Ellen's armor project

As I've posted here before, Ellen has been working on this suit of armor for some time. I'm finally posting a photo of it, as promised. This is a costume, or stage armor, real enough for some stage and film work. Ellen got interested in making armor when she got recruited to help out with the knights costumes for a stage production of Camelot, put on by a local high school. This personal project of hers grew out of that.
The only things in this picture that Ellen didn't make are the sword and the helmet (though she did embellish the helmet to match the rest of the armor). We're working on the scabbard for the sword as I write this. The chain-mail took the longest to make because it's made from soda can pull tabs, and they take a while to collect. We don't drink that many canned beverages, but Ellen is a bartender so there's an inexhaustible source for them. The mail took many months to make; a (lined) hood, sleeves and a skirt (over 2000 pull tabs). The tunic and cape are made from an upholstery fabric. The silver studded "armor" is Naugahyde. The girdle is simulated crocodile leather (the scabbard will be covered with this same leather). There are studded wrist cuffs and knee/shin guards also made from Naugahyde. I'll post a photo of this costume with somebody wearing it the next time somebody puts it on.
Ellen is also working on costume armor made from that crocodile leather for her big Belgian Draft horse. I'll post photos of that when it's ready.

Currently: 11-27-2012

Making sure the roofs and gutters are clear and checking studio and shop for weather tightness. Big rains on the way. They're predicting almost a foot of rain over the next four days for our area!! That's a lot of rain! I expect the power to go out.
On-going work on the 18 pc. collage. I'm maybe 2/3rds done with it, I'm guessing. I have to start  looking for more source material for this project. I need another batch of old magazines and books to break up the cobwebs in this project. No hurry though, just as long as I keep working on this and not let it get buried under stuff in my studio.
I've been doing a little recording lately. Nothing fancy. Just a quick-and-dirty session to test the idea and get it down. This is a new lyric I wrote to go with something I came up with while re-learning to play in open tunings on the guitar. The recording, "I've Got To Move On" (or "Move On"), is a slide guitar based blues number played on an "open G" tuning. I played both the rhythm guitar part and the lead part with a slide (a Craftsman, 17mm deep set socket). Two guitar tracks (rhythm, lead) using my old Kay guitar, bass guitar, and one vocal track. With a slight edit and a bit of a remix, and I ended up with something worth listening to. I might work out a better slide guitar solo and maybe more lyrics for it and then re-record it. For now though, this will do.
I made sketches of ideas for mobiles and other sculptures. Also worked on some design ideas for some Victorian themed mobile sculptures. Kind of Steam Punk-ish in a way.
Ellen is almost done with her knight's costume; hand-made chain mail armor, tunic, skirt, hood, helmet, the whole nine yards. Only the scabbard for her big honkin' medieval sword is left to fabricate. The only parts Ellen didn't make are the helmet and the sword. As if that wasn't a big enough project, she's making leather head and neck "armor" for her horse too. "And why is she making this?", you may be asking, as I did. Because, as Ellen said, "I don't know. It sounded like a fun, interesting challange."  I've got to post photos of this soon.
We've started development on a couple of puppets of the "monster" for Ellen's film idea, "The Devil's Claw". I need to make a couple of articulated puppets (pose-able leg and body parts). One for medium-to-long shots and one for close-ups. I shouldn't be too difficult.  The stop-frame animation the puppets will be used in will be more difficult (and time consuming) than making these puppets.

On Fractal Art

One of the first things I did when I built my first computer in the early 1990’s was to download a program to explore this thing I heard about: fractals. I’m not going to go into depth explaining all about fractals here. It’s too deep a subject. “Fractals” is a sort of nickname for the mathematics discovery of a guy named Mandelbrot. There are all kinds of fractals of the mathematical sort, but fractals are all around us. A simple math formula can describe a lacey fern leaf, or a tree, or a cloud. It is an iterative mathematics. A simple formula is repeated over and over. The result of each calculation is plotted on a two dimensional space and a point is made. The result is fed back into the formula, the result plotted and so forth, over and over, millions of times. The result is incredibly complex designs with recursive self-similarity. The macro view is remarkably similar to the micro view. All this is accomplished with very simple formulae. With a slightly more complex formula we can get some really amazing results. The first program I played with was “Fractint”. I think it’s still around. These days I’ve been playing with one called “Apophysis”, though I don’t use it quite the way it was intended.
 
