Christmas in July/Iron Reindeer

After finishing the bar for Cocoa Cinnamon coffee house, I spent some sweaty days building Rudy the Iron Reindeer. I pulled together all of the scrap in my shop and welded Rudy up. The team in DC was building a brilliant santa sleigh art car out of a airport baggage train. Rudy would help keep things from getting too cute.  Rudy bobbed in the back of the truck all the way up to DC. 

After a couple modifications we managed to mount Rudy to the art car. 

Then ride it around the back alleys of Capitol Hill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgPDY24Geik&feature=player_embedded

And Voila! Covered with a ghostly patina of playa dust.

Dustin Smith, chief Santa and sleigh engineer, led team of about 20, to fabricate, mechinate and to wire for light and sound, and bring the gorgeous  Merry Marauder to the desert. 

Sketchpad Space

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp_uL6n9J7E&feature=youtu.be

I made a video in order to practice the technology. I think of it as showing my sketchpad. I've never been afraid to show what's in my real sketchpad.

I think it would be cool to do sketchpad space videos of my friends 3 dimensional sketch pad spaces. I talked to Joe Galas at the Monkey Bottom who seemed interested in it.

A pocket sized instability structure

Lunch! That most sacred time where I retreat to my lair and work on things. Other projects are stalled slightly so this one popped into mind. I like instability structures. Like the tumbleweeds they are meant to be unstable, to rock and then to right themselves. These weebolwobles wont fall down.

The structure in it's new, beige office environment.

Ships and Mountains

The Process:

+ It had to be started and finished in under 50 minutes.

+This structure gets extra points because its a randomized gift for no particular reason.

And yes! I do want to scale these up to make a traveling sculpture playground.

The Big Blue Bug; a climbing sculpture

With any big expenditure of art related energy, the feeling that I've neglecting my family follows. Several things I promised my daughter; a pirate ship, a tree house and a chicken coop. The pirate ship was easy, 45 minutes with cardboard a razor and glue gun and I had a credible vessel. Fi festooned it with 100 sticker and sailed it into the stormy seas of her
imagination to befriend squid and dolphins.

The pirate ship is nice, because it's biodegradable once she moves on.

The tree house called for an unusual solution (Yeah I specialize in unusual solutions.) We don't have great climbing trees. Fi's not much of a climber. I wanted to build something a little physically challenging to her and her friends, but not permanently attached to a tree. The Big Blue Bug shape formed after a series of drawings. It's essentially a leaning ladder with a scarab like shape (possibly a tick). It's made from salvaged water pipes. The ladder on the rounder part can support multi-tiers of tree house slats. These will be attached to trees on special tree collars. The mandibles at the top would catch the tree. The pipes allow me to run a safety rope through the

mandibles, but it's self supporting. It's legs will be anchored into the ground.

I welded, tested and painted it blue at the space. I built the structure flat then used the wall and the entry sign of the space to bend the entire structure into a curled form. The curling was interesting and suggested a second life as a rocking-hammock hybrid. (Mental note: That really would be a natural evolution, rocking in two directions.)

Once the deck is in place, the blue arc could seem like a sail. and could definitely support a tent.

B-3 puts a climber into the lower branches of the white pine. Big Fun! A tree climbing tree-house. The "house"part to follow.

"I'm a Tree Fairy" Eeep! Success.

Amplimaphone (a sonic cannon)

The tension of the lead up to the Invisible show was relieved by building stuff. I have a tendency to do this. Creative tension = pile on more creative tension. In addition, the promotional work was difficult for me to do. Despite my faith in Invisible's integrity, I still felt like a carnival barker. The solution: build more.

I had been working on the Urban Tumbleweeds,but Kevin McGill, my partner engineer from Minor the Mechanical Bull asked me a question: " Hey there is this show that I'm going to be a part of called the New Obsolete, and I thought it would be cool to use the Amplimaphone. You would be all over this show! Want to build this?" I was thrilled. I forwarded this message to Mark to show the currents of creative energy being generated by the project. Tom Merrigan had formed a band out of some of the Bulltown Strutters and Kevin had been combing the Scrap Exchange for Obsolete objects to beat rhythms.

The next day I built the frame for the batteries and amps, mounted the frame on a aluminum jogging stroller and mounted the Amplimaphone to the frame. The idea is that we could play mp3s through the portable sound machine. I felt like a bad kid for not having worked on the project and I wanted to make headway for Kevin's electrical finesse.

Kevin wires the Amplimaphone

I wonder if low tech might be better.

We're determined to make some kind of hideous sound!

Perhaps a combination of Low tech and High Tech.

One night at the 715 Space, we wired it together. After 2 hours of trying to make it work we connected the right ground and afro-beat started blasting through the horn!

After our rousing initial success, I brought the Amplimaphone back to Kevin's lab where he could do amazing things to it's electrical guts.

