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.

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

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.

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.

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

Drawing

South Main Project: Update 10

In the afternoons after preschool, Isabel lies in the sunshine and draws while I weld. From time to time I lie down with her and we draw together, adding to each other's creations.

I am in a groove right now.

When I start dancing in the studio, I know I'm on the right track. Up to the kneecap on one side. And it was hot in the studio for the first time in months. So I was welding half-naked.

Angel Feet

South Main Project: Update 9

I am putting steel on the bones for the first time this week. I am thrilled to actually be building parts of the sculpture that will be visible to the outside world. Building feet is a tricky thing. The foot is beautiful, functional and an amazingly complex shape. This is one of the images I am using as a template for my work.

On to other news, my foot is healing. It is becoming less painful to walk. If it was a bone spur, or bruise, I am hopeful it will continue to improve and I can get back to running and sprinting.

I get to go to the circus tomorrow! Elephants!

My weight peaked at 172 over Christmas, within 7 pounds of where I started pre-mola, but it is slipping again. Not eating has it's benefits, as you might recall. But the thing is, I'm eating . . . However, I'm also increasing my metabolism as I'm working my ass off. So I think I'll let it do what it's going to do; I am eating, keeping my energy level up and working toward finding Philip. If it drops below 160, I'll let you know.

I get to go bike shopping for my son this weekend. His birthday is coming up and he's ready for a big-boy bicycle. Can you think of anything better?

Amazing Responses

South Main Project: Update 8

Wow, just amazing responses so far to yesterday's Help Me post. I'm just blown away. Thank you! I will address all of them as the week progresses.

Tonight I am working in my studio as long as I can handle it - which will probably be until my fingers will no longer function due to the cold. Wife creature is away for the next few days and I have an impending "mid-point" meeting with my clients, so it's imperative that I push myself as hard as I can.

I ran out of oxygen this afternoon, drove into town to refill the tank, and three hours later I have burned through all my acetylnne. So first thing tomorrow I will head back into town to replace that tank as well. You burn through fuel at an insane rate when you are using the cutting torch.

I almost cut an entire 4' by 12' sheet of steel into tiny pieces, and I am beginning the even more arduous task of bending each and every one with a clamp and my hands.

I sit on a milk crate outside my studio with one foot on the base of the clamp and feed the small edges of the steel into the mouth of the clamp, applying downward force every half inch or so to slowly bend the steel into curving shapes. Then I rotate the piece 120 degrees to the next corner and repeat until the piece is bent to my satisfaction.

Not the most fun part of my creature creation process, but important; I need thousands of different sizes and shapes to piece it all together over the next two months.

I have run inside to cook a pizza for the beasties, check on their chores, and upload this picture.

Working

South Main Project: Update 7

I am working hard. This week I have logged at at least 8 hours a day in the studio. I am working on the figure's skeleton. Hips, knees, and ankles to be specific. Trying to get just the right contrapposto pose.

This has been the week where it's been to varying degrees:

• a challenge
• impossible
• frustrating
• so close
• aighhhhhhhhhhh

This is part of the process: thrashing through a period where you seem to do nothing but work on one small detail that you know you have to get right but that seems so elusive that you begin to question your own basic sanity.

It hasn't helped that I trashed my foot in soccer on Monday. I don't know what I did exactly, but I went to plant on my left foot early in the game and it hurt, and I continued to play the rest of the game - like an idiot - and now I can't put any weight on that ankle. I hobble around on the ball of my foot - which ironically enough puts my leg into just the kind of contrapposto angle that I'm trying to achieve with my sculpture.

I stand there looking at my steel with my right leg locked, right hip thrust out, left leg ben slightly, balanced on the ball of my foot, hips and torso twisted slightly . . .

Cutting, Shaping, and Bending

South Main Project: Update 6

Kelly is determined to be an artist when she grows up. I remind her gently that she is already an artist and that she will learn and grow as both an artist and a person her entire life, that she will never stop the learning process. She was a big help over the weekend. In this picture you can see her helping me affix steel clamps to triangular cutouts so that I can shape them with a hammer.

The process of creating the thousands of individual building blocks that I will subsequently use to create the angel is detailed visually below. It is a laborious, time-consuming enterprise.

First I use a cutting torch to cut triangles of various size and shape out of the sheet metal. This takes a long time, and consumes a large quantity of fuel. The cutting torch gives each piece a ragged look, with organic edges, bubbles and splattered material that cools and hardens into fascinating shapes.

Here's a pile of one day's work, ready to be bent into shape by brute force.

Scale shot with Alexander's hand for reference. These pieces have been cut from the 10 gauge sheet, which is much thicker and harder to work with than the 16 gauge that I normally work with. I will be using the 10 gauge material for the legs and key pieces along the torso for extra strength and then tapering up to the 16 gauge material for the trunk, head and wings. To give you an idea of thickness, 10 gauge steel is 0.1345 inches thick. 16 gauge is .0598 inches thick.

