web site progress

I’ve been working on the heart of my new web site, the portfolio. The biggest problem I have is that I have a lot of images of my work that fall into a variety of categories. Part of what I’m trying to do is generate orders for furniture that I’ve already designed and made, that I have worked out the various jigs and templates needed to make the work and that I can therefore offer for sale at prices lower than I would have to charge if I were to make just one of these designs. I also want to generate more commission orders, which are my bread and butter. I would also like to show my sculptures and sell some of them through the site.

Although this could be confusing and may be on my current site I am hoping to create something of a synergistic effect on my new site, carefully threading between the Charybdis of confusion and the Scylla of too categorical and didactic approach, so that viewers will get excited, or at least very interested in my work, whether they want a made to order, already designed piece or a custom designed commission piece.

I do have to set up the categories though. Art is self explanatory. I am characterizing the work I’ve done for other people as “previous commission work”. A little long, but some people have told me that they weren’t sure what I meant when I showed them pieces as “commission work”. The next category is a little trickier. I am calling it “current designs”. This will be the work that I have developed the production processes for and will initially sell on a made to order basis. Any pieces that sell well will be further developed so that I will have some level of inventory, at least of major components, so that I can ship orders quicker.

There is another category that I will slip into the current designs category, these are pieces that I have designed and not yet built but will sell at a price point as if I’ve already done the preliminary development on. I also would like to show sketches and design ideas. These are to spark new commissions by again developing an interest. Right now I’m not sure how I’ll display that material.

The portfolio page as I see it now will have a “nav bar” under the main heading that essentially has the three main “tags” for the categories plus a “show all” “tag”. Clicking on any of these will sort the thumbs that run vertically on the left. Clicking on a thumb on the far left will bring the data and images associated with that thumb into the central section that “floats” more or less in the vertical center of the screen as the page is scrolled. At least, that’s the idea. I’ve sent Nate my mock-ups, I’m sure he’ll be busy for a while.

Boat Aground, Surfer Aids in Rescue

I just heard that a sailboat went aground near here this weekend. It was just a few hundred yards from where I was surfing on Saturday. Here’s a link to the local tv coverage WTMJ4 . A local surfer, Alex Guerrero donned his wet suit when he saw the boat and made his way out to help in the rescue.

Alex is a great guy. He also owns his own sail boat. He works for Cramer Marine and I’ve known him for several years. The ironic thing is that I was just talking to Alex’s boss, Gene Cramer on Sunday about how dangerous that very area is to boaters, how I can stand on large boulders with only knee high water over them that are 400 yards or more off shore. Earlier this year I was out in the line up waiting for waves and a large sail boat, a ketch if I remember correctly, was sailing right towards me. It seemed that all of a sudden the skipper must have seen me and he tacked right out into the lake immediately.

The boat that went aground was a boat that had been in the Cramer Marine yard for sometime as the owners worked hard to restore it into sea worthy condition. Their plan was to sail around the world. This may be a picture of the boat before it was in Cramer Marine Chinook 34. I’ll have to check with Gene to be sure if that is the very boat. If it’s not it is a boat that looks just like it. I found it on Cramer Marine’s Chinook owner’s page.

The area where the boat went down is near these coordinates: 43deg 3mins 57 seconds N, 87 degs 51 mins 59 seconds W. It is near what is known as North Point and use to be marked by a light house on the bluff above the point. The light house has been restored as an historical site but is not functional as navigation marker.

Todd

UPDATE 10/31/07 10:00 AM: Joe and I just got back from a surf check and saw the boat. It is hard aground just a few yards north of North Point. It’s on it’s port side in about 3 feet of water facing in shore with a jib still hanked on and partially up. We couldn’t see if the hull had been holed and it didn’t have the look of a lot of water inside. The wind is supposed to back around to the west then north west today as a cold front drops through. This could be good for the wreck, however recovery is going to be very hard. It may be too far in and could eventually end up onshore and cut up. What a sad end that would be.

I probably posted the wrong image in that link above about the very boat. But at least you get an idea of what the boat looks (looked) like.

Analogy

I’m always searching for ways of expressing the difference between the furniture I make and mass produced furniture available from the large stores. The other evening as I was cooking dinner an analogy occurred to me. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it has stuck with me long enough to have some value.

Having a piece, or several pieces of hand made, custom designed furniture in your home and having mass produced furniture is a little like having your own healthy teeth and having a set of false teeth. False teeth are great when you need them, but they hardly compare to your original set. They are both teeth yet they are so different.

