Rustnstuff

Sunday, May 12, 2013

High shine

I got back to polishing the cluster of bowls I was hammering on Friday. The high polished finish often makes it hard to photograph the pieces because they pick up so much colour or reflection from objects in the room including me holding the camera. There are several different shapes of bowls in the cluster: a full pod shaped bowl; a couple of more cone shaped bowls; a couple of the more rounded shapes; a couple of classic shallow bowls; and the bowls made from the goblet bases.

Full pod bowl with folds in the opening edge.

Conical bowl shapes with natural hammered lips. Brushed brass over copper bowl 6cm diameter by 4.5cm deep; and silver over copper 7cm in diameter by 5cm deep.

More rounded raised bowls. Silver over copper 4.5in diameter by 4cm deep; and silver over brass 6cm in diameter by 5cm deep.

More traditional sunken bowl forms. Larger bowl is 14.5cm in diameter and 4cm deep; and small bowl is 7.5cm in diameter and 2cm deep.

And the goblet bowls - polished. The most tightly hammered (raised) of these bowls is 5cm in diameter and 4cm deep; and the least raised is 6.5cm in diameter and 3cm deep.

But the weekend was not all about polishing - I have started work on personal shrines for the August-September exhibition. More on those as they are completed.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Bark spiral earrings & raised bowls

As is the case with most artists - I tend to be progressing many things in a similar timeframe.

At the moment I'm working on stuff that will go into: a display on recycling and art in the local library; a couple of open studio days Fiona and I will have in July; our joint exhibition in August-September; and of course the on-line shop. So it is often a case of doing what is a priority; or what I rather just feel like doing for the sake of creating.

The bark spiral earrings fall into the later category - I have been wanting to do a couple more pairs of these earrings since I made a prototype for Fiona some months ago. She wears them reasonably frequently - so I guess they have appeal.

Anyway I got to finish the two pair below.

The first set were made from silver-plate over brass; and the second silver-plate over copper.

And I got stuck into raising a few bowls as you can see from the cluster of worked bowls waiting in the annealing pit for the next round of fire.

I finished off the 3 bowls made from the bases of goblets - but I raised them to different depth - gives a sense of profession of the bowl raising process. I love the hammered texture both in and outside; and I think they turned out well given they were made from bases I initially put aside.

Fiona and I are off to the Up-Front Club to see who won the prizes in the Essence of Coffee exhibition-competiotion. Not holding out a lot of hope for my Steampunk influenced coffee mugs.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Online Shop down - IT glitch

I'm sad to say that my BSA online shop has had to be taken down and off my website as we appear to have experienced an IT glitch between a software upgrade for the website and the shop plugin.

It could mean the shop is offline for a couple of weeks. If Rustnstuff blog readers, or others, are interested in purchasing pieces whilst the shop is offline please feel free to send me an email and we will work it through.

Thanks for your support and patience. Barry

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Sunset, hawks, cotton and grasses

Fiona and I did another of our quick round trips to Goondiwindi and back to collect some art pieces. The evening we arrived we saw the brilliant sunset below - such a mix of colours.

In the sky above the show grounds hawks circled - we did not know why.

On the way home we paused to check out some of the large bales of cotton in the huge fields. Old huge rectangular bales and the modern smaller round bales.

And the fields themselves after harvest have their own beauty.

Layers of grass on the roadside and field fringes.

We got to look at quite a lot of fields as there were 10 stops for road works along about a 40klm section of road that had been impacted by floods earlier in the year.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

A little cutting and forming

Most of the weekend has been given over to serious pruning on the block; and then travelling to Goondiwindi to pick up my sculptural piece.

But I did make a start on cutting blank EPNS disks for Daily Word and Offering bowls; and blank EPNS rectangles for Peace Leaves.

As part of the metal harvesting process I had a number of EPNS goblet bases etc begging to be hammered. I particularly wanted to see what sort of bowl could be created from the goblet bases. Photos below show the base before and after: 3 annealings and 3 hammerings.

And on the annealing bed are 3 bases; a sugar bowl lid; and the bottom sections of two goblets - all being annealed and hammered together.

