zen and the art of metalsmithing

New Website!

2012-02-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

I am very excited about this new website OreAlive, specifically featuring my sculptures and sculptural installations, with the opportunity to buy them directly online. This year is going to be big... I can feel it. :)

People's Choice Awards Competition for Artists Wanted

2012-01-24T14:08:00.001-08:00

I'm in a dash to enter as many juried exhibitions/contests/grants/fellowships as I can right now. Most of them are juried by a closed Jury, but this one is done by YOU! please go to the link and click VOTE, and share it with everyone you know... I may just win! thank you so much.
http://shiraloa.artistswanted.org/yr2011

business as unusal

2012-01-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

times are hard for paying gigs right now, and for my heart, but i'm doing by best to take 2012 by storm anyway. i've decided that along with working tirelessly on my marketing materials, i also must actively search AND apply to artist grants, contests and gallery shows on the daily. today i will apply to at least two. unfortunately, that costs money, so it will be more searching than it will be applying, but i'm going to apply to at least 2 today.
i've got a new student- his second lesson is today. i'm looking forward to it, as it helps remind me of what is awesome about what i do, and to get inspired.
i had an interview on monday with an LA art blogger- i'll be interested to see how that turns out, and what it might do for my work here. baby steps....

rollin' along...

2012-01-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

Well, lots of things shifting in 2012. I'm ready. I've decided to get back into regular writing/photo posts, and since I'm keeping this blog more strictly about metalwork these days, I have a tumblr.com site that i'll be posting other artwork, poetry, and music. click that link if you want to check it out, subscribe, whathaveyou.

In other news, I have an interview with an LA art blogger on Monday that I'm excited about- he's coming to my studio. I have no idea what to expect, but he covered my show in October a little on his downtown artwalk post, and that was pretty cool, so we'll see where it goes from here... any press is good press, since I'm trying to actually and seriously trying to get things out into the world right now.

next up.... look books for marketing... weeeeee........

Posted!

2012-01-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

Just posted a lot of the new photos I just got from Kevissimo on my website here. There will actually be more to come, but man is that a lot of work, and I need a break to do other things... a lot of work is suddenly brewing over here! enjoy, and thanks for looking. :)

The Photos to rule all Photos

2012-01-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

Today is a big day- I've had an amazing photographer, Kevin "Kevissimo" Rolly, take photos of my recent sculpture series, and they look awesome. This is what I've been needing to push myself forward after the huge push of actually getting them done. The plan from here is to apply to all sorts of art contests, galleries, grants with them, and use them to create marketing materials in order to get custom commissions on a larger scale... ideally I'll be talking with hotels, restaurants and home/business owners to create permanent pieces for their indoor and outdoor spaces. 2012, let's do this!

I'll be putting everything up on my official website in the next 24-48hrs, so check back soon... I'll also post here when it's done.

Interview with the DoLab

2011-10-13T11:28:00.001-07:00

The DoLab Blog is featuring a new interview from my opening last Saturday!

oops!

2011-10-12T20:03:00.001-07:00

i just realized my actual website was all funky, not to mention there were no pictures for this whole crazy thing i've been doing. just updated it's page. you can see much larger images there, if you care to explore.

2011-10-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the first round of photos from the opening reception on saturday.... I had a great interview done on Saturday, and it will be accompanied by photos from a professional photographer, and I'm looking forward to sending that out, as I am sure it will help do the show better justice than these photos will. But I just wanted to get something up and out there for now. If you weren't able to come and are in the area, please do try- there will be another reception tomorrow, Thursday the 13th, from 5-11 for the fantastically fun Downtown Artwalk. Please come by!

this piece was named "Heart is Where the Home is", and is dedicated to all of the people (most likely you, if you are reading this) who helped me achieve this by donations and all manner of support. Thank you.

some people brought me flowers, some champagne, and one person brought me.... this.

i was so grateful to get a whole wall to show my process- from drawings to metal sketches, along with a laser cut write-up explaining what raising metal is and how it is done.

blown away

2011-10-09T21:37:00.001-07:00

just a quick note- i will be gathering pictures and posting a longer piece about this in a few days, but i just wanted to say thank you to all the people that came out last night, and to all of you who made it happen. it was totally a dream come true, one of the best nights i have ever had... i am SO grateful, so inspired, so exhausted (and in a good way), so amazed, and so grateful that i had this opportunity to prove to myself what i am capable of if i set my mind to it. I realized a serious vision that is already changing my world, just as i meant it to.

growth... that's tangible.

Official Release...

2011-10-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

d i a l e c t

is proud to present

Shira Loa

www.shiraloa.com

Tangible Growth in Metal Sculpture

Opening Reception~ October 8th~ 7-11pm

Downtown Art Walk~ October 13th~ 5-11pm

Closing Reception~ November 5th~ 7-11pm

"In an age of machines, “raising” metal is a technique of the past. For centuries, craftsman used the technique to create vessels and utensils, heating non-ferrous (brass, bronze, copper, silver) sheet metal until malleable and then cooling it to use hammers and stakes to stretch, bend and compress the metal into complex and hollow forms.
After studying with a master of the technique (http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/segments/view/642 ) for two years, I continued on my own for the following six, using raising to create organic sculptural forms that reference roots, plants, cocoons and chrysalises. I’ve so love exploring how an innately hard and tough material like metal can be made to look soft, alive, kaleidoscopic."

~Shira has masterfully created a series of illuminated metallic gardens placed inside of dioramas~

~In addition to Shira's work, we have a TBA showing from our wonderful resident artists, as well as a fully stocked accessories counter~

including Shira's truly stunning jewelry

Tonia King~ http://www.queenking.com/
LAS ~ http://www.lisasoltis.com/LAS/LAS_Jewelry.html
Belle Brooke~ http://www.bellebrooke.net/
Laser Ray~ http://www.wileyscoldfusion.com/

delevo designs~ http://www.delevo.com/
Zubin~ http://www.zubinart.com/

We look forward to this very special show and invite each of you to visit during one of the show hours, or our regular gallery hours throughout the month:

Thursday~ 5-10pm
Friday~ 5-10pm
Saturday~ 2-8pm

news, excitement, shock... and a plea for understanding.

2011-09-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

It's been so hot here in Building 5 that work days are practically painful. I'm covered in sweat within the first hour, and then all manner of dirt, metal, buffing compounds and whatever other offshoots of my work begin to coat my skin, leaving me with a film of grime that makes my shower water run black every night when I get home. But I've been at it, and although things have felt a little scattered due to so many different things to do, I've been feeling positive, been working out problems and moving forward. But before I write about some of the processes or post my photos, I wanted to make note of a very important shift that I found out about tonight when I received the flyer that will be advertising the show to come:
THE OPENING RECEPTION IS OCTOBER 8TH, *NOT* OCTOBER 13TH. October 13th is the downtown artwalk, and of course, I will be there, receiving all manner of folks coming through the gallery on the art crawl. However, the official opening of the show, and it's own event, will be Saturday October 8th.

... which means I just found out I have 5 days less to work than I had anticipated. This is, to say the least, a little frightening. 5 days may not seem like much, but to me, it seems like a YEAR. But there's nothing to be done about it but to keep moving forward, and dive into my focus more than ever.
Gulp.

So. I'm going to keep posting some process photos (I have been working on a series of them the last few days), and I will continue to do so as much as I can, HOWEVER... I have to announce that I can no longer spend as much time doing the process photos/blog as I have previously. I just don't have the time, and can't spare the energy. In fact I'm stressed just thinking about it.

And... I need to ask a favor: for all of those supporters who were going to receive the first round of awards before the show... the printed photos, the thank you cards... I am going to ask for your patience and understanding. I need to wait until the show goes up to take the time to print, cut, write and send all of those things so that I can focus on actually getting the show to happen. I also will then be able to print up photos of more finished pieces, as opposed to ones that are so in-progress. There is SO much to do, and it's just me doing all of it. So please have faith that I will not let you down, that I have not forgotten how much I have been supported by you all, and that I will not neglect to send these things out. I PROMISE. But please understand that doing that right now will take up precious time that MUST go into making this thing a reality.
Thank you so much for the support and faith. And I hope that you all can make it to at least one of the receptions!
Here are a couple pictures... though I need to stop now, because I have already spent over an hour on this post and these pictures alone.
wearable sculpture........

today was about figuring out issues of mounting, solidifying plans, laqcuering and finishing.
good stuff, though probably not that exciting to read about. butterflies in the belly... weeeeeeee

maintain.....

2011-08-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been able to post, and it's definitely been a week full of life challenges that have made working much harder than usual. unfortunately, what I am working on right now is not very exciting... yet. But I didn't want folks to think that when I made the goal I just quit caring about sharing with you, or that I wasn't working. So, below are some pictures of what I've been working on, and then I thought, to keep us all excited (myself definitely included), I thought I'd work on and post some more portfolio-type photos of the pieces that are almost done.

not very exciting, I know. but this is how all of those hearts and flowers and everything else starts. it's just that there are a LOT of them, so it takes a while to get anywhere interesting with one. plus, the smaller ones are actually a lot harder and more painful to do (hard to explain why in a post). so it's been a little arduous all the way around.
i think i worked on these pictures for my own sanity, although the original purpose was for the flyer for the show. this is just a few of the ones i am working on right now.

Hope you're still excited.... I have to remind myself about my love of process to get where I am going... I do love it.

Metal Heart

2011-08-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

Today I came up with an idea that would not only help me take my mind off of the approaching deadline of the kickstarter, but also help me funnel my gratitude for all the incoming support through my work: I decided to develop a piece specifically dedicated to all of the people who have pledged and supported me in this project. It may not be a "reward" that you can take home with you, but for anyone who has pledged even a dollar, this one is for you. I'll be putting everyone's name on my website with this piece when it is finished, as well as a little dedication once it goes up in the show. And I decided that this is going to happen regardless of whether or not I make the goal amount, because the love I am feeling from everyone, people I know and people I don't, is so amazing that it deserves recognition.

but first...
Laying out (almost) all my larger pieces the other day in their mock-boxes/stands was immensely helpful for getting a sense of where I am at and where I need to go. It's both frightening and exciting. As far as process goes, though, this kind of exercise is very productive. In this way, I found that pieces I thought went one place started to hop around, layouts changed and shifted, holes in designs were illuminated, things became more clear and directional.

and that's when I realized that this pretty little copper Heart was lonely.

I had started working on a brass piece that might be similar, but didn't really have total direction with it yet. It was a little bugger-- brass is so harsh to raise. Copper does this kind of movement soooo sweetly, and this brass fought back.

But it was today that the fight was fun, because it took on purpose.

So, to all of you who have been supporting me in this, these hearts are for you. Not fully sure how the rest of the Heart piece will develop, but it feels really nice to be making this one as I hold all the love I'm receiving in my own.

emerging at the finish

2011-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Time is running really short these days... not only because I now have under 70 hours left to make my kickstarter goal, but because I have so much going on in addition to this project. Life is so full... beautiful, but very, very full.

It takes at least an hour or two to process all my photos, so I'm going to have to let them speak more for me than usual for the last few days. I will say that I am really excited about what's happened here recently. Kind of throwing my ideas into a new spin, but that's ok. It's a good spin. :)

Here's where I had left off the other day:

Then, my zen for the day- tightening up and accentuating "wrinkles" in the piece... I find such happiness in the tiny little details.

Then I move to the buffing wheel, using different shaped wheels to smooth out any deep scratches and bring out the polish wherever the wheel can reach.

I always love this first stage of finish work:

The buffing compound leaves a sticky black goo in the contours, which looks great in some ways as it adds a great contrast against the golden brilliance of the brass. However, the same thing is also a negative: it leaves that sticky black film, which gets in the way of any patina or other finish work. so you have to clean it off before moving on:

now that it was clean and gold, I looked at it and had an idea for where I wanted to go with it:

That's a bunch of copper wire. But leaving it unworked looks too predictable. I don't use any unworked materials in my pieces, so in order for the wire to look organic, I take each piece and hammer it all the way up and down again, while spinning/twirling it in my holding hand.

In this way it develops facets. The top piece is hammered, the bottom not. Hopefully you can tell that in this photo. I'm missing my super macro setting on my dead camera :( !!

Then I need to make a hole in the main piece and slightly reverse raise it so that I can put a "stem" piece through it.

sometimes magical things happen, like cutting a random amount of pieces for the initial idea, only to find out that it was the exact amount needed to fill the stem. awesome!

I still need to decide on the final connection method (can't just shove the wires in there. they will inevitably fall out)

but it was starting to make sense.

I mentioned on that stupid, nothing-going-right day that there was a patina I was battling with. It just wasn't doing what it said it was going to. But after some more testing of methods on a discarded piece of brass (having discards around is always great for this purpose), I got it to go somewhere.

still not exactly the color I expected, but if I actually submerged the piece in it instead of painting or spraying the patina on, the color darkened. But that meant that I had to figure out how to soak the inside of the brass flower when I only had a small amount of patina to work with. it was a messy pain. After prepping the surface, I blocked off the hole I drilled and kept pouring in and out the patina liquid while moving the flower around,

and I got the color to start emerging, and a gradient, too, which is even better.

Then I figured out that this patina was great as a base for other patinas- it would intensify the next one to go on. So I tested it, in two different patterns I thought might work...

And I also tested what the wax finish would look like over it. It always changes when the fixative goes on over the color, often subduing or darkening it.

Then came the fun part... putting the green on, and watching it emerge. It changes and intensifies as it dries and as more layers are applied.

Then I applied a layer of the wax, watched how it changed, and tested the whole idea (although the copper "stamins" are going to be patinated and shaped as well, in a way TBD)

yay!
Now, to figure out where, how and with what does it go...

I'm down to the wire: 69 hours left to raise $1,679. Like I need any more pressure right now... sheesh!
best thing I can do right now? go back to work and find more zen :)

teaser

2011-08-16T23:31:00.001-07:00

my zen for today... to be elaborated on soon, but for now, I have only a moment to put up one photo from the many today. but I hope you all get as jazzed about this as I am... it's definitely making me excited to get back into the shop tomorrow.

Gratitude is good medicine.

2011-08-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Today was one of "those" days. The kind where nothing is working the way you want it to. Everything from patinas not doing what they are supposed to, to the worst: my camera stopped working. That was a big bummer, as it's is a tool I use constantly for my work. It doesn't even leave my shop these days. Luckily I have a loaner coming to me, but for today I had to use my phone to document (please excuse the quality).

But there's nothing like taking out your frustrations with a hammer... seriously, you should try it. I let some brass seriously have it for a couple of hours!

three rounds of hammering and annealing...

guidelines, even just one, help a lot when you're working an abstracted piece so you don't lose sight of your shape goal, especially if it's as dramatic as this. one would think by the below pictures that i might just have simply folded the piece of metal in half..... definitely not so.

Raising definitely helped my mood, although my wrists and hands are paying for it tonight. They usually don't even get sore right away, but they were so sore after a few hours that I had to call it an early day (at 7 hours). Brass is really hard to work with- very stiff and unforgiving- but it's so beautiful that I love to work with it. And funny enough, the piece I thought I was doing the hammering for? Well, turns out it doesn't work for what I was thinking, but instead completely shifted things...

I removed parts in another grouping for this new piece, and the removed parts ended up being great for what I was intending this one for! Again, being flexible with your visions and designs is really important. Things can be so much better if you are in conversation with the work as opposed to ordering it around.

What really made this long, crazy, clumsy, screwy day better though was how much love and support I received from friends and strangers today, reposting and supporting the kickstarter project. Seriously made tears come to my eyes, and my heart go all squeezy.

Gratitude is great medicine.

zen and the art of metalsmithing

2011-08-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

The last several days have been pretty intense ones in my little world. A lot of challenges, a lot of hard work, and some good progress as well. I've had several days of feeling stressed and overwhelmed by everything from expenses of tools/materials to the huge amount of things I still need to do for every piece in this show. Stress is definitely not a good motivator, so I have had to remind myself that this work is actually my zen. There are so many active meditations for me in this work, in the creativity and inspiration, but also specifically in the processes. Things don't always go smoothly, and everything takes longer than you think it will. But if I can find zen in at least one part of my work in the day, I can release the stress. So I renamed my blog to the above title, to remind myself of this.

The colors can always be made more dramatic if you lift off color from or buff the edging. It's a very tiny detail that most might not even notice, but it makes a big difference. Depending on the piece, though, it is a delicate and time-consuming process. These leaves have a lot of surfaces and contours to follow, and I had a lot of trouble finding the right tool to do exactly what I wanted. sufficed to say what I thought might be 2 hours of work turned into 5 or 6... and made me just about lose my head.

I tried every tool in my shop at least 2 different times, never getting the desired effect. which means there is now inconsistency in the leaves. That makes me cranky.

