It has been a while since I added to the blog page – I blame inertia!
This odd bird was originally put together for the Lower Clarence Arts and Crafts Association (LCACVA) annual Small Works (8×8) Exhibition. The format of the show is that entrants buy an 8″ by 8″ canvas with their entry fee. The canvas must be used in the artwork, and the finished piece may be no larger than 8″ wide by 8″ high. There is no limit on how far the work may protrude from the frame, and the piece may be designed to as a sculpture, sitting flat on a plinth. Each year, the event has a different theme – this year the theme was ‘From My Window’.
I do like to have a little fun with this event. So my entry pictured a bird bursting through the canvas and out of the frame.
After the exhibition was over, I re-housed the odd bird – putting him on the shield shaped mount. Recycled, repurposed and christened ‘The Librarian’.
This was the first piece I’ve done that is more or less figurative, instead of abstract or geometric. The odd bird was carved from Jacaranda, and the glass eyes (and eyelashes) were provided by my wonderful Su from Xandolla Glass Art.
This year seems to have been crazy busy. A lot of my time was taken up with making for the ‘Out of the Forest’ exhibition – but surely I did more than that? I know I’m not the fastest maker out there, and I am retired, but I’m not that slow – or am I? Time to take stock.
After a dive into the various photo storage sites I have, plus a bit more, I realised that not all of my work has been recorded as images, and there are plenty of other domestic activities which get me out of the shed – lawns, baking days, shopping runs, duty days at Ferry Park, etc. However, we did get a fair bit done.
The big job in the first half of the year was to finish painting the house and to replace the flooring in four rooms in the house. We laid a hybrid floating floor system, and in two of the rooms, the flooring was laid in a herring bone pattern! The videos etc on the computer make it look easy. It might be easy if you have learned all the tricks of the trade – I had much to learn. I have no photos!
Realeaux Triangle in curly Mango
The first piece finished was the Realeaux Triangle in curly Mango. This piece was entered in the Wood Symphony Gallery ‘Turned and Sculpted’ on-line exhibition and was sold to a US based collector.
A Realeaux triangle is one of an interesting family of geometric shapes. The Realeaux forms all have a constant width or ‘diameter’, like a circle. Look it up on Wikipedia!
Bud Form – Silky Oak
I finished another sculpture in the first half – a small ‘Bud Form’ in Silky Oak. This was pretty much a prototype for a larger piece in curly Mango that has only just been started!
I spent a bit of time giving a colleague and fellow Clarence Valley Woodworker a hand to make his first piece of furniture – a rocking cradle for his soon to be born grandson. While this was happening, I began working on a hall table.
From around May through September, I was working on pieces for the exhibition.
Realeaux Triangle #2
First off was a smaller Realeaux triangle – also in curly Mango. This piece was made partly in response to a query from Wood Symphony Gallery.
Sci-fi Tri-spoke sculpture – curly Mango
The ‘Sci-Fi Tri-spoke’ came from an idea I saw on Pinterest, but significantly altered and developed until the original is only vaguely recognisable. The shape of piece reminds me of spaceships in old sci-fi comics when I was kid. This was a challenging piece to build. Although the blank was one heavy billet of mango wood, the piece is surprisingly light.
Hall table – Sily Oak inlaid with butterfly keys and a dragonfly
I had made a similar table in Banksia – this one was from a piece of Silky Oak that had been leaning against the wall of my shed for a few years. It had several small fissures in the top – these were filled with resin, then rows of Red Cedar butterfly keys were inlaid. The design required balance, so a Dragon fly was inlaid in the right hand side. This piece sold soon after the exhibition closed.
This clock and whiskey cabinet had been on my to-do list for a few years. Red Silky Oak, Red Cedar and some Camphor Laurel for the cabinet back. On the card, it says that the clock would suit a temperance household…
A boxed set – matching live edged boxes in Tipuana with glass by Su Bishop
A ‘Boxed Set’ or a set of boxes. Five boxes in Tipuana, lined with Jacaranda, and topped with glass by the wonderful Su Bishop of Xandolla Glass Art. I put them into the ‘Out of the Forest’ exhibition as a set, not for sale seperately. The Tipuana has a black stain in the sapwood, and the creamy heartwood will redden with time. The boxes have a live edge all round, and mitres of Australian Red Cedar.
Mobius #7 – Mango
Another Mobius piece, this one exploring the relationship between inside and outside diameters. I spent a lot of time chasing the lines and curves. This was made for the ‘Out of the Forest’ exhibition. Curly Mango, finished tung oil and wax. Happy with that.