When they originally ran these fractal formulas, the got spreadsheets full of numbers, which makes spotting patterns difficult. They needed to run many, many iterations of the calculations, many, many time. Very time consuming without a computer. Modern PCs allowed them to calculate vast amounts of data in a relatively short time. PCs also allowed them to plot those numbers on a graphic display and beautiful patterns emerged. If you add say, a color gradient, to those ranges of numbers, even more beautiful pictures result. It takes vast amounts of iterations of these formulae to create these pictures. My early computers were doing hundreds of thousands of calculations per second for over an hour just to create one small fractal graphic. Today’s computers do more than a million calculations per second and it can still take an hour to calculate a good fractal graphic.

“Apophysis” is a fractal generation app, mostly used to make a kind of animated screen saver. I don’t use screen savers, but I do use this app to make fractal designs and tweak them a little. The app’s interface is all graphic and interactive, so there’s very little math going on. It’s all under the hood, so to speak. How I get the pictures is not like making a painting. It’s more like taking a snapshot of an exploding galaxy at just the right moment, except that I get to pick the color scheme, and which stars show and which ones don’t.
This kind of art is not for everybody. To each his own, in that respect. I think this fractal art can be quite beautiful. I like art that involves both sides of my brain. The logical side of my brain loves how complex things can be generated with very simple instructions. The artist side of my brain loves the incredible aesthetic beauty of the graphics generated by a math equation. Yet, there’s some unpredictability involved in the process as well. You never quite know what you’re going to end up with. Maybe one in twenty renderings is a keeper. I’ve made hundreds of these fractal graphics over the years. I’ve incorporated them in other art pieces I’ve created from time to time. I’ve included a small sampling of my fractal art here. The original versions of these images are much larger and a lot more detail is visible in them but you can get an idea of the kinds of images I make with fractals.
Slide show of fractal art on my YouTube channel:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=Lkpr7Rw2sCs

Wildwood story #1

I was in Wildwood, NJ one summer not long after high school, working at a crappy job as a short order cook on the boardwalk. The initial excitement of the season opening had long since worn off. I’d gotten off work early one afternoon and I didn’t want to go back to my tiny hot room. I decided to walk about a mile down the boardwalk to where my friends worked and hang out by one of the amusement piers until they got off work. They wouldn’t be getting off work for a couple of hours so, I wasn’t in a hurry.
I would’ve just sat down with my sketchbook and drawn for a couple of hours but I had no sketchbook with me. It was all the way across town in my room. There was a bit of trash lying here and there along the boardwalk. That would do, so I picked up anything that had blank spots and would hold ink. When I had a bunch of them, I’d sit down on a bench and draw on them. Just silly cartoons and goofy drawings made with a magic marker. When I’d drawn on all the paper I had, I’d gather them up and wade back into the sea of humanity shuffling down the boardwalk, dropping the drawings as I went and picking up new pieces to draw on. Then I’d sit down on another bench and draw more pictures, sometimes letting the wind take them. I put my initials on some of the better drawings. Then I’d wade back into the crowd and repeat the process until I reached the bench across the boardwalk from where my friends worked. I still had some time to kill so, I sat there drawing on pieces of trash laying right next to the bench. I didn’t even have to get up. I’d draw something and then toss the paper back on the ground. By now I’d drawn a lot of these things; I don’t know how many, 50 or 60, maybe more. I was about tapped out, so I was sitting back on my bench watching the crowd. (a great catalog of faces, but you have to draw fast).
I noticed a couple of girls making their way down the boardwalk. I heard one of them say, “Here’s another one!” The other one said, “Look, two more!” The next thing I know, they’re sitting on the bench with me and they both had their hands full of my trash drawings. They were excited. You would’ve thought they found gold nuggets. One of them said, “We found these laying on the boardwalk for, like, miles! Look at these things, they’re great!” We all had a good laugh going through their collection, which was maybe half of what I’d drawn. I said, “Want another one?” as I picked up a scrap of paper and began to draw on it. Their jaws dropped into their laps. A couple of hours ago I was tired and lonely. Now I’m sitting with two beautiful women treating me like a rock star. They couldn’t believe I was throwing these drawings away. I was thinking, it was worth it from where I’m sitting. It paid off big-time. I spent the rest of the summer with these gals.

