Blue Sloth

Working Late

South Main Project: Update 37

Rain

South Main Project: Update 36

It seems like every afternoon a thunderstorm rolls in. I work in the rain until I hear the roll of thunder. Then I sit inside the studio and watch the rain fall until I'm satisfied that it's just a rain shower and go back out to work . . . only to be chased back inside a few minutes later by another crack and rumble.

Davidson's Angel

South Main Project: Update 35

Meanwhile back at Blue Sloth Studios, work continues at a strong clip. I work in shifts of four to five hours. Anything longer results in far too many careless burns, and the fatigue begins to affect my ability to make sense of the complex relationship between the pieces. I could keep welding past that point, but I've found from experience that I just end up ripping the pieces down the next day.

I work late into the night on the second shifts, and find the cool air and darkness peaceful. I am behind on pictures, so I'll let you catch up over the next few days, interspersing sandcastle images with angel progress. I am quickly nearing a momentous and marvelous point where I will begin hanging wings off of my creation's slender shoulders.

Summer Sandcastle Contest: Day III

Sorry for the delay. Up 'till one this morning working on the angel before I couldn't think straight. Came inside and realized I hadn't eaten all day. Foraged for shrimp and potato salad. Collapsed. Couldn't sleep. Woke up at 4:14, tossed and turned. Gave up at 6:00. Back at work by 8:00. Isabel who had breakfast at 6:00 was carried outside by her big sister just as I was starting my first welds. "Daddy, daddy?" Woeful expression on my barefoot daughter's face. Her big sister has carried her outside. "Daddy? Isabel hasn't had breakfast yet." I shut down my torch, flip up my goggles, turn off my iPod, remove my noise cancellation headphones, set down my torch, filler rod, and steel. "What?" Kelly repeats, "Isabel hasn't had breakfast yet." She looks concerned. Let's not forget Kelly has just fixed her own breakfast with no problem not ten minutes prior, after oversleeping and missing her early-morning swim practice. "Yes she has. She had oatmeal and made Play Doh animals two hours ago." Kelly looks at me blankly. "Oh." I frown at my daughter. "Did you have breakfast today?" She looks at me innocently: "Yes." I smile back as I slide my goggles back down. "Good, Kelly she's fine. She had breakfast. Everyone brush your teeth, wash your hands, put on your shoes and come outside. It's beautiful out, we're going to have a great day." Of course I was wiped by 10:00 and started burning myself by 11:00. Since the burns are turning into scars that I will have for the rest of my life, rather than wounds that heal (think branding yourself with steel heated with a 2000 degree torch) I decided it was time to knock off for the afternoon. I have to drink water constantly with the heat. And add in my pot of coffee and I felt like I couldn't stop peeing. Sweat just pours off me. So hot outside. Came in, took my first shower since Monday and felt like a new man as I put on a real shirt (with collar! clean!) and took everyone for the fine dining experience of Bojangles. Ridiculously over-battered fried chicken never tasted so good. I won't even tell you what size family pack it takes to feed three beasties, one sloth and a mola these days. Alex has been begging for Boom Blox for Kelly's new Wii (birthday present) and we scanned the reviews before looking for a used copy after lunch (universally loved by critics). Got it home and it's safe to say it's one of the best games I've ever played. It's as close to virtual reality holodeck as you're going to get in the next five years. You can grab, push, yank and throw blocks. You can heave baseballs and bowling balls at blocks. You can create your own levels and designs. It is intensely fun for a family with school-aged children. It is even more fun if you can get the kids to give you a chance to play. Just amazing. Some of the multiplayers levels are like the world's greatest Jenga games (without having to rebuild the blocks afterward) where you try to remove blocks without toppling. Others are like the greatest games of "knock down the tower" with cows and penguins and pandas dancing and cheering you on (the soundtrack is addictive too - maybe I just need to get out more). Anyway, we played that until I looked at the kids around 8:00 and said innocently enough, "Are you guys going to want dinner or have you had enough to eat today?" Off to store. Back, Kelly cooked the burgers, I think I had everyone in bed by 9:45. Hey it's Summer. Wife creature came home about ten minutes after everyone had fallen asleep. Perfect timing. I cooked my steak, sat down to eat and realized I hadn't posted. Here I am. Steak is cold. I have movie to watch. I might make it through the previews before I fall asleep.