All steady progress towards creating stock; testing metal and shapes; and maybe creating a few bits that will go into the peace and stillness exhibition.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Metal harvest

Fiona and I are going to hold an exhibition in late August and most of September - so the planning and preparation is well underway. The twin themes will be stillness and peace - that is a surprise!! We both basically know what we want to create and the volume of pieces to go on wall, on plinths and in cabinets. The planning made me realise I needed a bit more metal. So last weekend we supplemented my stash by going on a run to recycling centres and and op-shop.

Today I did about 2.5 hours of cutting and sorting of much of the new metal stashes. It fell into two categories: large trays (stainless and EPNS) for large bits of flat metal for personal shrines: and small EPNS trays, coasters and bowl surrounds for bowls, leaves and peace books etc.

The photos below show the large tray; and the recovered metal.

Some pretty interesting patterns on the metal.

One of the trays must have been over 50 years old as I found part of a 1959 newspaper used as packing between the metal and the timber backing.

The second set of photos are of: the EPNS stash; the mangled mess of cut up ENPS bits; and then the sorted EPNS metal.

No excuses - plenty of metal to work on. But by way of a change before getting out on the block and finishing the weeding and veggie garden digging I started beating a number of small bowls out of bowl lids and goblet bases. I will do more work on these over the weekend.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

A morning of mist, moon and magpies

I didn't mean to take the iPhone with me on my walk this morning but for some reason it called and I put it in my pocket. I set off just after 6am as Fiona was off to do circuits with her women's group - so it was just on sunrise in the mountains.

The sunrise as I walked Treehaven Way was soft as it filtered through the mist.

And it was the time the birds were waking and foraging.

The one below was sitting and singing on the wire - maybe on lookout; and as you can see the moon is still about two thirds and still high in the blue sky - bird and moon against the blue.

The mist was hanging in the hollows and valley below.

Dew still clung to the twigs of trees.

Such a soft morning filled with the fresh breath of the day.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Sometimes you just play

Many things were achieved over the weekend- the mundane like weeding, cleaning the car and 'whipper-snipping' the weeds. But Fiona and I also got to go on a metal buying tour to increase my stash as I have an exhibition to work towards - more on the stash and exhibition later; and I managed to devise another travelling anvil for Japan - but I won't bore folk with that here.

I did however also get time to make a few more Steampunk influenced pieces - two pendants and a set of earrings. I could have done other things but these pieces of metal just called to be cut, bent, drilled, riveted and assembled. They were just a boost of refreshing creativity.

The pendant below is a foldformed piece of brass (about 4cm square) and pieces of a fob-watch. The parts are riveted in place with copper rivets; and the chain is heavy stainless steel (about 65cm long).

The second pendant has a piece (about 6cm long and 2.5cm wide) of scroll EPNS from an old drink tray; half a brass body of a fob-watch; the brass gonger out of a small clock; and a brass clock collar piece. The silverplated chain is about 65cm long.

The asymmetrical are made from the stainless steel body of a fob-watch. I love the fact that the pieces still have their ruby stones in place. These are a really fun pair.

Finding time to make for creativity's sake is good. Blogger is very slow etc tonight so keeping it all brief

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Wall

The Wall has had to pause - because we have run out of books. As you can see from the photos below I'm about 75% done - I have yet to finish the tail end.

But today I also started the process of adding other purposes or roles to The Wall. Over time I'm going to put orchids and moss etc into crevices. Today I planted a couple of Australian native orchids - quite hardy and produce small purple flowers. I used some of Fiona's left over paper pulp to act as the base for the orchids - the pulp was beginning to go off.

I also placed the first two peace messages into The Wall. I hope in the future that people who visit the studio-gallery or the block might want to add to this by writing their own peace messages and place them in grooves or crevices between the book covers or pages. The idea for this came to me from two merging sources: Fiona's weather-grams for the Flags for Peace; and a book titled The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2002). One of the characters in the book would place messages in a stone wall as a way of dealing with difficulties and anxiety. I thought that paper based messages in The Wall is such a small positive thing to do for peace.

The Wall will be completed in the next little while when I access more books to recycle-repurpose. And the process of change and growth for The Wall will be ongoing - it will weather as the books have no treatment or protection; it will grow orchids; it will receive messages; and it will be a living part of the landscape - it will be a piece of ephemeral art in the landscape.

And what music to listen to whilst building a book wall ACDC and Pink Floyd (The Wall) of course.