norman day 8 and 9 feelin fine

Well I finished working on the norman piece this morning. I spent the day working on and then giving my artist talk, and just sort of hanging out around the ou art building. Tomorrow I am going to try and get in the print shop and pull some prints before the opening. I still need to clean up the debris and try and get a good nights sleep before tomorrow but otherwise things are well. I think one of the biggest things I found out with the norman piece is that it felt like I had taken what I made for the city gallery piece and split it in half. Where the past three stir stick installations had central forms that defined them, the norman piece feels more like a return to my interest in defining space the way the redux piece did in 2006. I also discovered the joy pf creating the intersecting planes that appear on one end of the piece. The intersecting planes felt a bit like I was finally letting out my inner maya lin. I will try my best to get some action shots during the opening tomorrow night, and look forward to getting some time back in the studio at home before heading off to The University of Memphis for the next stop on the tour.

norman day 7

the end of day seven, until eight.

norman day 6

managedto get




i am taking the evening off to go see matt&kim, in concert...until tomorrow.

day five of norman

so today is the day that I began to turn a corner with the form. I should be finished with the mechanical lift tomorrow morning and moving on to ladder and ground work from here on out.
one the best features of the lightwell is the ability for me to step way back from the work and begin to see the whole gesture and overall composition of the piece, something that is a rare a opportunity.




this is tomorrows first priority, bridging this corner and beginning to shape this edge, hopefully i can get these two points to meet without any major incidents.

norman day 4

what's a day 4? why it's for weavin stir sticks what else. until tomorrow

norman day 3

the sound of a tornado siren in the distance, apparently a tradition every friday at noon in norman. I am beginning to see some familiar shapes in this installation and am finally getting comfortable with the direction this one seems to be taking.

Norman Day two

day two , the sound of trains in the distance, thunderstorms, and crickets. Oh and some headway with the form. until tomorrow

day one in norman

day one in norman and the crate and materials arrived safely. I also found out that matt &kim are playing a concert here on monday, what a great break to look forward to.

more images of the adorned shack studio

essentially this is a 16x20 prefab structure on blocks transformed into my dream studio, at least for the next two years until we move again. This is what is waiting for me when I get back from norman.
the sheetrock is half finsihed, i blame my sheetrock guy, so i blame myself for not finishing before i left town for oklahoma. I did manage to get all four of the fluorescent lights wired up without electrocuting myself, which is a real accomplishment.

another one of my patented found-object-found-stereo-speaker combination npr receiver/ipod external speaker station assemblages.(patent pending)

currently this half of the idea wall is being used even before I finish hanging the other half of the idea wall. Most of those scraps of paper are for upcoming installations and gallery maps of various other works in progress.

leaning against the wall over there are some of the component parts of the vibrating coffee cup installation at redux, which will be recofigured for a show in the future, and the wood from the resonator box/cube is being re-used for a newer project.

pretty self explanatory.

well i have a plane to catch to the middle of america and some stir sticks waiting to be woven on the other side of that trip, but I know what I will be doing when I get back to south carolina...sheetrockin and workin in the adorned shack studio.

counting down to Norman, counting down to a finished studio

the u of O exhibition postcard design, courtesy of jonathan hils' facebook page.

some doodles on the wall of what I am thinking about the oklahoma piece.
Although I never follow a preconceived site plan too closely, I still like to make them in order to filter out any first impulses that might not suit the site I will be working in. such is the case with the norman piece. I fly out tuesday and by wednesday morning I should be on site and getting down to the business of making the piece for the u of oklahoma.
In the three months since finishing the city gallery piece I have seen a tremendous amount of upheaval and change in my personal life but not so much in my studio practice. the reason for this is because I am moving forward with the next half dozen or so installations and the couple of odd sculpture projects as well whether or not i have a formal studio situation fully resolved. Beginning the day after the city gallery piece opened i moved out of my charleston studio and into a nice transitional space(read spare bedroom for indoor work/carport for outdoor work) building up to working in my as yet unfinished columbia studio(which I have christened "the adorned shack studio" as a statement of what it is and a reference to a popular critique of modernist architecture).

a view of the adorned shack studio from the spare bedroom where I was working.

one of the first things I did in the adorned shack studio, which is still in need of complete sheetrock, and at the point this photo was taken complete lighting, was finish crating some woven panels for the norman oklahoma show. I have since these photos were taken finished the lighting and begun hanging sheetrock, but I can work anywhere and once the walls and the electrical were in it was good enough for me.
My approach to the norman piece is similar to my approach for the city gallery piece. I have made some woven panels ahead of time, but this time i had to ship them rather than deliver them myself. In a cool bit of unexpected symmetry these panels are also comprised of some of the sticks from the city gallery piece that were returned to me after the closing. Although the crowd at the closing reception made short order of the piece and took home many souvenirs I was left with enough boxes of "used" sticks that I was able to re-weave about ten 4footx7foot panels, which will give me enough "oh shit" material that I should be able to work comfortably over the next nine days in norman.

the panels have been sandwiched lovingly between layers of 4mil plastic sheeting then closed snuggly within a beautiful travel crate of my own design and making. The theory holds that as long as no one drives a fork lift through the crate they will get there in a usable fashion. If someone does drive a forklift through the crate then I will have one heck of a collaborative sculpture between myself and the fork lift driver.