Artists' Peace Book

As part of our response to Mary-Jane's International Day of Peace 2012 challenge Ken, Noela, Fiona and I have agreed to create an artists' book each to be on show in a display cabinet at our local Maleny Library from 10-29 September 2012. The idea is to complement our peace flag making efforts and draw more public attention to International Peace Day on 21 September.


Given the number of things happening in our art world I thought I had better make a start. I would like to create a peace book in the style of a prayer wheel - but horizontal not vertical.  I hunted through my brass objects stash and came up with the cylinder below. In a former life this object had been attached to the outside of a very old and non functional zinc-brass backpack sprayer.

©2012 Barry Smith - Brass cylinder formerly attached to zinc-brass sprayer

©2012 Barry Smith - Brass cylinder formerly attached to zinc-brass sprayer

My plan was to cut the various attachment off the cylinder so that it could sit on the feet (formerly the brackets for attaching the cylinder to the sprayer).  I also removed an internal valve. So I was left will a reasonable 'clean' brass cylinder with lots of age and patina. I then cut a half semi-circular piece out of the body of the cylinder so this could act as a hinged cover.

©2012 Barry Smith - Cylinder cut and test wooden rod cut

A length of 25mm timber dowel and a couple of brass decorations (off some old brass lights Noela bequeathed to me and I had disassembled) will become the core of the rod that will hold six 'pages' of the book. The decorative ends will be used to turn the pages.

©2012 Barry Smith - Rough mock-up of Peace Prayer Wheel

©2012 Barry Smith - Rough mock-up of Peace Prayer Wheel

There is still long way to go with this artists' book. The wooden rod will need to be longer and I think thinner; and the prayer pages will need to be the full length of the rod not just the three quarters in the center. I tested anodised aluminium pages but the stamped words did not stand out - so I will probably use brass. I have yet to find some small hinges I have 'put away safely'; and I would like some form of catch at the front. And of course there will be the final polish - but you can see I have left a lot of the patina on. The patina and dents give it an aged used look - which is what I'm going for.

I'm seeking short one line peace prayers - so any favourites are welcome.

Take one broken umbrella ....

Pushed along by Mary Jane and inspired by Fiona I have made a start on creating my Peace Flags for the flags for peace project - 2012. As you can see from the photo below in keeping with my desire to recycle I started with a broken 'rainbow' umbrella'.

©2012 Barry Smith - Potential flags for peace????

Having cut all the ties I ended up with a circle of rainbow and a broken down metal frame.

©2012  Barry Smith - 'Rainbow' fabric

©2012 Barry Smith - Umbrella skeleton

Then came the testing part - cutting the rainbow circle into pennants and hanging cords.

©2012 Barry Smith - From rainbow circle to flags

But that paid dividends as I was rewarded with a colourful string of pennants and strings.

©2012 Barry Smith - Peace flags in the making

©2012 Barry Smith - Once was an umbrella - a splash of colour

The next part of course is to reinforce the top and print on the individual flags. But it was a good project for wintery wet days on our mountain. And it didn't involve hammering metal.

"Five golden rings"

Our Collaboration of Maleny Artists (COMA) Coordinator-in-Chief, Ken Munsie, has given us another art challenge: to create a piece of art on a 12x12inch canvas representing in some way some aspect of the rhyme 12 Days of Christmas.

In most of the other 11 parts of the rhyme there is just too much drawing and painting required; so I thought I might be able to present the "Five Golden Rings" by beating a piece of brass cut to fit the canvas. For this challenge I have had to use new material as I did not have recycled brass that size. I had copper but the words were not five copper rings!!!  As you can see from the photo below the work is finished - apart from mounting on the canvas, signing and a little more polish.

Barry Smith © Five Golden Rings

The 'rings' were beaten from the back to create rings in relief. The front was beaten to sharpen the edges and to give a patterned texture. The work took a few annealings as the metal wanted to twist and warp as the circles intersected etc. But the annealing created some good colour - mainly on the back.

Barry Smith © Lovely annealing rainbows

I wanted to give the piece an aged look. I wanted to use Ferric nitrate but had none; but we had some Ferric sulphate. I brushed a mixture on to the heated finished piece; and then left it out in the open while we went to Perth - the photo below shows the rather scaly and rusty-crusty result.

