Here is an image from the digital archive circa September 2003 at the Columbus, OH studio in the Arena District. This dude, John Bobb III gets the photo credit. I am sure I will elaborate on the circumstances of the Columbus studio in a future post. As far as characters go, the Union Tools studio had a cast that represented a full order of magnitude beyond any other place I have set up shop.

The steel ball in the photo was built for the public library in New Albany, OH, a suburb of Columbus. I guess it is a suburb, it is more of an enclave, I suppose. Whatever the town is, they needed a globe for the main space right in the center of the building above the circulation desk. I got involved in the project through a friend, sculptor Alan Hamwi, who works almost exclusively in bronze and lacks the structural welding chops to safely weld something that would hang above children’s heads. Al produced an element that went inside the ball. The final sphere was pretty tricked out, and actually split in half along two concentric bolting rings so that I could get it out my door and into the library. The photo shows it pretty early in the fabrication process with my DeLille Oxygen cap in full effect.

Here is the most celebrated polaroid of all, the infamous Get Serious tool crib identification picture. I don’t recall who took the photo, but they obviously amused me in a big way. This photo was saved by Ian Williams so that he could always keep in mind that he needed to get serious. Also, it had my phone number on it. Both numbers are now obsolete. The purpose of the photo is supposed to let everybody know who is allowed in the shop. It also keeps away evil spirits by intimidating them.

In the interest of continuing to leak new and old sculpture concepts here in the blog, I present this Form Z rendering from the concept phase of Rapid Deployment Minimalist Sculpture in the style of the Mujahedin that was built for a show with Ian Williams at Nexus in Philadelphia. This was going to be an alternative design, but I really like it, so I think I will put it together as the new administration escalates the conflict in Afghanistan. The final steel and graphite on vehicle composition was created when the United States first invaded, so it will be nice to revisit this whole thing after almost ten years. Simple design, but I don’t have the Russian olive drab paint anymore. I will have to start over. I had the paint mixed at Sherwin Williams based on the Testors Russian Armor Green. It sprayed nicely and looked super flat and even pre-weathered when dry. After working on the piece and moving it around, it became nicely handled, scratched up, and basically looking pretty similar to abandoned Soviet equipment. 

To build this thing won’t take too much machining, but I have to get my large-capacity compressor going again before I can blast the parts for painting. The real issue is resolving how it will connect to a base, or if it will even be able to stand without some kind of struts to support it from the left and right. I like that plan. I have always wanted to have a sculpture supported by wing struts like the U-2 has.

Add it to the list.

Here is another from the analog photo pile. This is a floor drawing at 100% scale for Untitled Sculptures with X-Rays circa a long time ago. I guess there are some notes on the floor too. The wheel of the Data Mine fire safe is visible in the upper right. I noticed that the safe does not appear in my portfolio images for that piece. I will sort it out. Pretty stupid to leave it out, after all, it was pretty important in the final presentation.

This is a Polaroid of a floor drawing from “Untitled Sculptures with Wall,” circa whenever. These are always nice to do if you have a flat concrete floor. I don’t, so I won’t be doing any new ones at the current shop. My floor is sort of lumpy due to what the TCR developers refer to as “underground infrastructure.” The final sculpture had either one or six steel-bar components. This was probably the most serious machining that I ever had to do for a sculpture. In the end, after I roughed out the 18 collars, they still had to be finished on a CNC lathe. What is left of this piece is still in storage in Columbus, OH.