus of being ordered. True, you personally may not know what that order is but everything clearly has its place. There is no logical layout at ARTISANworks, probably an indication that they only add items and don't take things down. I'm not asking for a neatly ordered museum display, I'm asking for some guide post, some marker in this tidal wave of stuff. Many of the rooms and areas of the building are themed, but none of them are obvious upon walking in, except for the Frank Lloyd Wright style room. 

All of these complaints are a moot point as ARTISANworks markets itself as a unique venue to hold an event. This ability to rent areas for birthday parties, retirements, and corporate brouhahas gets top billing on both their website and brochures, not the artwork. It's not even a particularly wonderful place to have an event too since there's nothing to keep the general touring public away from your private function. (the state art teacher's association happened to be throwing a party at the same time I went to visit.) Even with these basic issues though I was able to find some interesting things my family and I liked, but coupled with the high price of admission, I don't think there's enough to make me come back again. Next time I think I will try the First Fridays at Anderson Alley instead.

Image dump time in case you can't get enough art in one sitting! Here's a nifty painting hanging from the ceiling,

This is a little shrine to Kodak which is kinda bittersweet given the whole bankruptcy currently going on. 

Once again I don't know who the artist is, but I rather liked the colorfulness and controlled drips and splatter of the watercolors. 

I loved this clay piece that looks like a mermaid sleeping on the sea floor and still don't know who made it or what it's called, but it was one of the few works posted with a price tag. It was 3,000 dollars for the sculpture and 2,000 for the glass top table it was sitting on.

And last but definitely not least in my truncated image tour of ARTISANworks is this wicked cool silver sculpture thing hidden way up top on a shelf in a small room about 1950s dentistry. Its metalsmithing and it's so awesome, completely unexpected, and nicely crafted too! 

Taking a Breather

It's that little moment in between projects where you're finished or close to it and haven't quite figured out exactly what to do for the next one so this magical thing called time, or at least the illusion of it, appears.

I have been trying to use the time efficently to get a head on designing eye wear but I am having much more trouble than expected. See I have the concept, I have the lens I want to build it around, I just can't come up with the design! Above is the closest I've gotten to a coherent design but I have no idea what to do for the arms of the glasses, and I am getting off concept of my whole virtual reality thing.

While I try to salvage my glasses idea (I am seriously considering the application of LEDs)  I have  also been throwing a bunch of cylinders on the wheel in ceramics and am so very very close to finishing my metalsmithing project. The bowl fits into the base at least and yes, I did forget to take pictures of the whole thing too. I'll have more images to deliever next week or so when I'm hoping to get a lot of art stuff straightened out, among other things, so I can plow through and maybe even finish something early!

Brewed to Perfection

This post has been percolating for at least two weeks for your enjoyment; since I keep having to revise it again and again because so many art projects became due all at once. First the fun stuff: somehow I came across this link to a 87 minute documentary on hulu called Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade. Though not the best documentary, it did explain to me a lot about Twin Galaxies, Walter Day's desire to keep track of arcade high scores, and a good portion of where are they now for the guys who had the top scores.

Through the interviews you get a sense of what the arcade culture was like and their perspective on how and why it died so abruptly (Home gaming surpassing the arcade as well as rougher clientele showing up to  arcades). It's still difficult to imagine what arcades were like having missed that entire period of video gaming history but virtue of having been born in the 90s, but it sounds awesome.

While not "researching" games I have been camping out in the studio working on a few things and completing things at a rate that feels way too slow at times.

CAD class at least is quite fun and I completed the first project a while ago, which is this sweet wind up robot. I thought I was on to something different with my color scheme, but alas looking around the Internet there is at least one retro tin wind up robot with the same green, red, and yellow. At least the design is different, toy makers and sci-fi filmmakers didn't base too many robots on an egg shape (Robbie the Robot comes closest).

Next is ceramics, which is still not a favorite medium of mine. The left is a coil built vessel with red and black slip with sgrafitto in it, post improvements. My snake pot came out of the raku firing well (middle picture) but it didn't clean up as well as I would have liked (right picture) the snake was supposed to be a blue-green, but I guess I didn't slap on enough layers of glaze. At least it looks kinda ancient? Anyway on to Metalsmithing...

Where my angle raised vessel is almost the shape I want it so I can start worrying about building the base and ordering some super special awesome materials for it. I got a good start on the catenoid, though I get the feeling I'm doing it wrong, judging by the interesting blisters I some how gave my self hammering it and the charming surface cracks it developed. It's now a gamble as to how complete this will be by the due date since I have been focusing most of my time on jewelry.