Barry Smith © Beauty below the surface

But it polished off well with very fine steel wool and left some lovely patina behind; and then the edges and the high points were given a polish on the buffing-polishing wheels.

Barry Smith © Five Golden Rings - completed and polished

So I think I'm ready ahead of time with this piece - ready to hang later this month.

Metal letters

The garage sale went well yesterday - though people started turning up in the dark - 45 minutes before the advertised start time. But the good news is that we worked at selling for 6 hours and managed to move almost everything - so we now have a clear shed and in the next couple of weeks it will be turned into a print studio and teaching venue.

So today we rewarded ourselves with time in the studio. I used it to finish my ALAW 2011 black and white letters; and also turned the letters into a 3d presentation. I will post on the work on the ALAW 2011 blog but thought I'd share a few of the images here as well given the letters have been created from rusted metal straps; recycled tin (painted white); recycled bits from anodised canisters; recycled wire coat-hangers; and pop-rivets - a bit 'Rustnsfuffish' really.

Barry Smith © ALAW - Q 

Barry Smith © ALAW - black and white with a touch of colour

Barry Smith © ALAW - detail - B&W alphabet

Working out how to get the sequence right on the coat-hanger wire rods was a bit of a challenge. Fiona and I talked through and drew five options before settling on the one I used - always good to have another supporting artist on hand.

Barry Smith © ALAW - 3D B&W alphabet

The piece still needs a bit of finessing.

Rust lust on Friday

Though the day has held many thing I did get an hour to complete the piece, Journey 2, for the COMA exhibition.

I have still referenced the Snow Leopard by Peter Mattehiessen but for Journey 2: the ‘pages’ represent chapters of a life. The ‘thread’ that weaves through life’s chapters represents the turns and choices or life’s journey. The ‘pages’ are stamped with the words: journey, turns and choices. 

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2

Barry Smith © Journey 2 - detail

>Bit of a new thing for me  - I have used bookbinding waxed thread (courtesy of Fiona) to create the thread through the piece - I have used 7 threads combined into one to reflect the seven pages - a sacred number for life. Our lives are made up of many threads.

Barry Smith © Thread

Barry Smith © Journey 2 - detail

Barry Smith © Threads of life

Barry Smith © Threads of life

And of course I have enjoyed bringing rusted metal together with salvaged worn wood.

Friday's effort - a bit late

As we all probably experienced the blog system was down - makes it a bit difficult to keep in touch with the blogger art community - but we are back online so all is well.

I did manage to get down to the garage-studio yesterday after having cleaned it up a day or so before. I have started on a couple of assemblages but wanted to finish my COMA piece for the COMA Maleny Image 8 "between the lines" exhibition which is to open about 27 May - work to be submitted by 26 May. The exhibition will be in Rosetta Books (bookshop).

All works need to be 150mm square and need to reflect something about a book the artist is familiar with (read?).

My piece reflects my response to The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. I felt the book was not just a story of his journey after his wife died or about the snow leopard but also about life and the choices we are faced with, with all the twists and turns that are offered or challenge us along the way - as was the case in his journey.

Barry Smith © The journey - turns and choices

Barry Smith © Detail - The journey - turns and choices

The final piece, The Journey - turns and choices, is a grid with a central point. I have stamped sufficient letters into the piece (randomly) to enable the viewer to pick out the words: journey, turns, choices. The gridlines represent the different paths we can take in our life journey and the central point represents the fact that we are the centre of our own journey - nobody else's.

I started the piece with a blank 150mm square piece of rusted iron - which could represent the blank page we start with at the beginning of any journey.

Variety is the spice of life???

Since Saturday we seemed to have been on a bit of a roller-coaster - lots of work-work and community work - not a lot of time for personal art - or at least that is how it seems - still managing to get the 15-30 minutes in each day in some form or other.

When I look back I have managed to complete my first four letters for the ALaW 2011 challenge.

Barry Smith © ALAW3

I have cut and sanded a cube of Huon Pine in preparation for putting a font together. Sometimes so much time can go into the preparation.

And I spent time finishing the body of the dragon for the Festuri placemaking art event. And as part of the art4place team we spent 4 hours yesterday (Australia Day) doing temporary placemaking art with a focus on Chinese sister cities; and engaging children and parents in that art.

And hey tomorrow is Friday!!

A flight of letters?