I even made a trip downtown to a specialty store to buy a tool that I thought might work- I talked with the salesperson very specifically, brought my other tools to compare, and ended up buying the larger rubber wheel you see above. The little one below is pretty perfect except for how small it is and how much care it takes to move along the edge without slipping and affecting the other parts of the piece; i figured getting a large one for a higher powered rotary tool would save me a lot of time. Guess how much that wheel cost? It's about 4" across, just for reference. About 1" thick.

$50.00

for a rubber wheel.

and guess what?

it didn't work.

This is a perfect illustration of how expensive this craft can be. This kind of thing happens all the time, and you see how little tools like this start to add up. The smaller wheels only cost about $1.50 or so each, but you go through them fast on a job like this- like one every piece and a half. So after trying out a million different things and spending money I could have saved, I was pretty fed up.

But here's the thing about perfectionism- it can be a wonderful method of pushing yourself, or it can be a maddening energy sucker.

Especially with all there is on my plate right now, I need to remind myself to let go a little bit. Otherwise, when I sit down and make lists of all the steps I need to do

(each step containing many other steps), well, wearing my perfectionist goggles basically paralyzes me with fear.

So? Find the zen....

Patination (changing the surface color of metal with different chemical reactions) is tedious, but also a beautiful place of zen. It really is an art in and of itself- and one I have most certainly yet to master. But it is like painting, and the variations (many unpredictable), details and vibrancy can be so fascinating and exciting.

I posted about the red, which even surprised me once I went in to do detail work:

I actually had no idea I could get the depth and range that I did until I started playing around with it on the buffing wheel. Fantastic. It made my whole day better.

I decided to make the back of these leaves have brown tones, but wanted there to be gradients, so had to play around with amounts of solution and the timing for allowing the chemicals to react between rinsing... it really came out quite lovely. and... probably no one will actually ever notice this once the piece is up. But I will.

All the colors change, too, once you put final fixatives on them, and different effects happen with different fixatives. Testing is imperative.

So then there is the whole matter of making all of these elements stand up on their own, and how to create connection points without actually physically connecting the pieces. It was a lot of trial and error.

It has to be a cold connection once the patination is done on a piece. I learned to leave my pieces annealed (malleable) before I do the finish work on them, so that I can do things like this if I need to:

hammering down the copper around and trapping the tubing means I can weld a male part in the base that the female tubing part in the bottom of the leaf can slip over.

Alternatively, I welded tubing in the base that the pieces can slip inside.

aaaaand....

precarious, but it started making sense.

It took forever.

It's absolutely essential to mark and number parts when you have this many elements in a piece that constantly have to come on and off to get right. I had several different systems going with this piece. And of course a couple times those systems got crossed. Best not to use numbers for more than one system. Duh, Shrizz.

The brass leaves became my nemesis for a day and a half. again. seems to be their lot in life. But I was pretty proud of my inventiveness in their case:

They really only fit and worked certain ways, and there are 11 of them, so I made sure to number them, and then number around the base so that when I took them off, I knew where they'd go again later. I decided to weld pins along the inside of the steel piece, and drill holes in the leaves that the pins could slip through. But how would I know where to weld the pins to when the leaves were off? I decided it would be harder to weld pins first and drill holes later. Ao i drilled holes, approximated lengths for the pins,

then slipped the pins through, and put red paint on them.

then I put the leaves where they were supposed to go, and push the pin through and mark the inside of the steel egg.

It worked... for the most part. Because of the angle the leaves were bent at, it was still very very difficult to slip the leaves on over the pegs. I spent several hours working on just that, having to drill bigger holes, bend the very hard pins, reshape leaves the tiniest bit.. growl.

Then I added more elements to the piece, and more connection points and trappings. The idea is camouflage: make connection points be a part of the piece that make sense. I have to work on that a lot for this show.

When you finally put everything together, however unfinished or precariously placed, it really helps you feel like all that work is worth it.

This is not the finished product. It needs to come apart again for details and before I decide the order of permanent attachments.

More zen today...

6 days left on the kickstarter... crossing my fingers. I actually had nightmares about it this morning. I have more than matched the amount I am looking for with my own funds at this point. Thank goodness I love this stuff! I must maintain the determination that this whole endeavor is going to change my career completely. I guess it already has, in a way. I also hope that spending hours on pictures and writing about it makes people excited about the work and more interested in supporting. It certainly is making me feel more and more like teaching is going to be a path to follow more seriously down the road. Posting on facebook and the feedback that garners definitely helps me- I spend a LOT of time alone with this stuff, and if I don't get some interaction with people I go nutty or my vision gets too pinholed.

I'm feeling a lot better today than I have for the last several, although I am wistful for a vacation... October 14th, baby.
ok. back to it.

teaser

2011-08-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

I don't have time or energy to write today, and only could process two of the many pictures I took... but here's a little taste for you. I had a really frustrating day until the last hour, when this little beauty started to come together...

Red

2011-08-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, today was amazing.
It is so thrilling to accomplish something that you have been working towards for so long, failing and flailing about trying to do it. At least that's how I have felt about trying to do this red patina. Days of trying different set ups, buying various tools, experimenting on pieces to no avail. But the second part of the day I rode a high of adrenaline and excitement for the future because I was so excited that this thing actually worked.

Red. That Very Special Red. I finally got it today, thanks to some long distance calls to my mentor in Portland, and my friend Nikki Mosa, who lent me her big industrial size gas range. As I explained a bit last time, this is not just a "color the metal" kind of process. It takes an enormous amount of heat from a giant torch, the ability to handle the object in focus and move it quickly at a precise time, and put it into a giant pot of water that is at a rolling boil, and all the while holding that huge torch in one hand and getting out of the way when the red hot metal enters the water and erupts. It's actually really hard to do this alone. But I did it.

Tonight I have decided that since I took so many pictures, I am going to write less and mostly show my day with images. But I will say that I ended up with one of my favorite pieces I have ever made today- pretty good feeling. And it was the only one I actually got to work on after I did the patina process.... Which means who knows what's in store for the rest? That's even more exciting.

set up, out back of Big Art Labs. Outside is so much better... I had some close calls in my small space trying to do this in the early attempts.

large pot of water on the left, brought to rolling boil. heating space, with bricks to hold heat in, monster propane torch.

one piece after the process, with a pile of pieces awaiting their transformation.

even right out of the pot of water, this piece was my favorite.

This is one of the larger pieces I have right now for the series, and this is only part of it. I'm hoping that the finish work and the additions to it will make it stunning in the end. The red came out ok- not great, but variation isn't necessarily a bad thing. it's hard to get something like this get heated up evenly to the right temperature when it's just you handling the torch and the piece.

these leaves are going to be pretty stunning when they are grouped with the other pieces they go with. they are very long, so they were a little awkward to handle. also their tips are very very thin, so I had to be careful not to heat that part up too much, else they get disfigured. there is a lot still to be done with these- but at least now I can get going on them. I had to wait until they were reddened.

There is a LOT to work with here. but it's only just the beginning of the finish work. actually it's not the beginning. but it's not even the middle yet. I was so excited, but also overwhelmed. each piece has different places it's going to go, different processes. so I made myself get it together: lists. for each one.

as I said, variation in color isn't necessarily a bad thing. it can be really interesting.

then comes the part where you have to start sealing things, doing detail work, etc. I have some other patinas I wanted to try in combination, and there are different kinds of finishes that can be put over the color that will make a difference: it is crucial to do test runs, otherwise you could end up ruining a piece or having to do it over again. it's best to write out what you do to each one if you are trying lots of combinations.

good thing I tested, because I didn't even like that patina.

wasn't totally sure about this lip... but...

boy did I love what happened.

This took all day. I got here at 9:30, and it's 11 now. I am going to try to go to bed with a sense of accomplishment, even though I feel the daunting weight of how much there is still to be done. so many steps..... but oh, oh how pretty.

if at first you don't succeed.....

2011-08-06T17:53:00.000-07:00

I was pretty excited about today: I finally got my new propane torch set up. The torch is HUGE in comparison with what I have been using. Sometimes size DOES matter. ;)

mmmm. sexy.

This means that not only will I spend less time annealing pieces between hammering sessions (remember, you can only hammer so much until the metal gets too hardened to work any further, and you must anneal it with a torch so that it is malleable again), but I can also start moving ahead on the very special red patination process that I have been aching to try- I haven't done it since working with Greg Wilbur back in '07.

This specific red patina works specifically for copper, and is made using heat only. But it's not as simple as just heating it with a torch. Normally after you heat/anneal/solder non-ferrous metal you quench it in room temperature water, or straight into an acid bath that cleans off the surface of any oxides and debris. But to create this patina, one must heat up the copper until it is glowing red (far beyond normal annealing temperature), and then immediately quench in BOILING water. Not recently boiled, but literally at a rolling boil. So, I've been collecting tools to set this process up.

Big torch, check. Big pot for water so that I can submerge larger pieces (thus far I have only ever tried this on a very small scale, and that was in my teacher's studio). Electric burner to supposedly heat up the water.....But... unfortunately that didn't really work out. The little burner that I have is not powerful enough to boil the water, even if that pot is half full. And I forgot to get a crucial tool- long, large metal tongs that I can pick up pieces with; that flame is very very large and hot, and my dinky little 9" copper tongs will only help me burn off my hand if I use them for this. This red is going to be an element in many of the pieces I am working on, and I was all ready to get that part done and move on afterward. So, I guess it's another standstill. Back to shopping for more stuff, figuring out better set-ups, and I will try again tomorrow. This kind of thing happens often over the course of projects.

But I did think of and start something I am excited about today: MORE REWARDS for people donating to my kickstarter project! Since I've mentioned how crucial music has been to me over the course of this work, I've decided to make a special mix cd of some of the music that's been getting me jazzed up and inspired. So if you donate $30 or more, you will be sent this special CD in addition to the other rewards. This is my excuse to take the time to make a new mix :)

Discipline

2011-08-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

Getting far in any craft takes discipline. It means pushing beyond one's limits and desires. In metalwork, there is no cutting corners to get some place fast- if you do, inevitably you end up regretting it. I have struggled with patience throughout my life, and yet I have chosen a path that necessitates immense amounts of it. It's pretty amazing what you can teach yourself if you're truly determined.

Maybe it was lack of sleep, or the fact that I spent hours working on the new apartment I am going to move into this morning, or all the other things that are popping up for me in my life (new clients and job opportunities, scheduling family visits, thinking about friends that I don't have time to see, etc.), but today it was really hard to stay focused. I was pretty fed up with those damn brass leaves.

They were boring me, they were hurting my hands. It really took all of my strength to stay with them. Unfortunately I am waiting on a crucial tool to come in the mail, and I haven't been able to pick up a bunch of materials I need to move forward on the other pieces, so I felt like I had to do these if I was going to get anywhere. I am sure I could have found another thing to do, but did I mention I am also really stubborn? I also just really wanted to get them done. I can move forward a lot tomorrow now that they are. But it took at least 6 hours to finish 4 of the last ones that I had started the other day, and it was a battle. I normally breeze through the day, but I kept having to take little breaks and step away... and it was all I could do not to drop them completely. If you are trying to accomplish big things, it means you have to push yourself, which means finding methods to help yourself through the difficulties. Music has been a major help- I've been avidly collecting lately, and sometimes if I find the right album that gets me going, I will listen to it 3-4 times if it helps. Little dance party breaks are great for the energy and enthusiasm levels- sometimes I'll start hopping with tools in hand, and sometimes it's a really great energizer to, when an awesome song comes on, put the tools down and literally dance around the shop, move my body, get my blood flowing. Then I can return to it with more vigor. Snack breaks, cold drink breaks, or a moment to send an email or two (as long as I don't get too wrapped up in the computer world- I have been severely limiting my facebook and email time allowance), all these things help.

I did it, though. Now I can move forward. That's very rewarding after being annoyed and frustrated.

gotta remind myself i'm tough enough to do this. :)

Push and pull

2011-08-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

Although the last two days have been long and full of steady work, I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere... until the last hour of today. Funny, but it really doesn't feel great until that one special piece gets placed or problem gets solved, and then suddenly I realize that I have done SO much to get to this point.

I've spent the last two days on one piece. That's a first for this series. It's pretty great, that kind of focus, even though I worried all along that I might be wasting my time. When you are trying out an idea, you never really know for sure. For the last few days I was doing pretty much the same thing over and over again. I remain fascinated that I can make decisive, repetitive actions and have the thing look really boring and then boom! it starts to look really cool in the last hour of two days of work. I managed to take an idea that I had on paper and 100% improvement on it. At this point it's the strongest piece in the bunch.
Granted, even when I had all these beautiful elements that I knew belonged together, I got to the point of having to figure out HOW to make them physically work together.

I had an hour or so of staring at this pile of pieces, racking my brain to figure out what to do next. Kinda kills the excitement sometimes. This one has steel as well as brass and copper, and those metals all act very differently. All the brass and copper elements will have to be finished/detailed individually, and cannot be heated for connections. I was all happy about how neat things were looking until I realized that I had no idea how to connect them. The steps to get to the finish line can be overwhelming. There is an insane amount of pre-planning that needs to be done to make it work at the end. That's why you'll find piles of lists/notes like this everywhere in my studio.

But I think I figured it out...

getting there, anyway. I can now see ahead almost to the end. Pretty sure I know how to connect all the elements to the steel itself and stand them up, although there are a few brass pieces that I'm not sure how to put together.

It's all a push and pull. You start moving forward with one part, and then you have to stop because there is another part that has to be done next or else it might be too hard or impossible later.

At the risk of boring you, I thought I'd share a bit about the process for the elements in this one, because it illustrates how differently metals act, look, feel.
I focused on making two styles of "leaves", one in brass, one in copper. The decision to use different metals was not purely an aesthetic one, for the metals are very different in how they respond to heat and tools. Brass is very stiff and tough, even when annealed, and only moves so far when you hammer it. It takes much more strength and time to make it do what you want. But it's so pretty... looks like gold when you shine it up... so I love it. Copper moves beautifully- almost fluidly- under the hammer, and keeps moving and bending after more blows. And you can get some fantastic colors with copper.
These leaves both start out the same way, though. Cut out a shape from sheet, and then "fold" it in half. I put "fold" in parentheses because it's not like you just fold it over with your hands and bam you're done... there's a whole process to that too, but I don't want to bore you with every step. Regardless, the pieces are folded, and that's where each one begins to differ. The brass gets a solid heavy hammering along the crease to define it. then it's too hard to do anything with, so you have to anneal it again. Once it's softer, you pry it open again and then begin shaping it over various stakes. It takes about 3 rounds of hammering and heating to get it to a good place. Below you see finished leaves, and folded pre-hammered ones.

Because copper is so much more malleable, you can do really great things by fold-forming it (folding it and hammering while it is folded). Cut, "fold", hammer lightly on the crease to define it but not push the metal too much. Then using a hammer with a very thin, long face, hammer over and over and over along the length of the leaf part, starting along the crease and working your way out, flip it to the other side and do it again. Very quickly you see that the piece begins to arch and fan out. Anneal it and leave the crease alone and repeat the fanning process another two or three times. Leaving that crease alone means that the movement will happen in the direction of the fanning. If you hit the crease again, it will stretch there as well- the leaf part will still fan out, but the whole piece will stretch evenly instead of getting that awesome arch.. and once you open it up, it also makes it very easy to twist it.

Opening it up is a little bit of a chore, but once you do, you then shape it from the inside of the fold... and you get this shape:

My hands/wrists are very very sore from these darn leaves... ... and yes, I know what it looks like.... it's a theme, can't you tell? ;)

So around these parts, and in my community at large along the West coast, everyone is talking about Burning Man right now. There are tons of Burning Man art pieces, camps, and parties that have kickstarters going on... I pretty much picked the worst time to be raising money for something else. People are raising tens of thousands of dollars for their theme/sound camps. I'm trying very hard not to be bitter about it. I am SO grateful for the playa- in fact, I would not be sitting here right now in LA, or maybe not on the West coast at all if it weren't for the burn. It completely changed my life, and I loved it. I spent 6 years there building sculptures, big installations, running camps from 15-220 people, and helped build the Temple in 2008... and then realized that there had been a shift of service. It wasn't serving me the way I was serving it. It's different for everyone, and again, I wouldn't be who I am right now if not for it, so I feel well served on a lot of levels. But the expense alone is daunting, along with the energy, the time, and the drain. I can't afford it on any level right now, and it feels really good inside of myself to know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing to serve my future by not going and focusing on this work. It is pretty funny to me, though, when people ask me if I am going... I mean, I'm raising money for my work right now, and I would feel pretty irresponsible taking off for a week+ and spending a third of what I am trying to raise on playing/partying in the desert. So... I hide away in here by myself while art cars are being built and camps are being planned everywhere around me.