Here is a piece before it has been bent.

And here is one after I have bent it with a clamp and muscle power. I start at the outer most edge of each of the three corners and then make minute bends to gently curve the material. This lends each piece a dynamic shape, creates interesting positive and negative spaces (and my monsters and angels are all about the creative use of negative space as you will see). This also creates stiffness in the metal much the same way a flange would. In the case of the 10 gauge material, I must clamp the piece and hammer it into the desired shape, loosen the clamp, move it a half inch, tighten the clamp, hammer the piece, ad infinitum.

The Base

South Main Project: Update 5

Alex asked me what I was building so I made a rough sketch on a sheet of steel with one of his pieces of sidewalk chalk.

As you may have intuited, building the Coat Rack Creature was a way of getting my feet wet again in preparation for the South Main Square sculpture. Welding is an art unto itself, as well as a skill, and it takes a bit of time and practice to get familiar with the material, how it bubbles and pops and flows and expands and contracts. You can do amazing things with steel, and you can also mess it up really quickly. The steel has a life of its own and it'll do what it wants to do sometimes.

I enjoyed getting comfortable with my torch again. I enjoyed designing on the fly with nary a sketch or even a final product in mind. Completing the coat rack gave me the confidence I needed to dive fully into the South Main Project.

I'm well into the work now, I'm up to full speed cramming as many hours in the studio as possible. I have completed the base - the part that will be bolted to the concrete pad on site and hidden from view by a cover plate. I decided to toss my initial idea of using a ridiculously-thick quarter inch steel plate in favor of the four by four steel grid that you see below. I am building an internal skeleton so that will fan out beneath the work so that more of the work is anchored to the base than simply the part of the feet that would have been welded to the quarter-inch plate.

I believe this will give the entire piece more strength to bend and flow with wind and rain. I wanted more anchor points for key parts of the angel than my usual exoskeletal design provides for. This is the first time one of my creatures will be outdoors, and this piece is twice as large as any previous monster and four times as large as the more complicated and intricate angels that I have built thus far.

Sunday

South Main Project: Update 4

The weather spiked from 35 to 65 overnight, which made working outside all day something of a pleasure. The kids and I worked all afternoon, blowing leaves into piles and mulching them as quickly as possible before Isabel could kick them back into an entropic state. We made it all the way around the front yard and one side of the house before we had filled up both 90 gallon yard waste containers. It was growing dark by then anyway, and I had promised a football game if we could finish in time, so we had a fine time throwing the balls and chasing each other. Some neighborhood girls selling girl scout cookies decided our game was more fun than knocking on doors and we had a nice group. Amy even pulled up and joined in before it was totally dark. Dinner has been served, the kitchen has been cleaned (again) and the laundry folded, put away, one toilet unstopped, and the kids into bed. Wife going to bed. I'm headed to the studio, with one wistful glance at my pillows . . .

This is a picture of my chop saw cutting one inch square tubing.

Rust

South Main Project: Update 3

This is how quickly a piece of steel will rust overnight if left in the rain. The mill-scale rusts off first, turning yellow. Then the steel beneath will begin to rust, turning a deep burgundy. This commission has been designed to age in this fashion, so there is no harm in leaving the steel outdoors.

I plan to experiment with different lacquers over the coming months to manipulate the speed and visual hues of the decay.

Five Ton Crane vs. 164 Pound Sloth

South Main Project: Update 2

Note: this post was ostensibly written by the Mola Mola.

It's always interesting to ride shotgun with the sloth. The man attacks his day with a Goal, the hazy outlines of a Plan, and absolute Confidence that he can pull it off even if the Plan has holes, flaws, or has to be scrapped halfway through the first three steps.

Sloth starts the day with a cup of coffee and tall glass of cold water. He bundles up his beasties, gets the first two off to the school bus and pours another cup of coffee. The third one is usually running naked through the house at this point, having been told to 'get dressed' at least a dozen times by both of her adult minders.

This command elicits dulcet chirps of affirmation from the blonde wisp but usually has the opposite effect: layers of clothing are shed and then she seems to find invigoration from the feel of air against her skin for she begins racing through the house with a grin on her face.

The wife creature is kissed goodbye, clothes are found, and the smallest beastie gets a ride to school. The third cup of coffee, sipped while waiting in the long snaking line of cars outside the school, usually unlocks the floodgate to ideas, and a Plan is formulated.

Tuesday's Plan was described here. As mentioned there was a gaping hole in the Plan at Step Number Thirteen: How to get the steel off the truck and into the studio.