Leaning

South Main Project: Update 34

Hands

South Main Project: Update 33

Very hot day, but made solid progress on abdomen up to the sternum.

Fabrication Notes

South Main Project: Update 33

One thing about working outdoors in the early summer . . . thunderstorms roll in late in the afternoon. There will be no welding of the ten foot steel sculpture when you hear thunder. It's already been well-established that sloths are highly flammable, I'm sure we also conduct electricity very well.

A pair of birds started to create a nest inside the angel's hollowed out belly overnight. I could not reach all the twigs, so I had to be a fireman like Montag in Farenheight 451. Hopefully the birds will get a sense that my sculpture is not the best place for a new home.

Working outside in the heat means I eschew jeans and a shirt for the airy comfort of soccer shorts. I am prone to yelping more as sparks and splatter singe my chest and legs - things that would just singe clothes instead - but I am not quite so unbearably hot. And I'm getting a great tan.

It's beautiful outside this morning, and already getting hot! But I just swapped out my tanks so I am ready to go on this lovely Friday. I'll post some pictures of my progress tonight.

Torso

South Main Project: Update 32

It's been extraordinarily hot here this week. In the mid 90's before you even factor in the steel which just gobbles up the heat and reflects it, the concrete, and the welding. Sweat pours off of me all afternoon. I watch it drip onto the steel and evaporate within moments.

I have reached the sternum in the front, and finished the small of her back in the rear.

Nearing the One Year Mark

South Main Project: Update 31

We are nearing the point where I got the initial email from my patron's art consultant in the Bahamas one year ago, inviting me to submit an entry to the Call for Artists. From invitation to brainstorming to submission of ideas to serious drawing of concepts to final acceptance to prefabrication to the 30 previous posts detailing my progress, it has been almost a full year.

Certainly the longest project of my life, and it feels like several years have transpired when you factor in just how much progress my children have made in the interim, how hard it has been to function with the mola mola gaining traction within my body, and just how many milestones have passed in between sessions in the studio.

I'll look up the actual date that I was sent the voicemail informing me that I had been awarded the contract. I was at the Wynn when I got it, and I really didn't believe it when I heard the message.

Before I reach my next birthday, there will be a piece of monumental art in Davidson, North Carolina built by me.

Hip

South Main Project: Update 30

Burning

I burned the ever living crap out of myself today. Daily burns are part and parcel for oxy-acetylene welding. Burn too hot and the metal melts away from the desired weld. Too cold and the steel jumps to the welding tips, quickly boils, and pops - spreading red hot fragments like fireworks. My shirts - when I wear them - all have scorch marks, like dozens of tiny moths have attacked them.

I have singe marks all over my chest, arms and legs. Occasionally a filler rod spins from my fingers and really gets me good. That's like getting branded: the skin is instantly cauterized. Hurts like hell but heals pretty quickly. Without force behind it, the "brand" gets renewed within a few years as the skin regenerates.

Considering the amount of pain I'm in, and how dizzy I feel on a normal basis, I suppose the increase in burns is to be expected. I'd love to be able to report to you that my Mola mola is no longer an issue, that my feelings of pain and nausea have regressed, that my energy level has returned to normal, but I cannot. If anything I'm feeling worse than ever before.

Let me assure you that this is a physical state of being, not a mental or emotional one. I am embracing my world, my children, and my life in ways that make me both proud, happy, and excited each day. I can't stop coming up with ways to challenge, nurture and enjoy my children. They are happy in ways that defy expectation. I am sometimes struck by just how well some part of my subconscious brain is directing my arms and hands to create what I imagine in my mind. I'm pleased with my work, I'm thrilled with the opportunity afforded me, and I am determined to blow away my clients with the final work.