Folding Sculpture

    You do not touch art.
    You do not play with art.
    You do not fold art.

    My series of Folding Sculpture encourages you do all of the above. In my series of Folding Sculpture I intend to push the envelope that defines sculpture and painting. With this series I am taking the painting out of the frame and taking the sculpture off its pedestal. I combine them in new ways. You then manipulate the piece, exploring its possibilities, and perhaps finding something pleasing, leave it in a particular state for others to view. You may change your mind and rearrange the piece as often as you like. It is a sculpture that can be different every time you look at it.
    One might say that the folded sculpture is in a state of rest. It might reside on a desk, table or a shelf in this state of rest and be a nice little piece of art or décor. A casual visitor wouldn’t suspect its hidden dimensions. Human touch awakens this inert form and discoveries unfold. Pick it up and it’s eager to play.
We’ve been trained, for obvious reasons, to keep our hands off the paintings and sculptures. This series breaks down the barrier between the art and the viewer because one must manipulate the piece in order to appreciate it. Sometimes that manipulation itself is a pleasing sensory experience. Not only is the viewer now touching the sculpture, they are changing it! Normally, even if you own the piece of art, you can’t change it without diminishing its value. This series of sculptures encourages play and exploration, and in the end, makes the owner of the piece, in a sense, a collaborator with the artist. The owner of the piece always has final say on what it will look like.
Is it art or is it a toy? Does it have to be one or the other? Can it be both? I think it is just as much one as the other. It is a toy for an imagination more mature than a child’s. This is real interactive art; nothing virtual about it.
Some pieces simply fold and unfold, providing only few interesting states in the process. Others have many, perhaps infinite, aesthetically pleasing states in the process. Each piece folds in a different way. In addition, each one explores some aspect of what defines a sculpture. With some pieces the main event is in the hands. These are like three-dimensional kaleidoscopes continually changing as you manipulate the piece. Some unfold to a double-sided flat painting. Half unfolded, half of each painting is visible. Fully unfolded, only one of the paintings can be seen at a time. This playing-with-the-object provides an interesting tactile experience for the hands and an interesting exploration for the eyes while engaging the mind. Lastly, these folding sculptures, by their very nature being as compact as they can be, travel well. Many of them would fit in a briefcase.
Part of the exploration of a piece is when the manipulation stops and a visual appreciation of the object begins. Now the painting covering the surface of the object comes into play. The painting wraps around the surface of the object. The way the lights and shadows change the nature of the colors and patterns.Some can be folded and unfolded in ways that recombine different parts of the painted surface. This can’t happen on a flat painting.
The creation of these pieces is partially an engineering exercise and partially an aesthetic one. That’s something that appeals to me. It gives both sides of my brain a good workout. Each time I think I’ve exhausted the possibilities of this series, I make new discoveries; new ways to fold things.
You can see some of my folding sculptures and paintings on my web site, and some others on my YouTube channel.