I hope I’m not making your teeth grate. I’ll try and come up with better analogies.

Todd

A little weekend surf.

I don’t access a high speed connection on weekends. This blog will more than likely not have weekend postings.

I did access some surf this weekend though. Friday night into Saturday the wind blew close to 20 knots out of the north north west (NNW) and that set up some sweet waves by Saturday afternoon. There’s a spot I like on a NNW that’s less than 10 minutes from my house. The waves wrap around a point and large structure and come pealing in parallel to shore for some really nice long rides. There some pretty good size boulders out there and you have to paddle several hundred yards to get to the line up, but the waves are worth it. At least I think so. So far I’ve had a hard time getting any of my surfing buddies to try it. One guy did and really liked it, but he’s flying all over the world on business these days and hasn’t been surfing much.

On Saturday I was able to get a couple of more friends to try it and a surfer that’s new to the local scene paddled out as well. So we had a total of four surfers on chest to head high peaks that peeled along glassy walls for yards and yards and yards. Everyone was hooting and hollering and having a gas. It was pretty cool to have the new guy out since he was a California surfer and this was only his third time surfing fresh water.

Sunday I was able to put the winter log on Orca’s mooring. A messy job as you have to haul out the summer mooring buoy that is about one third covered in slimy algae and handle the heavy, algae covered chain. All from your little eight foot dinghy. I was also able to take the rest of the sails back to the shop for winter storage. Soon Orca will be tucked away under her winter tarp for a long winter’s nap. That’s alright, at least I can rest easy knowing she’s safe for the next couple of months. And, I can look forward to winter surf season, when winter storms tear across the plains bringing howling winds that push up great waves on Lake Michigan.

Reclining figure 1

Orca got hauled and I have a little time to post something. Here’s a drawing I did, then scanned and manipulated, then printed out and put up on my wall for awhile, scanned again and have posted here. It’s part of a series.

Todd

P.S. Here’s a link to a figurative carving I have up on my current web site.

A sailing picture

Just thought I’d through a picture taken of the Orca last summer. We’re the dark blue hull with my son, Joe, on the bow deck.

That graceful structure in the background is the Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Photo credit should go to Peter Reick.

On My Desk

I’ve got a lot to do today as I will be taking tomorrow off to haul the Orca out of the water for winter storage and I took off a little early yesterday to go surfing with my son. Sailing on the Great Lakes means storing your boat on land during the winter. I also take down the mast, set it on two “A” frames I set up on the boat and cover it all with a huge tarp.

Anyway, I thought I’d just look through one of the piles on my desk to see what’s there.

On top is the December 2007 issue of Fine Woodworking with a couple of book marks I’ve stuck on (I like to use these little post-it sticky tabs as I scan magazines). One is for an article that discusses how to weave Danish cord for a seat. I love the look of a Danish cord seat and have been meaning to explore some ideas for seating based on that. I have a book that describes how to do it but this article has a lot of great pictures. The other article marked is about yet another set up for routing tapered, sliding dovetails which is a great way to hold shelves into the sides of a case for bookcases.

Next I have the December 2007 issue of Woodwork with an article marked that discusses wipe-on finishes and the “unfriendly” labeling many of them have. It’s important to get beyond the front labels and understand something about the chemistry of these finishes.

I also have the November 2007 issue of Dwell with a cover article about green architecture and sustainability. Designer Jennifer Siegal graces the cover as well. From skimming the article about her practice in the magazine she appears to be just my kind of designer, something about “crunchy-granola-meets-industrial-vibe”.

OK, American Style just arrived this morning with an awe inspiring article about the glass artist David Bennet. His use of blown glass and cast bronze in figurative sculpture is great.

I’ve got three or for sheets I printed out of mock-ups for my new web site with penciled in notes. I took a couple of them home to show my wife to get her feedback. Well worth the effort.

And now my copy of “The Yachtsman’s Guide to the Bahamas” originally compiled by Harry Etheridge (1910-1957) with Harry Kline as editor and illustrator. This edition came out in 1970 and was brand new when I got it. The cover is missing now and pages are well thumbed. At the time I was unpaid crew on board a chartered sloop, something about 40 feet long or so, that my captain had contracted to teach sailing and navigation on for the Bahama Sailing School based in Eleuthra. What a summer that was.

