The Design Process: A Table, part 2

The dialog with my clients generated an interest in two of the sketched designs I had created, sketch #3 and sketch #4.

Sketch #4 was derived from an earlier table I had made and shown in my portfolio. Jackie had wanted to be sure and have the table legs as far out towards the edge of the table top as possible to maximize leg room under the table. Both of these designs accomplish that as part of the design motif.

Since these designs were quick ideas drawn to look for a direction to move in to accomplish a final design I felt that they needed some refining. I discussed this with Jackie and Peter and got their impressions. From those discussions I created two designs, one of each table.

At this point I’ve started looking at the joinery as well as other technical considerations so that I don’t present a design that would be too expensive to accomplish. Here is design #3.

I had also modeled the site, the clients kitchen, in my 3D cad program and was able to place the table within that model to give my clients an idea of the scale of the table and how it would look in their space.

 

I did the same process for design #4.

 

I’ll show another view of the rendered model here. I provided Jackie and Peter with several views of each but am not posting them all here to save some of my bit space.

 

 

 

For both designs I also created line drawings with dimensions. Here is the line drawing for table #4. Click to get a larger view.

 

Now it was up to Peter and Jackie to decide which of the two they liked the best or whether they would like to think about another approach. Their house had several elements that were of the Prairie/ Arts and Crafts genre. One of the elements of Arts and Crafts style is the use of exposed joinery and table #4 has more explicit exposed joinery. They eventually decided on #4.

After they made their decision I worked out a bid price for them and we signed a Commission Agreement detailing the design, materials, price, completion date and delivery details. I then created shop drawings, selected the lumber and built the table.

Here is a detail of the completed table showing the exposed joinery.

The cherry will darken with age and exposure to light. The kitchen it went into had plenty of light exposure and that is why I rendered the models in dark cherry as the finished table would soon darken.

Jackie and Peter were quite happy with the table. As a matter of fact they wrote this testimonial for me:

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

 

 

Why Art?

This mornings New York Times’ Science section has great article : “The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start” by Natalie Angier. She takes up Ellen Dissanayake’s thesis that art “did not arise to spotlight the few, but rather to summon the many”. Dissanayake goes on to say: “Through singing, dancing, painting, telling fables of neurotic mobsters who visit psychiatrists, and otherwise engaging in what Ms. Dissanayake calls ‘artifying,’ people can be quickly and ebulliently drawn together, and even strangers persuaded to treat one another as kin.”

I say- Yes! And I say that this idea goes a long way to explain the friction and dissonance between art’s core and the exclusivity that many have and are trying to extract from art. It is such a shame that artists are forced to hang on to the hierarchical stratifications imposed on them by galleries and dealers just to be able to survive when art is so conducive to healing so much of the social fragmentation resulting from late 20th century materialism. Art grows from the roots of the mother-infant bond according to Dissanayake and others. Traditional and early cultures benefited from nurturing this primal power. Should we not as well?

My mother painting

Me

As I lay in her womb.

The Design Process: A Table, part 1

I’ve been meaning put up a post that describes the process I go through in designing a simple project such as dining table. This project was completed this fall.

The client contacted me about a dining table for a new kitchen they had recently added. The client, Jackie Boynton, and I discussed the general requirements and set an appointment or me to visit her house so that I could get a sense of the space and other furniture they had.

The table would need to regularly seat 3 and occasionally seat 4. Once I got to the site it appeared that an oval shape top would be appropriate. The new kitchen was contemporary enough, with large windows and clean woodwork for an oval to work, the space was somewhat small for a rectangle and we did not want to constrict the traffic flow of a busy kitchen, used for cooking, homework, family gathering and many other activities.

I eventually established a comfortable table size by taking measurements of the site, modeling the site in my 3D cad program and by using my “ergo man” model. This is a model I’ve created to allow me to assure enough room for table settings as well as many other ergonomic design concerns in many projects. Here’s a screen shot of this model:

Here’s an image I took while on site of the area the table would eventually occupy.

You can see the old table, obviously too small.

