Aug/110
Variety Show
Re-installing the central dining room fixture-- the only time you'll actually see the fluted glass interior.
Installed, showing two of the four peripheral globes.
One of the great things about summer is that I can pursue a wider variety of projects than the school year allows. Five years ago I removed the central light fixture from our dining room while redoing the ceiling. This summer I finally got around to rewiring the fixture and replacing the sockets, as the insulation had degraded a bit since 1905. The fixture is an incredible piece of craftsmanship, composed of eleven different pieces of bronze and two pieces of glass. I had to make a template to locate the four corner loops, which actually only bears weight when the brass socket assembly is removed. This is the finest fixture in the house, and I trust that it will now be in good service for another hundred years.
The workmanship on that metal reminded me of a painting that I made for a friend last year, the image of which I am just now posting. It is a “portrait” of his gorgeous old Model 1860 Henry Rifle (.44 caliber rim fire, this one manufactured in 1862). It features a receiver engraved with “running deer pattern number one” by Samuel Hoggson, a factory engraver for Henry Repeating Rifles. But of course I was just as attracted to the figured walnut stock. 
Detail of the engraving.
The painting was an interesting challenge, as I wanted to have the rifle convincingly immersed in a landscape that I fabricated from a few photographs and my own memory of life in the Southwest. I was able to paint the rifle from observation, but used an Italian replica for most of the work because it made me nervous having the original laying around in the studio. I enjoy having plenty of room for imagination, innovation, and problem-solving in paintings. I made the rustic frame by request, and was happy with the way that the silvery, weathered surface of the white oak offset the image.
Which brings us back to wood. This summer I was able to retrieve this old church pew, which after some repair and refinishing has become the favored place to drop whatever you are carrying when you come in our front door. Although I haven’t yet been able to confirm it, I believe that the pew is made of American Chestnut. It is always a pleasure to breathe a bit more life into beautiful and useful things, but that would be even more significant “win” to me if this were in fact a remnant of the pre-blight riches that once dominated our eastern forests. I used my home-made black walnut stain to color the piece, sealed it with a thin coat of shellac, and then applied three coats of wipe-on polyurethane.
An old pew, repaired and refinished.
Jul/110
Space B’s Greatest Hits: The Chelsea Years
John Sarra, throw it higher, oil on panel, 11 x 14, 2011
If you happen to be in New York this summer, stop by to check out Space B’s Gallery’s new location at 59 Franklin Street in TriBeCa. On view is Space B’s Greatest Hits: The Chelsea Years, which features work by Jeff Bailey, Conrad Bakker, Daniel Caspera, Marc Connor, Randy Gilmore, Alex Menocal, Mary Anna Pomonis, John Sarra, Alex Schuchard, Patrick Smith, John Coyle Steinbrunner, and Erik Wicker. The exhibition continues through the end of August. Gallery hours: Friday & Saturday 12:00-6:00 and by appointment. Call Alex at 917-518-2385.
Jul/110
summer reading
Need atmosphere? Just add local wild-fires, and you've got a great excuse to stay indoors and read.
We’ve had our annual time in the woods and at the beach, and here are a few highlights from my reading:
CROCUS
For months now I am bleak and primitive.
The congregation of crows refutes
the resurrection of anything.
I sleep all day, drink all night.
I believe only in certainty of equations,
the curvature of space, words used merely for incantation.
This cold wind I sway in, this continual lent–
But wait, the first crocus
throws dirt.
–Nancy K. Pearson, Two Minutes of Light
ARCHITECTURE
I peer into Japanese characters
as into faraway buildings
cut from the mind’s trees.
In the late afternoon a small bird
shakes a branch, lets drop a white splash.
In the wind, in the rain,
the delicate wire cage glistens,
empty of suet.
Poetry’s not window-cleaning.
It breaks the glass.
–Chase Twichell, The Snow Watcher
Anthology
That evening I was reading an anthology.
Scarlet clouds grazed outside my window.
The spent day fled to a museum.
And you– who are you?
I don’t know. I didn’t know
if I was born for gladness?
Sorrow? Patient waiting?
In dusk’s pure air
I read an anthology.
Ancient poets lived in me, singing.
–Adam Zagajewski, Mysticism for Beginners
Don’t ask us for the word to frame
our shapeless spirit on all sides,
and proclaim it in letters of fire to shine
like a lone crocus in a dusty field.
Ah, the man who walks secure,
a friend to others and himself,
indifferent that high summer prints
his shadow on a peeling wall!
Don’t ask us for the phrase that can open worlds,
just a few gnarled syllables, dry like a branch.
This, today, is all that we can tell you:
what we are not, what we do not want.
– Eugenio Montale, Cuttlefish Bones
Jun/110
refreshed
Red oak base moldings, reclaimed/belt sanded/planed
I’ve been busy in the studio since school ended, with new sets of oil and ink paintings underway. The wood shop has been getting plenty of use as well. I was fortunate to reclaim several truck loads of red oak base moldings which were otherwise destined for the landfill. There are plenty of nails to remove but the wood cleans up well, as you can see in the photo above. Because the oak is red and flat sawn, there is not much to compel a full clean-up. Instead, the wood tends to hold more life in the median state– refreshed without being made new, cleaned up without being stripped of its history. During this process I happened to be reading Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, and came across the following resonant passage:
The spring flood brings us more than high adventure; it brings likewise an unpredictable miscellany of floatable objects pilfered from upriver farms. An old board stranded on our meadow has, to us, twice the value of the same piece new from the lumberyard. Each old board has its own individual history, always unknown, but always to some degree guessable from the kind of wood, its dimensions, its nails, screws, or paint, its finish or the lack of it, its wear or decay. One can even guess, from the abrasion of its edges and ends on sandbars, how many floods have carried it in years past.
Our lumber pile, recruited entirely from the river, is thus not only a collection of personalities, but an anthology of human strivings in upriver farms and forests. The autobiography of an old board is a kind of literature not yet taught on campuses, but any riverbank farm is a library where he who hammers or saws may read at will. Come high water, there is always an accession of new books.