And I like working alone... in fact, I can't get anything done if I'm not. People have been saying lately that they want to come to my shop and "watch you work" or hang with me while I do. First of all, I have to tell people that they probably don't want to hang here while I work... unless they plan on wearing ear protection. And if there is someone around, I either will get into teacher mode if they are really interested in how the thing is done, or else feel self conscious and discombobulated about what I am doing. However, I do LOVE visitors... love to take little breaks and chat, show what I have going on, take a walk out of the shop for a bit and talk about other things.... so come on by. :)
ok.. exhaustion and soreness has set in. g'night.

Pastiche and Problem solving: maintaining excitement and forward movement

2011-08-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

Some days, having so many pieces in progress at one time is exciting and inspiring, and I dash from piece to piece without hesitation. Other days I look around at all the millions of things to be done in every piece and feel practically paralyzed. That's when it's best to pack up all the other pieces and try to keep my ADD to a minimum by focusing on just one or two for the day. Or, to try focusing on repetitive, straight forward processes that don't call for too much innovation. Usually that ends up leading to rejuvenated creativity. I did that today, and it helped... however I still managed to completely change the direction of one of the pieces from the original idea I had drawn for it. That's ok... as I've said before, it's really important not to be too rigid about your ideas, because often times in three dimensions they just don't hold up, and you can discover better ways to do things aesthetically and technically than you ever would have on paper.

Pastiche. it's one of my absolute favorite words in the English language, and it's very present in this series for me. I'm not only using old techniques in new methods, but I'm also using pieces I made long ago to form new pieces, revitalizing them and changing them as well as combining them with completely new elements. The steel cocoons are something I have been making for 12 years-

it's one of the first styles I developed when I started learning to use metal in college. I actually haven't made any recently, but I have a lot of them lying around... so I decided to see if I could work one into a piece. I had planned something totally different for this one, but this is his (i've got to start naming and personifying these things now, I think.) new beginning...

Eventually, it will be filled and overflowing with plant-like metal bits. I may keep some of the original design elements, although they may not even work out in the end. We'll see what happens in the next few days. There is definitely a fair amount of trying out and subsequently scrapping ideas in this process.

Another example of pastiche in this series is turning into one of the more successful pieces in the series thus far. I began it 7 years ago, but it never really felt finished. I annealed her ends and reworked them, buffed her up and added new tones and patinas, and now have an idea to add another piece emerging from within her. And yeah, I know what it looks like. Duh.

As excited as I was all weekend about this piece, the process wasn't without frustration. She actually caused yesterday to feel like a wash due to patination processes not working. I redid the inside at least 4 times (which means do, dislike, UNdo (time), redo (more time), dislike, UNdo (more time).... etc), and that part is still not where it needs to be. Lesson? Put her away for a while and do something else. A very, very important lesson to understand in metalworking and any art form.

Another trick I've learned to keep myself moving forward when I am getting frustrated with a piece: "if you don't like it, buff it!" While forming the pieces, they are dirty and dull, and sometimes don't really look like much. If I am starting to get bored or frustrated with a piece I am working on, and I feel like I might just be wasting my time on it (which inevitably bums me out and makes me want to stop working), I take it to the buffing wheel and shine it up. Buffing is usually saved for after you have finished forming, because if you have to anneal (heat up) the piece in order to work it again, the shiny surface will be dulled and you will have to take it to the wheel again. But sometimes that extra time is totally worth it for the motivation it brings.
Boring pile of random metal bits that I spent hours cutting and shaping:

to: oooh, shiny!

Everyone likes shiny things. :)
These very well may end up with different coloring and not so shiny, but it sure motivates me to use them.

Last year during the building of my public sculpture in San Mateo, I wrote a bit about my disdain for math and numbers, or "arithmabophia" as I like to call it. Similarly, I really dislike straight lines. I imagine that's very obviously represented in my sculpture style. Ahem. Well, math is ever-present in building anything, but for the first time in my life, I am consciously involving straight lines and rigid angles in my work, specifically in the shadowboxes and pedestals I am making for this series. I actually doubted I could pull it off, but through making the test piece I did for this work a few months ago, I surprised myself. I've begun the laborious process of cutting huge sheets of steel down to the various walls and backs for the different boxes and pedestals, and although it is daunting, I am definitely excited about using what I learned from the first one and applying new decisions that will improve the future ones. It's no small feat for me though. That being said, there are wondrous tools that make all the difference in making this happen. My "Tool of the Day" is this fantastic shear that I have on loan from my friend (and amazing metal sculptor) David Haskell.

Thank goodness for this thing. No bandsaw or cutting wheel has proven more effective. It's not a power tool- you've got to have a solid table (which I don't- I have to push my table against other things and pile bricks around it and it still moves around. That problem definitely makes it more difficult and causes me to curse), and slowly work your way through the metal by pulling on the lever and shoving the sheet further in as you go along. But it really does wonders for someone who can't even draw a straight line to save her life.

Although I wear goggles when I do things like cutting and buffing, I inevitably get metal and other nasty things in my eyes. When you wear contacts, that's a really nasty experience. I think I ruined 4 pairs of contacts in 5 weeks during last year's project. The last few days, however, it's not the contact that's hurting... which is a little disconcerting. One of my eyes feels sore and swollen even without the contact in, and unfortunately I don't have glasses so I have to wear the contacts and irritate it more. If it's any worse tomorrow, I'm going to have to go splurge on glasses... can't take chances with those eyeballs- they're kind of important.

So that's the update... basically I've got a million things going on in the studio. On top of that, today I found out that I will be moving to a new home in two weeks, which means when I am not focusing on the million things here, I will be packing and focusing on the million other things outside of the studio. Sleep is going to be scarce this month, and socializing will be mostly non-existent. A little scary. But it's all good stuff, and I remain grateful.

"I'd rather be hammering"

2011-07-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

You know those days at work or school where you're constantly checking at the clock and you feel like the hours have mischievously been doubling themselves every time you look away? Well, my life in my studio these days is exactly the opposite. The days are simply not long enough, and the hours make mysterious leaps to the point that I am constantly surprised whenever I check the clock. It's really a beautiful thing that I am so grateful for; I am positively thrilled to be in my studio, and can't stand to spend a day away.

Today was a very productive and focused day. And on top of making a lot of movement forward on the work, I have vowed to myself that I am going to get back to scheduling time for process photos and blogging as I have before, because although I want to keep working as long as I can stand to be here, I know that it is extremely important that I take the time to reflect on what I am doing as I go along. Not only does it make for stronger work, it helps deepen all the lessons I am learning, which makes me a better teacher. (yes, I am going to get back into teaching after this series is finished.)

Lessons and musings of the day:
1) Temperance.
2) Timelines, lists, order, step by step brain-puzzles.
3) Pushing through discomfort- risk-taking: it can be positive, or it can be a frustrating waste of time/material.

I have to practice temperance between inspiration/excitement, physics, time, and my own physical strength. Some days my brain is overflowing with new ideas for pieces to add to the series or new additions to ones I already have. To be so inspired is really a gift- we all know how much it sucks to have artist/writer's block. I do allow this flow of new ideas to come through me, make drawings and plans if I think they are really important to make happen. Plus that feeling of being inspired pushes me forward and makes me voracious about working. I love that. But I also make myself regularly lay out and surround myself with all the pieces that are in progress already, my drawings and all my various lists of things that need to be done and take a moment to make sure that I can finish what I have started. Perhaps a new idea will negate an old one? Possible. But I stay realistic and focused so that I can balance quantity with quality. Temperance means that the amazing new piece that is in my head or drawn on paper or even made in metal is so exciting, but in order to stand it up or frame it or put it in conjunction with other pieces, suddenly the laws of physics seem like an evil stepmother oppressing it's beauty- I have to come up with inventive ways to make piece work in the physical world the way I see it in my head and not end up like Cinderella at midnight when I try to hang/stand it. Temperance means I must listen to my body, for this is very physically taxing work. I balance out different pieces and processes throughout the day so that parts of my body can get a break for time but I can still be active.

Burn... scratch... cut... last year I got so many wounds during my work that I started taking pictures of them... it's starting again... makes me laugh- when it doesn't smart too much. :)

geez, my arms are getting big.

The whole physics issue, along with the amount of steps it takes to get to the finish line of one of these pieces, makes it imperative to make time lines and step-by-step lists of all the tasks to be done. Usually they need to be written and re-written several times. If you don't do it, you will undoubtedly end up swearing and redoing at least part if not all of your piece, or it just plain won't work the way you want it to. Metalwork has both cold and hot processes, and those can be quite simple. But making complex pieces with various metals and elements means that there are some processes that are hot for one thing at a time when the other thing can NOT be hot, else it be ruined. Sometimes connecting things is easier to do hot, but you must use a cold connection because it will change the color. Or if you do use a hot connection in a certain area, you'll never be able to clean it up (every process needs cleaning/sanding/buffing of some kind) because of where it's located. etc., etc. Sometimes I have to sit staring at a drawing and pile of various pieces for what feels like ages and I think smoke must come out of my ears. But I am learning so much about being inventive and resourceful, exploring or broadening my usage of methods as I never have. A good day doesn't always mean a piece got finished; a good day could mean that I figured out how to put together a piece, or at least wrapped my brain around a couple steps ahead of where I am at.

Trying new things means pushing past comfort levels, and inevitably that means screwing things up along the way, too. Whether it's a process or just a creative idea of what to do visually, sometimes pushing yourself beyond can take you to powerful new places. Other times, like today, you can praise yourself for trying, and then learn when to let go.

I spent several hours on the top piece, trying out a new idea... that in the end just didn't work with the rest of the elements. So, I swore a bit, and then let it go, and reminded myself that I did learn a few things in the process. I went with the bottom one.

I've cut cardboard for drafts of the boxes that will eventually be steel. I will begin that process soon, but it's really crucial to know how the pieces are going to be laid out spatially so that they can be developed correctly. Obviously, this is very early stage, but it's growing steadily.

I welded for the first time in a while today.. it felt good. Planning in steel and non-ferrous metal takes a lot of back and forth, thanks to the fact that they act completely differently.

I get lost in the depths of every piece and process, and when I look up and another day has passed. Instead of worrying about all the millions (trillions) of things to be done still, I am just going to remind myself that I am one day closer to my goal.

Speaking of goals... There is that whole kickstarter goal that I am trying not to worry too much about... I'm doing this thing, no matter what. Somehow. But it's definitely daunting to think about not getting the funding, so... this weekend it's time to do some work on PR. I'd rather be hammering... damn, I should make that into a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. "I'd rather be hammering"

KICKSTARTER Fundraising Campaign Launched~~

2011-07-21T14:07:00.001-07:00

Please visit and Donate HERE.

Here is the Teaser Video made by the amazing Matthew Smith, of Kitchen Sync, and The Glitch Mob for the soundtrack.

It's On.

2011-07-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

It's a scary thing, to take a leap like this: To have total faith in one's art and abilities, with no guarantees on return, to struggle through crazy life situations whilst doing it.
My show at Dialect is 2.5 months away, and the only way I will achieve the goals I have for it is to be a full time sculptor until then. Unfortunately I can't launch my kickstarter fundraising campaign until I have the video done (shooting a week from tomorrow), and then once I launch it, 30 days of fundraising that will hopefully produce money to support this thing only a little more than a month from my show.

But I am so determined about this thing that I am just going for it. I'm getting flashbacks to last summer and my project that kept me working every day for 5 weeks, and to trashing my body to achieve my goal.... and loving it. I am already in wrist braces... (add to that a knee brace from an old injury that's acting up- I look like a cripple!) I definitely dove into the hammering again with zeal- maybe a little overmuch. Icing has begun in the evenings....

I did go get some real ice packs today so that I don't make a wrist smoothie every night. :)

This is just how it's going to be, and I love feeling so dedicated and inspired. I don't know that I will be able to dedicate as much time as I did last year to blogging, process photos and musings on technique, but I am definitely going to try. I am constantly learning and aware of process, and I've been reminded that I will become a better teacher through these projects. I look forward to sharing my knowledge in the future.

So here's a few process photos from yesterday...

I am working on a bunch of little brass and copper bowl-like objects in varying sizes, and they will all be placed together in one piece in the end.

They are small, but actually very challenging. Each one takes about 7-10 annealings and rounds of hammering, especially the ones that "neck in"- that is referring to those that have a lip that is stretched over and back in, partially closing in the opening.

and on pieces this small, the size of the hammers and stakes vs. that of the piece creates another layer of challenge, not to mention an intense strain/impact on the hand and wrist. Some have edges that I have allowed to wrinkle, and then will embellish and shape the wrinkles after the rest of the piece is the shape I want. but you have to stay in some control with the wrinkles throughout the raising process, otherwise, you won't be able to do anything with them at the end.

They look rough now; those dramatic raising hammer marks need to be smoothed out with different kinds of hammers, and they need hours of polishing and patination.... oh yeah, and then I have to build a steel display Shadowbox for them. But at the end when I put them together, they are going to be stunning.

I am also sprucing up some old pieces that I like, or reworking some that I have new ideas for. Here's one of my favorites:

It's wearable- a bracelet- and made of one of my favorite metals- bronze. I'll be making a stand for it so it can be both a sculpture and a piece of jewelry.
Ok, enough blabbering- get back to work, Shira!!

"fundraising your hangover" and other title ideas.

2011-06-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

I've always hated titling my artwork, or at least since I've been doing more abstract work I have. It feels pretentious, or like I am projecting onto the viewer what I want them to find in the work when instead I think that art should be viewed and discovered as a personal process for each person. If I make something abstract and then title it "Horse", it becomes a representation. Maybe a weird one if the piece doesn't look anything like a horse, but I'm telling a person what to look for or what to see or expect. I can infuse my art with what I see or intend, but in the end, the viewer has to take it in and make up their own mind.

So I'm starting this Kickstarter fundraising thing, and today I sit down to lay out the project and... get completely thrown of on the first blank space. "PROJECT TITLE. Choose a title that describes your project." CRAP! I can't even name the individual pieces, and now I'm trying to sum up the whole damn thing with a title specific and moving enough to make people want to help fund it. I only have a few words that pop into my head, and they don't get me far.

I decide that I should look through other people's kickstarter projects for inspiration, or even just for some kind of parameter references. I should have done this ages ago. There are so many. I look at the titles, I look at how much they are asking for, and I look at how much they've gotten in the time alloted. Because you have to pick a monetary goal and if you don't make it, you don't get a dime. You can get more, of course, but you can't get less. A little daunting.

Lots of the projects are for Burning Man. I smile and cringe at that- I've spent way too much money and time on burning man, so I just have to shut off there and not look at those ones. There are a lot of projects that make sense- mural workshops that need a few thousand bucks, public art installations that need 10k, mobile art venues that need more..... many of them are getting close to their goal, others are sad because you see they're only 16% of the way and they have 3 days left. And then I see one that makes my jaw drop in awe. Not in the how-amazingly-awesome-is-this-project kind of awe, though. I see this one, which is, get this, 378% into it's goal. That's right, she asked for $4,500 and has over $17k now, with time to spare.... and I'm just completely confused. Because this is a person who just needs some paper and some markers and 5 days worth of food in order to lock herself in a room for 5 days and draw. Oh, and the best part? You have to have rewards for people who donate, and in her little video she says that the reward for people who donated <$1000 is that they get to come and drink absinthe with her while she was working. !!!! First of all, gimme a break- everyone who went to art school has stayed in their room for 5 days making art and barely seen the light of day, and we were paying to do that for fuck's sake! What the hell does she need $17k to do that for?!? And secondly, she is basically having people pay her $1k to HANG OUT AND PARTY WITH HER while she plays with her markers and makes doodles that have been bought before they're made.... and if she's drinking absinthe the whole time with the people who paid her, who knows how the work will come out or if it will happen at all (Hey, I know what absinthe hangovers feel like!). OK......... I'm getting angry. Which isn't going to help me or anyone. I'm trying to figure out, though, if this makes me feel braver about my project, or if it makes me want to give up. Because there are plenty of really amazing, expensive projects on there that aren't even close to their goals. What if no one cares?

Well, no matter what you do, however it is you put yourself out there, you are asking for response or lack thereof. and you can take it as you want to. But it shouldn't be WHY you do what you do, or why you DON'T do what you do. So I guess I'm going to ask humbly and who knows, maybe I'll reach my goal, or maybe I'll get MORE than my goal. Maybe I should tell people I promise to lock myself in my shop for at least 5 days without leaving. Maybe I'll offer to party with folks while I use torches and bang on metal. That would definitely make the process more interesting, that's for sure.

building excitement...

2011-06-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

Some days, being an artist is about the free-flow of creation, the fascination with beauty, the expression of heart. other days, it's all about earning the right to add the word "work" to the end of "art".

I'm experiencing the dimensions of this dichotomy a lot lately. it's wonderful and challenging. Ira Glass spoke about being an artist and how you have to work for years and years making BAD art in order to get yourself to a point of making anything good. it means you have to work hard and keep doing it, even when you are making crap. I've made a lot of crap, and I've made some decent work. but for the first time in my life, I feel I'm working on art that is actually good. I'm on the cusp of a huge shift, and it's very exciting. This kind of shift only happens with challenge, change and opportunity; I've had several years of challenge now. And I've actively changed my world by moving to LA and setting up my shop. Now the opportunities are starting to show themselves.

