Descending Ashtray

I’m co-organizing an “adult Pinewood Derby” for the Portland Advertising Federation with a few friends. For those of you who weren’t in the cub scouts, it’s a chance for boys (and usually their fathers) to take a simple block of wood, and turn it into a car that gets raced against other boys’ cars on a sloped track.

This version is called the “Stumptown 40,” a reference to the length of the track (40 feet) and one of Portland’s many nicknames (Rose City, PDX and Beervana being among the most common). I haven’t started working on my car yet, but I did get a chance to make some of the trophies last week. First, second and third prizes are being given in the “speed” category, and attendees will vote for the “most creative car” award at the event, for a total of four trophies.

My friend Drew gave me a box of old wooden type before he moved to Brooklyn; given the wood cues in the event itself (Stumptown, Pinewood), and the audience of professional communicators, using the antique printing relics seemed a good choice.

For the “Creative Car” trophy, I tried to do something a little different. I used a short piece of some massive, old-growth Douglas Fir I had laying around for the body. The wheels (used on the other trophies as well) are actually the scraps left over from using a hole saw (the holes from the Labyrinth project, in fact) that I stained with vinegar/steel wool aging mixture, and screwed onto the body with rusty screws. The type atop the sculpture rests on an old wooden spool. Thin strips of recycled Doug Fir provide a resting surface for the letters, which are held together with glue and a little bit of hope.

Happy Fathers day, Dave!

It is good to be a Dad but it is also important to remember our Dad’s and Grandpa’s too. My Mom’s Dad just passed away recently and today we are going to have a memorial for him. I worked with my brother Eli and we made this urn to put his ashes in.

The whole thing is made from cedar (even the barn boards) except for the letters which are walnut. My Grandpa was a roofer and a rustic man, so we thought it was fitting to make him a house with wood shingles. The extension ladder moves up and down too.

The past couple of months I have been working on another movie set. It was a wild ride! Many long hours and short deadlines but I was amazed at what our construction crew was able to pull off. Probably the most interesting that we built was a multi level set in one of the giant barns at Living History Farms. I worked with the production designer and he described how he wanted the set to be built. Then he asked me to make a model out of cardboard and I said it would be just as easy for me to make it out of wood.

There was an important action sequence that took place on this set. Ray Liotta and Billy Burke are fighting and rolling around on the different levels. They bust through railings, fall into the grain bin and break through the floor. The model was helpful for the stunt coordinator and director to visualize how the scene would play out.

I will post pictures of the actual set once the movie comes out. Josh Carlson and the Garcia bros. cranked it out in a mere 3 days!

I used to love the comics when I was a kid. The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were far and away the best ones in my local paper. Later entries into my world included Fox Trot and Non Sequitur (and much later Don Hertzfeldt), but I never forgot my first loves.

It’s been snowing in Portland the last few days, which reminded me of the Calvin strips that were among my favorites – when Calvin would make snowmen … Not the happy, cute kind, with a button nose and a corncob pipe, but the kind of snowman every 10 year old dreams of making – the kind sure to piss off your parents.

So this year, rather than carve yet another Santa for my grandmother, I decided to do something a little different. Grandma was known for her yearly calendar gift, and mine was always Calvin & Hobbes (which she is a fan of, too). So this year’s Christmas carving is a dual salute: to Bill Watterson, the strip’s creator, and Grandma Selden, its avid promoter.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

In one of my many experiments on the now-all-but-abandoned DaveSelden.com, I had a somewhat regularly occurring feature I called “Studio Visits,” where I documented visits I made to other artists’ studios, with lots of photos and minimal text. Other artists’ workspaces are usually so private, and it’s interesting to see how the setup differs based on personality and end product.

On my recent European vacation, I had the opportunity to re-visit the studio of Constantin Brancusi, a favorite sculptor. In 1956, rather than see his beloved space demolished in the name of a construction project, he donated its contents to the city of Paris to be recreated elsewhere. In his later years, Brancusi believed the perfect venue for experiencing his works was his studio, where each object was carefully positioned with respect to other objects, optimal lighting conditions and physical needs of the viewer.

In the ensuing years, the studio was recreated in various forms, all to some degree temporary, but in 1977 the studio received a final resting place at the Centre Pompidou in front of Paris’ Museum of Modern Art. A building designed by architect Renzo Piano references the original studio heavily, respecting the artist’s wishes as to placement of works and lighting conditions, but maintaining a safe distance between the visitor and the valuable original artworks it now contains.

Something I have been thinking about lately, and something that I noticed in Brancusi’s work (as well as in the Louise Bourgeouis retrospective inside) was the care and attention Brancusi gave to the pedestals for his pieces. In many ways the pedestal was so integrated with the sculpture, it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

And of course, there were the tools, laid out in neat order as he left them. They were the only evidence that this was a studio, really, so clean was the floor and so white the walls, you’d think you were simply in a strange museum. Artifacts of his life were there if you looked, though, including a violin on a bench at the rear of this photo, apparently for the impromptu parties that were often thrown here (Max Ernst and Jean Tinguely had adjacent studios). His sleeping quarters were in the raised area above.

This is a puzzle that I made for Brandy. I painted a piece of 1/4″ masonite and wrote a secret message on the back side. Then I cut out the pieces on the scroll saw. The secret message told her where to meet me for dinner. She was surprised and we had a great time.