May/111
and another…
"F" table, 18x 35.5x 35.5, made with reclaimed materials
Christine and I were invited to participate in an exhibition called A is for… which opens in June at COCA (Center of Creative Arts), and we turned in our art work this weekend. It is a group exhibition featuring 26 artists who have been influenced in one way or another by their children. Each artist chose or was assigned a letter of the alphabet–we chose F and S because they are our daughter’s initials. In this way the exhibition will end up presenting the entire alphabet. A catalog is being produced, and the work will be auctioned off as a fundraiser for COCA.
After working my way through several designs, I settled on this low table. On the top, the F is created out of the mosaic of reclaimed painting palettes. Each leg is an F as well, made from yellow pine reclaimed from a shipping pallet. The pun is both convenient and meaningful. Palettes are a great symbol of ultimate potential, and function as a testing ground for the ideas of a painting. Pallets are facilitators, a means of transport and protection while moving from one point to another. In addition, Florence makes most of her own artwork at a low table like this one– a steady stream of drawings, collages, cut-outs, books, poems, and works which defy categorization. So I see these ideas at work in my relationship with my daughter as I try to help her discover her own potential and as I try to launch her gently into her own experience of the world.
Feb/110
winter storm
We’re in the midst of the large winter storm that has been sweeping the country today. We have several inches of ice pellets on the ground, and snow is expected within the hour. Evidently there are accumulations of up to 22″ to our southwest, but those are the only reliable weather reports in this region– the ones relating events that have already happened. The ice alone was enough for Washington University to cancel classes today, though. I believe it’s the first time that has happened since I came to St. Louis in 1995. I made good use of the time, building the last pieces of the dining room table. Now all that is left is final sanding, assembly of parts, and decisions regarding the stain and finish. You’ll still need to use your imagination to picture things right-side-up, but here are a few images:
Pedestal base top and bottom blanks, exploded view. I mirrored dado cuts to create the mortises.
Assembled pedestal before chamfering.
All parts in place-- I made the central stretcher today, which has a soft curve along its bottom edge (the top edge in the photo) and a through-tenon at each end.
Detail of the through-tenon. It will have a maple pin that runs from top to bottom, securing it in place.
Jan/111
table top
I’ve managed to make some progress on our new dining room table, so here are a few images of the table top. It’s a big one– nine feet two inches long, fifty inches wide, designed to compliment the architecture and woodwork in our dining room. I’m currently working on the table base and finish samples. I hope to be able to make use of the black walnut stain that I made this fall. The long boards were a bit tricky to deal with, especially since three of them are about eleven inches wide. As a result, one board had a slight edge flaw that prevented a clean glue-up on the last four inches or so. I used a repair technique that I learned from a book by Tage Frid. Simple and effective, although it is important to get the filler strip into place quickly– before the glue causes the wood to expand.
Final glue-up of the top, which is composed of seven quarter-sawn white oak boards.
Curves cut on short ends, just one inch of deflection across the width.
I used a Japanese saw to re-cut the imperfect part of this joint, and used a sliver of the same board to make the filler strip.
Filler strip glued in place.
Finished repair, trimmed and sanded.
Nov/101
recent work
lunette/flume, headstone/tomb (for Li Bai)
We had a Washington University faculty exhibition at the Des Lee Gallery last month, which was a good excuse to finish a new painting and try a different form of presentation. Instead of using the word “installation”, I might use something like “actualization”, as the point of the piece was to enhance the viewer’s awareness of the object-presence, material relationships, imaginative space, and historical (or anecdotal) reference with near simultaneity. This poses an interesting set of problems in a gallery context because of the associated conventions for displaying and interacting with the work. Lunette is painted on a sheet of sandpaper from a floor-sander, and features a wooden remnant from some plumbing work in my house. The painting is hung about ten inches lower than normal, a kind of “setting” towards the bench which is meant to emphasize their relationship while encouraging the viewer to lean over. I made the frame out of African Mahogany flooring reclaimed from my neighbor’s house. It is the same species of wood that I used to build the bench, wood which had been discarded because of the extreme warping and cupping that it had undergone.
Collectively the work is meant to invoke rather than portray the ingredients of the poet Li Bai’s anecdotal demise– intoxicated, falling from his boat and drowning while trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.