A section of the texture I’ve been carving into my crane sculpture.

I’ve learned a lot from studying sand patterns at the beach over the past few months. I’m always astounded at how such beautiful formations result from the erosive interactions of just a handful of elements- the density of different sands, slope of the beach grade, the continual play of surf and drying effect of sunshine.

I try to apply these lessons as I texture the fared contours of my wooden crane sculpture for our Tsuru project, cutting parallel channels that follow the arc of the grain over compound curves. The process takes concentration but is easy going with my very sharp 1.5″ Japanese gouge. When the wooden form is finally cast in bronze, the ridges of my chisel marks will be slightly highlighted with burnishing and their line patterns will recall the feathers of a large soaring bird while remaining true to the inherent tautness of the mother material.

Beauty becomes intrinsic to a thing only when its pursuit is incidental to the process.

Tagged: aesthetics, craft philosophy, deep craft, public art, scott Constable, sonoma coast, wowhaus

I still refer to my original model of Tsuru as the full scale version nears completion. (photo by John Whalen)

I’ve been shaping the final contours of my wooden crane sculpture for our Tsuru project in Denver. It’s been an arduous but satisfying exercise carving a form in wood at this scale, mostly because the form progresses so slowly working primarily with hand tools. I’ve learned that I need to keep focused on a particular, formal strategy for the shape to emerge naturally, which has required serious mental and physical discipline. The whole process has been a kind of duration meditation. My strategy has been to begin with the joint, the intersection where the wings cross the torso and get the ‘core’ to make sense, then articulate the edges, then interpolate the surface contours connecting the core with the extremities. Over the next few days I will smooth the entire surface and begin to experiment with surface patterns and textures. Once the wooden form is complete it will be delivered to Artworks Foundry to be cast in bronze.

The near complete bird has about a 9′ wingspan

My arsenal of hand tools for carving the crane.

To learn more about the development of our Tsuru project, please click here.

Tagged: deep craft, public art, scott Constable, sculpture, tsuru, woodworking, wowhaus

Aiya created a beautiful patina for our Fluke sculpture at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry

Ene and I met with Aiya at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry to inspect the patina she’s been layering up on our Fluke sculpture before it’s sealed and delivered to Santa Cruz for installation. While the patina will be maintained by the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center where Fluke is to be sited, the combination of a marine climate and frequent, physical interaction with the public will eventually create its own patina. We directed Aiya to anticipate this in the way she layered her colors and burnished the high spots that will receive the most wear by touch, and we’re all extremely proud of the results.

To learn more about the development of our Fluke Project, please click here.

Tagged: artworks foundry, bronze, deep craft, Monterey Bay, monterey bay exploration center, sculpture, wowhaus

Our bronze Fluke sculpture at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry, ready for its patina

Hats off to Piero and Rose and the stellar crew at Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry, who have once again masterfully fabricated one of our projects in bronze. We stopped by the foundry today for a final inspection before our Fluke sculpture gets its patina in anticipation of installation within the next month in Santa Cruz. This is the first time we’ve seen the completed piece, and we were thrilled at the level of craftsmanship and detail, with no sign of welding seams. The foundry will apply a dark blueish patina within the next week, and we’ll return for a final inspection before the project is installed at the new  Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center.

the sculpture is designed to be climbed by children visiting the new Exploration Center

I’m anxious to see the texture develop over years of being touched

To learn more about the Fluke Project by wowhaus please click here and scroll down

Tagged: artworks foundry, monterey bay exploration center, public art, scott Constable, sculpture, wowhaus

A triad of Deep Deck longboards in American elm, ready for trucks and wheels

I’ve been making small batches of my Deep Deck longboard in the background of other projects in the shop, laying up a new deck each day, trimming, sanding and finishing the previous day’s cured laminations. Making decks at this scale has been a pleasant, fairly effortless task, a good way to wind down from carving the crane before I sweep up and call it a day.

I burn my ‘deep’ logo onto the undersides of the decks, and stamp the species and date.

In the coming year, I plan to scale up my Deep Deck production, and hope my limited production prototypes will help to generate interest. I’ll continue to make the decks by hand, but in larger batches, which should be easy once I invest in a few key tools to speed production. The decks will be offered in dated, limited editions, sequenced from locally sourced logs that I mill and dry myself; the scale of each tree will determine the scale of each production.