Part of Anomaly Inc.'s mission was to make the New Obsolete into a min- street festival with food trucks and performers. Because of the cold, we brought the street performers indoors. But the Amplimaphone blazed tunes into the night. Also some convenient and annoying sound apps could be broadcast into the Durham sky: a lion, a chimpanzee. We could roll the Amplimaphone in to the 108 and make gorilla noises to clear out the final stragglers. I brought it to the Durham Mardi Gras parade to play before the marching bands arrived and plug the Invisible show. This was especially satisfying because the State of Things bailed on the radio interview.

The Amplimaphone plays in front of 108 Morris Street as people gather for the show. Some people were actually attracted to the show by the music. I think I was playing Beats Antique and Cafe Flores.

Kevin installed a LED's to illuminate the wiring and I wrapped El wire around the bell.

The Amplimaphone plays sweet music to a Bulgogi truck and a Urban Tumbleweed.

The New Obsolete

Since we went to Guilford College, I watched Mark make amazing things. First he played with windmills, bikes with wings, leaning sculptures, bass guitars. I thought it was cool, but never imagined it was vital. Then came my CONVERSION. In Denmark I learned black smithing. Molten metal changed my life. It was if Thor struck me with a hammer. Things I thought were static, were actually dynamic. Solids were liquid and became solids in new shapes. It didn't happen all at once,
but I began to observe and wonder how things were made. I know I wouldn't be content to be a mere observer. I had to make things myself. When I returned I entered an intensely creative environment of a pack of musical college sophomores largely without girlfriends or store bought booze. That pack was English Hall. Ridiculous projects were adopted and executed with the speed and grace of a flock of birds turning at an unseen magnetic signal. Situations like that are necessarily temporal, but the idea remained.

Mark advanced in his writing and depth of his sculpture projects. I began to take more note and even awe. At one point on the christmas tree farm, Mark taught me to weld. I started becoming interested in architectures and working on furniture projects. I got work in a sweltering metal fabrication shop and would stick scrap metal together at lunch. Eventually, I made a small geodesic icosohedron. Mark had already made a 8' diameter, 3 frequency geodesic. Then I made something that had no mathematics or practical application. It was determined to be my first sculpture. I

worried that I was treading too much in Mark's arena and was also way outclassed. Mark's writing

had a key " I don't care if it's been done, it hasn't been done by me!" This is a great way of freeing thought. I advanced without a shadow.

Mark began to make more and more complex sculptures. These sculptures began to play with light and sound. They interacted with the audience, they caused people without skills to participate in music. When I visited him in Pittsburgh, I watched him make the drum machine, a circular disk that you program with bamboo skewers to make solenoids beat. He made a typewriter that uses light trippers to play a piano.

In November, Mark asked about bringing his band Invisible to Durham. I've never done show production, but jumped at the suggestion. Simultaneously, a new group of friends decided to resuscitate a existing arts non-profit we call Anomaly Inc.

I met Mark on the train platform with a bicycle donated by Seven Stars. We brought Mark on a wild ride showcasing and looking at abandoned storefronts, making contacts and finding a space.

Of course we found adventures on the bikes

We debated the potential of the spaces to activate street fronts and enhance the cities streetl life.

Got panoramic views.

Visited other artists like Al Frega and David Solow and the Downtown Storefront Project folks.

Mark got to ride the train sunrise to sunrise.

A lucky break came when Tom Merrigan, architect and mobile urban pianist secured us a ideal spot at 108 Morris Street.

The old bowling alley/ hearse maker/ nightclub had plenty of space and working toilets. Mark can bring in his 10' tall music makers and we can accommodate an audience of 150.

SignWave Night

ONE of the aspects of the construction I considered, but didn't explore for the show was how it would look at night. Light would glow through the cracks and the imprecise cuts. It would outline the internal structure. The picture above is an experiment. I keep looking at this in the backyard and thinking it could go places again. My daughter loves it as a non-euclidean play structure, but I'm building her a treehouse so that frees it up.

Geer Street Garden Bikeracks

So I made these racks as a gift. I offered to Andy at Geer Street Garden to build them if he would donate a recommended sum to the Scrap Exchange. He could donate to a great organization, get the tax write off and do it at his leisure (within reason). He took the bait.

I fabricated three and he asked for three more. I installed them with a 3/8 inch expanding bolt drilled into the concrete. The material is all locally harvested rusty pipe and rail road parts. I got obsessed with the unfolding leaf form which was a good fit for the aesthetic of Geer Street Garden. The two smaller pipes separate the handlebars of the bikes so they don't get tangled. You lock at the head tube, and front wheel so the bikes don't slide. The day after the install, Tipping Point came to Geer with about a hundred bikes. The use has been steady since then.

For me this project combined my interests in bikes, sculpture, scrap metal, street furniture and urban design. More practically, now I can park my bike at Geer Street.

Jackie Mcleod is going to do a set of racks across the street. I like to think I helped tip the market over the edge.

Spiral Wing

An older work, done in 2006 and installed in Takoma. It was the first in a line of vitasculptures; sculpture made for vines.

Urban Tumbleweeds

Instructions:

You'll find me rolling down your street. Apply a tag, band poster, sticker, lost dog sign, found object, poem, graffiti, one half of a glove, write a letter, write a song ... then roll me on.

Return to Seven Stars Cycles any time after February 11th.