What we've been up to.

As you may've noticed, we've changed a few things. Not just our photographs, but the way we put them together.

The art has taken a slightly different direction recently, combining more digital effects and edits with the form of the art to give the photo to canvas transfers an effect more in line with the intent of the art. What is that intent? The idea(s) recently have centered around a reverse thermodynamics idea. That is, things are constantly taking a different shape, becoming more orderly and better than they've been. Instead of simply deteriorating into chaos, they're moving towards order and synergy with other things to become greater than they've been...

All that said, enjoy the new art and let us know what you think!

Bars 2.0

 So I’ve been throwing out hints over the past month about something new I’ve been working on. Hopefully, you’ve been able to come up with some sort of reasonable guess about wood + acrylic paint + wood stain + polyurethane + wood glue + a sander equaling some sort of wood sculpture. But if not, I’m telling you outright that I’ve started creating art with wood.

To give you a little background before I give you a look at what I created, I’ve had this idea in mind for at least a year, wondering how I could turn the geometry that’s in my head (see some of my paintings like Bars, Aerial, and Cave Painting) into something big and physical. Wood seemed like the right medium to translate my ideas into reality, so I started picking up some of the tools I needed to bridge ideas and reality. Toward that end, I got a chop saw around Christmas a year ago, but it wasn’t until recently I decided to go full bore after it – with things like school and life slowing me down in the interim.

[In case you’re curious, here’re a few things that spurred me on recently. Building out my Etsy shop made me explore Etsy a little more to see what else was out there, figure out who my competition was, and help me get ideas as to what would help me access the audience I was looking to share my art with. While doing that I found someone already making some beautiful wood sculpture, not dissimilar to what I’d had in mind all these months, which was obviously very well received. My first thought on seeing that was, “What are you waiting for?” Another recent impetus was the coming art installation at Local Coffee. I realized that that would be a place where I could showcase something like that effectively that would also be motivating as I had a deadline to hit to get everything ready.]

So a few weeks back, I made a few trips to the local home improvement store to pick out some materials that would fit what I was looking to create, and pick up some other small tools that I would need to bring it all together. You’ll get a general idea of what those all are in the pictures below, but just to summarize, my list included various wood slats of slightly different shapes, sizes, and types (poplar, oak, cedar, pine), a 1x6 to attach everything to, several different types of wood stain, wood glue, and a small orbital sander.

Upon getting everything home, and finally opening up that chop saw that’d been taking up space in my garage, I started measuring and cutting wood. There was nothing too precise about it, just making sure that I didn’t cut anything bigger than 4 feet long, as that might start to get unwieldy. Sanding was the next step, which while simple, was more time consuming than I’d expected (I guess I didn’t really have any specific expectations, but sanding all the surfaces of 60 or so 3 foot pieces of wood isn’t quick).

After that – over the next few nights – I spent time getting the pieces arranged just so, before I diving into the staining and painting of each piece. While the staining and painting itself took a few hours, it gave me enough time to realize – with the help of my much more detail oriented wife – that I had two problems.

The first issue was that what I was creating was going to be both heavy and bulky. With the outer dimensions of the piece at 4x4 feet, it wasn’t exactly compact. Furthermore, while a single wood slat or trim piece might be relatively light, dozens of them  along with a backing to bring them together was going to be in the 50-60 pounds range. Ultimately, I made the decision to cut the art into three separate pieces that could still be hung close enough together to work as one piece.

The second problem was how I was going to join all the pieces together. I could’ve used wood screws and/or nails, but then there were the issues of maintaining the integrity of the wood, avoiding pointy edges, and having to both fill and re-paint/re-stain the screw/nail holes. This was solved with a little interweb querying. Fact of the day: did you know that wood glue creates a bond between two pieces of wood that is actually stronger than the material of the wood itself? The wood will break before the joint. While I was initially skeptical, after watching a few YouTube videos and experimenting with some scraps I had around, I discovered that that is absolutely true. I stood on one of the scrap pieces and tried to pull the other piece(s) off of it and couldn’t do it.

So, with my major problems resolved and the bulk of the work done (excluding some touch up painting), the piece was finished [you can see it in the gallery below]. Although this type of art has definitely presented new challenges for me, it’s something that I’ll definitely continue to explore.

In one last shameless plug for the upcoming installation, Bars 2.0 will be debuting at Local Coffee here next week, so come see it in person and let me know what you think. 