Moving on I see the Summer 2007 copy of Epoxyworks from the Gougeon brothers. This is a great little publication full of projects, tips and in depth data about using epoxy.

There’s also a July/August 1995 issue of Wooden Boat with an article marked about making the Six Hour Canoe. Earlier this summer I did a workshop for the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center in which we taught a group of teenage girls a little about boat building by building two 6 Hour Canoes in three sessions. On the fourth session they were able to paddle them around in the inner harbor. Many of these girls, although they live in Milwaukee, had never seen Lake Michigan.

Enough desk top excavation for now. Tomorrow I’ll haul out Orca so I won’t likely be back to blogging until next Monday. Have a great weekend.

Todd

new web site progresses

Today I have to refine the design of how I’ll present the images and information in the portfolio section of my site, my new site, the one I’m working to get up soon.

Right now I have someone who is doing the actual html coding. I’m creating mock-ups of the pages in Paint Shop Pro-5. I add a layer with notes and comments about how I want the page to look and where the links should go.

Something like this. I send Nate, my computer wiz, the file and associated image files and creates the page in html.

To work out how I want the site to be organized I am using FreeMind, a mind mapping app. to map out the links, write notes about content and to keep a focus on my goals for the site.

You can learn more about FreeMind at SourceForge.

One of the things I’m trying very hard to do for this site is to focus on specific goals for the site. First of all this site is a site for my business and should contribute to adding to my bottom line. I polled past customers about what they would like to have seen on my current website when they visited it and got some eye opening answers. One that stood out was that it wasn’t immediately clear what I do. Another comment was that they were not sure where I was located and since they wanted to do business locally that was very important to them.  Those were great comments and I am doing what I can to address them on my new site.

It is very tempting to try and create a really slick, very cool, very hip site. My focus on this site however is to be as clear as possible to potential clients how I can benefit them. My prime benefit to 90% of my clients is that I can design and make for them something that they have not been able to find anywhere else. There is a lot more that I offer and once someone has done business with me they often soon realize that. They begin to get a sense of some of the wealth of non-tangible  value that I can offer, part of what I hope to communicate on my new site is exactly that. More on that later.

Now I have to work out a clear way of presenting work I have done in the past in such a way that someone will get the message that I can do their project as well. I also want to show some designs that I will be selling on a made-to-order basis that will not only be practical pieces but also give much of intangible value custom work can give. I also want to put up some rough designs and sketches that may spark an interest in someone. Maybe someone is looking for something but they can’t quite articulate exactly what it is. If they see some of my rougher ideas they may interpret that image in a way that allows them to form a clear idea of just what they had been looking for. OK, that’s a little  inarticulate on my part but this is something I hope to be writing more about.

Furniture FAQ

An old friend called yesterday with a question about attaching the legs of a table. It seems that he had just bought the table (not from me!) and was having trouble assembling it. I was more than happy to give advice over the phone and it seems as though I was able to give him enough confidence to proceed. Perhaps this blog could be a venue for others that may have such questions. If I get flooded with questions (yeah right!) I’ll institute some sort of limiting criteria, and I will always simply respond with an “I don’t know” when I don’t know an answer, but let’s give it try. My idea here is to offer moral support for those attempting to do some repair, re-building, or assembly of a piece of furniture they own. Some re-finishing questions may be answered, but I am not an expert at re-finishing.

Weekend

Saturday I was able to take a friend I surf with and his girlfriend, whom I’d never met, sailing on our Ranger 26, Orca. What a beautiful afternoon here in Milwaukee. The wind was out of the south south west around 20 knots. We’re on the western shore of Lake Michigan so that put the wind coming off shore which meant very little waves. The sky was clear, the air warm for late October. We reached on reefed main and big genoa north along the shore spotting sites we regularly surf.

After an hour or so the wind veered a little more south and we had to come about and beat back. The wind built some as did the waves and before long we had the occasional wave over the bow. I was a little afraid that one of my guests may get a little sea sick. Usually, that can happen as you’re sitting on a pitching boat, not thinking about much and just staring off into space. Luckily, my friend’s girl friend had taken 2 ginger capsules before coming aboard and my friend was an experienced sailor with little tendency to get sea sick. The ginger capsules worked great and we are able to carry on an animated conversation even as we pitched over ever building waves with the occasional spray off the bow hitting us.

