Thought I would post my newest work. I made three of these little gems and they are directly related to some of the geometry I am using in my current large project (to be completed by the end of the year).


I shot a short video
Me and a friend were playing around with video documenting some of my processes and took some footage while turning the tops of this edition. And seeing as it was from this piece, I thought I would post a link to it in case some of you were interested in seeing it. . Its not the most exciting thing you will ever see, but it is gratifying to watch the chips peel off.  Process Video Link

A commission leads to an interesting pair of works.

These are my latest creations ( There are three here). The pair you see above are a variant on the one here just below. The one below was a commission for a collector who liked my TI 524422363 so much he wanted me to dream up something with a similar organic, yet vortex-ish flavor.

 

I always welcome a challenge and rarely get to revisit an idea so soon after completion so I jumped right on the opportunity and dreamed up the work you see here above. The other two are a variation on this one, born out of my dislike of wasting good metal.

 

You see, the copper center ring for the commissioned piece (seen here above) was a bit tricky to cut, as copper always is. So I decided it would be prudent to do some test cutting in Aluminum, which is much more forgiving. It helped work out the bugs in the program and avoid any potential copper wasting mistakes. But, it left me with two aluminum blanks that were the same shape as the copper. Rather than waste them, or save them until the distant future when one day I designed something I could use them in, I thought it would be interesting to play with the idea of variants. Essentially keeping the composition and the center piece the same as the original, but redesigning and tweaking the lines on each of the other components. Rather than a conical center shape to hold all the splines, I went with a rounded shape, I revisited my treatment of the center opening and tweaked the design of the splines themselves.



Lastly, I decided I could also make the spin off pair different from each other using color. The pair are geometrically the same, But I employed different materials and anodizing to produce two very different looks. Brass verses copper on the insides, and the Blue and Orange Anodizing. I had often wondered how material selection effected the outcome of my works and this was a great chance to have a real world example. I normally run various combinations through my head as I design, It is great to be able to realize a few of them rather than just picking a single winner.



One of the benefits of anodizing over just using a colored metal is that it provides the opportunity to machine the color back off to accentuate certain geometries. In this case I was able to highlight a beautiful little detail produced by the pattern cut into the ring. A bit hard to see in the photos but if you click through to the full size image on my web page you can get a better look. Comments as usual are always welcome.

The Pollack Krasner Foundation

One other bit of good news. I was notified just a week or so ago that I have been chosen to receive a grant from the Prestigious Pollack-Krasner Foundation. The Grant is designed to give financial assistance based on both merit and financial need. This is the second time I have been awarded one of these most sought after grants, a rare honor indeed. If you are an artist struggling to make a go at establishing yourself, visit the website and see if this is a grant that might work for you. www.pkf.org

Every once in a while, I get myself into making something and it just seem sthat everything that can go wrong, will and is going wrong. But when I press on through it, the product at the other end is a wonderful mixture of good intentions and adjusting to the circumstances at hand. This piece in particular exemplifies the term, happy accidents.

I take everything in stride (or at least I try to), but I am always amazed at how strange accidents seem to clump up. Between having my house struck by lightning which damaged the CNC controller and speed sensors in my Lathe. Not to mention fried various other lights and electronics through out my house, cracking a bearing in my CNC Mill (completely unrelated), Which knocked out a second machine for over a week, Snapping a few expensive bits relearning the joys of working in copper, and a few other smaller things not worth mentioning, I still managed to make this sculpture while adjusting and adapting to the ever changing tooling and set ups at my disposal. I hope that does not sound like I am complaining, I am simply trying to relate the circumstances that influenced many of my design choices while making this work.


So to start out, I had been playing with the idea of doing a more free form piece for a while, meaning not planning so much, and instead, began by picking up pieces of metal, and started cutting to see where it lead. Naturally my eye drifted to this gorgeous piece of copper I had sitting around and I worked from there. As I alluded to above, Copper is as difficult a material as there is to machine due to it being very soft and very sticky (as far as metal is concerned) It requires lots and lots of cutting oil to keep the tool from binding and I was reminded of this rather quickly as I started this project.


So just when I would start to settle in on a final design, be it lightning or another break down, I would have to stop, rethink what I was doing, and adjust, which lead to a number of design changes that I think in retrospect worked out for the better. The process for this one was much more fluid and dynamic than usual and though a bit more uncertain and stressful, more rewarding in some ways. In the end, I had to bypass some of the fried circuits in my lathe so that I could operate the burned out parts manually, I did a few operations the old fashioned way, and design around the rest. It was lots of fun.

My latest creation everyone. This one took some time, but it was well worth it. 


It stands about 19 inches tall and is about 8 in diameter.


I utilized a lot of what I learned during my two previous studies to work out exactly the right way I wanted to plot the markings around the radius shape of the body and to be doubly sure there would be no mistakes. It turned out better than I expected.


This piece also afforded me a chance to try out a new way of cutting metal. After building a spindle lock and this custom tool holder, I used my mill as a slotting machine where as the bit takes long slow slices out of the metal with a stationary bit, rather than using a spinning tool. Only good for types of slotting, but then that is what I need.


Lastly for the what I will call the leg details on the piece. A custom arbor was employed to cut the radius shape around the circumference of the three brass dowels and do the slotting on them as well. As I have said in previous posts. sometimes you spend a good bit of time building custom tools, only to use them once. But if it is what you need there really is little choice. The arbor can be seen in the top left. It could almost be turned into a part of a sculpture on its own, Maybe I will come up with a use for it yet.