On Drawing

    I think children are born with the ability to think creatively, with a love for drawing and painting and making things. Unfortunately that creativity is wrung out of them in our schools, discipline and conformity being more important. Somehow that didn’t work on me.
I love to draw. I draw almost every single day. I can’t remember when I started drawing but by the time I got to first grade, my ability was well beyond my classmates. I never had any drawing lessons. I learned to draw by studying other people’s drawings; from comic books and fine art books. I studied anybody who could draw really well. My brother Rich and I had a little friendly drawing competition going in our grade school years. That improved our skills. My Dad was a draftsman by trade, drawing with rulers, compasses and protractors, and he taught me a little of that. Once in a while he would bring home a bunch of old blueprints on giant sheets of paper for us to draw on. His brother, my Uncle Bob, an aeronautics engineer, was a hipster jazz musician and modern artist, who I admired but he didn’t teach me any art skills either. I just remember really wanting to learn how to draw, and having no one around to teach me, I learned to teach myself. I could learn to draw by looking at other drawings. You don’t learn to draw by watching other people draw. It’s all in the marks on paper. Mort Drucker and Al Capp were early favorite comic artists, and Da Vinci and Ingress from the fine art world. Essentially, I learned something from everything I ever looked at.
Drawing saves a lot of explaining. It is a universal language. For me, pencil or pen on paper is not only an art form and communication method; it has enhanced my perception. You have no idea how little you see until you learn to draw. Take a flower for example. You put a flower, still on the stem, in a glass of water on the table in front of you, and you get pencil and paper. You see its general shape and the graceful bend in the stem. How many petals does it have? What do their edges look like? What does the center of the flower look like? What is the pattern of arrangement of the leaves on the stem? Is the stem smooth or rough? Are the leaves shiny or dull, round or pointy? Look closely at how the color in the petals has a tiny pattern to it. How did this bud unfold? Where are the shadows? The point is, you really have to look at the detail and things you don’t usually need to notice. You look for detail and patterns, light and shadow, and perspective. It’s not just how things look but how they behave. The way a person walks, the way a tree bends in the wind. Looking at everything as if you had to draw or paint it trains the mind to see subtle differences and detect patterns and just plain see with a higher resolution, so to speak, than most people. Anyone can train themselves to do this. If you do it long enough it just becomes natural.
Drawing isn’t just for artists. We also shouldn’t think of it only as “Art” with a capital A.  It’s a communication skill we should all have. I think drawing is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. We should teach kids to draw as well as they can do those other three things. The thing is, they probably would just do it naturally but we’ve made them fear picking up a pencil to draw. They might make a mistake! It might not look right! Hey, you’re not Einstein, but you can do math. You can write but nobody’s expecting you to be Hemmingway. So don’t be afraid to pick up a pencil, they’re not expecting Da Vinci. If you can get your point across, you’re doing OK.
    I believe drawing is a fundamental skill for most artists. If you can draw, you’ll be a better artist. If you draw well, you’ll be even better. I believe that drawing is perhaps the highest form of the graphic arts. With just a pencil and paper you must create your image. You’re stripped down to the most basic of media with which to create your illusion. You have only your skill to make it happen. Yet there are thousands of ways to make marks on paper. It is a real test of ones rendering skills.
Now I use a ballpoint pen or marker because I don’t have to keep sharpening them. I buy my pens and pencils at “Back to School” sales and get a years worth of pens for a couple of bucks. Pencils are still great to draw with. Mostly I use plain old generic yellow #2 pencils bought in bulk. I keep a pile of standard office paper next to my desk in my studio. That’s where I draw ideas, doodles, cartoons and make notes when I’m relaxing in my studio. It helps keep me from getting rusty.

The Devil's Claw

How would you like to get snagged on one of these? I could hardly believe my eyes the first time I saw one. That thing is a burr seed pod called the "Devils Claw". They are very hard and very sharp. This one is 8 in. across. You do not want to get snagged by one of these. They will rip your flesh. If you step on them, they wrap around your shoe. If they get caught in a sock or pant leg, just hope they don't catch your skin.These things started showing up in feed bales for our horses. A lot of them look like some kind of weird insect head. Ellen thought, "Hey, I could make a sci-fi insect monster out of these! Let's make a film.". So she started writing a little screenplay for it, and we're on our way. We're going to shoot it with the cheapest cameras we can. It's not a very ambitious project, just a fun little home made thing. We'll keep you posted.