Once the work for the ‘Out of the Forest’ exhibition was done and dusted, it was back to the accumulated backlog of stuff for our house and other work I promised for others.
Caravan Shelter
The first of these jobs was to build a shelter to protect the caravan from weather damage – especially the effects of sun and hailstorms. The shelter replaces an existing structure which had a few issues. The shelter was delivered in kit form. I demolished the existing structure, excavated and poured the footings, and with the help of a neighbour (thanks Tim Gherke!) erected the shed. There were plenty of lessons to learn along the way. We still have to put some drainage in place – but that will come next year.
Handrail on the deck outside Su’s shed.
Next was a handrail around the deck on Su’s shed. The main plan was to provide a good handrail to go up and down the steps to make it safer. Su is prone to a bout of vertigo from time to time. The handrail was made from recycled treated pine, and is really quite solid.
Kitchen bench and cabinet – Camphor Laurel, Flooded Gum and laminated pine.
The last big job to get finished was the kitchen bench and cabinet under for Su. Su chose the Camphor Laurel slabs back in March, but the ‘Out of the Forest’ show meant that nothing got done for the next seven months. The cabinet houses a small electric oven that we often use instead of the big oven for sheet bakes, warming food, etc. There is also space for recipe books, and odds and sods that normally litter the house. The cabinet is made from laminated pine, with a white washed paint finish, sealed with a flat water based poly sealer. The slabs for the bench were flattened and thicknessed by hand. The brackets and butterfly keys are Flooded Gum.
There are, of course, numerous other small jobs that got done along the way that I’ve ignored.
It’s easy to forget our achievements. We seem to be more inclined to remember the problems, the failures or other misadventures. It wasn’t until collected all of these photos that I began to appreciate the output. We should all take the time to remind ourselves of our achievements and the good things we’ve done. Do it now!
I was in a proper exhibition in a proper art gallery!
I am 74 year old retired engineer who grew up on a farm and worked with machinery almost as soon as I could walk. As a young man, I rode and raced motorcycles, and worked in motorcycle workshops, before I returned to Universty studies and became a professional engineer. I have no formal art training – my schooling was all mathematics and sciences. If you had suggested to a 20 year old me that I would sell art works through a gallery, I would have called you a crackpot. But here we are!
Out of the Forest was a three man exhibition – Pat Johnson, Andrew Grady and myself – woodworkers all.
Pat Johnson is a well known and highly regarded professional wood turner. Pat has worked demonstrating wood turning in the US and throughout Australia. Pat’s father-in-law taught him how to turn wood, and Pat was a good learner. His output ranges from commercial production (turning balustrades and the like for builders, through craft markets (pepper grinders, bowls and platters) through art pieces produced to sell in galleries. Pat calls himself The Travelling Woodturner and has been known to take his workshop with him as he traveled around Australia.
Pat Johnson’s wonderful mushroom farm!
Andrew Grady is a woodworker with many years of experience. He is part saw miller, part cabinet maker. He has a well equipped workshop, with some chunky machinery. He is also a man of many talents, having worked for many years in the oil drilling industry, with expertise in safety operations.
Andrew’s Love Seat from Jacaranda with Purpleheart inlays
I have a lot less experience as a woodworker! When we were first married, we had three kids and not much income. I made furniture that we needed – mostly chipboard and hardware shop pine. I did some renovations to the houses we lived in. I had the basic skills with tools, but no training in woodwork. It wasn’t until about 2004 or so that I started to take woodwork more seriously. I got some better tools, and I read a lot about furniture design and construction. Every project involved something new, something I had never tried before, and with every project, my skills (and tools) got better. At some point, I worked out that if I was going to put all that effort into a project, I might as well use good timber. Then about 4 years ago, I did a brief workshop on wood carving and sculpture.
Mobius #7 – Curly Mango
I met Pat and Andrew when I joined the Clarence Valley Woodworkers Association (then known as the Northern Rivers Woodworkers Association). Pat and Andrew are both long time members – I was new in the district. Around that time, Mark McIntyre and Steve Pickering started up the Coldstream Gallery Ulmarra, and were looking for artists. Pat, Andrew and I sold our work through the gallery from then. Initially, I was just selling bookmarks and small treen, but as I got more adventurous, Coldstream Gallery started to sell some of my boxes and sculptural pieces.
Wall piece – various timbers
Around February this year, Pat asked me to join he and Andrew in an exhibition that he was arranging for the Coldstream Gallery’s exhibition space, The Black Room. The exhibition was scheduled for late August, early September. My first reaction bordered on panic – there was a lot of work to be done, pieces to make, and only six months or so. When the second wave of Covid ramped up, lockdowns required that the exhibition be postponed. As it happened, all three of us needed the extra time to get our pieces made and finished. We each produced four or five major pieces, and a number of smaller pieces.