In this age of machines and computer generation, “raising” metal is mostly a technique of the past; there are few who use it anymore. The technique was used by craftsmen for centuries to create vessels, utensils and functional objects by heating non-ferrous (brass, bronze, copper, silver) sheet metal to a certain temperature at which it becomes malleable, subsequently cooling it, and then working it using various hammers and metal stakes in order to stretch, bend and compress it into complex and hollow forms. Although it is a delicate and extremely time consuming process, I have been studying and using the technique to make sculpture for 6 years now, and find that it has allowed me to develop an extremely intimate relationship with my materials as well as the forms and designs that I voice through artwork. Through my sculpture, I show how an innately hard and tough material can look soft, alive and organic in form.

I have the honor of being invited to be the showcased artist for a month-long exhibit at Dialect Gallery in the heart of the gallery district in downtown LA in September of 2011.

My show at Dialect will be an opportunity for me to gather together a body of work that is of a quality and caliber that I have not previously achieved. A large part of this ascension is my focus on presentation and of how viewers can connect to, explore and understand each piece. My sculpture is often made with its focus on process, material, form and movement, with less emphasis on placement or purpose. This series is about showcasing my development in sculpture while giving me the opportunity to focus on a presentation as a key component in the voice my work carries. The core of the show will be fabricated shadowboxes, built out of steel, glass and embedded LED lights, that will act as frames for the sculpture, and will also be designed to be part of the artwork. The result will be fully contained art pieces that enhance their own qualities of form, color and material.

So what? Why is this important to me? Through this opportunity, I believe my work will be seen, recieved and bought in a way it never has before. My intention is to start with this show and relatively small-scale works and use it as a stepping stone for future larger scale installation pieces. This is an opportunity to create a place for my work where it has not had one. As I see it, this could change my entire career. In fact, I intend for it to.

The LA Artwalk has been rapidly growing into highly populated event, and Dialect Gallery is in the thick of the excited crowd every month, and will offer me an opening reception that will fall on one of those busy Artwalk evenings. My work will therefore be seen by more people than ever before, and this opportunity has the potential to jumpstart my career here in LA and beyond.

Along with the sculpture, I will be displaying couture jewelry and sculpture to wear, much of it relating to the sculpture in the shadowboxes. Having been a jeweler for many years and finding it unsatisfying in regards to production, this is a chance for one of a kind pieces to be bought and seen; in Los Angeles, it just takes one or two of the right people using your pieces in shoots or stylings, or wearing a piece in the right photo to change your career forever. The opportunity to show my couture pieces helps me rejuvenate my feelings about making jewelry, to have faith that you can have success even if one doesn’t mass produce their pieces in a foreign country.

The catch is that the technique of raising along all the rest of the work that will go into building a show like this is both time consuming and expensive. The tools and materials alone are a small fortune, but what I also need is time to completely devote myself to this work. Time is money, as we all know. If I’m trying to work other jobs to pay rent, buy materials, gas, tools, studio rent, etc., then in what time will I actually be able to make the work itself? Last year I completed a large public art installation commission in 5 weeks, working 12-14 hour days metalsmithing every day, and not only did I barely make money for the time, I nearly broke myself trying to fit in the work in the time allotted. I know how much this takes. I also know very well that when I set my mind and heart to something, when I devote myself to something, I am loyal and determined to the end. And this is my intention with this project. I am absolutely 100% positive that this series will change my artistic career. I will finally be presenting my art in a way that it can be received, bought and marketed, to more people than I have previously had the opportunity to show it to, and in a city where there is an industry and economy that works with and for art and entertainment. I have such faith in this that I am ready to devote all my time and every cent that I have to do it…… but unfortunately, my cents are not enough. So, I am asking for help.

I’m looking into a starting a kickstarter.com account to organize my fundraising. I may not be changing the world with my art, but I am showing something unique, and method of metalwork that is rarely ever used, and looking to bring a heaping spoonful of beauty to whoever sees the work. I have to believe that this, the world of art, and helping even one artist achieve goals is worth investing in.

I've finished the test piece for the series. It was displayed at Dialect's satellite gallery at Lightning in a Bottle, a Festival I helped produce in Irvine, CA. I was going to call it the First in the series, but as it often goes when you are trying something new, you usually discover better ways of going about it along the way.... so this first one, although it's not bad, definitely has taught me much about how to better make the rest of the pieces, both in process and visually.

Now is the time to hunker down and work, to focus on how good this could be, and how much I truly love this work. It teaches me something new every time I do it, and it reminds me that learning processes are never finished. How's that for inspiring?

"Los Angeles, I'm Yours"

2011-04-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

not quite 2 months into living here in LA i am so in love with the city, people, and how things are flowing for me. i may be broke after i pay rent this month, but little jobs are lining up here and there, and for the first time in at least 6 years, not having immediate work isn't scaring me to death. why? because i've had more opportunities, connections and interest for work here in less than two months than i would in a year when i lived in portland or the bay. on top of that, i am surrounded by amazing people constantly DOing amazing things creatively and professionally, AND i am making some of the best work of my own that I have in my life. oh, and it's sunny and hot (i'm presently sunbathing in my backyard while i type this) all the time these days. so, if it weren't for the money thing? life'd be pretty damn near perfect.

when i first envisioned what i wanted for my life in LA last summer when I decided I wanted to move here, i imagined a large space divided into a multitude of different art studios/workshops filled with creative people doing different things, and some larger spaces where we could coalesce. a place where i could set up my own private space, but easily be able to step outside my door and find someone to chat with, learn from, rap tools and art with. the vision was so clear in my mind. for several months before i got here, things got fuzzy, and i wasn't sure where i would end up or how it would happen or if it would happen at all. well, 2 weeks before i moved here, i got a studio at the Big Art Labs, and i got exactly what i had been dreaming up. from technology to performance, craft, production and construction, all of it is happening at Big Art. i've had work and i've had impromptu lessons, i've had solitary art time and i've had party time. i love this place.

i recently worked with The DoLab (i think maybe i should stop separating myself from them at this point? i've worked with them for 4 years now in some capacity, and my man is the operations manager... ;) ) on huge projects at Coachella Music Festival. it was pretty unbelievable what we pulled off for this event... the DoLab has had a central stage installation at Coachella for at least 7-8 years, but this year topped them all.

only the first image is mine- the rest, i believe, are by Aaron Gautschi. now we move forward toward the DoLab's very own festival, Lightning in a Bottle. I'm discovering more and more ways i am to be involved this year: my artwork in the gallery on site, on-site vending coordination, pre-event structure building, as well as metalworking projects for both practical and aesthetic additions to the event. i played pretty hard at LIB the last couple years, and i'm sure i'll have my moments again during this year's event, but i love being part of making it happen. playing feels so much better after you've worked to build something beautiful that everyone is enjoying.

the last year in SF was pretty tough. i little to no personal space, i couldn't work freely in my studio, and i was unsettled physically and mentally. i felt very isolated at home and within my community, and work and fresh connections were hard to come by. all of it wore on me pretty intensely by the end... and now the amount of release i am feeling having a space where i can work whenever i want as loud as i want, privately or be surrounded by new and old friends in an instant, is so dramatically telling of just how much i needed this change. there are still challenging days, of course. but i feel even those days are easier to manage when other things in life feel so good.

i'm going to save my big news about my artwork for the next post, because, well, it's big! and it deserves it's own stage. it's exciting... stay tuned...

be inspired or be paralyzed. your choice.

2011-03-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

I don't like to brag, but when it comes to my friends, I don't hesitate to say I know some of the most talented, skilled, forward-thinking folks of my generation. It's mind boggling. Here's an example: Obscura Digital and Andrew Jones, teaming up to project a live, masterful artwork on and in the Sydney Opera house. Nothing like this has been done before to this scale and magnitude, and with live music. How epic to be doing something so new that no one has ever tried before, on THAT scale, and not only have funding and support, but be able to broadcast to the amount of people they are? Again- mind-boggling. Andrew said it was proof, after all the crappy venues he's played over the years and all the time and work he's put in, that if you reach for and work toward your dreams, they can come true. I want to believe him. I want to take that and add it as fuel to my inspiration as an artist. But it's not quite that easy.
I've finally set up my shop in Los Angeles, and have begun to hammer and make sculpture again. It feels AMAZING, and when I get into it I find that I get that feeling like I wish I didn't have to eat or sleep or do anything else BUT this for however long it takes until I'm done with this series... and there is a LOT of work to do. It's a grand feeling to be so in love with what you do. But when I think about it in juxtaposition with something like Obscura or Andrew... there's another light shed on things. As in, my work, as many artists' work, especially those whose is very time consuming and semi small-scale, just doesn't have the opportunity to be seen like Obscura's or Andrew's. It's not made for mass consumption. It's not grandiose and loud. And it's not even palatable to that many folks- I can spend days working on one piece and love it... and then realize that most people will see it and wonder what it's "for", or not have any concept of the work it took, or simply not find it interesting. Obscura and Andrew both get paid well (and rightfully so) for their work... I may not get paid at all. So no matter that I love what I do just as much as they do, or trained relatively as much as they did in my craft, I will not be ABLE to do what I do all the time because I do have to eat and pay rent etc. and cannot do that without making money, which I must seek elsewhere besides my art, which then takes time AWAY from my art, etc., etc., etc.
This is not new. This is the plight of the artist. And I still root for my friends in the limelight because they freakin' deserve to be seen and heard and appreciated. I still root for my little brother who is on talk shows and traveling the world making music in amazing venues, because he's amazing and he deserves the awesomeness he is getting. But the only way I can keep from feeling small and depressed and pointless is to remind myself that I do not make my art "for" anything or anyone, other than to make it, and for the love of the process and the result. If I compare myself to my friends or my brother, I am paralyzed because I cannot possibly measure up. If I am always wanting approval or reciprocity or acknowledgement, I am going to be more often disappointed than not, and disappointment, frustration and insecurity are not the places from which to make good work. I wonder if I gave up being a performer because I was scared I would be too wrapped up in what people thought and wanted of me. It only fed my insecurities. I used to ache to be on stage... now I shy away even when I am given the opportunity.
I am choosing to find my joy in the little tiny hammer marks that no one will ever notice in pieces that people might never see... because it is a very pure kind of joy. It may not "get" me anywhere. Who knows. But I am trying to reach for my dreams- even if it's just on a step-stool... reminding myself that we are all just tiny little specs that have this one chance to put out something beautiful, or to put out something nasty, or not put out anything at all before poof! we're gone. I don't want to be paralyzed, I want to maintain my awe and inspiration.
Sometimes it's good to write it out and remind myself. :)

the truest love, the deepest heartbreak

2010-10-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

a year and a half ago, i started having a serious longing for a canine companion. i knew, though, that my financial situation wasn't stable enough to support another being, the house i lived in didn't allow dogs, and i just wasn't quite ready for the full responsibility. a few months later, my new boyfriend suggested we get one. we were signing a 5 year lease on a new place with a park across the street, he told me that his parents (who lived an hour away) would be more than happy to help take care of it when we needed to go away or take a break, that he had trained dogs before and had had them all his life, and boy did he want one to go hiking with. with the assurance that i wouldn't be shouldering the entire responsibility myself, i leapt at the idea- i started scouring the shelters for the perfect puppy.

i found her. she was my absolute ideal. i named her Mika. and i instantly and completely loved her.

but i had never had a puppy before, or trained a dog. i scoured dog training books, watched 16 episodes of "the dog whisperer". all my money started going to food and treats and toys and training. my then-boyfriend pretty promptly started spending a lot of time at work and on the road, so i ended up training her, dealing with her puppy-craziness, barely getting any work done, but also bonding so deeply with her in a way i didn't even know was possible. she was my little world.

less than 2 months later, that boyfriend very suddenly decided he was not interested in the relationship or our plans for our new space, and, he said, his lifestyle didn't work for having a dog.

what followed was possibly one of the hardest times of my life, after an already incredibly challenging year preceding it. i was broke, i was brokEN, i had no idea what to do, and i had a crazy little puppy to take care of who needed walks every couple of hours, trips to the vet numerous times due to a bad stomach, and a consistency and presence that i never even gave to myself. but i will tell you right now that if i hadn't had her in my life, i'm not sure i would have come out of that as strong as i did. as annoying as she could be, as taxing as it was to take care of her by myself, she was constant love when i was sad, she brought me joy when nothing else would, and she continued to do that ever after.

anyone who has met Mika knows what a loving dog she is. i guess i had no idea how much i could love a creature as i love her, i have never had a bond with a dog like i have with her. but over the last 6 months, it has become apparent that i am not giving her as much as she needs to be happy. and when she is happy, it is absolute joy to behold, it fills your heart 'til it overflows.... and i want her to be happy all the time. although she grew up in the city, she has regressed into a total fear state when she hears the loud noises of the city these days. no matter how many times i walk her by that bus stop, she cannot seem to get used to the sounds. she also can't handle workspaces like warehouses, where i tend to (and will continue to) spend a lot of time. she will leap 3 feet in the air when startled by a sound, she'll run away and into traffic if you let her go, she'll hide, she'll cower. she won't play, she won't take treats, she'll hide and literally mope in the house. she is such a sensitive creature... she thrives when she is running in grass or on the beach, and she is absolutely in love with other dogs and will make you belly laugh when you watch them play together.

so as much as i have resisted through the frustrations of dealing with her issues, i have finally decided (i have trouble even typing that word... i don't think i've truly decided) to find a new home for Mika. i found a place with a kind man who has 5 acres of land up by harbin hot springs, with another dog mika's size for her to play with.

i am absolutely devastated.

this separation heartbreak i'm feeling makes the breakup of that relationship seem so trite and insignificant... like looking back at your junior high break-up that was just SO HORRIBLE at the time 15 years later after experiencing adult love and heartbreak. i've been bursting into tears several times a day. i could barely hold it together in the pet store yesterday. after 13 months of being together almost non-stop, 13 months of nightly snuggles, and simple, constant PRESENCE like non i have ever experienced, i am about to give that away. ((aaaand i'm bawling again)) i feel like a failure. what is wrong with me that i can't take care of her? but i work in my studio, try to stay focused, and i see her looking so bored all day inside. and when i get jobs that she can't come to, i stress out because she is left alone for long periods, or i have to spend the little i am making to hire someone to care for her, or KEEP asking friends to do it. so then she is bored and stressed and alone and i am stressed and sad for her. but even when i leave her alone for hours, or when i'm too busy working to play with her, she always provides and inspires absolute love. there is nothing like coming home from being out- even for an hour- and getting the snuggle welcoming committee that she provides. when i don't see anyone for days, she is always, always excited to see me, even from across the room. and i am always excited to see her.

and i'm about to give that up.

i'm trying to remember that this is going to be better for her. i know that i *could* deal with her quirks and flaws, the stress, i could make it work to keep her. but when i see her running about on our daily (way too short) trip to the dog park and i see her happy, i know that it's not fair that only 25% of her time is spent being happy. and when she is happy, i am so happy.

i'm trying to convince myself that it would actually be selfish of me to keep her, just because i love having someone always there to snuggle, just because of the joy *I* get from her. right?

to all of you who have known Mika, to all of you who have helped me raise and care for her, we thank you for being part of our journey together.

and, um, i'm going to really need some friendship next week during my first week without her... it's going to be harder than i can really imagine right now... so... i will appreciate so much any outreach and presence my friends can offer me.

fruition

2010-08-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

after being so good about regular posting/documenting for 5 solid weeks, it's kind of strange that i stopped right before installation.... but i kind of saw it coming. not only did i have a visit from a very special person all the way from Portugal, but my brother came into town as well, and i was so exhausted and distracted that i didn't make time to post. it was also strange and off-putting how absolutely anti-climactic the installation was. i was told a strict deadline, one which, i had to bust ass in a way i never have before in order to meet, only to get there on time and find that the site was a mess, i had to wait around for workers to finish a process that was happening right over top of the spot i was meant to install at, and then that the concrete wasn't even going to be poured for another few days.

if i hadn't been so happy to be DONE with the thing and to be relaxing into love and life again, i probably would have been absolutely livid. i guess things are as they should be.... but the other reason i didn't get around to posting was because directly thereafter, Bryan and I got in a motorcycle accident that left us pretty out of commission. right after that my sister came to visit, and the last thing on my mind was posting or working on pictures, or even returning to the site once the concrete was poured to unveil the piece. we were very VERY lucky on that accident- no breaks, no head or spine injuries, just lots of contusions, abrasions, nasty sprains, bruised ribs, and Bryan got a nasty gash on his arm. it definitely made for a sore and lazy next few weeks. my life went so suddenly from overactive, proactive, muscle-building, creative and busy to "maybe i'm just going to lie down for the rest of the day." this was fine while Bryan and my sister Rose were here, but when they both left (Bryan back to Europe for work, Rose back to Massachusetts)... suddenly everything hit me- it felt almost like the shock after the accident.

what an insane few months! no stopping, complete and total output and exertion, then the delicious intensity of love after being actively against relationships for the previous 8 months, then a traumatic accident and injury... it all came crashing down on me. i had a rough week of processing, feeling weak in every sense of the word. physically grounded and in pain, a strange distance from the piece i had just given birth to that was just sitting there, seen by no one, not even myself, and then back into being alone but without drive and purpose like i had previously had. i had trouble even looking at my studio, had no desire to create.... as i said, it was a rough week.

