Descending Ashtray

As a holiday bonus this year, employees where I work received AmEx gift cards. My first thought was to use mine for my upcoming trip to France and Belgium, but then learned the cards are difficult to use for travel expenses. Luckily, Woodcraft takes them!

I had been thinking of acquiring a lathe for a long time. I think my hesitation had to do with the fact that most of my work is very geometric in nature, and I think of the lathe as a tool for decorative turnings: spindles, bowls, vases, etc. I also had no idea how much fun a lathe could be!

I ended up going with a “starter lathe,” the Jet 10×14 Mini Lathe, which seems like it will do the majority of what I want for at least a little while. The “10″ number indicates the diameter of work that can be turned on the lathe, while the “14″ indicates the length between the motor (headstock) and the tailstock. An extension is available to increase the “14″ dimension, which I may do soon-ish.

I forgot that with most tools, the minute you start playing with them, you can think of uses for them. I am going to be remodeling my attic this spring, and part of that will include spindles for the stairway railing! As you can see from what I’ve got mounted in the lathe, I’ve come up with a lot of artistic applications for a lathe as well!

The second major purchase with the gift card was the WorkSharp Sharpening Center. I’ve read about these a lot in the woodworking magazines I subscribe to, all of which have rated it highly. I think it’s easily one of the best purchases I’ve made in the last 2 years (tablesaw still wins the “lifetime achievement award”) since it does a mundane job quickly, which gets me back to work sooner.

Basically, it’s a motorized version of the “Scary Sharp” sharpening method, which I’ve used in the past for my chisels and plane irons. With the WorkSharp, a perfectly flat glass disc has adhesive sandpaper stuck to it. The glass disc is rotated by a small motor, and you simply rest the back/edge of the chisel on the rotating sandpaper to develop a mirror-like polish, working your way up through various grits of sandpaper. I took a 1″ chisel to “Scary Sharp” in about 2 minutes with the WorkSharp (granted it was fairly sharp to start), which would have taken 10 minutes the old way.

The new tools required a fair amount of shop cleanup and re-arrangement, too. I’ll take a few new pics of the whole shop once I sweep up all those lathe shavings!

I occasionally check out the Smithsonian Art Museum’s blog, “Eye Level,” and often I’m intrigued by what I see there. Last week, I was especially fascinated by a work I found in their collection after seeing this giraffe featured on the blog.

I clicked on another link, and found this snake, which upon seeing, I knew I could improve. I’ve been compulsively collecting bottlecaps for a long time, and I have every color in the rainbow. A few hours sorting the caps, some simple carving, woodburning, a quick paint job … and voila: my Sunday Afternoon Smithsonian Snake.

It’s going to be a little present for my godson Will, just because.

I have to start this off with an embarrassing story. When I went into the Des Moines Art Center’s downtown location, I was carrying a coffee. A Starbucks coffee. I am not typically one for chain anything. I can’t remember the last time I went to Wal-Mart … I buy local whenever possible. But when you’re in a pinch, traveling … it’s tough to say no, particularly where much-needed caffeine is concerned. As I walked inside the front door, I swilled the last sip, coating my teeth with grounds (serves me right), and in one fluid motion, pitched the empty cup into a wastepaper basket next to the podium where the guard sits to welcome visitors.

“Oops. That’s a piece of art you put your cup in.”

1 art school education, rendered worthless by careless consumption of corporate coffee.

Still, I felt better once I got to know the show a bit better. Conrad Bakker’s artwork is all about mingling the real with the unreal, blurring the line between reality and fiction. Each of the sculptures and paintings on display in Objects & Economies [Untitled Projects 1997–2007] in some way challenges our perceptions, usually as it relates to commerce in some way. Take for example “Untitled Project: Gift Card [Des Moines Art Center] ,” a set of small paintings the exact size and shape of gift cards sold at the museum store, carefully painted to resemble the real thing, and sold for the face value of the card it represented.

Nothing in the exhibition was what it seemed - the security cameras that on first glance seemed to be protecting the artworks were in fact sculptures painted to look like the real thing, positioned in the place cameras would typically be. Ditto for the thermostat on the wall, the television set to “Mute,” the Epson projector on the faux George Nelson bench, and yes, even the wastebasket.

The works were roughly executed - no one would be fooled after a close look - but they passed a cursory glance, and when the works are photographed for placement on online shopping sites like eBay and Craigslist, they definitely require close examination. One series of paintings took as its subject matter items posted to Des Moines’ Craigslist, faithfully reproduced in small 4×6 paintings, and which Bakker then re-posted to the barter site as artworks for trade, listing the paintings under the categories depicted in the paintings. Very meta, very clever, and very worth seeing. This was one of the best shows I’ve seen at a museum for awhile, and hey - the price is right. Go see it before March 28th, 2008.

If you can’t make it to the show, check out Bakker’s web site - lots of eye candy to see and explore.

On the advice of my barber a few weeks ago, I added the film “In the Realms of the Unreal” to my Netflix queue, and it arrived a few days ago. I popped it in tonight, prepared for something unique, and that’s exactly what I got.

The film is essentially a documentary about artist and recluse Henry Darger, who gained posthumous notoriety for his maniacally rich drawings and paintings that illustrated his 15,000 page manuscript, titled similarly briefly, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. I say “essentially,” because Darger’s diaries and novel are brought to life by actors, and the narrator is child actress Dakota Fanning, an interesting choice given Darger’s fascination with young girls. I won’t elaborate on that except to say, it’s not what you’re thinking - Darger’s obsession is much more complicated than simple pedophilia, and not nearly as evil. Watch the film and see for yourself.

Darger’s work was intensely personal, drawing on his life as a devout Catholic, upbringing in an orphanage, and characters based on people he encountered in his real life. He was untrained as an artist, and used tracings and photographic reproductions to create huge watercolor paintings that illustrated his story about the battle for good and evil in an other world - this realm of the unreal.

A very interesting portrait, sad and beautiful at the same time, magically animated by talented filmmaker Jessica Yu. Well worth watching.

Darger’s paintings are now for sale by Chicago’s Hammer Gallery.

After a minor mishap with a Flexcut knife (broke the handle) and a Sunday spent carving, I’ve completed this year’s Santa carving: a Northwest Native-American-inspired Christmas Totem Pole. I tried to incorporate stylistic elements of the coastal carving tradition, to varying degrees of effectiveness. I really like the simple color scheme, as well as the additional elements added as separate pieces of wood (Frosty’s nose, Rudolph’s antlers). I’m not so crazy about my grasp of the NW style, but I think my grandmother will like it better this way, in a somewhat folk/somewhat NW style.

I used the vinegar/steel wool treatment as a way to age and weather the yellow cedar a bit - at first it turned a scary brown, but greyed as it dried, to a color that actually mimics red cedar a little more closely (the traditional wood used in totem poles). I then used diluted gouache in red, white and black, which I sanded lightly to reveal the wood beneath in some places, giving it an aged appearance. The nose and antlers are doweled on.

Anybody find my cutting board yet? I’ve posted it this month sometime, although it’s a bit hard to find!

I’m not so good at reading German, but this sculpture by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz is pretty amazing.