Mobile' #57

I finished this new mobile' a few days ago. This is number 57 in the series. This is all steel construction except for the colored plastic inserts in the rings. Those are pieces of auto plastic from tail lights found at accident sites. The stand is made from three really big nails (10 inches), part of a car transmission and a piece of rebar. It's all painted with a textured black paint. I built this in about six hours over two days. I really like the way this came out; almost exactly like the sketch I made ahead of time.
See this mobile' and the other 56 on my web site: tesserak.net.

A Couple More Boxes

What? More boxes? I thought this was an art blog.
Well, yes, it is an art blog . . . and more. Here at Tesserak Studios we make things. All kinds of things. One of a kind things. We craft. We don't manufacture. Yes, I agree, there should be more actual paintings and sculptures seen here. I hope to remedy that soon. The thing about a blog is: if I don't get a photo of the thing I make before it's gone out the door, and I don't have time to write something about it . . . well, then you don't have a blog entry. Also, this is not my only job and this is not my only blog. I only have so much time. In the meantime:
Here are two more boxes I've made recently. Most of the stuff I make is not made from new material. I use recycled, found or scrap materials when ever I can. I don't usually work from plans. I base things on what I have to work with. These boxes are made from small scraps of wood, too small for most purposes. Sometimes I build a box because I need a box. Other times I build a box to practice new woodworking techniques; different kinds of cuts and corners, etc.. These two boxes are practice pieces. Both boxes were made using a jig I made for my table saw for cutting compound angles. In this case, it was used to make boxes with 45 degree angles on the corners but with the sides tilted at an angle. Both boxes are roughly six inches square and about 4 inches high.
The first box has a stepped base, then short sloping sides, and is topped with a stepped lid with a loop handle on top. The sides of the box are made from poplar wood molding, the base and lid are oak and the loop is spruce. The top loop was a slice, with a hole drilled offset and cut at an angle, from a section of a railing. It is interesting that light shines through the tree rings on the thinner part at the top of the loop. The lid is a simple lift-off type. The box is stained and varnished. It's a shallow box, so not very useful. Kind of rustic looking with bit of Asian styling. If I made another like it, it would be a much better box.

The other box is shallow as well but with more interior space. This one came out rather well. The feet, box and knob are made from spruce. The lift-off lid is made from poplar. All the wood is stained so it's all the same color. It's finished with varnish. This combination of angled sides and lid work well together. The angles are repeated in the box feet, making a nice balance of the feet, body, lid and knob. Visually, it has nice lines and good balance. It is a beautifully simple design.

Black Lacquer box

black lacquer box before many coats of lacquer

Here is another box made with wood trim molding; this time, Red Oak for the top and sides of the box. The bottom of the box is Mahogany plywood, the feet and the lid handle are solid Mahogany. I made a new miter jig for my table saw for these molding boxes. I decided to paint this black lacquer because the wood had some really ugly grain.

Nearly finished box.

The "Mapletoe" box

I thought I'd try something a little different with my box making. Here I'm using strips of wood molding, in this case, walnut-stained Polar wood to make the box sides. The top and bottom of the box is natural Mahogany. (click on the photos to see a larger version) For accents, I'm using what I'm calling "Mapletoe" wood. I have a large Maple tree in my backyard with a serious infestation of Mistl-etoe. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that attaches to trees and taps the tree's nourishment for itself. On a large Mistletoe, a large bulge appears where it is attached to the tree branch. The wood in that bulge is not fully Mistletoe or Maple but something in between. I'm calling it Mapletoe. That wood has a lot  of natural wax in it providing its own natural finish. That wood is also kind of like a burl because it has so many Mistletoe branches coming out of it. I used a piece of this burl book-match sawn as an accent under the lids handle. The accents on the front and back of the box are longitudinal book-matched slices of the branch just as the Mapletoe bulge begins to form. The entire box is finished with a woodworker's wax.