Perhaps the number of burns reflects the amount of work I'm putting into this creation. I have one or two kids with me at all times. Today Alex was sick for the first part of the day and stayed home, Isabel is done with school and I set the two of them up with Legos on a table in the shade away from the sculpture, where they could work, still talk to me and I could still weld.

There is a certain amount of "Daddy . . ." that comes out of any young child. Help me with this, look over there I see a bird, what are you doing, etc. The amount of time between one "Daddy . . ." and the next is somewhere between five seconds and twenty.

This makes serious artistic pursuit difficult. Not impossible. Just difficult. Burns ensue.

I am doing my best.

My children get my best. My neglect tends to manifest in serious burns to my body.

Such is life.

Tools of the Trade

South Main Project: Update 29

The cutting torch is used to cut triangles out of a 4' x 8' sheet of sixteen gauge steel. I left the pieces in place for the second photograph. They were held together by little bits of molten steel. I sometimes have to pop a piece loose with a hammer; this time I let them dangle for the photo. The sun was so bright, it made an interesting pattern of shadows beneath the steel.

The rusty old clamp is used to bend the steel into curving triangles of varying radii. I sit on a milkcrate that my dad used to store tools in, and bend each piece by hand.

The results of the work are lined up so that I can pick through them and fit just the right piece onto the sculpture when the time comes. I estimate there are over two thousand pieces welded into the angel right now.

The Angel is Outside

South Main Project: Update 28

I have successfully moved the angel outside the studio. She will be completed outdoors where her height will not be a concern. This will also allow her to be moved upright to her final location after completion, rather than needing to be tipped over to get her out of my studio.

I bought scaffolding and assembled it yesterday. I will now have a stable and safe platform for working on the top half of the sculpture.

Cutting

South Main Project: Update 27

I have merged the three basic facets of building the angel into a more seamless routine. Instead of running out of pieces and having the creative process grind to a halt while I shift gears mentally and prepare myself for a week's worth of intense physical labor, I do little bits at a time. Before I would spend days cutting out hundreds of pieces of steel, then several more painstakingly bending them by hand into gently curving triangles before lining them all up in preparation for fabrication.

I now do mini-batches While I do run out of material more quickly, I don't lose the creative thrust that has been propelling me to that point. I pause only long enough to cut out another day's work and then press forward, making sure to resume placing pieces again before retiring for the night so that it is all still fresh in my mind the next morning.

Scale

South Main Project: Update 27

Kelly poses with the angel to provide a sense of scale. Kelly is 52 inches tall. As you can see, I am making tremendous progress on the work.

Left Leg

South Main Project: Update 26

I have had a great week of work in the studio. The left leg is nearing completion.

I'm off to baseball practice, then I'm taking everyone to see Speed Racer. I expect the kids will love it. I'm looking forward to the Clone Wars trailer debut in front of the movie, and will enjoy watching the kids enjoy themselves during the feature.

When in Doubt, Refill them Both

When I went to exchange cylinders on Friday, they were out of 80's and gave me a 60 acetylene instead. Well I burned through that dude pretty quickly and today I went back to exchange my 60 for an 80. I got home, got the regulator screwed tight and promptly ran out of oxygen within ten minutes of cutting triangles.

The pressure gauge is jammed on the oxygen regulator and I just have to wing it when it comes to the level remaining. It's cheap compared to acetylene, plus I have a much larger oxygen tank, so I don't mind refilling it a bit more often than I might if I bled it dry each time. I usually take them both in and exchange them at once, however having had the smaller acetylene tank, I figured I had plenty of oxygen to go.

Another hour round trip in the car tomorrow morning. Bah.

I'm off to coach Kelly's baseball game in an hour. Going to pitch three buckets of balls to her in the front yard first to get her warmed up. Hopefully she'll be driving the ball well in the game tonight.