I finally unveiled the piece the other day... almost a month later. another strange experience, for they are still not finished onsite, and the people there barely said a word to me about it the entire hour or so i was there. i guess it was appropriate. the whole piece was such a labor of love with myself and my capabilities. it made sense to be there alone, slowly and methodically unwrapping each piece from it's plastic cocoon. i saw all the little parts that i felt were not up to par, and remembered the parts that i was pleased with; it was a fascinating combination of metamorphosis, accomplishment, disappointment, pleasure, strength and aloneness (not loneliness- there is a difference). i cut my finger in the process of unwrapping the pieces and smiled- not because i am a masochist, but because it was appropriate: 5 weeks of tearing them to shreds to create the piece, yet they were looking uncharacteristically soft, clean and healthy from not working at all for 3 weeks following installation. it made sense.

so it's done. it's installed. and what i have learned?

i learned that i really can do what i put my mind to doing. i learned that i usually do MORE than i say i am going to do. (this is my original sketch, believe it or not...)

that i have a stubbornness that can push me to my edges and then over them, positively and negatively.... and that when i ask for help, i often receive more than i even asked for. i learned more about metalsmithing than i have ever learned in 5 weeks of any of my institutionalized education. i about how NOT to do things. about budgeting, spending, resources, and what i am worth. about how to let go and about how much i fight it. i learned how to focus, and that hermiting oneself and taking the time to write about one's process is absolutely incredible for growth and fortitude. i surprised myself- mostly in good ways, sometimes in bad. i discovered that i am less involved in/regarded/connected to my community here in the Bay Area than i thought, and now, less attached to it.

i have risen back up from my crash (both the physical accident and the mental/creative/emotional one) and am now more inspired and driven than i was previous to this whole thing. i had practically given up on making sculpture, and now i realize that i don't need to. in fact, i have so many ideas for where to go with it that i can barely figure out how i am going to get them all done in a year's time. and the best part is that these are not just a flurry of random ideas- they feel formative and possess a distinct clarity. i am ready to make moves that i wasn't ready to before, to step more boldly, and yet work to maintain balance within the movement forward like i have not been fully conscious to do before.

Thank Yous are definitely in order... for as much as i feel i worked solo on this project, i would never have been able to do it were it not for certain people a.k.a angels in my life. thank you, first and foremost, to Nevada for getting me this commission in the first place. secondly, thank you Big Jim, for... just about everything. for allowing me to make a mess of his workspace, for offering me help and ideas and materials whenever i needed them, and especially for those times when i thought i'd just about shut down for not knowing what to do and gently showing me that all i had to do was lift my foot and set it down again. thank you Bryan, for being the most consistent presence in my life, even from 8000 miles away... your friendship, love and support got me through tough days even when i was too scared/stubborn to admit i needed or wanted anyone to be there for me. to My Family on the east coast for reading my blog posts and intermittently checking in on me. to the various friends who helped me care for Mika- Jason, Foxy, Deb, Zachary- it takes a village to raise a dog, i see ;). to Phil, who showed up in my life at American Steel in the last weeks of crunching myself and time, providing smiles, fresh perspective and morale boosting when i couldn't see straight anymore, for bringing me beer even when i wouldn't drink it, for being one of the few people i would stop working in order to talk to. and to the various friends in different cities around the country who wrote comments here and there on my pictures and notes and gave me "hurrah!s" of encouragement... those meant the world to me, every time. thank you.

onward and upward!

the little shira that could

2010-08-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

it's happening.... my body is starting to give. i've had cuts and scrapes and pains and aches this whole time, i've gone without food, without sleep, yet i've been resilient, felt strong... but very suddenly, my body is not cooperating. my throat starting hurting last night, and i woke up in the middle of the night to swollen hands and every cut and scrape on my hands *burning* and red, infection starting to take hold. i have 2 wires embedded in my right ring finger tip, which are suddenly overly sensitive to the touch. i'm pounding immune boosters, i will pound water... i tried to sleep extra last night, to combat waking and dealing with dogs at 4am and 7am this morning... it figures that this happens the last day i need to have energy and oomf to get this thing done.

i had an incredible meeting last night with an artist who works in American Steel whose specialty is copper patinas. who knew? right there in the building? i've been searching and searching for what to do for a red color- the last thing to figure out- and magically it happened last night. on top of that, i got to meet a fascinating man who showed me his work, his techniques, and helped me figure out the best route for my particular situation. he gave me a bunch of patina that i would have otherwise had to special order in the mail, and would not have gotten in time. I love meeting people like this, and i love learning from them. i've always been an eager student, and i asked him question after question, devoured the information.

so today i plan to finish... if not, at least get to the point that all that is left is another coat of lacquer or two. i think i can i think i can i think i can i think i can i think i can.....

taking a tumble with the details

2010-08-12T01:19:00.000-07:00

dinner of champions.

today somehow produced more blood than most any other day i have had. which is strange, because i've definitely had more intensely physical days. funny, as i'm taking stock of them at the end of the night, there are so many that i don't even know where they came from, the one that SHOULD have been the narliest didn't even hurt, and the nastiest and most painful one actually happened when my trunk to my car closed on my thumb when i was pulling a bunch of crap out of it. my body has become a map for my days of work, and yet sometimes i cannot retrace the steps to origin.

details, details, details... everything is about details right now, and it's actually quite maddening. i actually felt kind of crazy today. it truly feels like i could work for another month on this piece JUST doing finishing and touch up work to make it look as spotless as i would like it to... and instead i am stumbling through so many processes trying to make them look just good enough that i can stomach allowing them to be set in the concrete at the site on monday. sure, maybe most people won't notice the inconsistencies, the imperfections. maybe they will look at the piece as a whole. but right now, every single piece of the whole is dissected into the sum of it's imperfections in my eyes. and not only are the imperfections everywhere, but they seem practically impossible to fix. i go to fix one spot, and see ten more, or i fix one part of the piece and ruin another part of it that i already spent hours working on, so i have to go back, undo, and redo.

above is a joint that, in a smaller piece, you either wouldn't be seeing, or i would be able to get to with a different tool. this is the joint of the head of the largest mushroom, and because it is so tall, you will always be seeing it... which means it needs to be cleaned. i didn't do the best job soldering this one, obviously, for if i did, i wouldn't have this mess to clean up. but the worst part is, it's almost impossible to reach it with the grinder because of the shape of the head of the mushroom. when i can reach it, i'm inevitably hitting other spots that i don't want to, or barely hitting it at all, or, in this case, having to twist and turn myself and the piece that accidents happen:

in case you were wondering, metal work is kind of a pain in the ass if you are any sort of stickler for detail. if you do not plan out your processes ahead of time, you end up screwing yourself over. i've tried, i swear, but i am also doing things that i have never done before, or on a scale i have never tried before, or using chemicals that i never have before. but i am learning. so much. every day, every hour. i'm pushing every limit from physical to aesthetic.

do you see the drip/streaks? well i do. so after 3 times through the process of wiping on chemicals, wiping off chemicals, wiping with wet sponge, blowing dry every bit of water, then going over every surface with a hand held scotch brite pad.... i had to do it again.

using the wire wheel so much means that you are pelted with wires for the duration.... you find them everywhere, often times by feel as opposed to sight. if you aren't full covering, they end up pelting your skin. but i find it kind of beautiful, actually.

i know that this will be a good piece, that i will walk away feeling i accomplished something big, if not only for the fact that i set out to do something i had never done with an extreme time limitation and busting ass to actually DO it. i doubt i will feel satisfied with how the piece looks. regardless, i have been inspired, i have surprised myself, i have learned so much, that i must forgive myself for not achieving quite the height i wish i had. i must allow myself to let go of perfection... but only as long as i give my all beforehand.

photo series: wreckage

2010-08-11T10:09:00.001-07:00

that's one of the drill bits i broke when i was using my cordless to go through the pipe. i think it's 1/2"

a particularly busy day of processes that had to be done in quick succession... leads to chaos at the work bench.

it's NOT glitter! actually it's OG elemental faery glitter: copper dust.

and it leads to....

do, redo, undo, do again

2010-08-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

this is the longest i've gone without writing during this project... frustrating, because it is certainly not for lack of having things to write about. all day while i'm working, hours and hours of tedious, repetitive actions, i think about all sorts of things to write, but sometimes i can barely get myself up the stairs and take care of mika, or have such sore wrists and am so exhausted that my eloquence drains away before i can sit down to put it all down.

i've been working 12 hour days... today was 13. really, it goes by so quickly... especially the days where i stay solidly going the entire time. it's been SO helpful to have care for Mika the last two days, and now that i am in the home stretch, i don't want to stop once i start going.

so. close.

where to start? i feel like i am so behind that it will be hard to describe all that i have been doing. i'm at the details phase. i think i may have mentioned before, but finishing work (that is, cleaning and detailing surfaces and colors of the metal) often can take more time than the actual construction of the piece, whether it's jewelry or sculpture, and it is always extremely tedious. it's also *crucial*. the surface of the metal can change the entire look and feel of the piece. when it comes to shortcuts and corner-cutting, there just aren't any unless you are prepared to have less than excellent work, and thus far in the 10 years I have been doing metal work, i still feel like i suck at it. i've figured out some techniques that i like that allow me to do less finishing than maybe i should. i avoid mirror-polishes like the plague (done them before- they are near impossible), and on small pieces and jewelry, i've grown accustomed to using certain tools in certain ways and in certain orders. but suddenly i am working on a large scale with new (and sometimes crappy) tools that are more aggressive, or that i am less familiar with. i encounter physical challenges i never have before.

I have now gone over every single millimeter of metal of every single piece so many times, often doing the same process twice. i polished almost all of the hammered pieces (an 1-2hr job for each) before i attached them to stems, only to do it again once they were attached because the soldering process changed them, and because after a week or two sitting out or getting jostled about, their color changed, or they got scratched or dirty. the stems have been gone over with a grinder with several different attachments a number of times.

there is a story from the other day about doing a couple hours of work and getting to the finish line where i was about to lacquer and seal the piece and something happened that made me have to go back and do what i had just done over again... i would like to actually recount the story in detail, so i'll just say now that this kind of thing happens all the time in metalwork. you are never done until you're REALLY done. you can work for a month on something and you do one little thing wrong in the last process and it can set you back weeks, or you may even ruin the piece all together.

suddenly i need to create colors i don't often use, or never use for large scale pieces. patination (coloring metal) is truly an art unto itself, and one i have not even come close to mastering. there are chemical recipes for every color, and these are not exactly things you buy at the grocery store. then there is the importance of preparing the surface for the treatment, which if not done right, means your patina will be uneven or not work when it is done. you can layer and layer it up, thinking it might take that 3rd or 4th time.... only to realize you have to take it all off, resurface the piece and start from the beginning. yup, i did that a couple times, and i'm *still* not satisfied.

i'm noticing myself letting go, taking off the perfectionist goggles... hey i can't see anyway due to the copper in my eyes, so what's the point of wearing those goggles? i know this piece could be so much more than it is. i will never be satisfied. but there's nothing i can do about the time limits i have, so the best thing to do is release and do my best with what i have. hope that it is good enough.

sufficed it to say, i was stoked to be done building the pieces, but in no way did i think i was done. and i have reached a point where i have been looking at this thing for so long that i am not sure i can see it well anymore. i think i know what i want, but i am also feeling the time constraint weighing on my decisions.

i just took my contacts out and there were bits of copper in them... that's 6 pairs down... i am going to try to make these last through at least tomorrow, since i have one more day of grinder usage, and that's what does it...

i have so much to write, to document... so many pictures to edit, but... i can't see well, and my brain feels as foggy and sore as my eyes. must sleep so that i can reach the real goal- that finish line fast approaching... i intend to cross it with sturdy step, not stumbling...

sometimes a moron, always a student

2010-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

yesterday was monumental, while still having a good amount of forehead-smacking, sweat and swears, and lots of lessons that are only partly learned.

i'll speak to the "partly learned" part... i was thinking about elaborating on the mistakes i made that caused me to have to work 3 times as hard on simple processes and cost me a couple hours of exhausting work, (try drilling through steel multiple times at strange angles with a hand-held, not-that-great cordless drill....) but... I don't think it's important to explain those details. it's more important to think about what i learned in the process of making those mistakes, and how to avoid them again. i say "partly learned" because for some of it, i did understand what i could have done to avoid extra labor. (i'll say that the "measure once, cut twice" rule would have helped me, but somehow i find my tape measure NEVER says the same thing twice! evil thing!) using someone else's tools is pretty frustrating at times; i have a lot of my own tools, but i use some things of Jim's since they are there at the shop, and i can't always be sure the drill bits are going to be sharp (in fact these were extremely dull, to breaking point) or the right size for my purposes. but there are some parts that i am just not sure how to avoid again, simply because i am inexperienced, and can't quite figure out an alternative, easier method. so i stretch my brain to do things in the most efficient ways i can come up with, even though sometimes they are so challenging that i struggle through thinking that there MUST be a better way but i am at a loss to figure that out. and other times i just feel like a moron. oh well.

my goal for the day was to have all of it constructed, standing and bolted (if necessary) so that the rest of the week could be all finishing and detail work. as hard as the last couple hours of work was yesterday, i emerged triumphant... the piece is now fully constructed and standing. after days of prepping and constructing elements of a base, testing out heights and placement of each of the pieces, cutting stems down a few inches here, welding them on and then cutting them off only to move them a few inches over... i finally have all the heights and placements worked out, and everything standing on it's own.

hmmm, not quite....

no...

ahh. there we go.

the bolting process was not even just for stability, it was also to make sure that the directions of each piece can be held, and i'm still marking each one so that when on site it will be simple to slip the pieces on and have them be at exactly the angle and direction i want them. preparation is everything in order to have a smooth install. this is all teaching me more and more about thinking ahead, taking extra steps to make less work down the line... all part of learning efficiency as a major skill in the creation of your visions.

now to dial in the details... giving up on the boiling water patina, unfortunately, but i think it will simply be too risky and too much work for something i am not sure will turn out the way i want it. so i will be looking into other patination recipes for copper, going over every single surface one more time to clean them up, then start layers of lacquer that can sometimes take 24 hours to affix... which means i need to plan my time out carefully, because i have 6 more days to finish and be ready for install.

ok, enough doddling. it's late- way too late for me to still be at home.

Arithmophobia

2010-08-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

me and numbers, well, we've never gotten along. math, linear things like straight lines and grids, they just don't make sense to me. i was that annoying student that asked "WHY" in math class (there is no "WHY" in math!! just do your homework!). i'm pretty sure my teachers hated me.

that whole "Measure Twice, Cut Once" rule? well, i can measure the thing 5 damn times and still have to cut it twice, or even have to scrap the thing and start over. it's actually kind of a phenomenon... i'd like to think that at least, because although i believe i am a generally intelligent human, this issue makes me question if i am actually slightly retarded.

when i moved to portland 5 years ago, i took a job/apprenticeship with an art jeweler named Ben Neubauer. to my horror, his work was completely based in geometry, straight lines, perfect angles, and hundreds of pieces of straight, 18gauge gold and silver wire pieces cut at exact lengths down to the tenth of a millimeter. i have no idea how i ended up working for him for 2 years, why he was so patient with me, or how i didn't go mad and jump out the window. the soldering was extremely complex and i was at the time extremely inexperienced (in fact i had never worked with gold before). if any measurement or angle was even slightly off- like we're talking a HAIR'S width- not only would it not solder, it would completely throw off the entire piece.

this is a pin- it can't be more than 2", 2.5" tops.

i learned tons, gained techniques in efficiency, metalsmithing, and patience, and am so grateful for the experience. but i am was in no way cured of my mathematical ineptitude.

