i started working on this "electric xylophone". it consists of sequentially smaller pieces of square stock steel mounted on a resonator box made up of birch panel scraps left over from the blackjack tables i built for ooh events. I mounted a contact mic inside of it and it is kind of like a chime/amplified woodblock depending where i hit it. I plan to polish the steel a little bit just to help and then i will figure out how to mount it so i can add it to my drum set.
on monday i start working at the gibbes museum of art. this should be good for me since it will mean i will divide my time between a museum gallery setting and my studio. I also got confirmation last week that i am going to do an installation at the dam stuhltrager gallery in brooklyn in semptember. i am really excited and nervous about the show, but as long as i have enough stir sticks waiting when i get there i should be able to build something cool in the ten days i have to make the installation. on top of this brooke and i have begun the painful process of looking for a new apartment. one of the unique things about living in charleston used to be that you got to rent an apartment in an older building for around 500 a month. by older i mean at least 200 years or more. but lately the rents have sky rocketed to such an exorbitant amount that it is harder and harder to find a unique living situation on the peninsula. but brooke and i will persist. we have been in our unusual apartment for six months and it seems to have reached it's useful limit. our upstairs neighbors are noisy at 2 in the morning, the restaurant/coffee shop we share a wall with emits an unusual smell which leeches through our wall(but so does their wireless signal so we can forgive the smell) and nothing is quite level in the apartment(on a positive note all the aforementioned issues also comprise the character and charm that make us want to stay downtown). we were just looking forward to the idea of starting over since we kind of took this apartment in desperation when we got it and we still haven't completely unpacked from when we moved back from california. but the cold reality of the bloated charleston rental market is sinking in and we are determined to make this apartment more livable and hospitable if we can't find a suitable replacement. i guess i should document all the modifications and things we made for the apartment and any more that we will be making if we decide to stay in it.
on monday i start working at the gibbes museum of art. this should be good for me since it will mean i will divide my time between a museum gallery setting and my studio. I also got confirmation last week that i am going to do an installation at the dam stuhltrager gallery in brooklyn in semptember. i am really excited and nervous about the show, but as long as i have enough stir sticks waiting when i get there i should be able to build something cool in the ten days i have to make the installation. on top of this brooke and i have begun the painful process of looking for a new apartment. one of the unique things about living in charleston used to be that you got to rent an apartment in an older building for around 500 a month. by older i mean at least 200 years or more. but lately the rents have sky rocketed to such an exorbitant amount that it is harder and harder to find a unique living situation on the peninsula. but brooke and i will persist. we have been in our unusual apartment for six months and it seems to have reached it's useful limit. our upstairs neighbors are noisy at 2 in the morning, the restaurant/coffee shop we share a wall with emits an unusual smell which leeches through our wall(but so does their wireless signal so we can forgive the smell) and nothing is quite level in the apartment(on a positive note all the aforementioned issues also comprise the character and charm that make us want to stay downtown). we were just looking forward to the idea of starting over since we kind of took this apartment in desperation when we got it and we still haven't completely unpacked from when we moved back from california. but the cold reality of the bloated charleston rental market is sinking in and we are determined to make this apartment more livable and hospitable if we can't find a suitable replacement. i guess i should document all the modifications and things we made for the apartment and any more that we will be making if we decide to stay in it.
these are just a couple of pics from a walk brooke and i took last week at the caw caw interpretive center. the park is actually an old rice plantation and was the site of a massive slave rebellion.today it is just a scenic walk in the woods, no more rice crop but they do have a nice set of trails and for only 1$ you can walk them, so we will definitely go back.
here is a shot of the blackjack tables i was making for oohevents. i need to get some finished shots of them. it was kind of nice for a little bit to be working on them, but once i finished i couldn't wait to get back to work on my own art.
so i have now determined that i will never finish working with this thermoplastic cast stuff. I still haven't solved the problem of stability. I keep building larger and more precarious constructions with it and making them so big that they collapse under their own weight. after years of messing with it I finally have to do something different. but even if i just keep building stuff out of it that collapses it keeps my dexterity up and it is kind of fun building stuff with it knowing it will eventually collapse.
this is the new beginning of the thermoplastic sculpture i think this time it will sit on this heavier footing and move up in this column like formation filled with coffee cups.
on a whim i painted the bifurcating line sculpture purple and i think i like it.
below is an example of pure serendipity. i have been manufacturing these cast water bottles and low and behold one day i found this old watch display case behind a store. it turns out that my painted water bottle sculptures fit perfectly on the shelves.
there is a recessed area in the top of the display case that can accommodate a light fixture which will create some really nice down lighting on the bottles and help to pick up the pearlescent white i mixed into all of the colors. i hope i can eventually display this case with the related drawings and steel water bottle sculpture as some sort of homage to the consumer fetish of the water bottle. I was thinking i would make more coffee cups and related works to go with it and then make a show and an artist book called coffee and a water please:a meditation on portable consumer fetish objects.
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