Wish her luck!

Tuesday

All day in the studio. Absolutely on fire.

Important safety tip: when one hand is holding the welding torch, and one hand is holding the steel in place, and you have the copper filler rod that you just used to braise the seam wedged between your forefinger and your thumb, it's a bad idea to use your lips to try to readjust the position of the filler rod.

My View

South Main Project: Update 25

This was my view on Friday afternoon. I have since connected the left knee to the right hip. It is not completed, but the bones are built and the muscles and tissue are taking shape. I rebuilt the knee too while I was at it.

It wasn't perfect.

Yes it was difficult to carve away weeks worth of work with the torch. Yes it looks much better. Yes, I'm obsessing over all the details.

I have put in three of the strongest days of work I can remember in a long time. I am very pleased with my current level of energy and focus.

I'm totally wiped right now, but I'm looking forward to finding some hidden depths of adrenaline and energy for my 9:20 game in a few hours.

I played great last night, even on a bum foot. I look forward to repeating the feat tonight.

Cockpit Floor

Jedi Starfighter: Update 13

Ready to Soar

Jedi Starfighter: Update 12

Building the Wings

Jedi Starfighter: Update 11

You're now looking at work being completed in March 2008.

Rainy Day

Jedi Starfighter: Update 10

April 15, 2007

The thunderstorms chase us inside. Which is good because my hands were cracked and bleeding and my back was killing me - and it gave us a chance to run to the store and buy a huge roast and good bottle of wine. While the kids played in the bath, I took a crack at making real Risotto for the first time.

It came out pink because I had no white wine to add - only red! So it was the Red Sloth Risotto with onions and asparagus. Very delicious and colorful.

Building

Jedi Starfighter: Update 9

April 14, 2007

After two great soccer games and a delicious (if hastily devoured) breakfast at the Soda Shop, we bid Mama Sloth farewell and sent her on her grown-up adventure and set to working on our project in the backyard.

There's lots of measuring and cutting and hammering at this stage. In order to give the ship clean lines, I decided to create a visual border around the outside of the wings - think of using a black magic marker to outline a pen and ink drawing. It should give it a bold look.

However this has necessitated another set of structural spars, since the end of the planks which would have been secured at each end will now end six inches shorter than originally planned. Those boards need a place to be secured.

This also means that there is not a single 90 degree angle cut on the whole project, which means each board must be carefully measured and cut on both ends and then put together like a giant puzzle.

The kids love this of course.

To keep the ship from looking like it was assembled by Ewoks, I made Alex and Kelly a 'monkey board' for nailing in nails. You can see it in these pictures. Any errant hammer strokes fall on the 'monkey board' and don't leave those telltale half-moon marks on the wing.

Airframe

Jedi Starfighter: Update 8

April 13, 2007

Jedi Starfighter Day 9

I'm having more fun building this than I can describe. Kelly is old enough to really learn what's going on, and Alex is getting the basics of hammering, measuring, and so forth. They're all tuned into the notion that we've made a plan, and now we're executing it step by step.

As far as the actual ship itself, I'm very, very pleased with the structure rising up out of the ground. The lines are dead straight (not the easiest thing to do with treated lumber, particularly lumber that has been sitting outside getting wet, expanding and contracting under the sun and moon) and level, and it is positioned just high enough off the ground to appear to be floating over the surface.

We sank the last four posts for the wings on Monday - it took one more trip to the hardware store for 50 more pounds of concrete - and with 10 posts the thing is rock solid. We've been framing the wings for the last three days, finishing just before soccer practice.

Today we'll be designing the pattern of boards that will comprise the wing panels.

Progress

Jedi Starfighter: Update 7

April 12, 2007

Designing the Wing

Jedi Starfighter: Update 6

April 11, 2007

Site Prep Pictures

Jedi Starfighter: Update 5

April 2, 2007

Here are pictures from the first two days of building the Jedi Starfighter. I have a wonderful group of wookie helpers - enthusiastic, playful and marvelously inefficient.

