I finally finished this thing. The center part was a little tricky to figure out but ended up to be very solid. I used the Dado quite a bit on this project. All of the shelves are dadoed in to the sides and the X shelves were done with a half lap joint.
While in Des Moines a few weeks ago (trip 1/3 if you’re counting along at home), Sarah and I visited two old friends: the twin locations of the Des Moines Art Center.
For those not familiar with Des Moines, the Art Center is two amazing museums: a large building on Des Moines’ west side, with 3 wings designed by I.M. Pei, Eliel Saarinen (shown, photo by Cameron Campbell) and Richard Meier, and a new branch downtown designed for “lunch-sized” exhibitions. Surprising as it may sound to non-natives, Des Moines’ Art Center easily compares with national institutions such as SFMOMA and any art museum in Seattle. It has a solid permanent collection composed of all the American and European greats, rounded out with a dense collection of African art. Exhibitions change frequently, and they routinely showcase internationally-known and just-emerging artists. Best of all, admission is FREE.
At that price, we were able to hit both locations, and saw two completely different shows. We started with the downtown branch, and so will these notes.
Hug: New Work by Patricia Piccini was easily one of the strangest shows I’ve seen in awhile, with her hyper-realistic sculptures depicting creatures of an imaginary and perhaps, a none-too-distant future. If this hyper-realism gave us shivers (and it did), we were equally impressed with the great stories her work told (read the wall text). The “cover” work for the exhibition was The Young Family, 2002, and its subject was described as part human and part pig, developed as a source for human organs. Contrast that knowledge with the familiar nursing mother-and-child relationship depicted, and the work provokes some interesting thoughts.
Another work whose work and backstory I especially enjoyed depicted the Bodyguard for Golden Helmeted Honeyeater, a real bird facing extinction in Australia. The Bodyguardwas genetically created to act as a protector for this rare avian species, and keep it from extinction. Several photos accompanying the sculpture showed the Bodyguard after its own unintended population explosion, frolicking in urban construction sites despite the presence of construction workers. More food for thought, especially considering Australia’s choice as the setting for this fictional work, and that nation’s struggle with the Cane Toad, introduced innocently enough to combat the cane beetle, and which has since become the poster child for a species run amok.
While this show has come and gone since I visited Des Moines, it will make another appearance in 2007, this time at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, another gem. Check it out beginning September 22, 2007.
A visit to the downtown branch of the Art Center turned up another wonderful exhibit, and one that has had me thinking a lot since I saw it in person. The Oxford Project is something I mentioned several months ago, is a project that originally tripped my radar because of my personal connection to Oxford, Iowa, and the fact that I had photographer Peter Feldstein and writer Steve Bloom as instructors while at the University of Iowa.
It’s a project that I don’t want to describe too much, because it really speaks for itself. But I will give a basic setup.
In 1984, Peter Feldstein attempted to photograph every resident of Oxford, Iowa, a town about 15 miles from Iowa City, Iowa, the home of the Unversity of Iowa. 670 of Oxford’s 676 residents ended up participating. Then, 21 years later, in 2005, Feldstein returned to take another photo of any of the original 670 he could find. Stephen Bloom conducted a short interview and asked residents to talk about how their lives were in 1984, and how things had changed (or not) in the ensuing years. The stories told by the pair of photos, and in the residents’ own words, are hilarious, heartbreaking, and tell one of the most truly intimate human stories of any work of art I’ve ever seen.
Just so our viewers don’t think I have disappeared, I thought I would show some of projects I have been working on.
I have added a few more branches but I still think it needs more.
This is a prototype of a bicycle trophy for “Bike to Work Week” in Des Moines. (I am going to add pedals and mount it on a base.) Someone is commissioning me to make it. If they like it, I will make 3 more just like this one!
This is what has really been eating up most of my time. I am making a new winerack for Cafe Di Scala. I am only half-way done with this one. When it is finished it will be able to hold more than a thousand bottles of wine!
The beginning of the mechanical sculpture with wood gears.
I have just been working a little bit at a time on each one of these things. With the exception of the latter, I am planning on getting these projects done by May 9. Then I am going to fly down to the southwest for a week, to do sketches and take photographs of landscapes. Once I return home, I am going to do a whole series of paintings of the desert.
I was starting to get some gear ready for the trip when Ethan decided he wanted to come along. When he is swaddled just right he fits in the backpack pretty good!
I’m not sure where the idea came from, but when I arrived in Des Moines last Friday, Gabe and I immediately started discussing and sketching ideas for a joint project in his newly-cleaned shop, something that would combine Gabe’s freeform and organic sculptural style with my more structured and conceptual approach. Interestingly, we both had a very similar idea, so it was easy to get going, even though I spilled some water on the sketch. Oh, and we only had one day to work.
I began Saturday morning by planing some poplar to 1/4-inch thickness so I could use it to construct the sides of the 5×5 cube that would be suspended in the tree’s branches. When that was all done, I cut the planed stock on the table saw to 5 inches with the table saw’s blade set to 45 degrees.
I took quite a few breaks to spectate as Gabe showed off his facility with the bandsaw and his sanding contraption, constructing the trunk and branches of the tree from pieces of walnut.
Did I say facility? Watching Gabe use these two tools is like watching a veteran, world-class musician play violin, so measured and intentional are his movements. I haven’t had a great deal of experience with either tool, as my work is more geometric in nature, and I was extremely impressed.
I left Gabe to his performance and made my way to the drill press, where I drilled 25 holes in each of the 6 sides I’d just cut, followed by some quick sanding.
Finally, after a quick-ish glue up (hint: use masking tape to construct a lightweight cube in this way) and some lunch, we were able to start piecing the trunk and branches together. It was a little like flower arrangement, placing the branches, and Gabe’s sophisticated spatial imagination really came into play as he sanded and molded branches to the tight geometry of the cube, weaving the branches in and out.
Too quickly, I had to leave the workshop and the nearly-complete project.
The most amazing part of the day was the speed with which the elements came together in a cohesive whole, even with a couple of setbacks and having to create a few jigs on the fly. I don’t recall ever working so collaboratively with someone else (I used to hate group projects in art school). It was the highlight of the weekend for me, and I left inspired with a lot of new ideas for my own work. Thanks, Gabe, for a great day. Now, what should we call it? And when are we doing Number 2 in Portland?
I mark my artistic career in two ways: the days before I knew of Sol Lewitt, and the days after.
Sol Lewitt, groundbreaking conceptual artist, exquisite draftsman, gifted printmaker, and sculptural wizard, died on Sunday, April 8th, 2007. He was 78.
“The idea is a machine that creates art.”
I have never wanted to be a decorator, I am far too impatient for realism, and I get self-conscious around models. Sol Lewitt’s aesthetic, the simple purity of a straight line and the supreme importance of the idea appealed to me immediately. As a designer, I am naturally drawn to grids. And while my math skills are less than stellar, I have an interest in systems and enjoy the meditative act of navigating the intricate logic of 3D space represented in two dimensions. I am also a hoarder.
“If the artist carries through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product. All intervening steps — scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations — are of interest.”
And, though he would probably wince at the idea of beauty in his work, his work is awe-inspiringly beautiful, in the same way the double helix of DNA, or a cloudscape, or a checkerboard are.
“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.”
See Sol Lewitt: