Benefits of working outdoors….

©2015 Barry Smith -  A painted sky

This morning was given over to community art - negotiating to make signs for the 13 sculptures that make up the Peace in the Trees Sculptural Walk. This afternoon I was working under the cover of the carport at the shed - cutting 10 1.2mX.1m strips from a sheet of 2.5mm thick aluminium. It started to rain as I had thought a possibility - when I looked up I was greeted by a magnificent clear strong rainbow; and then a pale second rainbow. I love how at times you get the contrast between the grey storm sky above the rainbow and the clear sky below - separated by colour.

©2015 Barry Smith - A coloured dome over the house

©2015 Barry Smith -  Double colour in the valley

©2015 Barry Smith -  Colour and cloud

©2015 Barry Smith - ©2015 Barry Smith -  Colour and cloud

I went around to the back of the shed and noticed how the gentle rain hard created a jewel of water in the centre of a nasturtium leaf.

©2015 Barry Smith - A leaf holding water - inspiration for resin jewellery?

The cutting took time; but  I now have the 10 strips of metal that will be cut down to fit the routed sections in my posts; and I will then prepare them for etching - hopefully this coming week.

I love the residue of metal left by the cutting process - like powder and strips of silver.

©2015 Barry Smith - Marks

Did I hear someone say it is Friday. Now I'm off to make risotto; and of course drink a little wine.

The fragility of some metal

Over the last couple of days I have been reminded that all metals are not equal; nor are always reliable in terms of strength.

The cases in focus are: the metal from the trays I have been given to create pieces for the family from; and the treadle for our Lightning Jogger letterset printer.

As you can see from the photos below metal from one tray suddenly split after three annealings and hammering whereas the others have not. I will decide what I can do with the split bowls.

And we were amazed when the treadle for the press snapped - at a place it had been welded before - see photo below.

So I decided to repair it by bolting steel plates on both sides of the treadle and across the break; and fill in the spaces and gaps with "plastic steel". The photos show the process and the treadle bolted back in place.

The challenge with breaks and splits is how to ensure the repair or added design element fits with the original piece. I think the press repair fits with the industrial look of the press. A coat of black paint and it will look like part of the original and possibly stronger.

I know Daily Word bowls can be boring but .....

As I have said in earlier posts I'm in a bit of a production phase at the moment in the lead up to the July open studio weekend and the August-September exhibition - so into turning our multiples of categories of things. I'm working on making about 10 sets of Daily Words - the bowls and the inspirational words.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been cutting circles (about 90mm in diameter) of silver-plasted EPNS; and hammering them into the shallow bowl form I use for the Daily Words bowls. You can see a few of such circles that have been marked and hammered but not ground and polished in the photo below. All the circles are cut from small EPNS trays - gifted to me or purchased from recycling shops.

©2013 Barry Smith - Part of the stash of Daily Words bowls - formed and hammered but not ground or polished

I have added a couple of new designs to the bowls series - a star burst, positive and negative space equal-sided triangles and a more defined ying-yang. The full stash of new bowls are in the series of photos below.

©2013 Barry Smith - Daily Words bowls - spiral, ying-yang and star burst

©2013 Barry Smith - Reworded silver-plated drink coasters.

©2013 Barry Smith - Negative and positive space hammered triangles

©2013 Barry Smith - Full hammered pattern, hammered pattern on the rim and hammered in the centre and rim.

©2013 Barry Smith - A stash of Daily Words bowls

As is often the case  the bowls are so highly polished that they pick up all sorts of reflections - but still they look pretty good. Fiona pointed out that today is the fourth anniversary of posting to this blog - not a bad achievement .

Foraging on Friday

No creations were made today; but there are lots of bits collected that will add to future pieces. As I indicated in my last post Fiona and I went on a material stash replenishing trip today. I know that many fellow artists (e.g. Donna) understand the need to visit 'collectable' establishments to see if we can find 'good stuff' that we can add to our creative pile for use in future pieces.



We were lucky to come across a place that had lots of bits and pieces that the owners were happy for artists to sort through to pick bits for assemblage work - and at bargain prices. The photo above shows the resulting stash - mind you there are a couple of pieces that I had to pay over the odds because they are 'collectable'.

And on this foraging trip we were lucky to buy another large copper laundry boiler at a very reasonable price - great patinated copper for both Fiona and myself.

And yes there is more - I got this rusted but very restorable blacksmith's vice (about 1m long) - it will be great for foldforming once I have serviced it and mounted it on the outside work bench.

And there is yet more even (so exciting!!!) - Fiona found this great hand operated bench drill - it is in pretty good order; and once cleaned etc will be great for drilling the 'pages' of Fiona's metal books - a lot more control with the hand driven drill.

So at the end of our Friday we are happy - with our heap of rusted and patinated bits - our art material stash.

Accessing recycled timber and metal

One of my key aims in doing my sculptural or metal beating work is to use salvaged and/or recycled objects and material (including scrap and rusted metal and timber). It can add to the uniqueness of the pieces as once the recycled objects has been used then that is it - no mass production.

In the main I am able to access plenty of timber off cuts, recycled timber that often comes from people pulling down fences and salvaged timber when they are removing a tree from their yard. Just a few days ago I scored part of a truck of Bunya Pine tree that was being cut down and mulched by the owners of our energy grid. On request they left me with two one metre lengths about 350mm in diameter. It will be milled after a year of drying.

Getting metal is not quite as easy. I have found that the old laundry boilers have been a good source of copper; and the brass pot plant jardinieres of the 70-80s have been a good source of brass. Friends keep an eye out for rusted iron plate and copper, brass and rusted objects for me.

I spend a bit of my time cutting up boilers, jardinieres and other objects (e.g. trailer bases and mild steel fire places) to create flat sheets of metal to work with.

In the photos above you might be able to make out four different sheets of brass that have been cut from jardinieres. This metal has been used to make small meditation bowls and letters for the A Letter a Week 2010 art challenge.

I do also end up with a lot of scrap off cuts. I can use some of these as does Fiona but there does tend to be more than I can handled so I will have to think about other project uses for them. I used quite a few such bits recently making brass leaves for the font in the photo.

Rusted iron and the generosity of fellow artists

One thing about my form of art is that the materials often don’t cost a lot – not many people are marketing rusted iron, cast off copper and brass objects or preloved and rotten timbers. But then again these objects are often hard to come by as they can just be sent to rubbish tips or to commercial metal recyclers. So it is always good to have friends and family on the lookout for bits and pieces.

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a bit of a windfall in the rusted iron department. I had to say no to Susan (print and handmade book artist) and Edith-Ann’s (ceramicist and assemblage sculptural artist) separate offers of rusted corrugated iron – I’m not quite up to working with pieces that can accommodate the scale of corrugated iron yet.

Kim (who combines rusted metal with ceramics) delivered these great metal plugs from the rubbish tip of a metal fabrication workshop.






James (who is into marble sculpture but is also a builder) rescued and delivered this huge (2m high) 3mm thick plate rusted fire place and rusted 2mm floor out of a 6X4 box trailer.







And Edith-Ann provided the rusted out top of a 44 gallon drum.





And of course the rust itself is a beautiful gift of nature.





I just love the fact that the network of fellow artists supports what you are doing artistically and are so generously willing to share.

Rainy day tasks

It continues to rain on the mountain – not as heavy but lots of scudding showers. This means not a lot of outdoor work gets done.

However today between showers we went to a block of land in town that is about to be cleared to make way for a new medical centre-complex. We were told we could remove fence posts – a lot of these are old and have very interesting cut-outs and lots of rusty nails and bolts in them. Fiona and I ‘harvested’ 6 solid posts that have ‘installation’ written all over them. In the process we managed also to pick up a few scrub ticks – Fiona had one and I had three. But with our trusty tick remover they were all dispatched.

Other good news from my perspective is that I finally got around to putting vents into the walls of Fiona’s paper studio. This task has been on the list for about 12-18 months. I cut the vents out of the stainless surround of a rusted out BBQ that was thrown out as part of the roadside rubbish collection. The vents will help keep moisture down and therefore reduce mould attack – at least that is the theory.

Since I was using metal cut-off disks in the side grinder to cut out the vents I took the opportunity to cut up a heap of brass pot plant pots – so I now have a really good stash of metal for bowls - including the Super Bowl Challenge 2010; and the A Letter a Week challenge.

Recycled materials

One lesson I learnt from the In the Stillness exhibition was that I have an ongoing love of and commitment to using as much salvaged and recycled material in each piece of my work as I can. Obviously I need to use new glues and rivets etc but the main body of work can be based on reuse. I also learnt that in the main metal and timber are the materials I warm to most – with a bit of Perspex thrown in occasionally.

I am currently working on both a COMA piece and also a piece for the Artspace Mackay artists book exhibition. The Mackay piece will be an artists book with a sculptural form – as indicated in my rough sketch.

You can see from the photos that the materials I start with can be fairly rough but the new form and at times the cutting and polishing will bring out the latent beauty of the materials.

Smoke and water

E-day, that is exhibition day (28 Oct.), is nearly upon Fiona and I so there is just that slight bit of mad panic emerging in the household. Not that we are not on track but rather we anticipate that the unexpected could, and usually does, happen and all the best plans go out the window.
Still the last few days have been productive.

I have continued to work on the water font pieces for the garden but also a few pieces that would be used as vessels for burning incense.


The grey piece below is a cut down recycled zinc coated water pressure cylinder. The leaf pattern was cut into the cylinder using an off-cut blade in the angle grinder. Rivets and patterns ground onto the metal finish the design. However it needs to cure outside – hopefully picking up a bit of rust over the next week or so on the edges of the pattern and other areas where the zinc has been ground off.



The tall thin piece is made from recycled timber and copper from and old water heater.



The incense burner is part of an old copper fuel tank and copper soldering irons – just a piece to keep the quirky dimension alive.

Metal – beaten and busted

Sometimes we just try to take the material too far. As you can see I had beaten this small bowl into shape; had added a line of copper rivets as and internal decorative feature; and was attempting to rivet a curved piece of metal to the bowl as an external decoration.



All went well attaching the external piece with rivets – all looked solid – but as I attempted to beat and meld the metal together the attached piece let go and also split. In its own way it does not look too bad – so I might go back and work it a bit more and see if the split and detached rivets can be incorporated into the final piece.