Pat’s Banksia Vase
The exhibition kicked off on Saturday 9 October. A few days before hand, we dropped our work off the gallery. I got my pieces there in a single trip, and while I was unloading, Andrew arrived with a couple of his large pieces. Andrew’s pieces were stunning, especially the red cedar and glass coffee table!
Andrew’s Burl Table – Red Cedar
The first time I saw the exhibition assembled was when I turned up for the opening on the Saturday morning – and I was blown away! It looked fabulous. The collection of pieces that had been worked on for six months or more was stunning. I couldn’t believe I was part of this! And the comments from visitors were just great!
Pat’s extraordinary Dragon Fly – Ebony
Outside the gallery, the state was still under Covid restrictions, and travellers were staying away, so numbers were down. None the less, we did have some good sales. The gallery offered to let us extend the exhibition for a few more weeks. According to the gallery, the exhibition was very well received, and even in the last week, people were visiting the gallery to see the exhibition.
Andrew’s Chevelle Mirror – Jacaranda
When I agreed to join the exhibition, I knew that it would involve six months of concerted effort, and very little else would be done around the house. Since the exhibition ended, I have been in catch up mode. However, I still have a backlog of pieces I would like to make, and I look forward to getting back to my work early next year.
A clock… Silky OakWith a secret…
Being part of the exhibition turned out to be a very exciting thing. The feed back (and sales) were just great. The challenge of putting together the pieces and getting them done was significant, and I didn’t get to make all the pieces I wanted to make, but I am proud of the work we put on display.
Hall table – Silky Oak
Would I do it again? Yes – but with about 12 months lead time!
Who knows?
Box Set – Tipuana, glass by Su Bishop
Apologies for the quality of the photographs!All of the in-gallery shots were taken using a mobile telephone as a camera. I have said before that as a camera, a mobile phone is useful for happy snaps at children’s parties. I se no reason to change my view.
The internet is full of rabbit holes – the kind that lead to all kinds of mysterious and fascinating places. I came across an interesting image which lead me to the work of Michael Foster. Michael is Breezy Hill Turning, and he has a curiosity about the mathematics and sculpted surfaces.
In his website, Michael states that he has “exploring the intersection of math and sculpture. One of the really cool things that I have discovered is the class of math objects called minimal surfaces. These are surfaces that describe the least amount of surface area that will connect a circumscribed area.”
A soap bubble or film is a natural minimal surface. The forces of surface tension will always try to adopt a state of minimum energy – and that is a soap film that occupies the minimum area for a given volume or other constraint. Soap bubbles are spherical, because a sphere is the surface that encloses a given volume with the least surface area.
But soap films can get much more interesting when they are not spherical. If you pick up a film of soap on a flat wire loop, the soap film will form a flat film – the least area of film that conforms to the boundary of the wire loop. And if the loop is twisted out of flat, you get a curved surface that is a new minimum surface.
Now Michael Foster is a wood turner. His sculptures start with a turned form on which the boundaries are drawn. He then sculpts the surfaces that join those boundaries as a minimal form, resulting in spectacular swirling curved surfaces. Think of the marking on a tennis ball – and imagine a soap film that connects that curve.
Michael Foster – Enneper II – Minimal surface
Then there are various special classes of minimal surfaces – helicoids and catenoids, and many named after the mathematician who described them – Enneper, Hennenberg, Bour, Scherk, Schwartz, Costa, Reiman, etc – conjectures, theorems, proofs and laws. Plateau’s laws describe the behavior of soap bubbles and films. And then there is the Double Bubble Conjecture…
The understanding of these shapes is enough to give serious mathematicians a serious head-spin, but they do make beautiful shapes.
Michael Foster – Scherk Tower VI – a five story saddled towerMichael Foster – Convoluted – A 5 story Scherk tower that has 3 perforations on each level like Tower IV with 90 degrees of twist and then the whole tower bent 360 degrees into a torus.Michael Foster – The Tao of Geometry- Based on Infinite loop trefoil.Michael Foster – Costa Hoffman Meeks- A minimal surface named for the mathematicians that described it mathematically.Michael Foster – Cayley’s Nodal Surface – a 3D representation of the formula wxy+xyz+yzw+zwx=0A double bubble surface – photo by Brocken Inaglory
Finally got this one finished! – Camphor Laurel and Oregon (Douglas Fir)
I started it back in October 2019 – seems like a lifetime ago… Since then, there were plenty of interruptions. However I had the piece carved and sanded by March.