On Mobiles

As a sculptor I like it best when art and engineering come together. Both sides of my brain get a good workout. All sculptors, whether they know it or not, are using engineering to some degree. When they don’t, the piece breaks or falls apart. I like engineering as art. Another thing I like is sculpture that is not static. Things that change or move. I like the idea that every time I look at a sculpture it is different, or changing while I’m looking at it. Creating a mobile is essentially an engineering problem but not one solved with a calculator and a blueprint (unless you’re making a very large one). There’s a lot of intuition and experimentation involved. I do make sketches of ideas for mobiles so I don’t forget them. I have very good visualization skills and I do a lot of what-if designing in my mind’s eye. I can get quite obsessed with mobiles and spend entirely too much time thinking about them. In fact I don’t think they are ever completely out of my consciousness.
I’ve been fascinated by mobiles since I saw my first one as a child. It was a big red Calder at the Pittsburgh airport. It left a big impression on me. Since then I’ve mostly encountered them hanging over  baby cribs or as some cheesy discount store mobile involving birds, butterflies or airplanes. Anyone, even a child, can make a simple one. But if you take even a quick look at some of the mobiles Alexander Calder made you’ll see there are a lot of ways to make a mobile. (By the way, it’s a French word, pronounced, mow-BEEL)
Mobiles, as their name clearly states, move. No motors, no batteries, no pulleys or gears. They respond to air currents and gravity. They can be constructed so that they are constantly changing and never repeat their movements. There is one unavoidable, uncompromising collaborator working with me on these mobiles: gravity. If you don’t do what she likes, she breaks things. She never lets go of a mobile but she does let the wind play with it.
Building a mobile is an interesting process. It is difficult, in most cases, to make an exact plan for a mobile. I usually start with only a rough idea based on whatever materials I have to work with. From then on, I more or less ad-lib. Often I get something different than I started out to make, and sometimes, even better. Making mobiles will give you an intimate understanding of how to use gravity, leverage, balance, range of movement, mass, center of gravity, and inertia. Mobiles can hang from a ceiling or a wall, or they can balance on a pivot point or ball on some kind of stand. That stand could, and in my opinion should, be able to stand on its own as a sculpture. The non-hanging pivot-point on-a-stand type is the one I prefer to make even though they are harder to make than the hanging type.
One secret to making a mobile is to build it from the bottom up. That way everything below the point where you are working remains in unchanged. There are exceptions but in most cases this is true. Mobiles also don’t have to be perfectly balanced and often look better if they are not. Heavy materials are good for outdoor pieces because their mass makes them more graceful in the wind, and can stand up to very stiff winds. Indoor mobiles require very light materials so that they will respond to the more subtle air currents inside a building. There are also considerations to be made for how much movement you want to allow for the mobile’s arms and/or the elements at the ends of those arms. You might, or might not want parts of the mobile to collide with other parts. With restricted movement, when a swinging arm comes to the end of its range of movement, its kinetic energy is transferred to the arms connected directly above and below it, causing them to move. A good mobile won’t get tangled with itself, or jam. A good mobile is a good composition, even as it changes. A good mobile fits its environment. I like building these things and letting its environment play with it.
I’ve designed some unusual mobiles. Two anti-gravity mobiles; one with balloons, one using floats under water. I couldn’t resist designing the giant, full-size, auto-mobile, using cars, trucks and buses. Then there’s the super-simple but poignant; a small log balanced on a point, with a toy soldier at either end, each pointing a rifle at the other. Any way I can employ balance and movement in the same piece, I’m looking for a way to make it happen. I’ve designed many more than I could ever build. I don’t care for the cliché mobiles like birds, airplanes, fish, leaves and things like that. Let somebody else make those. You can see some of my mobiles on my web site. Tesserak Studios: Mobiles

Nov. 1. 2012 projects in the works

Still working on my 18 pc. collage series. This one will take some time to complete, but at least I'm working on it more frequently than usual.
I'm trying to take a break from the mobiles for a while. I want to wrap my head around something else for a change. Thinking of starting another painting. Maybe.
There will be a show about my mobiles on public access TV in San Francisco soon. I'll make a post here when I find out when it'll be on. After that I plan to put it on my YouTube site.
Ellen has completed her Knights outfit; helmet, chain mail hood and skirt, tunic, crocodile leather armor. Still in the works: a scabard for this big honkin' sword, and leather armor for her horse.
Ellen started writing a little screenplay for a film idea she came up with (no title yet). It will be a cheesey little "horror" flick involving a big nasty insect. We started shooting a couple of short clips. This should be fun.