more new sculptures

New Work

Here's just a small sampling of some of the new work i've produced in these last two weeks (the total is 32 new ones) . I've been busy. more pictures coming soon. happy holidays.

The Recession Session

The first Recession Session show will feature all new work; ranging from busts, to figures, to animals, to creatures, to belt buckles to anything else I can come up with. Pictures coming soon. Sorry for lack of news.

So uh... yeah I'm in California

I haven't written anything in a while because the whole california scene has been very interesting... to say the least. I won't go through all the details because, well I guess things are still folding and unfolding as I go along. Vagaries aside, I was fortunate enough to spend an evening chatting with Robert Williams legendary/iconic painter and founder of Juxtapoz magazine Magazine (not to mention a personal hero of mine). Also I placed my large sculpture of the gas-masked man walking his mutated dog at a sweet spot known as The Cypress Lounge in Santa Cruz:

Yukon Ho!

Some pix from my trip cross country :

Climbing boulders in the Mojave Desert, The Raven of the Gas Station in Arizon, The Truck, and hangin with Mikey the Wags in St. Louis (not exactly in that order)

It's a dog (eat dog world)

Isn't he adorable?

New work.

Smoke Break/ A Man About a Dog.

Welding for a Nimbler Generation: Sculptrobatics

I present to you a series of some of the most daring and difficult moves in competitive welding:

Our first maneuver is known as the One Handed Government Bend: The welder throws himself over the perilous spikes of his dragon sculpture, left leg splayed against the dragons head, right hand operating the trigger, left hand is placed cooly behind his back for added stylistic effect:

Our next maneuver is known as a Left Handed Quasimodo BuzzBox: here the welder squeezes himself into the tightest little ball, operating the trigger with his left hand and positioning the nozzle with his right:

This next Maneuver is known as Arc and Circumstance: a difficult contortion and balancing act, all the while concentrating on the sticky welding operation of Arc Welding (as opposed to the easier trigger based MIG) the left hand here is used as pivot and weld guide:

This maneuver is called the Brazen Recliner: A simple relaxed method thats more stylistic than practical:

And finally we have a great moment in welding history: The welder, aged 14 is seen here attempting the incredibly difficult Deep Freeze Splay Legged Chasm Extension.

The Dragon : Unleashed

Finally finished and installed; here is the first full shot of the Dragon:

More photos plus a movie coming soon. Also the owner of this dragon has started a naming competition amongst his friends and family... so I figured I'd extend the invitation to the general public. Any ideas what we should call it?

Joseph Merrick* The Elephant Man

I made this sculpture before I read the book because I was always fascinated by his grotesque features. Now having read his story it makes me realize how trivial my own personal problems are. We all have problems and to us they are going to be important no matter what, but some things help to really put perspective on it all. The elephant man was hideously deformed, well beyond the sculpture pictured above. For most of his life he was treated as a monster and spent many years locked in a room and displayed in sideshows as a circus freak. It wasn't until three years or so before his death that he finally had a place of his own (a renovated space in the back of a hospital). Despite his terrible deformities and his life of hardships he always displayed a very positive manner; he could not smile, yet he was perceivably happy for the little kindness he had seen.

Some love for the little guy.

New head on old shoulders.

I posted earlier about the anguish of Ugolino and how I made a sculpture based on him... however, as it turns out, I was unhappy with the pairing of his amalgamated-scrap body with the tediously rendered face. So I took his head off and put a different one on (if only life were that simple). For the moment Ugolino will simply be a bust; until I get around to sculpting a more detailed and fitting body, as well as a family to go along with him. But for now I present The Salvaged:

And now for something completely different

Until the new website is done (end of the month) I will be updating this blog with working shots and whatever else I can come up with (maybe even some old pieces that are yet to be unearthed from obscurity).

Inhale.

post-ponderance pondering what I should possibly ponder or (more probably) protracted procrastinations and meditations: Of pre-assemblage on my upcoming attempted proto-creation

Woah, wait, weird wordplay. My apologies for my frenetic chaotic and occasionally caustic case of contrived iambic clauses. It's a cause for much distress and discourse and I could probably teach a course, which would be (of course) about the crash course (from the most natural source) of the human sort, this discourse requires no retort or recourse or retweet (though I cringe at the cliche that that may one day be), about our adroit exploits wrought through blood sport as opined by yours truly: Me.

Again I cringe as there is still the contrived tinge of a voice which has been reared from earth singed with terse verse ( and the occasional drinking binge), as well as artistic visages that smile with self ascribed eminence who fail to bestow the worthwhile tenants to those 'neath their tutelage and only instill a voice which is resonant with their own scent of resentment (I wonder if it's clear here, just what I'm getting at), and I'm betting that most of them don't even know it yet.