There's alos a shot of froggie's pond being filled in (no more mosquitos this year!) and froggie himself. No telling what color he is beneath all the slime. I'm sure he will be quite happy in the large pond by the 15th hole - there are thousands of frogs there, so he should do just fine.

Lying in the dirt late yesterday, I was able to solve the last of my design questions, so I'm eager to get outside and get building today. The wookies are bouncing off the walls with anticipation.

We need to make a trip to a junk yard later this week to look for blaster cannons and other materiel to trick it out authentically.

The cockpit will be fun to design, but will probably take a couple of weeks to get right. I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself, but as my mind solves one set of problems it immediately races off to the next.

Original Drawings

Jedi Starfighter: Update 4

It must be something about this time of year. The advent of Spring. Longer days. Sunshine and warm breezes. I have this powerful urge to trek out into the Sloth Forest and build things. To pull weeds, bag leaves, plant flowers, trim trees, repair stone walls. To make things right. To create things for my children.

I first drew plans for the Jedi Starfighter in late February of 2006, two years ago. I couldn't or didn't start work on the project that Spring. Last March I tackled the project but never finished. This year I am not only attacking the project, but taking it to new levels.

Today I finished the wings. And I didn't just finish them, I nailed them literally, figuratively and everything in between. They are gorgeous even if you don't particularly know what a Jedi Starfighter is. I nailed the rake of the wingspan and the angle that they droop off the fuselage. The dimensions are spot on and the indentations and cut-ins are exactly as seen in the movie.

But better than that, the wings glow in the soft sunlight that filters through the Sloth Forest in the late afternoon. The lines respect the environment surrounding the work and the ship seems to float just over the surface of a natural berm of soft moss.

I am pleased on many levels, but most of all it is so much fun to watch the kids climb all over it when we have finished for the day. They look at me with two questions in their eyes as the sun goes down: Are we done for today? Can we play on it?

Yes and yes.

Sinking the Landing Gear

Jedi Starfighter: Update 3

April 1, 2007

Today we dug holes in the tightly-packed Carolina red clay. Aside from being very hard work, digging holes in the Sloth Forest involves a bit of luck. Trying to avoid the myriad tangle of tree roots is difficult and something of an art.

The first hole went smoothly, but the second hole hit a vertical petrified root that defied all logic. We had to shift the entire project over a foot (and re-dig the first hole to maintain the angle I had chosen relative to the house). The rest of the holes had roots, but we were able to chop them up as we went along.

Since we needed a place to put the dirt that we were excavating, I decided today was the day to clean out froggie pond and relocate froggie and his mate once and for all. The stagnant leaf-clogged pond was fetid, rank, and ready for a new life as a hole filled with dirt.

Froggie made a break for it and took off through the forest. His mate was too lazy to move, and she was easy to move into a bucket for relocation to the golf course pond. How they survived at the bottom of that pond with no fresh oxygen, covered in an impenetrable layer of leaves, is beyond me.

There are many mysteries in the world.

We sank four posts into the forest and poured concrete to secure them in between rain showers. I continued to play with the angles of my wing mock-up in the driveway, and worked on the engineering problems in my mind, jabbering aloud to no one in particular. Kelly and I went back to the hardware store to pickup the second load of lumber (and a post-hole digger).

Tomorrow will be a fun day - we get to start framing the fuselage.

Braintstorm

Jedi Starfighter: Update 2

March 31, 2007

Design work, mental blueprints and brainstorming in Lowes hardware store. I like to mock up my ideas on the floor right there in the store. Lots of problems and design issues get solved with the material in my hands, with different choices stacked up and down the aisles around me.

We picked out materials as I worked through the problem of cantilevering two wings away from the cockpit. Lots of curious onlookers, and Kelly and Alex delighted in telling everyone what we were building.