I manipulated this image in my photo editing application and added a rendering of an early sketch idea for a table to get a sense of the style direction I should be going towards.

This process of manipulating the image in a photo editing program is awkward and doesn’t allow me to measure the clearance around the table and to get a good idea of how the table will look so I modeled the space in the 3D cad program and was able to drop in various rough ideas for table designs.

To get a dialog going betwenn Jackie and myself about the table design I created a series of 3D sketches and quickly rendered them and was able to email them to her and her husband, Peter. They were able to discuss them and get back to me. Here’s a link to my Flickr set showing several of these sketches:

I think that these designs have a lot of potential and look forward to interesting another client into having me finish one or more of them.

In part 2 I’ll show the two finalists that Jackie and Peter chose, the eventual final choice and the completed table.

Chinook 34 wreck

Yesterday my son Joe and I went down to the lake front to check on the Chinook 34 wreck, the Falcon. It is working ever closer to shore. Joe took some evocative pictures here’s one.

It should be interesting once the ice starts to build around her. The ice could lift her further ashore or it may send her back out into the lake to be pounded even more on the rocks.

Joe also got a close up of some of the damage to the hull. The orange circle shows where we are guessing the rudder post was torn out. The rudder is missing. You can just see the prop in this image.

She has an inboard engine and will likely be leaking fuel soon.

Surf Board Table II

There seems to be some interest in the surf board table I posted about a little while ago so I thought I’d post this image of the completed table. If you are interested in having me make one for you I would be very happy to just get in touch.

-Todd

Night and Day- surf post

Wednesday afternoon my son and I decided to take a drive south of town with our surf gear. The wind had been building from a steady 20 knots to 30 knots during the day. It was coming out of the northeast with gusts to 40. The surf spots near our house were insane washing machines of huge peaks crashing into each other sending waves in all directions. We had to hustle as it was almost 3 PM and the sun was to be below the horizon before 4:30.

We crossed the high bridge over the Milwaukee harbor in my old ‘89 Ford pick-up and could feel the gusts shaking us. The air was getting cold with temps dropping into the low 30’s. Clouds covered the sky. Spray flew high over the sea walls.

The spot we were headed to is about 30 minutes south of our house in a small city with a tiny harbor that only recreational power boaters use. To the east and south of the harbor entrance is a wide expanse of wild beach and woods stretching down to a large power plant way to the south. Sand fills in from around the point just to the north and creates a gentle under water slope up to the beach where waves arc in and peel forever.

We pulled up to the small trail that leads down a steep bluff to the woods and eventually to the beach and parked the truck up against the curb. We took turns changing from our street clothes into heavy winter wet suits. My son changed first and headed down the trail as I changed. Grabbing my board out of the back of the truck I was hit with a gust that sent me towards the edge of the bluff that the trail cuts down. I squatted down and went over the edge, down the trail barely able to keep my board from smashing into the trees lining the trail. Once I was below the lip I was in the lee of the wind and was able to navigate past the crumbling concrete and re-bar, broken glass and tree roots to the trail at the bottom.

A small storage area for the power boats is fenced off just to the north of the trail. The boats are covered in plastic tarps that were flapping with an insane thunderous cackle as gusts of wind tried to tear them off. Tall reeds over seven feet swayed and beat against each other in the wind. Every once in a while you could feel the low shudder of the ground as waves drummed on the channel sea wall.

I found my son sheltering against one of the large, steel barges grounded on either side of the makeshift channel into the small harbor. He looked at me like I was nuts to even think of paddling out into this maelstrom. Maybe I was, but what I saw were clean waist high waves peeling off down into the bay, spray flying off the peaks and night gathering.

