{ Monthly Archives: November 2011 }
A Trip to the Foundry
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)
Flotsam of the Day
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)
Tsuru Update: Sculpting the Basswood Crane
The crane, roughed-out in layers of basswood, almost ready for shaping
I’ve been laminating layers of basswood to shape into a large crane sculpture, to be cast in bronze as the feature of our Tsuru Project in Denver. With a specific gravity of 0.32 and non-directional, knot-free grain, the wood is lightweight, stable, and carves easily, making it the perfect material to shape into a stylized bird at this scale. Of equal significance to me, basswood comes from the linden tree, a species that thrives in regions where crane historically migrate.
I always like to find congruence between the forms I make and their material origin, however oblique or obscure. Since pre-Christian times, the tree was thought to have divine, healing powers throughout Northern European cultures, and its wood has since been carved and painted into panels and alters for religious iconography. In late spring, the linden tree produces a blossom that famously attracts honeybees, who make a distinctive monofloral honey with the nectar. The tree has always been associated with love, and is the subject of countless romantic poems:
Under the Tilia Tree
On the open field,
where we two had our bed,
you still can see
lovely both
broken flowers and grass.
On the edge of the woods in a vale,
tandaradei,
sweetly sang the nightingale.
Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230)
A Good Poem
A good poem always ends
with an involuntary, shaky
inhale, a gasp
of sorts, but unique
to the occasion,
always a surprise,
the threshold of either
a tear or laughing, or
trying to make another poem-
(This is not a good poem)
Tsuru Update
the great white egret flock in the marshes around Bodega Harbor as they migrate south
The Dungeness crab season officially opened in Bodega Bay over the past weekend and the beaches have been teeming with life just after dawn- fishing boats on the bay, surfers on the south swell, pelicans skimming cresting waves, geese wedging overhead, sanderling and dowitcher combing the shoreline, suddenly strewn with bull kelp and crab carcasses. Ene and I typically walk a stretch of Doran Beach each morning with our dogs as the sun comes up, so we’ve developed a good feel for the patterns of migration, tides and seasonal shifts, most of our weather originating offshore.
Lately I’ve been drawn to the marshes around Bodega Harbor, where the great white egret takes seasonal shelter on the journey south. The birds typically cluster in large groups at the harbor’s shallow edge, where bulrush protects against wind and wave. Just as the sun rises over the hills to the east, the egret take flight in small groups and circle back, drying their wings and warming up in the sun, sometimes landing remotely to forage for breakfast. It’s a great place to study how these elegant birds move in flight; they take off, climb to soaring height and land within about 30 seconds, and the process takes about an hour, when the flock begins to disperse for a more substantial meal.
I’m preparing to carve a slightly larger-than-life sculpture of a whooping crane for our Tsuru project in Denver, and have been enjoying my morning field research before committing to a final form in wood. My sculpture will combine additive and subtractive techniques. I’ll laminate layers of basswood to approximate the shape of a soaring crane, then carve the form with chisels, rasps, adzes and draw-knives, probably adding a final layer in clay for texture. The wooden form will eventually be cast in bronze and, measuring about 8’ x 9’, will need to break down to transport to the foundry, so I’ll engineer a joint to allow for the wings to be separated from the outstretched body.
The Scale of Now
Stereo view of the sun by NASA, showing magnetic fields
As I develop a new body of work in wood, I find myself seeking the simple pleasure of being present in the moment with my material and tools. It’s the ultimate luxury for any artisan to act as one’s own client, which is where I began over twenty years ago. I’ve since internalized the rigors associated with producing ‘work for hire’, however free I’ve been in generating ideas along the way. Like all of my projects with wowhaus, my new body of work begins with a research phase, where I attempt to tap a set of commonly shared goals and parameters that ultimately shape a thing, place or situation, most often under strict constraints of budget, functionality and time.
Though I now have only occasional windows to indulge in exploring new ideas, I’ve earned the luxury of beginning at the beginning, which for me has to do with trying to understand what it means to ‘be present’; what exactly does ‘now’* mean when the usual constraints are removed almost entirely?
(*‘Now’ requires scale to convey meaning. Viewed as a conceptual sample-and-hold of everything happening simultaneously in the universe, the idea of ‘now’ at this scale would be meaningless, ironically resembling something more like eternity. The idea of ‘now’ needs to be understood at a human scale, in some ways as an attempt to frame or reset said scale in temporal terms. ‘Now’ does not and cannot actually exist, the flow of time and energy being in constant motion. Perhaps ‘now’ is more like an expanding membrane that defines what is perceived as ‘the present’, an edge, the shape of everything in flux at any given time. Regardless, ‘now’ can only ever be understood as a singular perspective, a consciously framed viewpoint of consciously moving in simultaneity with the rest of known reality. The perspective of ‘now’ carries most meaning when it is a consciously shared state with others, hence the value of memories and their proxy as photographs, music, or any experience of art.)