Since then, it has spent a few months sitting on top of a cupboard while I dithered about the base. I tried a couple of different ideas, but finally stumbled across the idea of using Oregon (known in USA as Douglas Fir, also known in Australia as the Irish timber). The base has been carved then charred before finishing with oil and wax, giving an interesting texture and grain pattern.
Overall, I’m kind of happy with it. The shape was limited by the size of the camphor laurel billet I started with, so the twist is a little cramped, but an interesting experiment all the same.
‘Essence of Brooms Head’ – Coastal Cypress and Brooms Head beach rock
Pleased to have been awarded a Highly Commended for the Lower Clarence Valley Art and Craft Association’s Phyllis Austin Award. Th Phyllis Austin Award is an annual event, entry limited to LCVACA members. The winner gets to be custodian of a John van der Kolk sculpture (The Sleeping Platypus) for a year. (I would love to have a piece by John van der Kolk in our home – even if it is only for a year!)
The award was named for a lady who was the driving force in getting the funding for the LCVACA gallery – the Ferry Park Gallery. Unfortunately, poor health took her before the gallery was opened, but she is remembered by this award. One of the unusual aspects of this award is that it is open to a very broad range of crafts and art. Weaving, spinning, quilting, embroidery, pottery, woodwork, jewellery, sculpture as well as painted art in various mediums, print making and so on – it would be very difficult to judge!
This year’s judge was Niomi Sands, Director of the Grafton Regional Gallery. Niomi selected jeweler and silversmith Bobbie Winger to receive the Phyllis Austin Award and to be custodian of the Sleeping Platypus for the next year.
Niomi handed out two Highly Commended awards – one to weaver Chris Lokes, and the other to me for my ‘Essence of Brooms Head’. Delighted!
One of the blogs that I follow is ‘Joel’s Blog at TFWW’. Joel Moskowitz is the owner of Tools For Working Wood, in Brooklyn, NY, USA. The most recent blog, ‘A Visit to the Newark Museum’, concerns a trip Joel made to the said museum. The subject matter is quite wide ranging and well worth the read. The point of interest here is the reference he made, and the link enclosed in the blog, to artist Preston Singletary.
Check it out. Go into the link, and read about this man and his work. His website and the images of his work will tell you more about him than I ever can.
Meet Mobius #5 – also known as The Paperclip. I started work on this fellow back in November when I was demonstrating at the Clarence Valley Woodworkers annual Jacaranda Exhibition, and was finished in time for the Lower Clarence Arts and Crafts Assocation’s Phylis Austin event.
Today, I took him to Coldstream Gallery – he is for sale. But on the way, it occurred to me that I hadn’t taken a photo of him – shock and horror! Out with the mobile phone and gallery lighting – one crap photo later… I know lots of folks take lots of photos with mobile phones – mobile devices in general – and some of them are very good. But lots are dreadful. For a phone, a mobile takes a pretty good picture, but is isn’t a camera.
Thinking that I only had the crap photo, I posted on social media – better something than nothing. Later this evening, as I was fossicking though some files on the computer – I found a bunch of proper photos, including this one. OK – technically not brilliant, but way better than the crap photo…
Post again…
(I hate it when other folks fill the bandwith with their latest efforts…)
Ferry Park Gallery is a local community gallery, run by the Lower Clarence Arts and Crafts Association. The gallery came about after fundraising and lobbying by the association members, who raised a substantial sum of money for the construction of a dedicated facility between the highway and the Clarence River.
The gallery exhibits the work of members, and exhibiting members take their turn to staff the gallery. Everything is done by exhibitors and volunteers!
One of the features of the gallery is a space devoted to ‘Artist of the Month’. Members nominate, and are allocated a month to display their works.
I never intended to nominate for Artist of the Month. Being AOTM requires a significant commitment in making stock and also in providing a good display. The benefit is that the AOTM has his work in the best location in the gallery, with (potentially) increased sales. The downside is that making stock and replacing sold stock takes a lot of work!
Despite that, here I am, AOTM in conjunction with the wonderful Lynne Gehrke, artist and horsewoman.
I spent half or December and all of January making treen – boxes and plates and turned dishes and trivets and more. We also pulled out a bunch of work that Su and I did together – jewellery and sculptural pieces. In the end, I’m happy with the display – I think we did it justice.
It will be a couple of years before I am eligble to be AOTM again, but next time, Su and I will do a joint display.
Shed on a One Acre Block 