Tag: art

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Risky Business

Some artists and craft people do one thing without variance their entire careers. In fact, some are very thoroughly tied to the form and tradition of their work, and deviation could bring negative consequences. If you make Windsor chairs, many traditionalists who purchase your output might look askance if you suddenly began experimenting wildly with asymmetric designs, new construction techniques, or polychromed chairs.

However, change does find its way into even the most conservative workshops, albeit gradually. While a few chair shops still rely on whip stave and pedal-powered lathes, the majority have transitioned to electrically powered equipment, striking a balance between tradition and innovation.

In carving, there is room for carvers who use powered tools and traditionalists. I use mostly traditional hand tools in my shop, but my electrical Dremel tool is great for working in crevices and sanding tight corners. The tools are complementary and help me get my work done.

Several years ago, my eyes forced major changes in how I carve. I had a hole in the retina of my right eye, and it needed repair, or I’d lose vision in that eye. One side effect of the repair was that a developing cataract required surgery soon after the macular hole repair. The surgeries, while successful, resulted in visual challenges in the shop. Where my vision focused changed, and in the right eye, the healing left a small amount of scarring that distorted my vision slightly.

The vision changes made me step back from carving until my eyes, and I came to a new understanding of how things worked. I was out of the shop for a bit over six months. When I went back to work, I discovered that there were things I had trouble doing. The worst was small lettering. Anything under an inch was almost impossible, and I had to relearn other aspects of carving detail work.

The small lettering problem bothered me. It wasn’t a significant part of my work, but it became a fixation for some reason. I took a risky step and invested in a laser engraver for small lettering. It has paid off. But as is often the case, when you change one thing, other changes cascade along. Art and craft are esthetic equations. Change one thing, and it changes what appears on the other side of the equals sign. Having opened myself to change in one area, I began to experiment in others. The mixed media carvings I’ve produced are the result. They combine fine laser engraved lettering of text, traditional carving of the vessels, and paint and colored stone for the texture of the waves.

It was a risk that paid off and has started a wave of evolving change in my work. Exactly where it will take me, I don’t know. But that is the nature of risk and change. Outcomes may not be predictable.

1800’s sloop of war
Daily writing prompt
Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
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Illusion

The little eagle’s head has been carved separate from the body. Why?

Tradition is one reason; I learned from others to carve the head and eye first so “The birdie can watch what you are doing.” But the primary reason is that it’s easier to complete the shape and back of the head when it’s not in place. A look at some of the detailed pictures shows that the head looks as though it’s fully carved, but it’s not. No one will ever see the reverse side, so we just create the impression that it’s there.

The body’s pattern has been cut out, so the next step is to attach the head to the body and begin”fairing” the head and body together. When finished, they’ll look like one. At that point, I’ll begin defining the shapes of the feathers, the feather veining, and the final details. After that, I’ll rough out the banner and add the lettering.

Will it stay natural wood with varnish, get painted, or be gilded with 23-carat gold leaf? Usually, that depends on who commissioned the piece and where it will go.

eagle with banner
detail of one of my eagles
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Wings

Years ago, I had a weird dream. Two of my favorite artists, John Haley Bellamy and Salvador Dali, were sitting with me in a coffeehouse discussing art. I merely sat by and listened while the two masters talked. They were deeply involved in a discussion of exaggeration and distortion in art. At one point, they turned to me and asked what I thought. I opened my mouth to speak but woke from the dream that instant.

I spent more than a few hours thinking about that dream and their discussion. Bellamy was famous for his eagles, and Dali was famous for his surrealistic images. The link seemed to be the way images were portrayed by both artists. There were more similarities than you might think when considering how Bellamy accentuated and distorted eagle necks, wingspan and wing proportions for effect.

I began to experiment with the lessons that the masters relayed to me.

There have been no new visits from either Dali or Bellamy yet, but I’ll let you know the next time I meet them at the coffeehouse.

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Rule of Thirds

I

The third-floor apartment on Park Avenue had few amenities, including a view of the Kuomingtang sign down the street. I arrived in Baltimore a few weeks after discharge from the Navy and was invited to share quarters with a friend who had a third-floor walk-up in Chinatown.

We had a “sometimes” business carving “genuine” Tiki gods and other countercultural junk. We accomplished this mostly with a Dremel tool and routers. One of us had to find cheap wood for these projects, and scrounging was my specialty.

That was how I wandered into Warburton’s studio – looking for free scrap. I arrived just in time to be recruited. Three balks of wood were being prepared to become a Saint Joseph for a private chapel. I found myself helping move the materials into the shop.