... this was proven again by my realization that my budgeting skills FAILED me on this project. the budget for this piece really just barely covers my labor. thank god (Jim) i scavenged a majority of the materials for it. i would be making $.05 an hour otherwise... but i have still spent a pretty penny so far to make it happen... well, i know better now.

all this came up in my thoughts because of the task at hand yesterday. when i wrote last that i was at an impasse, because what i needed was to not only ultimately stand every piece up on it's own for the concrete to be poured around it in an allotted space, but i needed to stand them up just even to see if they fit, to compare sizes, to adjust heights, to make an arrangement, and i had no idea how to do that, temporarily or finally. Jim came to the rescue, of course, because that's what he does. what i needed was to have a connective base that would allow me to impermanently attach all of the pieces to it so that i could see them together. so a grid that was within a 42" circle, that had tubing matching each size of stem welded upright so that i could slip the bottoms of each piece over (or in, if they are rod) and stand them up to arrange them. there will still be a bit of fudging, i'm sure, it will be so much easier to attach a piece of tube stock and then lop it off and reattach it if necessary than to do that with the actual pieces themselves.

jim took me over to bay 2, where there is a giant metal bending machine, powered by an air compressor with a tank like i have never seen...

jim geeked out a bit on it, mentioned something about 40 horse power.... anyway, it's totally spectacular, and watching two men (and a 5ton crane) feed a 20' long 3' wide piece of solid steel through this thing and actually bend a beautiful, perfect curve in it is damn sexy. lucky for me, there was a pile of pieces of large square tubing bent into a 36" diameter circle, and because the woman in charge of them loves Jim, she agreed to give me a "screwed up" one. "screwed up" means one of the ends was curved the slightest bit too sharply, but for my purposes, it was perfect- it will fit down inside the space for the concrete with 3" to spare on either side and be strong enough to support all that i need it to. Jim then pointed me toward the metal graveyards in his shop and around the building to scavenge the rest of the necessary metal, and off i went... i kind of love that i felt like i needed so much help, but all i needed truly was so perspective, and a nudge or three. i proceeded to rummage, to haul all sorts of stuff from out of various piles over to jim's area, sometimes finding they were not the right size (i did actually use my tape measure previous to hauling/cutting them, but... well, see above retardation), i pulled bent, twisted 10' length pipes out mounds of rusty scrap... it was fun, and i got my exercise for the day.

due to my aforementioned arithmophobia, making a grid for the base of this sculpture was not exactly the most appealing thing for me. luckily, welding is extremely forgiving (remember: "hot glue" for metal) to the point you can fill in large gaps with filler metal, and also this did not have to be exact- it just has to support the points i want to attach pieces to. and the best part? no one is going to see the thing because it is going to be covered in 16" of concrete! therefore, the important part was that it lie flat, which it did because of the circle frame, and because of the way i welded the grid. it didn't matter that the grid pieces were bent or twisted scrap metal as long as i put them together in the right way. and i did. :)

strangely enough, i did have fun making the thing, though i maybe cut a few more times than necessary (and used the grinder when i was too annoyed to cut again with the saw), and i longed for knee pads as i crawled around on the concrete for hours. but i really enjoy welding. the strangest part to me is that both Jim and Gary came by and insisted that the base was a Thing of Beauty, even though i had purely thought of it as functional. Jim kept saying cutely "i like your Thing a whole lot!" and went and stood on it- which proved my welds were good :), and also proved that it will serve it's purpose.

at the end of a 11.5 hour day, the grid was finished, i had scavenged all the tubing necessary for the base of each piece, and Jim, Gary and Preston helped me stand all of the individual pieces (minus the HUGE one, which is just kind of ridiculous at this point) up and tied them together in a sort of bouquet, just so i could see what they looked like next to each other.

pretty exciting... but also scary, because i look at them and see so much to be done. Preston (he's a long-time fixture of American Steel, and an amazing character whom i hope to do a little elaboration on sometime in the future) insisted that i was looking too hard wearing my perfectionist glasses, and all of the folks that came by to look were extremely supportive and encouraging. it feels really amazing to get support and props from a bunch of work-hardened men, i have to say. but i still won't get comfortable yet. 11 days left, and so much to do. but now i am feeling less overwhelmed, because there are steps laid out, a logical progression of things to do. yeah, yeah, i'm not linear girl in general, but sometimes my brain enjoys the release from chaos.

details on the horizon that will have to wait: color!

from the other day... copper is just so gorgeous. this is just after soldering the top to the stem. the color is from heat alone.

you can't help but look

2010-08-03T22:51:00.001-07:00

i don't know what it is about discarded pants that disturbs me so much... there have been several of them in and around Am Steel... maybe it's because it's kind of like a car accident- you don't want to look but you have to, you don't want to know what happened to the people, but the story is just too tantalizing to keep you from rubbernecking and causing traffic jams.

i think i got about an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep last night. i was eaten by mosquitos all night, and at dawn i crawled downstairs and tried to sleep on the couch.

in my own house.

i didn't think i would be able to function all day, which was an extreme let-down considering that today was the day my friend Jason graciously offered to take Mika off my hands. i was a zombie for a few hours, but somehow managed to get it together, drop her off, and have a pretty zoned-in work day. it was an extreme relief not to have her there, and i threw myself into it all... i completed construction of the final mushroom, and worked on (hours of using the grinder) finishing techniques. i have some disturbing pains in my hands and wrists, but i'm mostly functional. i was so *in it* that i barely took pictures. i did however put up a sign:

i can't tell you how many times a day someone stops me in the middle of work, has me put down my gear, take off my mask, goggles and headphones, only to ask me where Jim is. as if i have him on a GPS or something??? after it happened once today i realized i had to put the damn sign up, and should have done it ages ago.

although i got into a good flow today, i eventually reached a point of impasse. i think i stared at the pieces for at least an hour or two trying to wrap my brain around how to arrange them, to make them stand up just to test out the arrangement, how to secure bottoms on them without being able to put them in a vice in the right place, or maneuver them as necessary... basically i need a second person.

i hate asking for help. i prefer to be self-sufficient, and i'm pretty stubborn about it. but the more i stared at things, the more i realized that the time had come. not only do i feel like i need advice on structural/engineering elements, but i physically cannot do everything i need to with just two hands.

Big Jim will save the day... of course. i think that i believe in god because of his existence. he's told me he will help me tomorrow... and i plan on paying him for his time, and hope he lets me, although i also think that i could do a good trade for him of cleaning up and organizing his shop after my project is done... we'll see. but tomorrow he's going to help me figure out how to stand everything up, how to balance awkward pieces that do not want to stand up on their own on small plates in order just to make sure they are at the right height to work with each other in the allotted space, to stand them up if only to figure out the arrangement of where they will go in relation to each other and if they will even all fit in the space before i cut them off the plates, adjust their height, etc. etc.... i'm too out of it to describe in detail right now... but all i can say is that it's the home stretch and yet i was so stuck and stared at it for so long that i thought i might not be able to make it from here.

Jason dropped off Mika this evening at American Steel, but as much as i am sure the break was good for her, going there put her right back into fear mode. in fact she got so scared at one point she wet herself! i'm so at a loss and too over my bandwidth right now to deal with it. we'll see how things go once i'm not going to American Steel every day, but i'm sure a personal trainer is in order... that and a second home, so i can escape for a few weeks at least. heh.

i had a whole rant building up the last week in my head about the "community" i have been "part of" since moving to the west coast... feeling like it's not what i thought it was, and that really i don't feel much a part of it as i thought, or... that i might not WANT to be a part of it. when i moved out here, i felt sure that i was surrounded by the most incredible, talented people on the planet. honestly, that part hasn't changed. i feel lucky to have worked alongside of and seen some of the most cutting-edge, exciting and beautiful art, music and creative work i think is happening right now. but what i thought before was that we were all supporting each other, that the network was vast and unmeasurable, and was for the greater good of the community as a whole, and that i had more friends than i could count because of how "open" everyone was. i have put so much energy into promoting and supporting the people in the "scene", and yet lately i feel like i am on the outside. why? i realized that really, most people are still out for themselves. people want to know/promote you if you can make them look prettier, put them on stage or in lights, if you're at least semi-famous, or if you can give them something. if you are a musician, if you are an event thrower, if you are in the right part of the fashion industry, or if you are model-beautiful, they want you in their photos, on their website links, in their favorite-people lists. if not..... then you are just an acquaintance that they say "oh we should hang out soon" or "oh tooooootally i'll call you" but they don't mean it. there is a nasty phenomenon here of saying what you don't really mean, or completely flaking on what you insist is your truth. as someone from the east coast, where people are maybe a little TOO rough, closed, and blunt, i see it as a west coast disease, and it's gotten to the point where i feel disgusted by it. i went out last week and had so many folks who i considered my friends ask me what i have been up to. really??? yeah.... ok... and when they asked if i was going with them to the next party and i said no i was exhausted and had to work but i had come out to wish people happy birthday, they moved right along, some without even saying goodbye. i had people ask me when i went out this weekend if i was vending my jewelry... and when i said no, they didn't seem to have anything else to say to me. people who i used to feel close to only communicate with me by commenting on pictures that i've taken of other people at events- the people that do the cool things or make the cool music or keep the social scene up and running. they don't say a word to me, or about my work, even though i have spent years giving them praise, promoting them, or trying to get them recognized for their talent.

sculpture isn't giving anyone anything... what i am doing is not going to make anyone else look good. so basically, regardless of putting my blog posts up to my 902 facebook friends for a while now, only a handful of people really give a crap. and you know what? that's fine. because i would prefer to have friends that really care, and that i can have meaningful connections with. i'm doing my damndest to keep up with those that matter, regardless of being so taxed physically, emotionally or time-wise. but it definitely disillusions me further, makes me feel like i am less interested in the things i have been interested in, makes me much more cautious to give props to people i think are doing cool things, makes me distrustful of people in general. i don't get enthusiastic about people because it makes me look good; i do it because i appreciate their efforts/creativity, i admire and respect them and want other people to experience that too. but it doesn't seem to work that way for everyone. the festivals, the parties, the fashion, the business... as much as i wish to feel a part of it (it's like the car accident, or the pants), to be invited on the special outings, to be in the pictures with the pretty people, i am starting to loathe it now. i'm making plans that stray from the path i've been on for 5 years... less festivals (no burning man), more travel, less parties, more in-depth relationships with fewer people, less fashion, more art, less art-as-business, more stability, less work with the medicinal herb world... it's all connected. but basically, more focus on forward, and.... hmmm, i guess more focus on self, since that's what everyone else is doing anyway. i guess i'm just not going to pretend it's something else.

shrug.

ooooookay that's my rant. time to ice the hands....

grrrrrrrrowl

2010-08-02T23:59:00.000-07:00

today was pretty much all challenge and frustration... i couldn't seem to get out of the funk. i tried so hard to remember that it's all up to me- that i make my mood, i can change it... but i felt at the mercy of the yuck today. i haven't hammered in days, and the pain in my wrists and hands has set in in that deep, sharp way it does after working overmuch. I remember it from the time i worked on a show after finishing up a couple years of work with Greg in Portland. it was worse when i *didn't* work. it's really not that bad right now, but it was definitely present today.

i managed to solder the giant amanita mushroom after i finally finished wire-wheeling the pipe of the stem. we're talking an 8' stalk of thick, 4" diameter copper pipe. right now it feels TOO big. maybe it's just because i can barely lift or maneuver the thing by myself... i can't tell if the proportions are actually wrong or what.

the head of the mushroom is 2.5' or so. surprisingly it only took two tries to get the whole seam to flow. that was a lot to heat, and it was definitely the most difficult seam since the pipe sucked up so much of the heat. but once it was soldered i realized i didn't know what to DO with the thing! i'm not ready to patina yet, so i've been standing up all the pieces against one of the shipping containers in Jim's shop.. but this thing is so damn huge that it wouldn't fit where the rest of them were, and i can't lie it down because after heating up the top of it, i'm worried about the weight warping the shape of the head of the mushroom were i to lie it on it's side. so i wrangled the thing over to a corner between the gate and one of the tool cabinets... but it was precarious at best... and i saw it shift a bit when jim came in, so i asked him to move the gate a bit so i could try to move it out and i looked away for a split second and the thing came down and crashed against the stake table... amazingly it didn't break the seam or screw up the top of the mushroom, but it did take a nice gauge out of the stem and set my nerves off.

but today's problems were mostly because everything was interrupted and not very functional. Mika was the tipping point. her barking is getting to me too much, and i have begun to yell at her more than i would like. she barks if anyone walks by or approaches the gate. on top of that is the fact that people are continuously coming by looking for jim, or saying hi and asking what i am doing, which is nice and all, but when i have safety glasses, a respirator, my headphones on, and a grinder in my hands, it's reeeeeeeeeally frustrating when i have to stop and take everything off to have a person ask me "is jim around?" while Mika is freaking out on them and all they have to do is look in a 15' radius to know whether or not Jim is around. i'm starting to feel like i want to put a sign up that says "IF I HAVE A TOOL IN MY HAND OR MY HEADPHONES IN AND THE DOG BARKS AT YOU, LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE". i'd gain an extra hour or two of work for sure.

If mika's not barking, she's whining or crying or cowering. I tried to shorten her leash so that she couldn't SEE people walk by, but that meant she couldn't see *me* at all, which makes her cry and howl. so i put her in the car, which feels pretty wrong for lengths of time. i see all these other dogs running around without leashes, totally happy, well behaved, and i just want to know what the hell i'm doing wrong or what to do better with her....? foxy and i decided she must have been dropped off at the pound by the shortbus for dogs. ugh.

i had to go return and pick up different polishing wheels today, and then adapt them to work with what i had... and it still wasn't enough to do what i need. this kind of thing can eat up two hours, and make me feel completely unproductive.

on top of that i just didn't feel clear on the most efficient course of action for the next steps... i got overwhelmed, and with frustration and overtiredness and grump, i ended up feeling like i had to leave and give up for the day. i can't do good work on the edge of yelling/tears all day. stupid.

so... bath, tv and movies and bed... i feel a little better. and my friend Jason is thankfully taking Mika for the day tomorrow, which means HOPEFULLY i will have a productive, uninterrupted day. crossing fingers... time is tight. morning coffee is going to be making a list of the steps to the finish line....

like that.

2010-08-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

well that was interesting.

Sand by the Ton turned out to be a takeover of American Steel AND my project. i tried so hard to work on Saturday, but with all the noise, the thousands of people and craziness, it was extremely hard to stay focused. poor mika was beside herself, and i started throwing things and cursing everything Burning Man. that's when i remembered that when you can't beat 'em, you gotta join 'em, and went out and grabbed the tequila and dove into the madness... suddenly i was at Burning Man! which was fine, since i am not going this year (or next year, probably, or the year after that....), so i got the condensed version. weird giant art, crazy, dressed up, out-of-their-heads people everywhere, a million sound systems, people "lying down" in very random places, lights, fire and hula hoops (where are those damn party bolt cutters i've been wanting?!?!).... and even sand/dust. i got my fill... and got a nasty hangover to boot, which definitely helps in not wanting to go out to the desert again this year, despite the offer of a free ticket. at least i had the hangover in my bed, instead of in a tent in the blazing desert sun. yup, not really worried about going this year.

i did get *some* work done- in fact, i'm moving into the final phase. but i thought i'd document the soldering of the stems to the brass chanterelle tops, just to reiterate once again that everything in this is a series of steps, of processes, methods and techniques. A to B usually involves about 15 other letters. this is the simplified version....

because i want to fill the stems with sand to prevent easy bending (as in a person pulling on it and bending it), i opened a hole in the bottom of the brass piece where it was to be joined to the stem. less metal surface area to absorb heat also makes it easier to solder. to do this, i used 4 different drill bits to start a hole in it (start small, work your way to larger bits).

i then annealed just that area at the base, and slipped the hole over the skinny end of the stake, and stretched/hammered it open more.

this also helped in getting a better fit to the stem. i annealed the end of the stem, and opened that up with the hammer and stake as well, folded the metal out and back so there was more surface to solder to. the more surface area with solder, the stronger the joint. i then started sanding it, which serves the double purpose of evening out the surface (and then UN-evening it, because the piece is certainly not perfect in shape, both stem and piece need to be fitted exactly and particularly to each other's uneven surfaces), as well as creating an easier surface for the solder to grab on to. if it is sanded instead of smoothly polished, the variations in that texture provide even more for the solder to bind to.

once i created a tight fit (remember that for soldering, there must be a tight seam, without large gaps. this is much easier on a straight forward joint, and not at all on organic things like this), i flipped the piece and prepped it for the soldering, clamping the stem in place in a vice, and using a large amount of paste flux to help the solder flow, keep the oxidation levels down, and to use as a temperature gauge. (the flux helps indicate heat levels, as it's state changes in the heating process.)

then it's just a matter of heating in the right places, using the heat to move the flow of the solder as you add it, etc.

so the only two left unassembled are the ginormous aminita (the tubing is at least 4" in diameter... yikes) and the second steel bullet-like mushroom. then it's filing, sanding, and adding bases to the bottoms so that they can be arranged and anchored into the concrete when it is poured around them, and patination and lacquering. sounds simple, but i'll definitely need the next two weeks for it. but it's coming together!

