Product for the Vessel exhibition shop

 

As I worked on my three pieces for the Vessel Exhibition I also worked on a few pieces that might go into the gallery shop.

Over the weekend I completed making some sail form bowls/incense burners and some sail form earrings. You can see 5 pair of highly polished solid brass plate earrings in the opening photo.

I made 7 incense bowls-burners; including making the incense holders our of melted metal - beautiful silver-brass metal with gorgeous tops as you can see in the photos below.

An another look at the earrings- reflecting a painting on the wall - as you can see one pair is made from patinated copper.

Another productive weekend.

Prototypes

 

Amongst other things, today I played with a few prototypes that have a nautical theme - sails and waves (prototype small scale wave pipeline above) -including a prototype of a sail form incense dish as you can see below. 

Earrings also got a run as you can see from the prototype below - might have to be a bit smaller - I will consult with Fiona.

However, the main task was to see if I could form a double wave (wave pipeline really) from sail blanks. For the test piece I cut sail blanks out of copper from an old hot water system.

The final piece could be considerably larger - but you can see I have riveted the forms in an overlapping pattern; and then curved the riveted piece  over a pipe held in the vise.

As a protoptype I think it has worked - the final piece will include sails blanks that have been ground hence have contrasting edges. Some additional photos of the earrings and incense burner bowl follow. I think I will ensure both the earrings and bowl have more texture in the final versions.

All in all a good day in the workshop-studio

Another day of finishing stuff; and last chance for giveaway

A fairly normal Friday really - community meeting that went for almost 3 hours, art and work on the block - the good life.

I have been having discussions with a local shop about whether they would carry some of my meditation-reflection bits - in this case Daily Words and small Leaf Incense Burners. I decided to make four of each to check my use of material and timing etc as I usually sell these items at a fairly low price in my online shop; and am not sure what I would get for them if I sold through the shop and yet tried to maintain a reasonable price level.

I thought I would simply share a few photos of my labours.

First a couple of shots of stamped words before grinding and polishing; and some cut down bits from goblets that I have drilled to make incense stick holders.

©2013 Barry Smith - Raw stamped metal and stamps 

©2013 Barry Smith - Raw stamped metal

©2013 Barry Smith - Incense holders in the raw

And then a few photos of the completed and polished pieces.

©2013 Barry Smith - Incense holders polished

©2013 Barry Smith - Small Leaf Incense Burners

©2013 Barry Smith - Small Leaf Incense Burners

©2013 Barry Smith - Bowls for Daily Words

©2013 Barry Smith - Bowls and words for Daily Words

And now I'm off to have a red wine; and a discussion with Fiona about if to sell and where to sell such work.

And don't forget the 600th post giveaway will be drawn on Sunday.

Bowls for Shrine to the Moon

Recently I posted on my the final of a series of personal shrines I am getting ready for the mini exhibition Fiona and I are having in the Up-Front Club.

Fiona had suggested that I complement the shrine with an aluminium bowl and leaf - a silver look but slightly muted. So I asked people what they thought. The reaction was mixed but a few people came down on the side of brass - but Suzi suggested maybe a bowl that had more than one metal - maybe one made from aluminium, brass and copper. So I have taken up the challenge a produced a few possibilities.

Barry Smith © Bowl cluster

Barry Smith © Zinc plated brass, brass and copper rivet

Barry Smith © Aluminium, brass, copper and aluminium rivet

Barry Smith © Aged foldformed zinc plated brass 

The photo above is all three together for comparison; and the individual bowls - all about palm size. And the photos below show the bowls, with an aluminium leaf, on the shrine.

Barry Smith© Moon shrine with foldformed bowl

Barry Smith © Moon shrine with aluminium, brass and copper bowl

Barry Smith © Moon shrine with zinc-brass and brass bowl

So what do you think of the various options?

A little time doing art

Fiona shared with me that she had read that no matter what artists should spend a little time with their art each day. It means more than just reading about art or someone else's art. It means going to the studio and either starting, continuing or even just planning something - getting the creative juices going. I am going to see if I can do that in 2011.

For Fiona and my joint exhibition in Studio 4 Gallery in March one of the series I am working on is offering and incense bowls. Yesterday and today I have worked on the small incense bowl below. It deviates from my normal round bowl - it is oblong in shape. Again it is not big it is meant to be a niche or window ledge piece. It is about 100mm high and 150mm long.

Barry Smith © Incense Bowl - Japanese Temple

I wanted it to have a bit more of a Japanese Temple influence look about it.  Fiona took a photo of me holding it to show how small it is; but also to show that it has the look of a Japanese Temple gate look about it. It was a bit dull and stormy outside when the photos were taken.

Barry Smith © Incense Bowl - Japanese Temple

As usual it is really strong as I used my new diamond drill to drill through the stone and the bolts that hold it together are glued into the based rock.

2011 &one for Velma

So much has happened in 2010 and we have all experienced so much in our life journey - not all good but we are here and we have hope. So may we all depart 2010 with a sense of survival and achievement; and enter 2011 with hope and expectation.

Fiona and I don't do Christmas cards but we do New Year cards so we have designed our cards to reach out to our friends.

But today is Friday right!!! So there had to be some creative work going on.

I tested out my diamond drills today and made a small offering bowl - not an incense bowl - this one is in honour of Velma - a small bowl to collect the dew or to make offerings in. It is small  - 110mm high and the bowl is 90mm wide.  The bowl is made from a failed tri-fold bowl - so this piece has had three lives already. And of course you are stuck with the mountains in the background

Influenced by the aesthetic of Japanese gardens?

I managed to get a couple of hours in the garage-studio today. I wanted to do a test for a new series. I want to combine stone with my beaten metal bowls to create small incense burners that reflect a little of the stone in Japanese gardens. I was also testing out how tile drills would work on stone.

Well I managed to make a couple of prototypes - and in the process discovered that I would really need to buy myself a couple of diamond drills as the tunsten-carbide drills just fell apart when drilling anything harder than mudstone.

So below are the two test pieces.

Barry Smith © Stone and metal incense burner



Barry Smith © Stone and metal incense burner

 

Barry Smith © Stone and metal incense burner 2

The stones don't really match up - they came from the 'stone river' beside our driveway - but with better matched stones and a diamond drill I think this will work out. Why the drilling? I want to drill through the stones and attached the bowl with a bolt that goes right through the whole piece.

Three small foldformed bowls

On Friday I did the folding work on four small bowls; and turned a serving platter into a larger bowl which, when finished, is likely to become a medium garden font. I did further work on the small bowls but as it turns out the aluminium one just did not come up to scratch. The metal seemed too soft to hold the shape I was working towards.

The brass and copper bowls have been gently beaten, with a nylon hammer, into the final shape, including flat bases to enable them to stand up. I had cut circles from a new off cut of copper, the side out of a brass jardiniere and a relatively thick piece of brass plate that in the past was part of a small brass door.

I think the photos indicate that the copper and brass have worked well - but I must say my favorite is the bowl made from the heavier brass. I like the slightly Japanese ceremonial look of the bowls. They will probably become part of a series of incense burners - for incense cones. They of course will need a base - I'm thinking a flat black or white stone, or small stone stack, if I can find suitable stones.