The craft is quite a bit larger once you lay out the lumber and my original idea for a location in the Sloth Forest was not large enough. Quickly rethought my plan and found a great spot where the ship's landing gear would rest on relatively even ground and would be facing toward the Sloth Castle, but at a slight angle - offering a dynamic viewpoint from the patio and Great Room.

Got my Imperial clearances from the Emperor's chief legal counsel to proceed in this location and reassured her that the ship would not be too high profile. (I did not mention the 20-foot tall spider droid I want to create next.) All permits have been signed off, the wookies have landed and are feasting in the kitchen in preparation for tomorrow's superstructure work.

Time for a glass of wine, some basketball, and playtime with my beasties.

Return of the Jedi Starfighter

Jedi Starfighter: Update 1

Sometimes when you feel totally overwhelmed with pain and can't stop thinking about all the things you can't do it's best to go out and do something that seems totally impossible. About this time last year I started a project with the kids to build a full-scale 1:1 replica of a Jedi Starfighter.

Along the way I got sidetracked by the Sky Garden project and the Ghost Jail, both of which were completed and are used every day by the kids - they love the Ghost Jail. It was supposed to be a Ghost Town style jail, but I believe they really view it as a jail for ghosties. It matters not, they are in and out of there with the neighborhood kids a dozen times a day.

The Sky Garden had to be completed ASAP as I realized the bushes had grown too tall to plant tomatoes in our little side of the house garden - so I raised the garden above the bushes.

I finished those projects, then we went to the Bahamas for 17 days and when we got back summer was in full swing. Right about that time, I got the angel commission and began work on preliminary sketches.

The poor Jedi Starfighter has sat in the ship yards, unfinished for a year. I am having a blast resuming work on it. Nothing like tackling a project for the pure joy of it.

Reflecting on a Work in Progress

South Main Project: Update 24

I've crossed a major hurdle: I've revealed a work in progress to critical scrutiny. It was a suggestion I made when we discussed the provisions of the contract: break the artist's fee into three installments. One payment due at signing, one at a midpoint review, and the final due upon completion. It was a way of easing my clients' concerns on such a long-term project where there were no set plans showing them exactly what they were getting in terms of a final product.

If you've been reading my updates on the South Main Project, you can begin to see how my process of creating angels and monsters is fluid and kinetic. Each day's work flows from the progress and direction made in the previous session, and each session is a work of art in and of itself, full of happy accidents, misconceived placement of pieces, and occasional flourishes of greatness. I don't add pieces to the angel when I'm not in the right frame of mind. I know the results will be disastrous.

If I'm in the wrong frame of mind, I do the cutting and bending. Sometimes all I'm emotionally qualified to do is sweep out the leaves.

The point being, I have no idea what my angel is going to look like in two months. Even if I was forced to draw what she would look like, I'm quite sure she would end up quite differently, and I'm hopeful that she will turn out far more beautiful than anything I can imagine and place on paper right now. Such is the nature of making it up as you go along.

I'm sure there are artists who have such a firm grasp of their vision that once they have imagined their creation, be it painting or sculpture or play or novel, all they have to do is simply do the long, hard work of filling in the words, the brush strokes, or the chisel blows. I often think of the movie Amadeus where Salieri laments that Mozart composed the music in his mind and simply had to scribble the notes down on paper for others to be able to play it.

But they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head. Page after page of it as if he were just taking dictation. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall.

I am a dedicated craftsman and my vision develops during the creation process. I write the same way: I start characters in a place with a situation to deal with and then make it up as I go along. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to simply know what is going to happen ahead of time, to know what a piece is going to look like and be able to sit down and draw it - in fact I often feel like I'm less of an artist and more of a good improviser, able to adapt to the situation and materials at hand - but I know from experience that when I do know exactly what I'm going to build and can draw the final result ahead of time, I find the building process to be tedious. Furniture tends to be this way for me: desks must be a certain height off the floor, bed frames must conform to queen-sized mattresses . . . and I have no problem drawing the final result, or looking at an existent piece and imagining exactly how I could build it myself.