Warburton’s work area had extraordinarily high ceilings. To one side was a mezzanine with a smaller workshop poised above the main work floor. The main work floor contained everything from large bandsaws to a 19th-century jointer that could remove your hand in a second of inattention. Against one wall was the main work area for carving. There stood rack upon rack of carving tools. In a corner was a bench upon which Warburton’s current engraving project sat with the burins and gravers of that trade neatly racked.

I asked Warburton why he used those old-fashioned tools rather than power tools. He looked at me for a while before replying, then said, “You can find out yourself. I need an assistant, and if you can do the work, I’ll teach you why I use those tools.” Actual work on a steady basis was not what I wanted, so I thanked him and said I’d be back to see what he was doing. 

II

I wound up checking back almost every day. Warburton tolerated no lazing about, even by unpaid louts like me. He assigned me all the cleaning tasks he despised and was an apprentice’s lot since the Middle Ages. There was a logic to it. To properly sort walnut plank stock, I had to learn to gauge the quality of the planks and how to properly sticker and stack the boards, so there was air circulation between the levels. Failure to do this could result in warped, twisted, and cupped stock that was worthless to the shop.

Warburton also had a box of old dusty wax fruit, cones, balls, and broken plaster castings that he periodically asked me to set up and draw. I would have gladly sorted several thousand board feet of lumber instead of doing still lives. When asked to do this, my goal was to set up the items in absurd, obscene, or Daliesque tableaus that I hoped would provoke him. He ignored this. Instead, he commented on the balance, composition, rhythm, and pattern formed by the objects. 

His most important lesson was about the rule of thirds. To this day, I am a terrible draftsman, but that summer, I did learn to do perspective drawings of Baltimore street scenes as I grew sick of wax fruit. I always used the rule of thirds and looked at the balance and rhythm in the composition. And I did lots of scut work. I flattened water stones that had been used so often that they had hollowed surfaces, learned the basics of sharpening, and learned to actually use the knife. The maestro maintained that it was the foundational tool and that without being able to sharpen and control it, I’d never be a carver. 

Eventually, I was given a small block of walnut—a scrap, really—and told to create an abstract shape. Emphasis had to be on the grace of curves, smoothness of transitions, and quality of the tool work. I was warned that all compositional elements would be involved. Was it to look like anything specifically? No. But he did pull out several books on the work of Jean Arp and Barbara Hepworth. 

I began to be a snob when called upon to use a Dremel. My routing of Tiki’s became infiltrated with contamination from Hepworth and Arp. My friend accused me of ruining the business. In opposition to this, I began to critique his compositions, pointing out that they lacked balance or rhythm. The fights were loud. 

III

Down the street from our apartment was Oscar’s flower shop. Oscar’s was different. The shop had no real flowers, stems, or leaves. Plastic floral material was just coming onto the market, and Oscar occupied his retirement, making incredible and fanciful arrangements. Oscar was impressed with my new approach to carving. He began to offer me offcuts of cherry and walnut from his farm outside the city. These he posed with his floral creations. We agreed to a 40/60 cut. This probably would not have been an issue with my friend except that Oscar decided that Tiki’s were…so yesterday. He accepted no more Tiki carvings. Riding my first wave of artistic popularity, I asked for a 60/40 percentage cut. I was an established “artiste.” Oscar smiled and said we could revisit the deal when the current inventory sold. I agreed.

About that time, I felt the desire to head to Boston for a week or two. I went on a frolicking detour, and my friend sulked.

About three weeks later, I returned from Boston to find all my carvings on the back loading dock and some new carvings of my friend’s installed in Oscar’s floral emporium. When I asked what had happened, I was informed that my friend had started routing and power sanding pieces similar to what I had hand-carved, but they cost Oscar about fifty percent less. Also, with his big red beard and ripped and stained jeans, my friend looked much more like a real artist than I did with short hair and pressed khakis. 

This did put a strain on the friendship for a while. But my buddy’s actual love in art was painting, and he soon returned to that. Oscar also moved on. In a few weeks, he called us to come to get everything left in the shop. Oscar had found a source for driftwood on the Delmarva that he maintained looked much better than anything we had done, and they were much cheaper. 

This was a different rule of thirds for art: you innovate and sell. Someone copies and sells for substantially less. Lastly, the demand for the product declines.

IV

Later that week, my friend and I stopped at Warburton’s to look at the progress on Saint Joseph. I mentioned to Warburton how we both lost a source of income from the sculptures. Warburton simply said, ” It’s hard to improve on nature.” To which we replied, “Yeah. Or to depend on the taste of a guy who sells plastic flowers.”

