Descending Ashtray

Well, I’ve finally had some time to get back out to the shop in the last couple of days, and I’ve been trying out the adze and crooked knives I got for Christmas. The adze is to the left of the below image, the “not so crooked knife” and traditional crooked knife to the right.

I’ve been working on a freeform sculpture in some Alaskan Yellow Cedar I bought on eBay. Been caught up in the Northwest coast art (totem poles, etc) for a few months now, and decided I’d like to try my hand. I didn’t do any measuring on this sculpture as I normally would, just eyeballed on the block of wood. I used a paint can and WD-40 can to trace the circles with.

Working with these tools is very physical. I feel like my right forearm is going to be huge in a couple of weeks if I stick with it. It’s been pretty therapeutic to hack away at the wood with all the family stuff that’s been going on. Nice to just find a rhythm and space out a little. It also generates a lot of wood chips. This is about 30 minutes’ worth:

For my birthday I received a gift card to Home Depot and some money. I pooled it all together and kicked in some of my own and purchased a Porter Cable air compressor. It’s really noisy, but the air is convenient and the nailers that came with it (3!) are quite a bit lighter than my portable brad nailer.

It came with three nailers: an 18-ga. nailer, a 16-ga. nailer, and a stapler. Not sure what I’ll use the stapler for, but who knows?

In other news, one of my DeWalt batteries appears to have died. Ever have that happen before?

Looks like this is gonna be a classic. I guess I’m John Malkovich.

I went to the Maintenance Shop in Ames to see this ensemble of four songwriters who are on tour together. David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), Mark Eitzel (American Music Club), Vic Chestnut and Will Johnson. It was a good show. They each took turns leading while the rest backed them up. Eitzel was probably my favorite. I have been waiting almost ten years to see him play live.

I have always wanted to produce a really special book about my 5×5 project, one that explains both my story, and my imagined story surrounding this theme.

Here are some really creative artist books I saw today.