I have the chain together and I just got the clasp soldered together last night. Tonight I have to round up some two part epoxy in order to add my last minute decorative doodads to the clasp. The cheese grater holes inside Pac-man's mouth will have a rats nest of colorful wires glued in; left over from when I dismantled three Genesis controllers to make a little model chair for intro to 3D Design. The big copper loop will get a cut in it so I can string on wooden Parcheesi pieces, spaced out by brass tubing, which will also conveniently cover the break in the wire.

Now provided I don't get distracted by attempting to beat lousy and unusual games in the the Pac-man franchise or by such paltry thing as sleep or dinner I should be able to finally finish this necklace and get on to designing the VR glasses.

My Bowl is Buoyant

Bam! There, now this post isn't a lie! My bowl for metal smithing is indeed an appropriate vessel for sailing through the calm blue pickle. Truth is, I haven't got any really interesting in progress pictures (they bore even me) so let's discuss the next project. It's eye wear, and boy do I have ideas! First, some back story:

Yes back before the Xbox and Kinect even existed the Sega Genesis had a motion controller called the Sega Activator in about 1993 or there abouts. This got me thinking about how games were always meant to be immersive; exemplified the most with the virtual reality craze of the 90s and video games awkward transition into 3D. Case in point YouTube's side bar helpfully had this video about a Sega Master System add on called the Sega Scope 3D:

I'd never heard about it because no one in America ever cared about the Master System, no matter how good it was technology wise. This commercial is closer to what I want to do with the eye wear project  but I can't discuss the details with out first covering the most infamous of all misguided virtual reality 3D gaming devices, the Virtual Boy. 

No I don't have any damned clue if you were supposed to strap it to your head or not. But, I have heard many stories of headaches from staring too long into the device's red LED display, and the noise and weight of it couldn't have been much help either. It apparently did produce some sort of 3D effect using the concept of parallax motion though it never took off and is kind of a forgotten "console" in between the SNES and the N64. It only ever had 22 games released and was taken off the market mere months later. 

The idea of going through all sorts of trouble to experience an altered game like and flashy new reality only to have it turn out to suck and have not been worth the cost (both to your wallet and your dignity) will be the basis of my project. I'm planning on having a pair of glasses that alter your perception of the world and sure they will look all cool and glitzy, until you realize that do little more than sunglasses. And oh yes sunglasses WILL be involved...

Things are a Groovin'

Its been two weeks into the semester, and a lot has been happening, even though I haven't been able to get into the studio as much as I want to (curse you swipe card)! and the quickest way to show off is through pictures so here we go!

Metalsmithing: worked up a couple pipe cleaner models for the nested vessel project. I am leaning toward the one on the left, and hope I can use 16 gauge blue aluminium wire to weave between  the copper spokes of the base. It's going to take a hell of a lot of wire though and I'm not sure I have the patience or the funds. (Also I cannot get this paragraph to justify to the left for some reason, perhaps it needs to express its individuality?)

Jewelry: Making endless jump rings at home since the lock on the studio isn't active. I was able to get in one day though and start cutting out Pac-man links as well as learn how to fuse some jump rings! I'm only halfway regretting using absurdly thick metal for Pac-man, but at least the links will have more dimension to them?

Ceramics: Yep its a pinch pot with a snake looping around it. For this project I had to create a zoomorphic tripod vessel and this was the only good idea I could come up with. On the right is the slapped together maquette for the final. The final itself actually does stand on its own, though I do wish I could go back and re-seat the pinch pot at a more rakish angle but the piece is now dry and ready for crit on Tuesday. 

CAD Class: In a move that I feel is somehow ironic, I'm the farthest ahead on things in my Rhino CAD class. Thus far we've been learning the interface and what tools do what by going through the basic tutorials. Hence the castle for moving and stacking solids, the flashlight for Boolean unions and differences (and an extra bit on lighting) and I got ahead on the duck, which is about manipulating the standard solid shapes into something more organic and a few other details. Now we are going to start an actual "real" project by building a toy. So far my only plan is to build a wind up toy, but it should be fun!

Something like this one though more complex than a sphere. Speaking of toys I've found some fun little quasi-inspirational things on the internet, which will be shared next time when I pretend this blog is on Tumblr.