The best place to catch these waves was up close to the outer wall or grounded barge, right where the big waves from deep water pitch up over the lake side sand bar just outside the channel. Part of the wave slams against the wall shuddering the ground beneath on impact but part of the wave rolls over the deeper  channel water rounding off a little allowing a surfer a chance to paddle into the wave just as it is about to peak up again over the sand bar on the inside of the channel. Then you can drop down into the wave, gaining speed to trim to the wave. Then you trim your rail into it angling across the water rushing up the face to create thrust against your fin gaining even more speed. You paddle out into an angry set of waves past rusting hulks, spray every where, wind screeching and the next thing you know you are skimming lightly across the face of a gorgeous, arcing wave, gracefully dipping and turning in the most beautiful dance with water and gravity.

My son took a few then headed back through the woods and up to the truck as I went for a couple more. A good friend joined me but that’s a stretch of the the word “join” as we each were in our own world of wind and spray and coming darkness. There was no way to shout so you could be heard.

After several more long rides with hard, long walks against the wind back up the beach to the channel I decided to find my way through the woods back to the trail and up the bluff. As I approached the top of the bluff, up the muddy trail with my toes barely holding me from sliding back I had to time my approach between wind gusts as I did not want to be blown over backwards just as I emerged over the top. It was like waiting for the set waves to die down enough to paddle out into the line up. I was able to make it with out damaging my board.

The next day, Thursday, Thanksgiving day, was sunny and cold. The wind had backed some to the northwest and had died down considerably. There were a few hours between baking a pumpkin pie and starting the candied yams for our Thanksgiving Day feast that allowed me to grab my wet, wet suit and board and check a spot just north of town.

What a difference the sun makes. Even though the air is colder a sunny day is so promising compared to the foreboding dark of late fall afternoons. Cheer was to be had, glory at the beautiful lake sending in huge waves breaking with frosty white peaks sending spray in gorgeous veils curving back from swelling lines. Time to forget about the cold, the damp wet suit the long paddle out, the very cold water. Time to rise up with the waves, riding high and paddling hard. Down into the trough, off across the face. These guys were holding their size way in. Shouts and cheers could be heard as friends witnessed glorious rides of friends.

This was an altogether different surf spot, altogether different day but the waves were from the same deep weather system. Today you had to paddle straight out, long and hard. You had to time your paddle so you were heading out between the big sets and you had to watch your drift from currents and wind, know where you were and where you were headed. But that was all fine as the sky was clear the sun was bright and friends were around.

An hour of glorious waves and it was time to head back to the kitchen and finish up making a huge dinner. Family, good food, good wine and a warm home were just enough to draw me away.

Intrepid

My Microtek 4850 scanner has an attachment for scanning slides. It does a pretty good job on slides that are not very dark, but on dark slides it adds a lot of noise that is hard to edit out. In working on my new web site I’ve been going through a lot of old slides and a lot of old digital images. I found a few slides of a piece I did some time ago as a commission for a fund raiser. It was auctioned off and I’ve lost track of it now so these slides are all I have of it.

I think you can get idea of the piece even with all the image noise.

Here’s a scan of slide I did in the same session. It’s of one of my 3 legged stools. This was sold through a gallery.

You can see the difference in image quality between the two scans. It must be that the stool slide had a lot of light.

Over the years I’ve done quite of few of these three legged stools all based on the stools of Wharton Esherick. As a matter of fact here’s a set of 3 I recently made on a commission basis.

OK, why am I posting stools and mobiles? Maybe it’s because I think of the stools as sculpture. I really like the carved seats, each one is unique and they are a sculptural element that you interact with. Also, I like the contrast between the sensuous carved stool seats and the flat, metal elements in primary colors of the the mobile.

Sitter2, Fall

Sometimes, especially as winter approaches, it seems like you get very tired.

This is the same model as in Sitter. My drawing instructor at the time said that a lot of figurative artists will try hard to avoid drawing or painting the hands and feet of their model. They’re not easy, this was as good as I could ever get, at least back when I was taking class.

Fall leaves and a cast concrete piece I have yet to name.

Here’s a little Miles Davis to go with this post.

Gozanoishi, Like Tazawa

Yesterday’s New York Times included a stunning picture taken by Raymond Meier of the Gozanoishi Shrine gate on Lake Tazawa, Japan.

