1. I almost died. 2. But I didn't. WOOT. 3. Some New work!

I've been working on a quite a few new things. It has been a while since I updated, but I kind of like this format so giving it a try again. My family has been through some serious health issues the last few  years - In my case I was in a really bad accident in 2015. I rolled a 1947 Willy's jeep on a busy highway. I was working on restoring it, but it is now a crumpled wreck. I did have a rollbar, but it was old and small. However, it kept me alive, barely. 17 broken bones including three vertebrae, ribs, fingers. My fingers on my right hand were mangled. I was unable to carve/scuplt/ or even hold a pencil hardly for months. My hand will never be the same. My index finger is a lumpy mass of barely movable tissue, and will never recover. So needless to say, by the time I was healed, I was super nervous to get back to work. What if I was no longer able to handle a knife, or use an adze with precision. What if I couldn't use my chisels? Would I still be able to engrave? The primitive method I use is very physical, and finger/forearm strength & control is critical. So with that going on plus major health issues with the rest of my family, I avoided the studio for a while, I finally got over my what ifs and decided to start trying again. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Apparently I've adapted. I don't even notice my mangled finger. Thus I am back in the saddle and have been creating new pieces that last few months.  I have a couple pieces for sale on the FOR SALE page (weird I know). In addition to those items, I am working on an octopus sun mask, an undersea octomonster, and a few other things. 

Sun Octopus in progress. Port Orford Cedar, should be about 3.5' in diameter when completed. He will have  8 octo sun rays. 4 large, for small between the 4 pictured below. All eyes will have brightly polished and engraved copper eyes. I will be offering him for sale at about $2700-$3,000.  

Almost halfway! Suckers take forever. Tedious work. But it must be done correctly.

Making progress- First ray mostly complete:

Starting out- basic sun shape completed, working on sun octo ray disposition:

Octomonster- I think I'll call him Undersea Doug. I'll probably offer him at around the $300-$400 range when complete. He's maple, port orford cedar, a ton of pins holding him together, copper & Brass. I'm about 3/4's of the way, but it will take a few days to finish painting. Lots of layers here. So far I have painted the base coat. In addition to his aged copper auric crown, he will have a shiny brass engraved belt buckle. Here are a few in progress pictures:

new old things

Demon fairy skull.

Jewelry box- frog, polliwogs, mosquito, dragonfly, salmon. $400

A recent bow commissioned by the photographers Jarmo Pohjaniemi and Doug Hill. I made it in a little less than two weeks so it's more of a prop. It was functional, if only just:

Working on a couple of very large things:
First, a lowbrow series of four sculptures I am calling "Gang of Four": Grasshopper, Beetle, Ladybug and Spider. Coming in July 2013.

Also working on a series of NW Coast sun/moon masks showing birth to old age, hopefully completed by April 2013.  I plan to document the entire process here a little better than I have the last year. A lot better rather.  We shall see.

Bear Mask

Bear Mask, Cedar, lots of paint.

 

Sold! (and new works in progress)

Everything. All gone- except the old woman mask. Time to get busy again. Finally have room to make the enormous sun mask I have in mind.  I am also going to work on some pipes and a weird little statuette of a bird thing (non NW Coast). I think the tusk is repairable, if nothing else I will just make it look very olde.

 Here is the bird statuette so far. I plan to add quite a bit to it, along with much longer skinny legs, maybe wings, refine the carving quite a bit more, etc.:

Bad at this

I really couldn't be worse at updating this thing could I?

But when things are just going along it bores me to post about it and I assume it bores everyone else too.  Maybe I am wrong and I should post everything that happens. Either way here is a summary of the last 3 months. Sold some stuff, made some stuff, finished a customer's gun stock. Had problems welding the brass butt plate, got mad and had a machine shop do it for an extortionate  amount- thus killing any profit margin.

The only thing of note is that I finished an engraved copper bracelet and gave it to my daughter for her 12th birthday. Frog. I will be working on various silver and copper jewelry over the next month. Maybe, if you are real lucky and stuff, I will take a picture and post it. Don't hold your breath.

Thunderbird hunts Orca and the Art Walk

It is finished and I think I like the painted version. I liked  plain wood as well. I started painting it during the Shady Cove Art Walk a few weekends ago, and finished it tonight.  (If you want a wall panel without paint, just look a couple posts down. It will look about like that.) I had a nice old couple insist I should not paint it, and more importantly the Hawaiian Ice guy, but it just was not designed to be plain wood; so in this case I decided to go with my original idea. Of course, had they offered to buy it I would have sold it unpainted.