My next batch of decks will come from a 100 year old white oak.

I recently purchased the log that will yield my first large production run of decks, a giant white oak that was felled for safety reasons on the property of a historic, one room schoolhouse in Healdsburg, CA. It’s likely the tree was planted adjacent to the Felta schoolhouse when it was constructed in 1906. I look forward to researching the site and posting more about its history as the wood dries after I mill it in early 2012.

The Felta schoolhouse, built in 1906 in Healdsburg, California

Tagged: deep craft, deep deck, innovation, longboard, scott Constable, skate deck, skateboard, woodworking

My 9′ wooden crane sculpture shapes up in the studio.

One of the reasons I opted to carve the giant crane for our Tsuru Project in wood is that I get truer contours when shaping grain; there’s a dialogue between the material and the form and the shape just emerges as I slowly shave away material, working from the center outwards to the creature’s extremities. I can rely on the inner logic of the strategically stacked grain of my laminations, like a graduated volume, to know when I have surfaces just right. It’s a much slower process than working in foam, but somehow leads to a truer, more plausible form.

Here are a few other reasons I opt for carving wood in my sculpture projects:

• Waste is non-toxic and can be composted or burned to heat the studio

• It’s a great workout and I get to use my favorite hand tools- drawknives, spokeshaves, gouges, planes and adzes.

• The simplicity of repetitive handwork gives me time to think, relax and focus.

To learn more about the development of Tsuru, please click here and scroll down.

Tagged: carving, deep craft, public art, scott Constable, sculpture, tsuru, woodworking, wowhaus

The completed Community Table is just over 14′ long

Yesterday I installed the top to my Community Table for Shed. The table will spend the next year in Cindy’s studio warehouse in Healdsburg while the building is under construction nearby. By this time, the stickered wood comprising the base will be dry, and turned into auxiliary tabletops for the SHED cafe, to flank the Community Table, which will be installed with a new batch of freshly milled wood when the building is ready.

The completed table is just over 14′ long, with a base of pecan, stickered to dry, and a top of solid sycamore, milled from a Sacramento street tree. For now, the top has ‘live’ edges, and varies in width from about 38″ to about 46″. We may decide to trim at least one of the edges square, but will explore scenarios around the table before a decision is made. Next, I will finish the sycamore top in situ, with multiple coats of a durable, non-toxic polymer made from whey, a by-product of cheese manufacturing.

To read more about the details, process and background behind my Community Table for Shed, please click here.

the sapwood of sycamore has a lovely, lacey pattern

I inlaid an 8″ ‘butterfly key’ to keep a check from growing at the base of the slab.

Tagged: deep craft, furniture design, scott Constable, Shed, sustainability, woodworking

Two identical bases of green pecan, ready to receive the top, a giant slab of sycamore.

Whenever I design and make a new piece of furniture, I’m always keenly aware of how it will age, and how the piece might transform over time to encourage and support future, as yet unforeseeable patterns of use. I’ve been collecting choice local woods over the years, all neatly stickered in the barn, so my design process usually begins with rummaging through my piles for inspiration, making measurements and drawing directly onto the wood with white chalk. My primary criteria at this early stage is whether the piece of furniture I have in mind is the appropriate final destination for the wood- will it do the tree justice? I’ve always thought of my furniture as a way of extending the life of a tree, as a way of simultaneously storing and appreciating wood by putting it to good use; living daily life as an extension of making.

As I continue to collect and store local woods, and especially as I begin to mill trees myself, I’m becoming more attuned to the value of locally sourced, well-sawn, air-dried wood as a commodity. An increasingly scarce resource, fine wood is a good investment and increases dramatically in value, especially if it has the added cache of ecological responsibility, streaming from the urban forest, or as ‘horticultural salvage’. Because handmade furniture ultimately needs to compete in the marketplace with an increasingly sophisticated range of mass-market comparables, it can be challenging to offer a price point in proportion to the value of the material itself, which is a dilemma, even if the quality of the finished product is markedly higher. This is especially the case when ’studio furniture’ needs first and foremost to meet rigorous functional, as well as aesthetic requirements.

I milled grooves into the stickers for better air flow and to allow for movement.