irrevocably altered

2010-07-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

today was painful. so many new bruises and cuts, another pair of contacts down, and an achey neck from hours at machinery that's *just* the wrong height (it makes all the difference). i spent the day on the polishing wheel, or with the wire brush on the grinder, both of which throw off a huge amount of material into the air. I wore both safety glasses and respirator, but it didn't keep me from having to pull out my contacts half way through and still feel like my eyes had shards in them all day. the wire brush on the grinder can be brutal. (i had to use it to strip rust and grime from the stem tubing, as well as touch ups on the indian pipes) it's effect is amazing, however if it catches on anything or if you don't hold it with enough force at the wrong moment, it can catch or kick back on you. i got the air knocked out of me from it clapping me in the chest. somehow i made a nasty gash/bruise on my hand. at one point i moved in the wrong direction and smacked my hip bone on a steel stake. sometimes yelling and throwing things is the only way to deal with these hiccups... and i wondered if maybe it was one of those "walk the hell away" days. but as i've pointed out before, i am damn stubborn, and kept going.

american steel is buzzing like never before. saturday is a huge event there called "Sand by the Ton"... there are sculptures and stages being erected, art popping up everywhere. i took a stroll and checked out some of it. it's truly amazing the creative hub that this place is, and as much as i loathe being there sometimes, i am extremely grateful to be able to witness and be connected to the culture and force that is as a tornado within it. i don't know if i am actually going to attend sand by the ton, but it's definitely more than i thought it was.

i think that's the coolest sand sculpture i've ever seen.

i got home feeling kind of like i got hit by a truck... there are farewell parties and birthday parties to go to, and yet i'm still here, drinking a glass of wine and feeling like climbing into bed with a movie. kind of lame. can haz life bak plz? i mentioned the thought of going camping this weekend... yeah... not happening. i'm back to feeling like i can't stop until this thing is done. it was a nice thought. there's simply too much to do.

jim was really proud to remind me of how he built spots into the rack so that he could lift it like so with the crane, and how he guessed at where the center of gravity would be... and that it's only tipped because there's crap in the back of the vehicle. :)

i made that thing for the Burning Man temple Basura Sagrada in 2008. it was a burn barrel with extras... and it's been here ever since... a little broken, but it's interesting to see it every day and be reminded even more about the last stretch i spent at American Steel; my life was irrevocably altered.

coalescing

2010-07-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a milestone. for the first time i can really see everything coming together.

there is nothing so gratifying as the assembly of various elements that have been individually labored over... sometimes you have been staring so long at little pieces, working so much on the individual sections that you cannot see a whole, and this can be overwhelming and disheartening at times. but now i see it rising- like a those sped up stop motion montages of the seed sprouting and growing into a plant... a lilting but steady movement up toward the light.

i took a break from hammering yesterday, but did not give my hands a break. i used the grinder for much of the day, stripping rust and paint from metal. the indian pipes are nearly finished- i used the grinder to clean the stainless stems, and took sandpaper to them after that; they now have shiny stems and leaves. then i took a leap- i decided to see how long it would take me to make the extra elements i wanted to try, using those huge extinguishers i had emptied, cut and burned out weeks ago. it would be a waste not to use them, and besides, i realized that all of the pieces are very tall, and some shorter ones would help balance out and fill in the space at eye level.

the paint did not come off the extinguisher easily- they are too big and heavy to fit in the sandblaster, so i had to strip it with the sanding wheels with the grinder. i was initially intending to hammer and shape the metal a bit at the edges to get a more organic feel, but HA! it's so thick and stiff that one whack was all i needed to know that there was no way in hell i was doing that. the hammer bounced off without making a tiny mark, and the entire thing resounded like a gong and reverberated through my body (which i had to use most of to support the damn thing against the stake. these extinguishers are huge!). so... i used the cutting torch to cut and melt the bottom, and it looked a lot better. then i picked out and cut some large steel pipe for the stalk... seriously rusted, so that was another long stripping job. i capped the pipe, welded a large nut that i cut off an even larger bolt onto the cap, and then welded the top of the extinguisher onto that. welding is so cool... it's like hot glue for metal. and the best part is, unlike soldering, you can fill in big gaps with the filler metal.

so that piece came together in a matter of several hours, which was great- it still has finishing work that it needs, but i feel confident about making one more of those and think it will balance out the piece well. i needed a bit more steel amidst all that copper anyway.

and then i took the leap... time to join some of the tops to the stems. though i was nervous about soldering on this scale, about possibly ruining the pieces i had spent so long making, the process went swiftly and easily. all that soldering for jewelry paid off... it's the same thing only big. you must know where to apply the heat, when to apply the solder, and make sure that your seam is clean and does not have large gaps. as i mentioned, welding is easy in that you can fill in any gaps between the metals you are joining with the filler metal, so you don't need to worry SO much about your preparation of surfaces. Solder doesn't work like that. it only flows in a tight seam, will only bind metals that are tightly and cleanly fit together. hmm, there is a metaphor here somewhere... but to avoid getting cheesy, i'll hold off on that. regardless, i flared out the end of the tubing to be joined so that there was more surface area to connect to the inside of the mushroom head, which meant holding 7' lengths of tubing on my shoulder at the right angles over the stake and hammering the end just so. kind of awkward. but i found the actual soldering process to be simple, or at very least familiar, and it went smoothly. two of the bronze (or are they copper??) mushrooms are now assembled, the third i only held off on because i still need to work the stem so that it isn't a straight stalk, and that takes some brut strength (or... alex lazerus coming by and helping me like he did for the others ;) )... you can't simply heat up tubing to bend it if you want it to maintain it's tubularity (is that a word?!? wow... it is!). it will collapse if you just bend it like that. you need something that will compress and bend it all at once, like a conduit bender. i had a little trouble working it last time, but i think if i anneal things before i work them, it won't be so challenging.

i woke with very sore and stiff hands this morning from using the grinder so much, but there is a little relief in my wrists; i'll take what i can get. i think i ruined another contact, though. a lot of good those safety glasses do. i feel like i need to wear freakin' swimmer's goggles to avoid getting metal particles in my eyeballs.

i can't remember who it was but someone came in the other day and asked what i was making, and when i told them they laughed and asked if i was going to make the big caterpillar that would sit on top of the mushrooms.... eyeballs rolled... but this picture is for that person that wants it soooo much to be about a mushroom trip. :)

Mika was SO challenging yesterday... things are not getting better for her. she barks crazily at anyone who walks by jim's shop. she's jumpy and miserable, sulks constantly. i actually got really pissed at her yesterday, grabbed her a couple times, ended up putting her in the car... and felt horrible on the ride home when she was so subdued and quiet... she's usually excited to go home and is panting and sticking her nose out the window... but she spent most of the ride lying down in the back seat. i feel like a bad mom... but she is completely inconsolable. even at home today there have been movers bringing stuff down from an apartment above us, and she's hiding upstairs with me, sometimes trying to crawl under my desk. i dropped my water bottle on the floor and it spooked her so bad she ran and stood and stared from ten feet away as if it was an attack. i don't know what to do.

i've been killing myself over this project, so stressed about time, so convinced i couldn't take a moment off... but once i arranged the assembled pieces together, i felt a pressure lift a little. suddenly it seems like it may be ok. there are still many things to do, and as i have said, you never know how much time things will take, or what might go wrong in the process. but i can see the light at the end, i can see where it is going, it feels possible now. real. i **might** even take off on saturday and go camping for a night. that would be so amazing...

jim keeps saying that someone is going to stop me in oakland and say "how much you bench, girl?!" :) my guns keep growing... it's kind of cool, kind of weird.

foxy returns tonight... that means no more leaving the house a mess regardless of how rushed or tired i am... that means i have to finish detail hammering today if i can so that she doesn't have to listen to the bangbangbang for hours at a time. gotta hop to it.

no cutting corners.

2010-07-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a long but gratifying day... and not just in the project, but in my whole self. finally shook off the grump i had been wearing through the weekend, dove into work, and it helped that i have moved onto the phase of laying out the pieces and starting towards assembly. it's always encouraging to see everything (or in this case, *most* everything... still have a couple more pieces to do) laid out together. i'm not even close to being done- there are so many time-consuming little things, but at least i got a bit of renewed energy, and was able to hammer a significantly smaller amount. I spent the day gathering and cutting more stalks/stem pieces, trying out different patinas and finishing techniques with the grinder, cleaning off the metals... and discussing assembly and techniques with Jim and another new friend who came by to check out the project.

the indian pipes are almost finished... the stems need sanding, and i may need to do another round of patination, but there is some nice contrast happening now, so that feels good. in case you didn't know what an indian pipe is, check them out... they are some of the coolest plants, in my opinion. in fact i think they are so cool that i have one tattooed on my belly. there's a long story behind that which i won't elaborate on here, but needless to say i think they're incredible and i always squeal with joy when i come across them in the woods... which is pretty much never because i think they only grow on the east coast.

i'm still working on the second brass piece, and that's what takes it's toll the most on my body. metalsmithing has a lot of lessons involved, one of which is patience, and, intimately connected to that, the fact that you cannot cut corners. if you do the thing will either not look right, or it just won't work. i tried to move too fast on that second bronze, tried to dive into the edging details before it was raised enough. no wonder i couldn't get the metal to speak to me for that detail work. by the end of yesterday's raising session, i could already tell that good things were happening, that once i went into the details it would flow better. i was right- had a short detail work session today that went really well. but i am bruised and bloodied from this piece.... i use my legs as a brace sometimes, but if hammer blow or the angle isn't right sometimes, the piece is forced rather intensely into my thigh... i don't usually feel it that much, but it leaves a mark, apparently... and at this point i don't notice a cut until i notice the blood on the metal.

i had a thought today that these brass pieces are turning out so well that i almost don't want to put them in the sculpture because i think that no one will ever notice the details i am doing. oh well... i guess i will just stock it up to practice, and now i feel like i have the skills and ideas for a whole show's worth of pieces. but i'm giving myself 6 months to do them. :)

mika's still miserable at American Steel. she sulks a lot.

i finally got a bodywork session today... it was really great, and the woman was RUTHLESS. i needed that... "it has to hurt if it's to heal!" but it means tonight is a night off- baths and movies, writing, cleaning my house... some day i might have a social life, but presently i am just going to enjoy my hermit life. what else can i do?

the artful wrinkle

2010-07-24T23:01:00.000-07:00

grump and exhaustion central over here. guess that will teach me to work a 11 hour day and then go out and party and wake up again the next morning to try to work. yeah... it was really nice to finally go out, to move my body a little bit, stretch it out on the dance floor, but.... i think i'm grounded until this thing is done.

after battling with the big brass yesterday, which seriously kicked my ass, i figured i could do some fun detail work on it today from home... but it was not flowing like the first one did. those wrinkles can either lead you or distract you, and today they just weren't speaking to me the way i need them to. i don't want them to be half-assed. i see how beautiful it can be (i'm really happy with the first one), so i decided i would take my lesson from before and know when to put the piece down.

spent a couple hours scrubbing the polishing compound off of the 4 pieces i polished yesterday. that's some nasty shit- even with scrub brushes and detergent it wasn't coming off completely- i might have to up the anti to some more bleach-based stuff. but it is really fun to scrub the pieces off in the sunshine (omg, sunshine? what's that??? i actually sat in the sun a bit today!) and watch them glint and glitter. makes the polishing wheel time worth it.

oh, so i guess i was mistaken and those first 3 tops were not actually bronze... at least it seems like they aren't... usually everything gets a coppery overlayer when it goes into the acid bath after the annealing/hammering process, and it's during the polishing that you see the actual color of the metal revealed. well, i was excited for the honeyed bronze to come out, but alas, not so much. bronze IS copper, but it's an alloy so it has other elements mixed in. this kind of changes my plan for the color of these pieces, but I'm not too concerned about it.

mika was definitely happy i was working from home. she got play time with her boyfriend from next door, and then i even tried taking her to dolores... but she got scared by how many people were there and ran away from me- over the train tracks, up the hill, into the street... grrrrr. i love her, but this dog is so much work. it's times like these when i get angry about how she came to be in my life and how i thought i was going to have so much support in having her. i took her home, did some erranding and came home for dinner, fully intending on getting into grime clothes and going to American Steel to work... but i just about feel asleep at the kitchen table. i passed out at 8 and woke up to my alarm at 10pm with sore hands and a feeling like i could sleep for days... i guess i'm not going to am steel. time to ice, take a valium and go to sleep for a long time- maybe even get 7-8 hours? god life is weird these days. it's saturday night, and i'm in bed at 8, spend my days alone, longing to go on adventures in the sun but turning down every request for hang out time. it was nice to socialize a bit last night, but it goes to show me that i have to be singular in focus right now and that's that. it's hard though... where's my summertime? lost in hammer marks and the artful wrinkle.

take me away.....

2010-07-23T08:58:00.001-07:00

waking up is a world of soreness and stiffness and ouch this morning. epsom salt bath didn't help, and i never iced my hands last night. oops... doing it now over breakfast, will take some ibuprofen and then hope that i can pick up a hammer.

i finally wrote a list of all the things that need to be done by the deadline... i can't tell if it's manageable or not at this point. nothing is an a to b kind of thing.

i don't usually manage to go to bed much earlier than 3am, and awake at 8-9am... to start it all over. today all i want is to be in a different country.

i'll be less grouchy/ouchie when the ibuprofen and coffee kicks in and i start working... focus, shrizz...

indelible

2010-07-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have learned much in my life about how moving beyond physical pain can bring some of one's greatest lessons and personal growth. I would not be who i am today if it were not for having experienced serious chronic pain and traumatic physical tests, and I feel stronger for having gone through them. So pushing through the pain in my wrists/hands every day as I work seems natural most of the time- i am a goal-oriented person, and my goals are on the other side of the pain, so therefore i keep moving forward. But this is different than my previous experiences because it the pain is literally self-inflicted. the more I work, the more I hurt. everyone keeps saying "take care of yourself" or "don't overdo it" or "take a day off" or any number of things, and I would love to, but I simply cannot. I have less than 3 weeks to finish this project, end of story. I cannot afford to miss any work. i am responsible for making this thing happen, and i refuse to fail. but i am concerned... I LOVE what i do- the hammering and the laboring, and I want to be able to *keep* doing it. even my mentor wrote me "Cuts and muscle heal, but joints and tendons are another problem." I don't want to injure myself to the point that I cannot do it anymore in the future. But what can I do? I keep going.

I think I'll be ok- it's not THAT bad. It's not the worst pain I have ever felt, and I am taking care to ice, soak, and brace.

I have always found my meditations in art through repetitive actions, time consuming detail work, the wielding of elements to create... and also through dealing with chronic pain. if you can breathe through it, like a yoga stretch, you can fine tune a zen-like strength. however if you aren't careful, or if you are tired, you can go to a negative place with it, spiral into anger or self-pity. that is not the place where you become a better or stronger person, and i work to avoid it. sometimes though, i fall prey to that place- the easy place- and get stuck in a loop of negative thoughts that defeat my purpose... i went there yesterday, and am glad that a pain killer made me too loopy to write last night so that i didn't justify those thoughts by writing them down. I am doing what I love, and there are always sacrifices to be made for beauty and greatness. Nothing truly great is easy.

So... you know that part about the not-too-much-more-hammering thing i think i mentioned? yeah, well, that changed. I added three more pieces. bought a bunch of beeeeauuuutiful copper sheet, and raised two new pieces out of it. copper is so gorgeous, and such a pleasure to work with. it's extra malleable and stays that way for a long time so there is less back and forth in the process of changing it's shape. it's almost like it wants to go where you tell it to. the colors are psychedelic when it's heated, too. but what i am most excited about is the patina i am planning for these ones... it's a very special process that Greg taught me that makes the copper turn an incredible rosy-crimson color. Normally you quench non-ferrous metals in room temperature water once you are done heating it, however in this process you heat the copper to glowing red, and then quench it in *boiling* water. what follows is a magical transformation as it turns instantly black, and then the blackness crackles off to reveal the gorgeous red. I've done this on a small scale,

but never to anything as large as these pieces, so it will definitely be an undertaking. I will need help- i'll be looking for assistance when the time comes for it, but i did find the perfect container for the water at american steel... Jim keeps reminding me that anything i need i can probably scrounge from somewhere in that place. so far it's been almost completely true. i decided that these mushrooms would be inspired by the classic poisonous amanita muscaria- the red ones with the white spots. i drilled out a bunch of holes that will be the "spots", and hammered more so that the dots warped a little.

I did a little detail work on the chanterelle. one side of the wrinkly edges is hammer-finished and the tiniest bit polished, along with some minute adjustments to the body of that side of the piece. these pictures are in hopes of illuminating the difference that this kind of detail work does (top ridge hammered, bottom not). sometimes i think that no one would know the difference, because i'm such a geek for the teeny details- even just a few of these marks changes so much for me. But I don't know if these pictures actually captures it... shrug.

i wonder how many times i have hit hammer to metal? how many hammer marks will there be in this sculpture? immeasurable marks, and yet, indelible.

forgiveness and resilience

2010-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

OOPS. what a mess. this took 2-3 tries to get out of, after 2 tries that got me INTO it.

ahh... redemption...

