Month: May 2010

I’ve been back into masonary again, especially soft stone sculpture, and dying to have some cash so I can get some fibreglass and start making molds of the stuff. It’s just too arty doing one offs and I don’t really like the idea of carting them around to markets on the off chance people will like what I do… but trade me might work.

Anyways, before getting the molds together and the materials to do the soft stone stuff, which incidentally is equall parts NO 1 sand, vermiculite (available at Nuplex in Penrose) and cement, I’ve been doing a little 3/1 sand/cement wall building to warm up to the masonary stuff.

This is the raised area just outside the main door to the garage and it’s been unfinished for years.
This is the wall down the side of it which I’d planned to do in bottles but I’ve changed my mind and want it opening into the area I now use to do the soft stone sculpture.

This is the corner where I’m going up to create a post on which a deck from the shed will project out. No steel in it because the weight bearing will be compressive only though the post on the other end will be tied into the foundations with concrete… but it’ll be freestanding without buttresses so it’ll need the steel.
But then whats most important is what I do for money, though it’d be really great turning up at places and doing the above, and I suppose that’ll happen in time once I get a few of the below sold off. Thsi is my first one after a few years doin’ other stuff, though I did do one or two during last years Manukau At Festival.

And these I did today. The block on the left will have a cast made so I can make a bunch of them for round the front on the patio.

I really want to do casting and have a mosaic of shapes that can be put together in a myriad of ways. And heres another of one of the above. I do particularly like like this one and I think I really am startin’ to develop a style!

Oh well, possibly two more tomorrow if I can get up early enough!

I did this deal with the guys at Revel Cafe in K Rd whereby I get the old radio stuff, donated by (can’t remember his name at this moment) Radio Spares around the corner, that was in the toilet if I replace it with a small sculpture. I wasn’t getting around to it, only remembering once I was in the vicinity of Revel, so I dropped off P4HF saying I’d leave this one in the meantime to encourage me doing another. The boss got wind of it and thought he was getting P4Hf, which is interesting to think he would think someone so beneficent (which I’m not), so I emailed him the real story and in light of that, and to get P4HF back asap, I did this this morning.

It’s called “For the Kids we build!” and it’s got the baby head inside the alluminium pot with Buzz Lightyear above the looking in hole and this basically means the babies are brought into a technological world.
The bit at the top is two sheep and a monkey wearing clothes sitting on a pineapple podium which is about our harnessing nature for our own ends and basically just being monkeys with clothes on. The small amount of hope thats within this statement is that the monkey, leaning down towards those watching, is that he can’t help but be in a position to hear the sheep murmuring about freedoms.

So from today on in it’ll be in the toilet at Revel Cafe in K Rd.

So here we go. Looking around this site will give you more info on the Warm Glow light, in other posts, and the P4HF sculpture. The candleabras are recent kinda’ metal sketches for another big chair I’m doin’ which were encouraged by seeing, out of the blue (at Verushka’s place), a candleabra I’d made way back in the nineties. It was after I’d made them that I’d realised they were sketches for the chair to come. Never thought of the concept of sketching in metal but candleabras are an interesting way to do it.



So this is the No1 candleabra and hearkens back to the one I made in the 90’s with the very organic styling in the torchwork.



This ones a little closer to work I’ve been doing lately with some of the old torchwork, as in heating and bending in situ, plus the way I’ve become more linear in the design aspects.



And this one is possibly somewhere where I’ll go with the design of the chair with a significant kinda linear design thing then some rough textural work using a fine blade in the grinder to do cuts in the body.
All these works are well protected against rust with a coating of an American product called Penetrol which seems to be mainly boiled linseed oil with some anti rust added in.



Sturdily made and put together with various allen head bolts tapped into the body. On/off switch and uses small 25W bulbs in normal bayonet fittings.





This is Peace for his Fiancee (P4HF) and is a very deep work indeed.