Collages

So I've begun taking photos of objects that are easily accessible to me and my plan is to turn them into fantastic scale-free collages. This is one of my side projects that apart from the actual erasing of backgrounds isn't too time consuming. In the future I may turn them into Monty Python-ish animations, but the goal at this point is to amass a pile of clip-art objects from my own life and set up interesting impossibilities that aren't just rivers flowing inside churches.

This past weekend we went up to 'The Land' in Farmingdale, where we camped it up with the Sylvains on Hutchinson Pond. Our first wedding gift was an acre of land abutting the Sylvain's 4 acres deeded to us from Kate's Mum Debbie. Yay! We're very excited. There are beautiful hardwood trees, swampage, frogs, snapping turtles and countless other things to keep a wannabe naturalist like myself busy. I found some diseased raspberry plants that were beautifully disgusting. I found ferns growing in every direction. Baby spiders were huddling on a leaf for safety. Suzanna and Johnny made a teeter-totter out of a dead tree that I pushed down. I found loads of carnivorous sundew plants.

some moons I collected on my travels

I'm particular to moons plus or minus 160 miles in diameter compared to Earth's moon (2000-2320 mi)

Rice Accumulation Part 2

I'm not sure if I will ever complete this thing. The size and shape of the rice, my tweezers, and my fingers largely determine the possible gluing angles and also determine the form. The various planes are beginning to curve around and converge where they will join together, then it simply won't be logical for me to add anymore rice grains.

Rice accumulation

The other day I started super-gluing rice together. Around about the same time I developed a cough and read online that cyanoacrylates can trigger asthma so today I ran to Maine Hardware and got a chemical respirator. I figure the slow breathing, nose pain, and discomfort caused by the respirator are a fair trade for chronic illness followed by cancer. Anyhow, I love the translucency of the jasmine rice I chose. This piece isn't quite done, but I like where it is going. It's starting to look like a cross between a crazy hair-do without a head and an electro-magnetic disturbance in a termite colony. I like how when building something out of components that are slightly different from each other, I become increasingly picky about them. There is an ideally shaped rice grain, first of all, with one rounded end and one scooping end. It must be free of fractures, or twists. Sometimes a grain is white in the center. I'm not sure what this indicates but I prefer a smooth translucent grain. I imagine a grain of rice can be graded as a diamond could, with or without inclusion,s on scales of clarity and color. Then I imagine that anything naturally occurring could be graded based on an ideal and I sense my material possibilities.

some photos from our 2004 road trip

Better late than never

Some rings I made the other day

These first two rings are made from the same cuttlebone cast strip of sterling silver, which was formed round and soldered. The insides are smoothed and are extremely comfortable. If you like the woodgrain look of these pieces, you should look at the work of Portland artist Jason Morrissey. The ring above was patinated to create more contrast.
This ring is composed of some random components I had in my tool box. I had this silver casting made from dripped injector wax and a small hollow band ring and I just soldered them together. I think it turned out pretty and nice, but I wouldn't wear it.

These rings are for sale at http://daedalsmith.etsy.com

can of pens with coaster and paper edge, in the style of a fancy dessert

Vortex

Today I'm working on a copper wall piece for a show in a week and a half. The piece is a bunch of shapes cut from one sheet of 16 gage copper. They fit together with no space between like a puzzle, and form an oval shape with a hole in the middle, so it looks like a vortex or a hurricane. All of these pieces will be rivetted to another sheet of copper but raised from it to create a shadow. Right now I'm filing the corners of each piece round so they reflect the light, and I only have a few more pieces to file. I can't decide yet whether to just patina the copper pieces so they're darker or to paint the copper somehow. I like the look of oil painted copper, but it might just be a bad idea to cover up the metallic look.