I think one of my strengths as a parent lies in my ability to adapt on the fly, and that each day I spend with my children is treated as it's own little work of art. I'm careful not to rush past the little things that give life nuance and meaning, I try to create a beginning, middle and end to the kids' experience of each day, and I make them stop and enjoy how lovely it is to be on this earth today. No wising away your days on events yet to come. You only get to be 4, or 6, or 8 once.

But I digress.

The clients had no idea what they were getting. They wrote a check and had faith in me and I went off and said, "Great, now I've got to figure out how the hell I'm going to pull this off." Not the easiest thing when I'm in pain, sometimes battling just to make it through another day, and not sure what the end product is going to look like or how to get there.

So I'm pleased to be a the point I am now, with a direction in mind, legs rising in my studio, and a client who took a look at the work in progress and said, "I think she's going to look great."

It frees me to take further risks, to push myself to do something spectacular, something new, something that will definitely be unique to this sleepy little Southern town which is tied inextricably to a wonderful liberal arts college with an endowment large enough to buy their own Rodins.

I am pleased because I am not simply going through the motions. I know I'm good enough to create something artistically safe, something pretty that will appeal to a broad audience. But I'm showing confidence in myself, in my process, and in my clients - I'm hoping to make something stunning.

I know already that whatever I create will be eviscerated in the local press - there is a strong tradition of public scorn for public art in Charlotte, a phenomena fanned by the Charlotte Observer. Knowing that, and knowing that many nationally-known and very gifted artists have been ripped apart for their contributions to this city's public arts initiative, I simply have to create something that I am proud of, something that my client loves, and be pleased to be lumped in with artists far more refined than myself.

The criticism is inevitable. I know what I need to do in my heart to be happy: create something beautiful.

Midpoint Review

South Main Project: Update 23

The first word out of her mouth was, "Wow." Followed by "Oh my gosh," said with just the right amount of soft excitement, and repeated enough times to make me smile.

Neither woman knew what to expect when they walked in the studio - and they said as much as they gazed at the angel. But it was clear that they were both excited by the progress. The art consultant in particular was effusive in her praise and very interested in how I was achieving the unique look.

I walked her through the process from 4x8 sheet of pristine steel to cutting to bending to assembling in jigsaw fashion. I handed her a piece of unbent steel.

"Oh it's heavy. How do you bend this?"

I showed her the clamp and the milk crate. "I sit there and I apply force."

She said, "Oh my gosh, this is so labor intensive."

I laughed and said, "You have no idea. There's over one thousand pieces already welded in place."

"Oh you have to count them," she said earnestly, "We'll include it in the artist source material."

We had some fun discussing how she is going to look on location, how the rust is going to set her apart from her surroundings and hopefully draw the eye, and yet still complement the red brick buildings that surround her.

It was a good day for me as an artist.

Reinventing the Way I Work

South Main Project: Update 22

I am carving up my sculpture with my cutting torch, watching pieces of my hard work drip and fall away. The right leg is just what I imagined when I began sketches nine months ago. When I started the right leg I took a much more aggressive approach to creating tissue and muscles beneath the steel skin. As my work progressed I became much more confident and audacious with what I wanted to do. I took risks, I pushed far beyond what I thought was possible using jagged pieces of metal.

In finding a way to create a much more subtle nuance to the inner and outer curves of the angel's legs I realized it was time to push the edge of what I could do once more. I always thought it would be nice if I had a lightsaber to sculpt with. I could carve up steel as easily as a butter knife through Styrofoam. I looked at my creation, tied not only to pieces above and below it, but anchored to an exoskeleton every few inches, and I thought, "Why not?"

Since it's not going to collapse like a stack of bricks, I decided to remove the fat cumbersome ankles. I fit the cutting torch attachment to my gas regulator and I began taking away pieces in long sweeping arcs. I turned my sculpture from a fabrication into a hybrid: a fabrication and a reduction.