You see the nice people at Dillon Supply pick up the steel with five ton crane that rolls on tracks that extend the length of the warehouse. It's rather cool. Having perused many parts of the sloth's brain, I can tell you for a fact that he covets this crane and plans to one day build a studio large enough to house one.

The nice thing about five ton cranes is that they can pick up large objects quickly and easily, manipulate them, hold them in place - for say welding purposes - and then move them back to where they belong. Right now this is all done by a 164 pound sloth, a strong back, and a host of clamps, braces and improvised stands.

The sloth strolled through the warehouse brainstorming and picking out steel, went back to the counter and picked out his steel, paid for his order and then backed his truck up to the loading dock

The picture above is the view from the loading dock looking back toward the rear of the building where the steel is dropped off by train. He watched the crane load the steel, all the while having no idea how it was going to be unloaded. This did not concern him. He was simply confident that he could pull it off.

The man operating the crane took a look at him and said, 'You're an artist aren't you.'

Sloth looked at the young man for a moment to gauge whether this was meant as a slur, a compliment or simply a statement of fact. 'Yes, why do you ask?'

'You just have that aura about you.'

Sloth grinned. 'What? The haven't shaved in a month and look like crap look?'

The man laughed. 'No, relaxed. Confident.'

Sloth turned and smiled. Confident. His steel was being lowered onto the truck. His steel. His steel that had been paid for in advance by a very excited client.

The 3/8 inch hot rolled steel rod, one by one by 1/4 inch square tubing and sundry angle bar was cut in half, bundled together and similarly hoisted onto the truck.

Sloth drove home, backed the truck up to his studio and put on his work gloves. The sticks were easy to unload: he simply cut the restraining ties and unloaded them one ten-foot length at a time.

That left the sheets of steel, the beautiful four by eight foot lengths of hot rolled steel with shiny mill-scale glistening in the sunlight. Back in the day, he could lift a full sheet of 16 gauge steel - just barely - onto his shoulder and carry it from one place to another.

Turns out he can still lift and move a sheet of steel just like his 20-year-old self.

But the 10 gauge sheet was not going anywhere by brute force. He set up a series of saw horses behind the truck, wiggled the sheet halfway off the truck and then drove the truck forward, stopping to place new supports in the space vacated by the truck.

He returned the truck and had time for a nice lunch before going to pick up his littlest beastie from preschool.

Dillon Steel

South Main Project: Update 1

An image from the counter of Dillon Steel while I stood and placed my order.

An amusing note: we're in the middle of a severe drought in this part of the country. I unloaded several thousand dollars worth of steel onto saw horses and bricks outside my studio - since it hasn't rained in months there was no need to get the sheets inside.

So of course it rained last night.

There's no real harm in this case, as the piece is going to be left outside to age naturally in its final location.

South Main Square Project

A Call for Entries was sent out to over 3,000 artists last Spring asking for proposals to be submitted for an outdoor public display of art in Davidson, North Carolina. The circulation of the call included the Program director for the McColl Center for the Visual Arts, the Gallery Director of Davidson College, the Curator of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and the Public Arts Director of the NC Arts and Science Council.

I submitted a proposal and was notified in June that my design was under consideration by the selection committee. When I returned from the Bahamas I met with the Project's Art Consultant and gave her a tour of my house, my studio, and the projects I had completed over the last eight years. She was particularly fond of the mural in Kelly's room and the Jedi Star Fighter of all things. We discussed the specifics of my designs and I gave her my full sketch book with all the variations of the drawings I had completed.

In July I received a call informing me that I had been awarded the project.

I met with the Property Owner and her Art Consultant several times over the next two months and to make a long story short, they liked my proposal to build an angel overlooking the highway so much that the project has since grown in scale and complexity. The location of the sculpture has actually been moved to a more prominent position on her property.

The contracts were signed a month ago, and I have begun work on the South Main Square Project. I have a delivery date of March, 2008.

The timing of this project is not perfect, as I had not thought I would be able to resume work as a full-time artist until Isabel started Kindergarten in September of 2009. I also had hoped I would be back to my normal good health by now. However, I am ready to embrace this challenge.

It is a very big deal for me. This is the largest piece of sculpture I have ever been commissioned to create. It is particularly significant as my Grandmother loved Davidson and retired there. She was one of my greatest supporters and provided encouragement to me as I worked my way through college and chose to pursue my art after graduation. I will be thinking of her every day.

My acceptance of this contract, in essence accepting another full-time job on top of my parenting responsibilities, means that my work here as a writer will change. I do not know exactly what is in store for the Blue Sloth. It's possible that this site will transition into the visual diary of a working artist. Perhaps that will be a compelling reason to visit.

Whatever happens as I move forward as a father and an artist, I remain grateful to you my readers for your support, for your comments, for the occasional kick in the pants, and for all the great fellowship over the last four years. Were it not for this blog, I would never have had the pleasure of your friendship.