Blog Archive
Week Three
September 21, 2007
More welding and grinding
.
Also created a couple of signs to use at a local art fair at which I have been
persuaded to show some poles. And the requisite business cards, which for me
means something in the shape of a pole with my URL and phone number on it. And
price lists and invoices. And loaded the trailer with poles to haul to the show
in the morning.
I have no interest in displaying my work at a show. I'd rather be at my desk or workbench designing a new pole. But I've spent part of every day for the last few weeks doing things necessary to prepare for the show. Maybe I should have mentioned that in this blog on some of those days, but it seems so mundane. It doesn't cross my mind.
September 22, 2007
Spent the day displaying peace poles at a small, local art fair - only the
second time I've done anything like that. The first time was about five years
ago.
.
Since I don't keep inventory to sell, but rather make poles when people order them, mainly what I had to show were rough prototypes and mistakes. If I don't like the way a pole turns out, I set it aside and create a new one for the customer. It doesn't happen often, but I do have a few poles as a result of that. So I wasn't able to show much in the way of pristine works of art.
However, the amount of attention we got was gratifying. I was surprised by how many people chose either the bronze or the stainless poles as their favorites.
When you come down to it, where else can you purchase original sculpture this inexpensively?
September 23, 2007
Even with the umbrellas yesterday, that was a lot of sun. So rather than musing
about how to make better poles, the thoughts in the back of my mind today were
about how to make better shade at a fair. All the ingenuity of all the artists
and craftspeople who regularly spend days sweltering under hot sun at fairs and
none of them have produced anything better than a single layer of white
synthetic fabric to protect themselves from the heat and the glare? I don't
understand that.
In
the age of space blankets, and of tents with a second skin in the form of a
fabric fly that is several inches removed from the tents they protect, there are
more effective options. Did you know that white fabric offers less protection
from ultraviolet rays than dark fabric? Explains the black robes and tents of
the Bedouin, doesn't it?
I've got a design in mind that I'd like to try on a sunny day in my yard to see how it works . . . when I get time.
September 25, 2007
An on-going project is chasing down chemicals and coatings, talking to tech
people, and doing experiments, currently on the naval brass. I'd like an effect
that so far hasn't been possible. I also have been doing the artwork for a new
translation of Chinese that has been requested. It is amazing how many hours
that takes. Today I also began preparations for putting the chamfer on the
limestone poles. Most days most of my time is like this - tasks that keep me
busy the whole day but at the end of the day leave me trying to remember what it
was that I did. If I remember, it doesn't seem very interesting to post here.
Like the phone call to a school to contact the teacher of Chinese. The phone
call to a lawyer whose son is in Taiwan. The return phone calls and emails about
leads and thoughts about how to find better fonts for the new translation. The
time spent on the Internet looking for resources that could help find vector
files of the specific Chinese characters in question. The time spent in Adobe
Illustrator trying to create better looking versions of the amateur
hand-sketched versions sent to me. The research on how to shorten the list of
Chinese characters that I'd need to look through. Depending on which brand of
Chinese one picks, there either are 48,000 or 85,000 characters in Chinese, and
new ones are added all the time. To be literate, it is necessary to know only
4,000 or 5,000, but which 4,000 or 5,000? And where can scalable graphics of
them be found?
As that was proceeding, the customer sent a different translation. All new characters, but two of them possibly missing because of a problem with opening them. The ones that did appear are more clear. I can use them as templates to create vector graphics. So I spent time doing that. The deadline is approaching. I cannot wait until we are sure this is the final translation. I have to start now to get this finished in time while hoping I don't have to start over again.
Yesterday was the same. Today I had to start over. And I feel guilty about having gotten people to do favors for me when, in the end, their work was not used.
Still, I feel lucky to be doing this work. I believe in the cause. And I am getting to approach it through art, even if most of my time is spent on things like this.