Rule of Thirds was first published on April 19, 2020 and is a Flashback Friday presentation.

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Feelings

Over the years that I’ve worked as a craftsman, I’ve participated in many craft shows, boat shows, and art shows. The interactions with the casual visitors to the shows are what it’s all about. Your job is to take the minute you have their attention and turn it into a motivated sale. And, no, you can’t come across as a crass, ruthless sales clerk. Your job is to interest them in what you have laid out for them to examine.
Usually, it’s about me educating you. But I’ll never forget one interaction that was an educational moment for me.
For a while, I had a line of hand-carved walking canes. The heads were carved owls and bears, but I mostly sold ones with eagle heads at boat shows. At a good show, I could sell several of these throughout the show.
My best and most enjoyable show was held late in March every year in Portland, Maine. The Maine Boatbuilders Show was in a funky former factory on the waterfront. Being it was in Portland, and during March, you trudged through puddles of rain or drifts of snow to gain access to the show. But lousy weather did nothing to lessen the crowds. And thousands of boat owners, potential buyers, and casual visitors did troop through my booth. It was my most profitable show of the season.

Sunday afternoons were always slow, and it was the day that most families visited the show. By four in the afternoon, most of the vendor’s thoughts were turning from spotty sales to packing up, packing out, and getting dinner. We had all started a bit of surreptitious packing away of smaller items. But we couldn’t be too open about this. There were still visitors walking about and some sales to be made.
That afternoon I had a visit by a pair of sisters in their twenties. They looked carefully at everything and asked intelligent questions, and it was a joy to have them see me on a slow Sunday afternoon. One thing that I noted was that they ran hands over everything. Seeing that, I noticed one sister told me the other was blind. She enjoyed the tactile aspect of my carved goods. I admitted that I deliberately made my cherry spoons to be fun to touch and hold. But it was the eagle-headed cane that attracted the most attention. It was fun to have and feel – contours, feathers, beak, and eyes. It was an easy sale, and a happy customer.
Taking up my trim saw, I quickly adjusted the cane to her size. Then, the pair strolled off to meet up with family, carrying a shopping bag with the cane, spoons, and a cutting board, all useful but also pleasing to the touch. Since then, I have pointed out to people that the carvings have a tactile element.
It’s not just sight but feeling that brings pleasure.

Daily writing prompt
Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.
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Real Life

A lot of people make decisions that sound good but actually make them miserable. Yes, you. You’re back in the back row, trying to sink down so I don’t see you! I’m talking to you. You took a degree in business administration even though you were passionate about the arts. You sneak into Continuing Ed classes whenever you can to feed the artist in you. I had people just like you in my carving classes. 

The class was a one-week immersive experience in which I took students from tool sharpening to simple cut patterns, chip carving, and on to lettering and the finale of a hand-carved eagle. When you were fatigued, I sent you into a library room filled with art books, carvings, and models to study. More than a few of you were frustrated masters of business administration, accountants, software, and electrical engineers.

You studied in those areas for the fiscal and employment stability they offered. Most of you were men, but there were also women.

At your “real life jobs,” you spent spare time sketching in a doodle here and there of something you’d like to carve, sculpt or paint. You offered flimsy excuses to bosses and co-workers about going to arts and crafts camp. But, you were sneaking off to spend a week in my class, building a boat, or painting watercolors by the shore. You were in stealth mode.

Once in a while, you muse about opening a retirement business, so you collect the tools you’ll need for that venture. In the meantime, you haunt every boat show, art exhibit, or gallery opening you can. The bottom drawer of your desk has the latest art magazines hidden for perusing when nobody is around. But, mostly, you are jealous of everyone who acts on their artistic impulse.

Like a child, you dream of running off and joining the circus.

Daily writing prompt
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
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Art

Art according to Xenia H.I.M, Empress of all she surveys:

The remarkable consensus among cats is that they invented great art. Humans merely did a monkey see, and monkeys do routine in admiration of the feline example. 

Kittens do roister about, but adult cats inherit an elegant poise from the feline mistress of creation. This model inspired the dramatic arts of ancient Greece, the might of the Sphinx, poetry, and great literature. 

Now it is true that cats did not invent all art, only great art. As my cousins in Florida, Canada, England, and Virginia agree, melodrama is an invention of dogs. I mean, watch them piteously roll about seeking the affection of those pathetic humans. With those great carbuncles of noses, only a human could love them. Hummphhh!

Well, it’s time for the mid-morning snack, TTFN!

With great thanks to Lois for promting this post!