Brass is really unforgiving. And just in case it wasn't clear before this point, I'm really stubborn. those things work each other out in the end, but it means war for a while.

Brass is springy and stiff, even when annealed. Strange, I looked up synonyms for "springy", and found all the synonyms to mean the opposite of what I am trying to describe! I'm saying it bounces back, does not change as much when you hit it, and yet the synonyms are words like "malleable", "adaptable", and "yielding". It's very hard to describe in words what the difference is between how the various metals respond to working, but when brass is hammered, it simply does not stretch as fast, and when it does stretch, it seems to hang onto the rest of it's sister molecules for dear life, so that changing it's shape is almost like a tug-o-war game. I faced an almost 3' diameter sphere of it yesterday for the second Chanterelle piece. The first 2 rounds of hammering with any piece are always the most challenging; you have to tell this flat sheet where you want it to go, to methodically guide it towards a form that it does not naturally go. As I mentioned previously, if you move to far to fast with the center, the edges pull and wrinkle. I want wrinkles in this piece, but not until the edges, and not yet: because of how far in I am taking this piece (as in not a bowl shape, but practically a folded one), i need to make sure the center all the way out to about 3" from the edge is evenly stretched/compressed in the beginning. I'm a little rusty on my technique on top of never creating a piece like this, nor working with a piece of brass bigger than the palm of my hand before, so I think I must have pushed the center before I was supposed to. Sufficed it to say, the first 2 hammering rounds were practically a wash- I raised the center, only to cause the middle rings to lift in the *opposite* direction I wanted them to go, and in the process, causing everything to stiffen before I could even hit it with a hammer. I took a picture of my "oops"... It was actually pretty painful to deal with. Holding the unyielding, large piece against the stake, trying to keep it from bouncing off when I hit it with the hammer was quite a feat, especially at the end of 4-5 hours of hammering bronze. I had to use my whole body, try out position after position of metal to stake, of location of my body and swing of the hammer; I used my leg as extra support and I have bruises all over it now. Why I decided to use brass for my largest raised piece I can only chock up to simply not considering all the factors beyond aesthetics. But I do not regret... half the fun of this project is rising to meet challenges on my own, finding my physical edges and testing them, pushing them. I probably should have stopped after the first annealing, but as I said, I'm damn stubborn, and I pushed through another three, determined to at very least get the piece going in the right direction. I did it! and then promptly lost my steam and became aware that my wrists and hands were screaming in protest.

The good news is, after this I can ease up on the hammering. (Honestly I don't WANT to- love it so- but it will be best for my body.) I'm actually staying home today and doing detail work on the other chanterelle so that I can give myself a little break. But the next step is proceeding to the stems of the pieces, which is a completely different kind of work, and will be significantly less taxing on my body. I have been collecting (thanks hugely to Big Jim's resourcefulness) various sizes of copper tubing, and will set to cutting them and learning how to artfully bend them. I've never worked with tubing like this, but I know that if you heat it and bend it, you can certainly cause the tubing to change shape easily (copper is so pliable), however you risk collapsing it and losing it's tubular nature. So I'll be trying out different methods to find the best way to make the stock look organic. The photos above are just reference for the ratio of the size of the tube stock to the size of the head of the mushroom... it's nice to see the two together, even if it isn't how it will actually look in the end.

I finished the three bronze mushroom heads, and promptly decided that I will need a fourth. At least. I don't have the material for it, so it will have to wait, but I actually don't feel worried about the extra work. I venture to say... that things are going rather smoothly at this point towards finishing on time. That's a little bold to say, but once I collected together, measured and took stock of the materials I have vs. what I need, I actually relaxed a little. There are many, many more processes to do, and if I think about that, I still feel pressed for time, but I am not going to beat myself up about it and just trust that I am moving at the pace I need to.

I'm not willing to pat myself on the back just yet, but I am enjoying rising to challenges both mental and physical. My muscles are definitely growing... and I'm liking it... So, not giving myself too many props, but actively stepping into a powerful place where I am embracing some super powers :). SuperShrizz! Princess of Power! whatever you want to call it, it feels good. it also feels good to be at home today... my house is a wreck, and i finally decided to throw my work clothes in the laundry... I probably would have kept wearing those pants, but a dog at the park gave me an extra incentive to wash them yesterday after he lifted his leg on them! (what dog does that?? I feel pretty good now about how I've trained Mika... some people do NOT know how to handle their dogs.) But it's pretty hilarious in the grand scheme of things.

American Steel: photo journal entry 2

2010-07-19T00:39:00.001-07:00

something about the way those boxes are piled makes me not want to explore this bay except from afar.

the irony of a washing machine here is not lost... it goes back to that whole washing-one's-hands conundrum.

This is a project my friend Douglas is working on... He says not only will it be where he and crew will have studio space, but the bottom floor will act as an Art Gallery.

meditative rhythm

2010-07-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

more of the brass chanterelle-inspired piece

bronze, the beginning of concentric raising process

I'm almost done raising the first Brass mushroom, the inspiration for which is a chanterelle. it's now to the point of the fun detail work- really diving into those ripples, accentuating them, and then the best part- shining up the brass so that it looks like glittering gold. But... it's not time for detail work yet, so I've put it down. There is still so much to do that I must pace myself efficiently and not get too caught up in the little stuff right now, as much as I love diving into the minute movements of the metal, the magic that I find in the millionth hammer mark (which probably no one else notices). I must make sure I get the major stuff done so that I don't myself having amazing detail in one piece and the rest completely unfinished.

I broke down and bought a Band Saw... and wow did that change the process of releasing shapes from sheet metal. Enough fighting with the scroll saw and hand-held shears! I had to anneal part of the sheet metal and roll/bend it so that I could fit and cut the pieces because the saw only has a 9" deep throat, but the cuts flowed like softened butter, and took 1/100 of the time and practically none of the effort I have previously expended on cutting out shapes. I thought I might not keep the saw... um, yeah, never mind... Score!

For now, I must keep going with the big movements, which means getting the basic structure of everything worked out at least roughly. I raised the three Bronze mushroom tops today- I hammered for about 6 hours, and made good headway. My wrists/hands are now in braces/ace bandages, which I think is helping, but the first 20 minutes today kind of scared me because it was so painful I was worried I wouldn't be able to keep going. But once I pushed through the initial part of the raising process (and the pain), I got back my rhythm, and took breaks to stretch. I can't really stop, so I just need to deal.

I lose myself in it, the swing of the hammer, the blow to the piece and how it moves. The most important is being conscious: although it is counterintuitive in a way, you must remember to have a loose grip on the hammer, to let it fall with a fluid wrist, to not strain in your hand as you hold it, to not push it into the metal but instead, let the swing and the gravity do much of the work, and while doing all of this, remember the importance of where and and at what angle over the stake you hit it- for that last part is what actually changes the shape. There really are so many elements to such a simple process... I still have not mastered doing all of them perfectly at once every time. One would think that, as I am right handed, it would be my right arm/wrist that is most painful- when in fact it is my left. This is because the energy to hold the piece in position against the stake with force so that when hit it does not bounce off the stake but receives the full force of the contact between hammer and iron, is extremely stressful on the muscles of the hand and the wrist. On top of that, every hammer blow sends echoing impact through the piece and into the holding hand. I also have trouble not locking my wrist or thumb in place in the process. However, I lose myself beauty of the process and the material every time, in every annealing, every turn.

So much is coming back to me about the raising process and the properties and reactions of metal after being away from this process for the last year or two. If you are not deliberate, consistent and aware with the concentric circles you hammer in from the center out to the edges of the piece, you can run into troubles: you must compress and stretch the metal evenly, and not to fast at once, or else it will ripple and buckle. That's why you can't just bang it over a spherical object to get it to rise into a bowl. If you raise the center out too far in the beginning, the edges ripple like fabric ruffles. Which, in the case of the brass piece, I wanted, and I will accentuate them. But for the bronze pieces, I want a more even rise from middle to edge, or at least more control and continuity. When a ripple starts to form, you have to deal with it right away, or else it's there forever. But even this challenge was so beautiful to me. I remember Greg instilling in me the outlook that although you are telling the metal which way to go in general, it always tells you, too, and you should listen. the whole process is so meditative for me.

Bronze is SO beautiful. it's also less stiff than brass, and seems to move further faster. But look at the beautiful colors that come from heating it up! I have to be careful not to get lost in those, either :).

I didn't work as long as I had intended to today... I ended up with a blister on one of my fingers that prevented me from going further once it ripped- and I forgot my first aid stuff today. In the end though, it's probably best to give my arms a break, have a start fresh tomorrow.

I still feel very pressured by the timeline on this project, but at least I feel like I am making solid headway. I'm just frustrated that I have to break my body a bit to get it done.

Yet... I am SO grateful for this incredible experience. I am throwing myself into it like I rarely have had opportunity to do. That is a gift, and one full of many lessons that are making me stronger every day.

new dawn

2010-07-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

yesterday was a wash.

But it's a new dawn, it's a new day... i will choose to believe that everything is possible, and choose to disregard the pull of all that weighs me down... i am starting the journey of the day by soaking my wrists and hands in salt water; i am buoyant.

raising hearts & hammer marks

2010-07-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

hearts and hammer marks

2010-07-16T08:57:00.001-07:00

after only 2.5 hrs of sleep, i awoke this morning at 5:30am to swollen, throbbing hands and aching wrists, along with a voracious appetite that wouldn't allow me to go back to sleep. well, that only proves what a productive day yesterday was.
It was indeed the case that after the crappy day on wednesday that i arrived at American Steel on Thursday with renewed sense of purpose and drive. I ignored the copper pipe of pain for most of the day, having decided that, like the aluminum, i would tell it to fuck off... and then had a sudden realization i could very possibly still get some mileage out of it if just cut it apart BEFORE i hammered it. just cut off the lengths and hammer them individually, and solder them back together if i wanted to. DUH. i couldn't think of anything else when i was working it on wednesday, even something that simple. you just have to step away sometimes.

I made Raising the brass disk my focus of the day... despite the hole blown through it, it started looking beautiful really fast. and I LOVE Raising metal. in case you don't know, Raising is the process of using hammers to stretch the center of sheet metal, while compressing the edges to that they fold upward and inward toward the center. in order to do this, you must first anneal the metal by heating it to the point (particular to each metal) where it's properties of strength and hardness are altered. once non-ferrous metals like copper, brass, bronze, and silver are annealed, you must cool them down by quenching them in water, and then work with them while they are cold. once you work with them, they begin to harden again as they compress and stretch, so you can only do a certain amount of work with them before you must go through the annealing process again. once you do, you can stretch further and further.
When I moved to the west coast in 2005, i began a 2 year apprenticeship with a master at this technique who inspired me to no end. There are very few people who do this anymore- it was once the method to create all utensils and vessels out of metal- but Greg Wilbur is one of the most skilled and creative at the technique... he taught me everything I know, and I will always think of him as one of my biggest inspirations, and one of the best teachers I have ever had in my life. been thinking of you a lot, Greg! thank you!

So I haven't done much hammering in the last year or so, and when I have, it's been small things, little sculptures, pieces of jewelry... now here i go hammering on a 2' piece of brass (which happens to be rather stiff, by it's nature) for hours... i was drenched in sweat for the entire day working this piece, and it hurt like hell after a while, but I truly loved every minute of it and had to force myself to take breaks so that I wouldn't get injured. however, like any sport or taxing physical activity, if you jump into it intensely, you are going to pay the price. no wonder I woke up feeling like i might not be able to use my hands for a day or two.

The conundrum is: I feel happy with the direction I am going, but fear that a month of raising every day might break my wrists. I realized that with such a short amount of time to do this project, it would be best to stick with a method and materials that i am familiar and at least somewhat comfortable with.... when in doubt, stick with what you know, right? I feel so much more confident about making the shapes that I see in my head with this method. it's just going to mean that i will need to ice and soak and medicate myself as much as possible so that I don't injure myself irreparably. ah, what we do to ourselves in the name of art.

the pictures document a bit of how the metal changes as I work it, and... the heart was a little present for someone. a heart that starts as a heat stain, a scorch mark, a burn.... and then deepens and stretches, hardens and shines as it is hammered and compressed... i love the symbolism in this. and i love the impermanence; the fact that this material is so solid and enduring, yet it can change SO drastically, and at will.

normally when you are raising, you don't let the piece wrinkle at the edges. i am purposefully waiting to hammer all the way to the edges to MAKE it wrinkle, and then I will do detail work accentuating those wrinkles for the shape I am creating.

I can get lost in the hammer marks, in the wrinkling and stretching of each portion, the balance and shift of the molecules.

I don't know if i will be able to work like that again today. i think if i spend time with the scroll saw cutting out the other pieces I will be working later (bronze too!), and then just do detail hammering on the piece I started yesterday, I should be ok....

oh, and update on the Mika Monster... she's getting more and more used to Am Steel... she's still a fraidy-dog, but she is able to relax a bit now that she has her little zone at the back of Jim's shop, and wags her whole body when she sees him. the compressor and the crane still freak her out, but maybe in a week or two she'll chill out enough to chew on her bone or play with a toy instead of sulking all day. i take her to the dog park every day so that she gets a good run and a decompression from her fear mode... it did her wonders yesterday. she was so good. <3

evil copper pipe of pain

2010-07-16T02:12:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's workday was such an epic fail that i couldn't bring myself to sit down and write about it... i just wanted to forget. However, EVERY kind of day is a learning process, no matter how much or little you "accomplish" toward the end goal.

A really important lesson in making art is knowing when to STOP. I have a tendency to push and work even when things aren't feeling/going right, fueled by some unexplainable drive that makes me think that if i stop i am worthless. Unfortunately, if you keep working on those days, the bad parts start to snowball, and before you know it, everything is breaking and falling apart, and those are the days where safety definitely is more at risk. Wednesday was just such a day. From start to finish, it was pretty much a struggle... to the point where I almost lost my cool completely. I worked my ass off, hurt my body, and didn't accomplish anything except learning what I didn't want to do. Which, I guess, is a good thing to accomplish. I struggled for several hours with this really beautiful, HUGE and thick copper pipe, thinking if i split it open, i could hammer it out into a mushroom-y type shape and all would be awesome. Because I love copper; it's usually relatively easy to shape because it's so malleable and stretchable... Except when it's machined, 1/4" thick, 4" diameter copper pipe. The piece I cut was 20" long, and once i splayed out the slices, I intended to hammer and stretch the metal (this is called raising). However, you have to hold the metal at just the right angle over different parts of different stakes in order to hit it just so with the hammer and get it to stretch. and due to the thickness of the metal, the hammer blow was going to have to be VERY significant every time, not to mention precisely played. Well, this stupid thing was so unwieldy and awkward to hold, and so heavy and thick, that it was practically impossible for me to get it to change shape at all. Jim arrived to find me drenched in sweat, panting and grappling with the thing, almost in tears. He took some swings at it while i held it, and it definitely stretched (they don't call him Big Jim for nothing...) but was I really going to try to make sculptures out of this stuff? could i make it do what i wanted? I didn't feel confident about something that took all my strength to hold and a whole other person to hit on. so i gave up on that after several hours... because although the first part of raising is always the hardest, i just didn't think there was time nor energy in my body to make several finished pieces out of this material in the next few weeks along with everything else that has to be done for the piece.

At this point, my hands and arms were so sore that when I went to revisit the steel Indian Pipes to hammer their leaves into shape, it was too painful. So... what next?, I thought. I can't just STOP... i tried to get excited about the beautiful piece of sheet brass that i brought. I drew out a big circle... and realized that i didn't have my scroll saw to cut it, so i would have to do it by hand, with the most crappy pair of metal shears ever. The funny part about this work is that i was thinking i was giving my hands/wrists a break by not hammering, but it was just another kind of pain to cut this sheet little by little with dull sheers. I finally got the circle cut, and it was time to anneal. Annealing is when you heat the metal (non-ferrous, specifically) to the point where the becomes more malleable. So i took out the huge torch to start heating the piece up, section by section to make sure it was evenly annealed. I am using oxy-acetalyne, which is extremely hot, and the torch head is very large. i had my headphones on and didn't notice a man come into Jim's shop behind me, but when he left, he surprised me and i looked away from the metal for 1 second and... POW! the torch got too close, metal got too hot, and I blasted a hole right through it.

and so, we come to the place where i throw things and give up.

There comes a point when you have been struggling with something for a so long that you can't see it anymore. It's strange but true. you can't get new perspective with it in your face while you are frustrated. You can't find solutions, everything you touch seems to break... It's time to let go and walk away, even if you are stressed for time. tomorrow you will return with fresh eyes (and fresh contacts... i had to get new ones because i had metal lodged in one... and i think i just found a piece of copper in the new one today...) and refreshed energy. And to my delight, that's exactly what happened....

and i was going to tell about my awesome day, but i can't keep my eyes open... more soon.