Rustnstuff

Friday, February 15, 2013

Friday fragments

There has been very little time for art play today. The day has been taken up in the main with work in our community.

I did manage to bring in a few fragments of iron (offcuts from leaves and shards) that I had stamped yesterday and put out in the rain to begin the curing process. Whilst the curing has not finished you can see some quite nice colours are appearing. I think I will just keep making these peace fragments until I have a really good stash. Fiona and I thought they could be installed on top of The Wall (of books) - we will see. Still it would be good to have a 100 or so of these fragments.

The stamping was done using 6mm plumbers letters, a 4lb hammer (small sledge hammer) and my larger anvil. Had to hold the letters with pliers as I was a little worried about my fingers. Photos are not great as the light was not good at the end of the day.

I was asked to stamp a few healing sayings on scrap metal - so I did manage those today. They will go on a keying and therefore be a reminder to the owner.

As you know I made a stash of Peace Book pendants. Several of these have gone to new homes but a couple have made their way into my shop.

I think I hear a glass of red wine calling me.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Cutting and creating rust

At the moment because of the weather I am moving between indoor and outdoor art. If its raining then I'm indoors doing smaller pieces - mainly jewellery; and if it is fine I'm outdoors working on components of three larger pieces of work.

Yesterday I got a good run at cutting up rusted iron plate for my shards; a tryptic of rusted leaf-forms; and a circular pair of leaf-forms. The cutting is done with a side grinder with fibre cutting blades. Takes a bit of time and fiddling but there is a certain satisfaction in cutting the pieces out myself and by hand. Anyway I thought I'd share a few photos of the stash of cut rusted metal which is now out in the rain curing more before I get to do the assembling of the posts; and bending of the leaf forms.

To give a sense of scale - the larger leaf-form is about 1.3m long.

I love it when I get to play with the rusted plate iron - the art is there before I start - nature creating gorgeous colours and patterns.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

The Wall

Today I finally got around to starting the small wall of books that is going to be located near 601 mvr Studio Gallery (aka The Shed).

Two-three years ago I created an installation of three stacks of discarded encyclopaedias called Quiet Transition.

©Barry Smith - Quiet Transition - installation of encyclopaedias and year books

It has sat out in the open near The Shed for all that time; and the stacks are starting to gradually breakdown - probably take about another 2-3 years.

This gave me the idea of creating a small wall from discarded books I have been collecting in the garage.

The Wall is to be about .6m high and 10m long. It will run from the Peace Post alongside a stone river to the top entry to The Shed.

Today I started to create an earth pathway-pad; and cement continuous metal thread into the pathway about 1m apart. The metal three will hold planks in place to compress the books to enable them to last longer in the elements and to stop them toppling over.

As you can see from the photos above I got about half of the metal threads cemented in. Once that job is complete Fiona and I can start the process of creating The Wall by stacking books in overlapping layers.

One of the things I liked about doing the work on the book wall today was the fact that I found myself listening to Pink Floyd's album The Wall - I smiled about the possible contrast between the lyrics and the fact that we would be building a wall out of books. Hopefully some of these books could have torn the walls of ignorance and bias down not hemmed people in.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Beginnings

There has not been a lot of time for art over the last few days; but I have made a start on a few Peace Book pendants. I have had quite a few requests for the pendants so I decided to make a series all at the one time. I quite like this process for a number of reasons including: the fact that as I have said before I like the idea that tangible peace pieces are worn and send out energy; making a series forces me to think about the words and uniqueness of the pieces; I get to use offcuts of trays; and I just like making them.

As you can see from the photos below I have six pendants in the rough. They have been: designed; cut; sized; and drilled. I have now worked out a process. The drilling of 4 leaves of the books is often the biggest challenge - getting all the holes to line up and avoid breaking fragile drill bits.

A bit of polishing, adding jump-rings and chain and these Peace Book pendants should be good to go into the world and new homes.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Art walkway creeps towards implementation

Over the past two years Fiona and I have worked with another local artist (Edith-Ann Murray), local store owners, an architect and a builder to design and bring a covered art walkway (about 32 m long and 3m wide) into reality. Initially it was envisaged that this placemaking piece of functional art would be funded by joint private and government funds. However, after almost 1.5 years of design and technical work the relevant government funding program was disbanded by a new government. But the store owners wanted to proceed though with a more modest walkway; and additional artistic elements could be added in stages later. We have moved from a cantilevered design with various additional art elements to a more standard post design. More will be revealed when the walkway is in place.

The walkway will have about 47 sheets of 3m x1.2m Corten steel (rusts very nicely thank you). About 23 of the sheets will have cutouts that reflect a native plant that grows along the banks of the local Obi Obi Creek. The cutouts will be about 800mm by 600mm in size.

Today I have been working on the template that will be given to a local resource-recycling centre who will cut the Lamandra Longifolia influenced design and cutouts into the Corten sheets using a hand held plasma cutter. The design process is shown in the photos below.

The cutouts will be covered on top by a sheets of 8mm Perspex - bolted in place. The aim is for light to flood through the cuts outs creating a dappled light pattern on the cement path below. And people walking under the walkway will see the patterns in the sheets above - negative space light. At a later stage we hope to etch the same pattern into the cement path.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

We see things with different eyes and spirits

Recently Fiona and I joined Ken and Noela on a trip to Brisbane to see the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art Exhibition at GOMA - not long before it closed.

Whilst we four do share many art interests it still never ceases to amaze me that individually we can still be captured by some particular detail of some of the things we see. I thought I'd just share a few photos of fragments, angles, edges, shadows of things I saw with my eye, spirit and lens.

And of course that is but a toe in the water of what we saw and were uplifted by. So good for the spirit to occasionally immerse oneself in the works of others. It was a good outing with the team.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Finished for Friday

Between cleaning up the block and house after the storm and a bit of community volunteer work I have grabbed a couple of hours for art here and there. I have been focussing on Peace Book Pendants and Peace Leaves. Seem to be in one of those phases!!!

The Peace Book Pendants are proving to be popular; and a few will wing their way to new homes of the next couple of days.

I managed to complete three Peace Book Pendants - all a bit similar but also quite unique. This time I tried a square (about 4-5cm) book form with five jump rings as a spine; a long rectangular book-form (about 2cm wide and 4-5cm long); and a smaller rectangular form (about 2.5cm by 3.5cm). All the 'pages' are made from recycled metal and were cut free hand - so the 'pages' have a worn unevenness about them. The cover of the longer rectangle is cut from the side of an old cylindrical salt cellar.

As you can see from the photos I have used two peace aspirations: seek peace and imagine peace. And I continue to make the Peace Leaves from recycled silver-plated EPNS. Why? It is a way of putting the peace ripples and aspirations out there.