Close view of the "Mapletoe" burl accent

click on photos to see larger version

Folding Sculpture

Back in the 1990's I was exploring the basic geometric shapes, Square, Circle, Triangle, and limiting myself to those shapes, experimenting on what I could do with them. This was two-dimensional work on paper, canvas and wood. It was an exercise. Experimentation. Severely handicapping oneself, to force creativity.
Moving that idea into the three dimensional world, I experimented with the Cube, Sphere, Cone (or Pyramid) shapes. These creative experiments were interesting exercises which did bear fruit occasionally. At one point I focused on the Cube for a while. That's when I started developing my folding sculptures.
I began by exploring how I could fold flat, square shapes into a Cube. This led to a series of Folding Cube sculptures. (You can read about a few of them on my art web site: Cube Sculptures). Those in turn led to other folding sculptures series.
I'd always liked Origami and enjoyed folding all kinds of things I came across in books. I liked being able to make three dimensional things out of a flat sheet of paper. This may have laid the foundation for my moving in this direction. But this folding sculpture of mine was different, though I got some good ideas from Origami. As I built my first Folding Cube sculptures, I realized I'd stumbled onto something very interesting. The first Folding Cubes I made had a delightful tactile quality about them. They folded and unfolded nicely. They felt good in the hands. And they made a pleasing clacking sound when they closed into the folded cube shape. In short, they were fun to play with. Instead of just painting them with plain colors or decorating them just for the sake of decoration, I chose to paint them in a sort of abstract, Modern Art style, with a bit of wear, as if they'd been around, and handled for a while. Now I had something that would look at home in the Museum of Modern Art. An executive desk toy.
That's the thing. It was like a toy, but it was a serious piece of art at the same time. That's subversive. It's not mocking Art. It is liberating Art from its ivory tower. You're not allowed to touch sculpture or a painting, let alone play with it (unless you own it). It's also a piece of sculpture that might look different every time you put it down. It's a piece of sculpture that, though it might be rearranged, it never loses its essence.
By treating the surfaces of the the Cube and its folding components as a painting I was blurring the distinction between a painting and a sculpture. Was it a painted sculpture, or was it a sculptural painting?   Also; is that a single painting, or several paintings, or some kind of morphing painting? I love that these sculptures have the qualities of a painting and those of sculpture without being completely either one.
The whole idea with the Folding series is that the pieces look like sculptures, and that you then discover that you can manipulate them. They should look good just sitting there on a shelf or a table. They should feel good and be fun to play with. When you put the piece down, you can choose which state, or position, or "pose"  to display the piece. Which, in a sense, makes the manipulator of the sculpture a collaborator.

Two more small boxes

Here are a couple more boxes I made. The one on the left is 5" x 4" x 2.5", has walnut sides and mahogany top and bottom. The one on the right is 4" x 3.5" x 2.25", made of teak wood.  Both have 1/4" finger joints and lids with brass hinges. The final finish on both is linseed oil followed with woodworkers wax.

3 more small wooden boxes

Still trying different kinds of wood, different size boxes with different size finger joints. Starting from the left, the first box is about 10.5" long, 3" wide and about 2.5" high. The bottom is white oak, sides are spruce, and the sliding top is redwood. No finger joints on this one. The corner joints are 45 degree glued joints. Natural finish with a couple of coats of wood worker's wax. I'll use this box to hold some of my old artists paint brushes. The small box in the center is 2.5" square and 3/4" high, just to see how small I could do a finger joint box; in this case, with 1/8" finger joints. The sides are white oak, the top and bottoms are pecan wood. I haven't cut the top for this one yet. I'm thinking of making it on one of the ends. The box on the right has 1/4" finger joints. The sides are made from redwood I milled into strips from an old 2x4 and glued the strips together. Redwood is difficult to work with at this scale because it chips and splits very easily, though it is really nice looking wood. The top and bottoms are inset, made from mahogany. This one has brass hinges. None of these are stained. They are polished with a couple of coats of woodworker's wax.
I hardly ever buy new wood anymore for small woodworking projects. I use found/recycled/reclaimed wood only. Some of this wood is over 30 years old and has already been used to make one or two things before I got my hands on it. Best of all it's free!