I have completed my A Letter a Week 2010 (ALaW) art challenge; and have now signed up for ALaW 2011. I turned my second alphabet into a flock of birds.

Barry Smith © Flight of Letters

Barry Smith © The whole flight

The birds were created by bending each of the 7cm squares of rusted metal on the diagonal; bending some wings tips upwards; and creating a head by bending the tip of the diagonal bed downwards. Each bird is drilled in the centre of the diagonal bend; a piece of recycled wire coat hanger was flatted at the tip to allow the 'bird' to stay in place without sliding down the wire and pivot and be taken off for transportation; and the wires are placed in holes drilled into old rusted wood splitting wedges.

Rain, Rain, Rain

What a crazy weather world we live in. When I check out Velma, Suzi and Tammie's blog photos all I see is white, white and more white - and I think cold. At the moment our corner of the world is caught in an ongoing rain depression.

The outside has just been filled with greys and whites and wind and water.

So as you can imagine there is not a lot of outside work going on at our place. We have knuckled down and done work-work today - but slipped a little art work in. I managed to finish my last letters for ALAW 2010 today and posted them. I will create my Flight of Letters sculpture over the next couple of days.

Words in flight

I have started my second alphabet for the ALaW 2010 weekly art creation challenge; and have posted my first 4 letters for July.

Recently I visited the Cooroy library and apart from having seriouis library envy I was really taken by a series of metal pages that were suspended from the ceiling with quotes etc 'written' on them. Whilst they are meant to represent pages of a book because of the way they were folded and suspended they reminded me of birds - thus words in flight.

I decided that for my second ALaW final piece, where I bring all my letters together, I would create an installation that suggested a flock of birds in flight.

After I have created each of my letters by engraving into a rusted metal square I am bending the squares diagonally and then creating wings tips by bending triangles upwards. I then add the suggestion of a head pointed downwards and a tail tip pointed upwards. Thus creating a birdlike shape.

I guess in six months time we will see if the concept of 'the flock of letters in flight' holds up.

Tubular temple bell - for peace

In an earlier post I indicated that I was creating a tubular message bell for the ALaW 2010 challenge. I started with the idea of randomly attaching the letters to the pipes I found. But in the end it evolved into something a little more meaningful.

I decided to create some quietness and temple related words using the vowels. I came up with: pax (peace), joy, zen, hum, and lit (light) to be attached to five pipes. I decided on an odd number of pipes for the bell - so why not the sacred number 7. The left over letters were used to embellish two other pipes. The word pipes are the central five. The peace pipe is in the centre.

Initially I had thought of a making wind chime but the combination of brass and black pipes made me think of a Japanese temples. So I decided to suspend the pipes in a black stand like a gong in a temple. This of course meant that the form of the pipes needed to structured as well as looking good. The letters are riveted to the pipes with six black rivets each. The words curl around the pipes with each letter offset from the other by a half turn. This results in glimpses of different letters rather than having the words all standing out too plainly - one has to look for the words.

All the time I made the piece I was conscious that I knew nothing about tones, pipe lengths - so would it be all form and no function (no quiet harmonious sounding gong)?

The piece (Tubular Bell for Peace) took quite a while to execute but I am happy with the finished product. And the good news is that the pipes do make a lovely sound both when struck singly and when the touch each other. I like the idea that when one strikes a pipe with the word on it that a little vibration of that word might go out into the world. And when all five word pipes are gonging what a combined message.

Tubular bells - tubular messages

Having finished my first alphabet of letters for the A Letter a Week 2010 creativity challenge I had to turn my mind to how I would present the brass alphabet.

Two months or so ago I found about 12 one metre long lengths of 30mm steel pipe, painted black, beside the road as part of a curbside rubbish collection. They were just too good to waste. So I have had them stashed on my pile of good stuff.

Well I have decided to make a set of tubular bells using the pipes; and attaching my alphabet around the pipes with pop rivets.

I have given the bells (7 pipes) a theme - centredness, peace and joy. So I have decided to create 5 related words using the vowels; and the other letters will be be randomly placed on the other pipes.

As you can see from the above so far I have created Zen and Joy and will add Pax (as in peace). With the I there is the possibility of lit for light; and with the U possibly hum as in mantra, or sum as in sum of the parts, or drum as in march to your own tune. Any other suggestions out there???