While my way of thinking about wood-as-commodity has lived quietly in the background of most of my furniture design to date, I’ve been wanting do make a new body of work where the concept is front and center, both in the process of making and in the process of using the furniture. To this end, I’m grateful to my friend Cindy Daniel, who commissioned a ‘Community Table’ for Shed, her Healdsburg-based café/retail/community hub offering local foods, goods and quality wares. Shed is Cindy’s contemporary spin on the traditional country mercantile store, and I’ve enjoyed working with her over the past two years designing interior scenarios for the new building currently under construction, a large, open air metal structure designed by Mark Jensen.

My original thumbnail sketch for the Stickered Table

As much as my Community Table for Shed will serve as a gathering place in the café, it doubles as a process piece for the duration of the enterprise, establishing a kind of invented tradition. The table’s base consists of two nearly identical stacks of green pecan wood I recently milled from a dying tree, neatly stickered to allow the wood to naturally air-dry. The table’s top, a massive slab of sycamore, rests on top of the two piles, acting as a gravity clamp to keep the material from cupping. I milled V-grooves into the stickers to allow for better air flow and to decrease friction as the boards inevitably shrink. After one year, when the stock is adequately dry, the top will be lifted and the material removed and converted into functional wares for Shed, either to be used in the café or sold as product to customers. This first batch will likely make small table tops for the Shed café, slated to open in October 2012.. The two bases will then be re-constructed, stacked from freshly milled wood each year, that will in turn be made into a small production run of whatever item surfaces in the course of its drying.

I typically shellac and wax the ends of boards to prevent undo checking.

I like the idea of adding an element of ‘crowd-sourcing’ to the design development of an annual product, taking advantage of a constant flow of people gathered around the table while the material slowly cures beneath. I also look forward to maintaining an ongoing relationship with Shed as a kind of artisan-in-residence, collaborating with Cindy to design products that exemplify the Shed ethos.

Please click here to see the table with the top installed.

Tagged: appropriate technology, craft philosophy, deep craft, furniture design, green design, green woodworking, innovation, Jensen Architects, scott Constable, sculpture, Shed, slow design, sustainability, vernacular, woodworking

cast bronze sections of our Fluke sculpture are welded together over a steel armature

We paid a visit to Berkeley’s Artworks Foundry to inspect our Fluke sculpture as it nears completion. The foundry is doing an exquisite job fabricating the sculpture, which they will also install in Santa Cruz after the footing is poured and cured this December. Fluke was cast in eight individual sections that the foundry welded back together around a stainless steel armature for added strength. The welds are then ground and textured to make a  seamless surface to match our original positive form. Satisfied with the final shape, we spent some time discussing the patina, and decided to go with a deep, dark blueish tone with lighter veins and greenish highlights on the bumps and barnacles. I’ll be excited to see the foundry’s patina samples soon!

Scott and Aya discuss the patina

hollow bronze sections are attached to a stainless steel, structural core (photo by Artworks Foundy)

Tagged: artworks foundry, bronze, deep craft, Fluke, public art, scott Constable, sculpture, wowhaus

short-tailed albatross skull, found at Doran Beach

One of the delights of daily beach-combing is how the tides always seem to churn up something new to suit the mood, especially after a storm surge. The other day I discovered the decomposing carcass of a large sea bird I did not recognize. I removed the skull and took it home, macerated it in water, and after scrubbing it clean with a toothbrush was able to identify it as an short-tailed albatross, a species I did not know migrated over Bodega Bay. I’ve been thinking a lot about migratory birds as I sculpt a large whooping crane for our Tsuru Project, and this latest discovery reminded me how vulnerable these creatures can be to the perils of migration.

I’m adding the skull to my Tsuru-related research archive, a visual database I’m building of forms and images relating to my crane sculpture.  As the global population of whooping cranes hovers at around 250, it’s difficult to see them first hand, so my sculpture will be a hybridized interpretation of cranes and their metaphoric associations. One of my favorite references is a book called Cranes of the World I found recently at an antiquarian bookstore. Published by Winchester Press, the book was written by the dentist and amateur birdwatcher Lawrence Walkinshaw in 1973, when the population of whooping cranes was thought to be around 50. The book is chock full of Mr Walkinshaw’s photographs from his travels around the world on birding vacations with his family.

sandhill cranes, photo by Lawrence Walkinshaw (Cranes of the World, 1973)

whooping cranes, photo by Lawrence Walkinshaw (Cranes of the World, 1973)

Tagged: albatross, birding, deep craft, public art, scott Constable, whooping cranes, wowhaus