M, my friend’s girl friend, works in internet sales for a large retail corporation and we began discussing my goals of a new web site with online sales capability. T, my friend is a writer and currently works as an editor for a sailing magazine. What a great afternoon we had out on Lake Michigan. We talked about classics, about the internet, about commerce all as the wind grew ever stronger. At one point M asked what kind of furniture I make. I found myself talking about the difference between Louis the IV and Louis the VI styles, about the history of Biedermeier, antique Asian finishes, mid-century modern and my own, organic, Scandinavian-influenced, studio based style. Luckily for M and T the harbor approached fast as we were really smoking along and I had to go up on the fore deck to take down the genny and could not carry on and on about furniture and art.

Sunday I ran into T at one of my favorite surf spots. The wind had built overnight and come more out of the south and we had chest high waves to ride that wrapped in around the sea wall along the north side of the Milwaukee harbor. Just as the wind backed a little to the west the waves cleaned up and offered a good 3 hours of surf. This spot is cool because we’re surfing right along the sea wall and rocks put in to protect the road that runs along the lake front and these both are great places for people to view us surf. Since it was again warm and sunny we had quite the audience. Too bad the waves tended to back off after the initial drop. Nevertheless it seemed that everybody was having fun.

What I do

I better get this down before it evaporates into the wake of a busy day.

What I do is a little bit of a mystery to me.

It is pretty easy to describe in very general terms what I do, but I know that I do a lot more. In general, in the most general sense, I make things. I take ideas and make them real, solid, usable. There’s a lot more than that though.

I am going to use much of my blog to explore the something else that I do. Of course I could make a list, write a few paragraphs, maybe add some pictures and get another description of what I do. It seems to me, though, that the accumulation of what a blog can accrete  may be the best way of presenting, even discovering, what I do.

In the process of creating my newest website I asked several past clients if they would write a few words about their experience with what I do. It was a little overwhelming, the response I got, and it opened my eyes to something I hadn’t paid conscious attention to for a long time. I’ll post these testimonials on my web site but I’d like to post at least one here. Jackie’s comments are a way of describing both a terra firma on which I could easily stand and as a terminus a quo, a place from which to launch from. Here’s Jackie’s quote:

Todd Fillingham is the best kept secret of a craftsperson in Milwaukee. He has a beautiful portfolio of lovely, creative and usable furniture. I have known Todd for 25 years but it was only when I heard his name sponsoring an NPR show did I think- “he is the one to design a perfect table for our newly remodeled kitchen.” And I was right. He looked at the site, he listened to my ideas, he did an array of drawings, he made a few alterations after discussions and he used both his sense of design and what I wanted with his skill and computer savvy to do a picture of a table that is exactly what he then produced in beautiful cherry wood. We thought the price was reasonable for this utilitarian piece of art.

Jackie Boynton

OK, I’m not going to be posting a lot of testimonials here, that’s not my point and I get a little uncomfortable doing it, just as I get uncomfortable doing most of my marketing. But I do interact with people and in that interaction there is an exchange of money, sometimes a lot of money, but also of ideas, needs and desires and I try to use all of my skills in visualizing, designing, building and making to go beyond a simple commercial transaction.

This exploration will be far from linear and will explore many things far afield. I just hope that the inevitable tangents curve back in to the center yet to be discovered. Menicus once said, “The tao is near and people seek it far away.” Maybe we need to approach it from far away sometimes.

The wall.

I’ve just started this blog by uploading a header image taken from my studio wall.

Weber’s airline chair, Giacometti’s “le Nez”, a glass head by Vallien and a post card of Narendra Patel’s work along with a navigational chart of the entire Lake Michigan have somehow managed to stay up on that wall for many years. Many other things have come and gone.

I design and make custom furniture. I also make sculpture and do some painting. Weber, Giacometti, Vallien and Patel are just a few of the people I look to when I’m searching for inspiration.

Today I am in the midst of creating a new web site. My current site, Fillingham Art Furniture Design is the third iteration but has been unchanged for far too long. I created this last version in Dreamweaver and dread re-learning all of that again. I thought I might step away from the site for a while. Something of another wall seems to be blocking me.

For a while I’ll be writing about getting the new site up, my plans for it, some design ideas for furniture I will show on it and some ideas about how I’ll sell the furniture through the site. Soon I’ll write about furniture design, construction, working with clients as well as fresh water surfing, and sailing. I’d also like to write about making mobiles, resin sculptures, carved wood,  and figure drawing.  That’s just for beginnings.

Todd Fillingham