I live lost in our meca-era. I say fuck Richard Serra, I prefer the wisdom of Caswell Berry and Steve Berra. Whats missing is mystery. If you don't know those people than you'll Google them quickly and, perchance, contort your face sickly (cause wisdom on wheels is like getting slipped a mickey). I wish (washily) to live amongst the reeds and plant seeds instead of subscribing to RSS feeds. To attend to needs that have escaped us (or simply scraped us) and have been tossed in the wind, like so many weeds; whose fate (to be doomed) has been deemed by the popular populace who thinks their thorns are obscene. This I scorn like the coming of morning, interrupting my dreams.

Again, once more, as before; I despise my own contrivances that I constantly find burning the surface of mine minds open mindedness (I'm constantly reminded of this). It makes me remiss; no, it makes me pissed, that I can talk like this, that I can balk and squawk like this, occasionally walk as such, with bravado that's motto is: Push come to shove. What happened to life and what happened to love. Where's my proverbial olive branch and turtle dove?

(Exhale.)

Octoberflash

So here's where I'm at.

New York has raised a big proverbial middle finger to the Fall season and welcomed Winter into our midst with wide open, down-parka'd, arms. As of yet I still keep my windows open some nights. I like to say it is the cold that makes me sleep better but I'm going to take a moment to revise that statement: It is not the cold that aids in my sleeping, rather it is having cold all around me and the act of huddling, cocoon-like, in my blankets; that warm, safe, protected from the elements around me feeling is what makes me sleep nicely ( much preferred over those muggy nights where I sleep splayed out on top of the covers like I was just dropped from some immense height onto my bed) . Now sleeping is nice, but waking up is the real pain in the ass these days. I don't want to leave warm den of blankets which I've encased myself in. Especially to do work outside in an unheated shop. But eventually I get up and get out of bed... and this month, I've decided, will be exceptionally taxing. My local social network is made up of the migrant workers I play soccer with and they all seem to hibernate when it's cold. All work and no play makes October a productive month. I've decided I'm going to bang out some serious work over the course of these next four weeks. I'm headed out west come November and I hope to be bringing along some of the most vicious and diabolical pieces to date (for a group show in LA), including a tricycle riding demon and an evil little girl amongst others. Also I'm working on a new website due to drop sometime this month. For now I'll unleash a little more dragon.

Cranberry Vanilla Trailmix Crunch and the Pursuit of Happiness

Well today was the Jewish day of Repentance: Yom Kippur. A fast day. No food from 6:30 the night before until 7:30 the night of. Not a tremendous feat but enough to make you really really hungry. I have an inimitable way of always breaking my fast with a ridiculously heavy food and eating it with great fervor, such that I am almost always struck woefully ill immediately following. Nonetheless, fasting in such a way truly makes me appreciate food; my tenacity towards eating, though tonight it is cut short due to self induced over-eager-indulgancy, will commence with renewed zeal tomorrow. Multiple bowls of my favorite Cranberry Vanilla Trailmix Crunch will be consumed. Fasting like this truly brings to light what a joy and a privilege eating actually is. A privilege we modernized humans take highly for granted. I may even go as far to say that the ease to which food is attainable is one of the single most principal reasons for the turmoil which exists within so many minds today. Depression, anxiety, lament, rage, so often directed towards the self or towards others... but why. Well a friend of mine (Michael O. Jones) recently posited that man's plight all started when we developed hands, a brilliant theory which I cannot properly expound upon; the theory I can expound upon is that of our overly accessible food supply. Just think if all day we, like most all other living creatures on this planet, spent our day seeking food. Seeking food that isn't easily attainable (and I don't mean to lessen the struggle of making money and actually buying food), if all day we hunted and gathered I don't think we would have as much time for petty human-condition type problems. All our emotions would be directed pretty much at the outcome of how our search for food panned out and success would be punctuated with glory and happiness.

Okay, I'm definitely over simplifying matters here. I can attest to the fact that my theory has it's share of holes in it, such as ignoring all the advancements in technology and human ingenuity. Granted. But it's all too often that we hear about people without joy in their lives, our friends, our family, and most frequently those glorified celebrities who are plied with drugs and alcohol and usually call it quits at an age much below average. So where's the joy? Where's the love at? What happened to people really appreciating shit? Like "Goddamn, this bowl of cereal tastes good, maybe I shouldn't take all these horse tranquilizers tonight..." It's hard to really take stock of what you have, instead of trying to find what you're missing. Sometimes it's nice to take a break from something that we all take entirely for granted. To take a step back and truly appreciate something. Just think of how great breathing must feel for the recently asphyxiated.

Ugolina, Sated.

Ugolina della Gherardesca. Mentioned in Canto's XXXII and XXXIII of Dante's Inferno, while alive he was trapped in a tower with his two sons and grandsons and starved to death and confronted with the pleas of his children to nourish himself with their bodies. As if his pain in life was not enough, Dante subjects him, in his poem, to infinite torture by encasing him in ice up to his neck, shoulder to shoulder with the man who locked him into his prison while he was alive.

(sculpture is slightly unfinished)