Reduction sculptures are hand-carved, reduced from a solid block of stone or wood. You reduce the material, taking away everything that doesn't belong until all that is left is the sculpture itself.

Fabricated sculptures are started from nothing. You add material until you are completed.

And for the first time in my career I am doing both at once.

My mid-point review is in 17 hours. It will be the first time my client and her art consultant have seen anything since the contracts were signed. And two days before the meeting I decided it was time for a leap of faith - here I am carving out chunks of work and welding in new curves. It has occurred to me in the last two days that it's very possible that I've lost my mind.

But as I step back and look at my accelerated progress, I am confident they are going to look at her and go, "Wow."

This is a good development. I am pushing myself and will not settle for anything less than new and wonderful.

Replenished

South Main Project: Update 21

One reader was surprised to hear that I had already used up my enormous supply of steel triangles in building the feet and legs up to the knees. As you can see from the first photograph, I hadn't used all the triangles, but as I like to have a wide range of choices as I work my way slowly up the structure, I needed to cut two more sheets of steel and bend another thousand pieces. So with help from my beasties, I have replenished my supply of material to work with.

Welding in the Rain

South Main Project: Update 20

My supply of steel triangles began to run low - and considering I might consider two dozen pieces before temporarily tacking one into place with a spot weld, it's important that I have a vast supply of subtly-different shapes, sizes, and curves of various radii. I have spent this week cutting steel with the torch and then painstakingly bending each piece by hand on my knees with a clamp and muscles.

The big pile of blue tape is left over from painting the hallway last month. I made a giant tape ball out of it when I was cleaning up, and then found that it was a much more effective form of padding for my knees than commercially-available kneepads.

The kids have been a great source of help. Everyone has pitched in to arrange the pieces that I have bent into logical rows based on steel thickness, amount of curvature, and whether the piece is a complex curve (bent in both directions) or a convex curve (all three corners bent in one direction).

It has been cold and rainy this week, but it hasn't slowed us down.

Legs

South Main Project: Update 19

Right Leg

South Main Project: Update 18

After a week of miserable pain and a week of tending to a household of sick beasties I got back into the studio on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I was rocking. I refilled my tanks on Friday just before they closed at 5:00 and I burned through all my fuel two days later.

The legs are up to the knees and I have nearly exhausted my supply of steel pieces, so I began carving up sheets of steel again with the cutting torch. I have a huge pile of triangles to bend over the next two days and then I'll be building thighs.

Pierna Izquierda

South Main Project: Update 17

Leg Rising

South Main Project: Update 16

Twee Voet

South Main Project: Update 15

You're starting to get a taste of what she is going to look like. Someone asked about scale: the base is a 4' x 4' steel grid, so each of the smaller squares is 16" on a side. I'll stand next to her this week and you can have further visual reference to her rather enormous feet - just remember, it's impolite to point out the size of a woman's foot.

You may start to notice how the pieces curve in and out of one another, sometimes creating an outer skin, sometimes simply implying where the skin would stretch across.

What sets my work apart from say, a bronze casting, is my use of both positive and negative space to create depth, volume and nuance. A casting, or a carved marble figure, is solid - you cannot peer inside the skin. Any negative space is created by the figure's pose, perhaps by the space between the ribs and the crook of an arm. Whereas you will be able to see inside my sculpture - the skin will not be a smooth unbroken expanse of metal.

The gaps - negative space - add the element of light and shadow. Depending on where you are standing and time of day, there will be interesting shadows and rays of light that will pierce through the structure. And as you slowly walk around the piece, it will change from moment to moment as you gaze at her.

Right Foot

South Main Project: Update 14

Nuovi Piedi

South Main Project: Update 13

A Giant Jigsaw Puzzle

South Main Project: Update 12

Shaping the Armature

South Main Project: Update 11

Angel Feet

South Main Project: Update 9