 (Note - Click on the image below to scroll through the various images and stages of the piece.)

Art Begets Art

I've been thinking a lot lately (that business ethics class taught by a philosophy professor has sharpened my mind up in recent weeks) and wanted to start a dialogue with you all about why and how art and creativity seem to product more art and creativity.

So here are three thoughts I've had on why art begets art: 

1. One of my favorite things to do lately is to get on Google and search for "art" or "painting" or "sculpture" on Google images. When you do this (and I recommend that you do), a good portion of the time, most of the work is interesting, if not impressive. Sometimes, it's impressive. And sometimes, it's just downright inspiring. And since I'm not THE Creator - think creating ex nihilo - seeing these just makes me want to create. See the earlier post on my Wave painting, it pretty well sums up this little phenomena of mine. 

2. So some of you may have noticed the little hints I've been dropping, with various pictures of wood, wood glue, sanders, stains, and the like. While I can't give you the full scoop yet, I can say that all the painting and taking pictures I've been working on lately has opened me up artistically to the point that I want to create in other mediums, namely wood sculpture. It's been very fun and challenging to try out something new, realize what it takes to create certain things, and then keep going. Anyway, where I'm going with this is that I'm finding that the more I use my 'art' muscles (i.e. a certain part of my brain), the more art flows out.  More and more I find myself laying in bed late at night thinking of idea after idea of different things I want to do in whatever medium. And once it gets going, I've found it very difficult to stop (did I mention I've been VERY tired lately?).

It's kind of like water flowing out of a dam. The more I open the floodgates, the more water that comes out and the harder it is to close it back up. Another way to look at this might be exercising and/or lifting weights. I can't just go out and grab a 250 pound barbell and hang clean it (CrossFit people are nodding). But, as I begin to activate certain muscles and tissues in my body, and strengthen those, I find I'm able to do more and more than I ever thought I could, and not only that, but I want to do more.

3. All of this makes me wonder if we don't all have certain latent abilities for doing almost whatever we want in life. To be certain, some people have bigger buckets or capacity for certain things. Most people will never be as naturally gifted at basketball as Tim Duncan, for instance, but that doesn't mean we can't learn how to play, and even play well, to a certain degree. Another qualifier is obviously situational. I'm not going to be creating great works of art if I'm struggling just to feed myself on a given day (ahem, starving artists anyone?). However, I think that we've all been given basic abilities to do many, many different things.  And all it takes is the right nudge at the right time, and that little snowball of ability is careening down the hill as a landscape altering avalanche of change. This doesn't always turn out for good (see Hitler, Adolf), but it just goes to show what potential lies within us; what can happen when we really pursue something.

What do you think? (Let me know in the comments below!) 

A Good Magician Never Reveals...

Actually, I'm no magician. 

So here's a little look at how a typical beginning to end photograph process goes for me. Generally I see something that catches my eye, like this super old bottle of wood glue that I was trying to use.

I open it up and Voila!, the basis for another abstract photograph.

So the first thing I do, obviously is snap the picture. I make sure that the focus and the light are generally how I want (it's pretty difficult to fix bad focus and light in post-processing). It then goes into another application that I use for the initial post processing effects, like contrast and saturation adjustment - you can see the subtle differences in the second photo below (fyi - click on the image to see the next image in the series). I may add other touches, like specific color highlights, it just depends on the photo. 

Next, I'll put the image through a second application that let's me add other effects like textures and light leaks. Depending on what I'm trying to accomplish with the shot, I'll use several layers to make the image look just right (see the next few photos in the series). 

In this case, I felt like there were several good shots worth creating and sharing, so I simply went back to the second image and ran back through the process. 

And that's where you get photos like this little series on wood mastic.  

The Art is Everywhere

Well, it’s hump day. For me this means getting through one more night of (late) class so that I can get back to building more of this monster I’ve created to distribute art to the interested. It means trying to keep all the balls in the air. It means trying to continue to produce unique work while trying to keep up with everything else. This means that my itch to paint more and create other new and exciting things (which I’ll reveal soon) simply has to wait.

In spite of all this, the art is still there, waiting for someone to find it and show it to everyone else. It’s around every corner, in parking garages and car washes, in kitchens and front yards. For example:

Most of the time, it’s easy to glance at something, and just pass it by, especially in the rush of the day. But sometimes, when you catch it just right, and you remind yourself to slow down and appreciate it, good things can happen. Especially in the rush of the everyday.