Behold, the first addition to the Welded Steel wing of my new Gallery section! No, not the usual portfolio. That’s because a) I’m sitting in a mud shack in Taos, New Mexico without a studio and haven’t done this stuff in years, b) what you’ll see is not for sale and may no longer even exist, and c) there’s a story behind most of these, and posts like this is how I’ll tell them. That’s the main thing, anyway.
As some of you know, I recently unearthed some of my old photos and slides, which is where these shots come from. Curating my own art works from the past is a good way to remind myself of everything I’ve done, and putting this stuff on the website fleshes out my bio for the masses. This is either brilliant or a marketing disaster: “He used to do WHAT?!?” (Hurry up and buy more books so I can tell.)
“Alien Rat” (’89? ’90?) is a prime example of what you can do with steel rods and an acetylene torch. The piece was about a foot long. I started with an open framework corresponding to the outlines of the figure I had in mind and then filled in the gaps with a moving welding bead. It takes forever to do it that way, but the degree of control you get by careful wielding of the torch is addictive enough to keep you going. What you end up with is a heavy, hollow object like no other on the planet. This one even has rat gonads!
I’m happy to say it won second place for sculpture in a juried art show in Colorado somewhere. The judge was Ray Vinella, a name many will recognize. (At the time, I didn’t know he lived in Taos. Funny how that works.)
A gallery in Chestertown, MD eventually sold the rat to a visiting dentist. Maybe he’s working on your teeth now.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
What influences, vibes, images or whatever in the inner or outer world is that little figure tapping in to? I’m not asking what it “means”, exactly, so much as what it comes out of or what you’d like us to “get” when we look at it.
Here’s a stab from this particular looker – who sees a cartoon critter gone berserk, a nightmarish thingy one might dread in the dark, a rat from the black lagoon. You used to be a great reader of “Mad” magazine. Some of those alternative cartoonists liked to link up simple foolery with an undermining of the “normal” in an ugly-is-cool esthetic. Anything like that going on here? Speak, artist!
Nothing to “get” here. I just made something I liked. Every aspect of its creation involves seeking, finding, and expressing pleasure.
Artists don’t owe us any explanations. Agreed. But I always want to ask what exactly – or even inexactly, just approximately – made the artist do the thing he did. Where did the pleasure come from? These must be questions you ask yourself, given that you could have chosen any of hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions, of possible images and themes. Why this particular one? What inside or outside of you does it connect with?
“These must be questions you ask yourself…”
Uh, no.
Not ever. Not even once! Asking would just slow things down, in any case. One is simply in the flow.
Woah! I’ve never seen this alien rat before. I like that it’s got “junk.” I’m so bored with Barbie and Ken.
That was a good one, one o’ my faves. Shit. We have to spend more time together, so we find out who we both are before we fucking die.
BTW: Almost every time I get involved with comments on this blog, my Firefox (ver 3.6.27) browser will crash. Just complaining.
Well, there’s only one plugin involved here, the thing that shows you a real-time preview. Otherwise, it’s just straight WordPress.
Of course, it hasn’t crashed this time…, not yet.