I have some Port Orford Cedar left, I am thinking of making a long story panel, or a three parter. Maybe morning, noon and evening suns or something-- done in just lightly stained wood.














The show was a blast, but it was too hot! 103 on Saturday and 99 on Sunday. No way I am going to do that again- the wood just can't take it. Too bad :(   On another positive note, it was our 17th anniversary. We had a lot of fun hanging out  in our 1960 Shasta trailer, selling art by the river. I sure do like my wife.

I may do the Sisters Harvest Faire in October- it sounds like a lot of fun. I dig these outdoor festivals.

More photos coming soon!

Many of you have asked for more photos to be available online- both new stuff and old stuff- I am going to attempt to set up a scrolling account through Flickr or DeviantArt. We shall see how it goes...

I finished painting the Thunderbird wall panel. I will add it to the feed if I can figure it out.


EDIT: I have managed to get Flickr working. Most of the slideshow is grabbed out of facebook so not much new. Tonight I will go crazy, including pictures of the wall panel. I need to experiement with the copper dagger as far as photos go, the ones I have taken so far do not look good at all.

Dragonfly Sun Mask: mark II and new wall panel

This is the finished product, finally. It took me a while to finish because a) I got busy working on other things due to the fact that b) I spilled the off white paint I mixed to just the right tone, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to match the whites if there wasn't enough to finish left in the bottom of the jar. Finally I gave up the avoidance technique, and tried to salvage the approximately two tablespoons of paint that was left. I added a little water and hoped the thin paint would cover adequately. For once I was lucky. It would have added hours of time to have to repaint all of the white to match tones. Because this mask does not include salmon with abalone eyes around the rim, I decided to do a little more elaborate painting on the frog. I think it would have been to busy and cluttered had I done that on "Mark I."



















On to the wall panel. Typically when I have done wall panels in teh past, I have attempted to tell a story. In this one, not so much. It just struck me one day that it was quite interesting that a Thunderbird likes to snack on Killer Whales the way they like to snack on seals. I am really liking this one. I am not sure if I am going to paint it yet or leave it natural wood. I think I will just live with it for a few more days before I decide.
I finished the copper dagger. My opinion of it is "meh." I started the turtle bowl too. I will post pics next time.

Murals!

I am working on some tennis backboard murals for our city parks, with the delightful help of the local Campfire USA kids. The backboards themselves are in pretty bad shape, and required quite a bit of prep work. They are 10'x6' and the wood is cracking and peeling off. Not the best surface, but what the heck.
This is the first of three.










And.. after the initial stages:




I decided to go with a killer whale design on this one. I drew out the basic picture then did a "paint by color code" chart for the kids. They whipped out the initial painting pretty quick.











Here is the "finished" product.













I then spent some time cleaning it up, adding a little detail, and covering it with a nice layer of spar varnish, what with the tennis balls to be smacked against it.

Here it is finished. It has yet to be mounted at the tennis courts.
Next mural will be a frog eating a bug.

I have been busy

But not in a "busy doing art" kind of way, but a "work/get girls ready for Taiwan/ sleep" kind of way. There, that is my excuse. I have made little progress in the last month.
Here are a couple pictures- The Dragonfly is about half painted. THe dark blob in the lower corner is Olive the Lab, she must be in all photos.



Rather than just mention the copper dagger here is a picture of the blade. Note the patina. Secret formula. :)



I will be by myself for almost three weeks while my family is overseas. I have big plans for finishing my current projects and starting a couple new ones.

Yes I have been working

But not too much to show for it yet. I was able to get some red cedar bark for the many beaked hamatsa, I will be glad to see it completed. I broke the jaw on the upper beak at the show though, bummer.

I should have the copper dagger and the dragonfly finished within another week or so, I will post pics then.

Ready as I am going to get

So, no copper dagger. Just ran out of time. The blade is finished, but the handle requires too much work to finish at the show. Oh well.
The dragonfly sun mask is ready to be painted, but I will do that at the show. Thanks to Bayley and Channing for helping me sand!
The many beaked Hamatsa raven is painted. All it requires is a little touch up, and the hair and cedar bark. Oh yeah, and the little skulls dangling. I will carve those up at the show, out of alder probably, and attach them to the hair.


No turtle bowl. Oh well, I will just do that with the dagger when I get home.
Instead of the turtle bowl, I will be doing a panel sculpture of Thunderbird attacking lunch, in this case a killer whale, while the sun looks on. I will be using a technique by one of my favorite deceased artists, and a good friend of my Uncle's, Lelooska. He did a fantastic small sculpture about 15 years ago called "Puffins on a Rock." I am going to copy his use of wavy water in that piece, to an extent.

with white paint.

Notice the sad, neglected Colnago.