Part of the beauty of that image, there are so many parts, but one part of is the clear view of the joinery of that massive gate. Horizontal cross pieces projecting tenons, locked by wedges through the uprights. I love this type of joint. In this case the visual image says massive beams locked through stout uprights. I can almost hear the mallets pounding the wedges home, the joints setting into their matching cuts, locking everything tight.

I’m not sure if the joints were cut with tapers to form locking dovetails as is common in a wedged, through tenon joint used in many woodworking traditions but I suspect that is the case. I once built a bed, designed as a Shaker style bed, and used this method to join the side rails to the bed posts of the head and foot boards.

If you look in the lower right corner of this picture (a “snap shot” that appears grossly ugly in comparison to the other images in this post, for which I apologize) you can see one of the wedges locking the joint.

Both the Shaker and traditional Japanese woodworking traditions valued the beauty of showing well cut joinery

The Gozanoishi Shrine gate also struck me by the use of the small roofs on top of the posts. This is both a visually pleasing way of topping off a vertical line and an immensely practical way of preserving the posts from damage caused by rain infiltrating the ends of the wood grain creating a perfect opportunity for rot to take hold. This roof image is carried up to the sweeping top beam creating a beautiful feeling of shelter and movement at the same time. It is too bad that the online version of this image crops this sweeping top beam.

In looking for other images of this magnificent gate I came across this image of a woodblock print by Kawase Hasui dated 1926.

A couple of differences are visible. The first one I noticed was that Lake Tazawa was higher when Hasui saw it. I have no idea whether level of Lake Tazawa normally fluctuates or whether we can see once again signs of global warming. The next obvious difference is the color of the gate and we can see as well that the little roof tops of the posts are of a different style and I notice that the wedges locking the through tenons are located on the insides of the posts instead of the outside. This gate was likely rebuilt, maybe after World War II.

One other element of the original image draws my attention. That is the draped rope with the tassels. I wonder if the tassels are strands from the rope itself, cut and allowed to drape decoratively. As a sailor I have done a fair share of rope work including various types of splices that often entail a similar sectioning and cutting of the rope strands.

collage and chair design

Here’s a closer look at the collage I created for the “client pages” page I’ve been working on.

I created it to communicate a little about the typical process of designing a piece for a client. In this case the piece was to be a chair in the Biedermeier  style to accompany the desk, armoir, bed and two night stands I had already designed and built. I worked with an interior designer hired by the client whom I had been working with for some time and she gave me the basic criteria and some ideas about the design concerns.

I found several images from various sources and created some quick sketches based on these historical examples. We had a meeting, the interior designer and I with the client and I was able to narrow down what the client wanted. Based on this discussion I drew a set of scaled, hard line drawings and eventually a color rendering using colored pencils, ink and water colors.  The client was happy with this design and I was able to proceed to doing the final shop drawings and fabrication.

I’ve been using a computer 3D modeling program for some time, Rhinoceros, and  a rendering program called Flamingo to generate the rendered images, however at the time I designed this chair I was not familiar with the program enough to be  able to quickly sketch out the ideas I had from my research so I relied on my earlier skills with pencil and ink. The important thing is to communicate as clearly as possible to a client what you are thinking and to be able to listen very closely to their response. I feel that it is very important to put as much care and attention into this phase of a project as I try and do with the fabrication and finishing. I hope that this collage will help communicate this to prospective clients.

web site progress

I’ve been working on the mock-up for my “client pages” landing page. The plan is to allow clients that want one to have a web page on my site on which I will post design images, details and related links to their project. They will then be able to post feedback to me any time they want and they will be able to share this page with friends and family to get their feedback. The whole point is to improve and sharpen the communication between my clients and myself particularly during the early stages of the design process.

I also want to develop a way to engage the secondary customer, the spouse, close friend or other person that my primary customer will likely seek approval from for their investment.

I am also creating a database of my work with associated images, bid spread sheets, product name, product ID number related thumbnail images, etc. I’ve looked at a lot of options for applications to help and have decided to stick with Excel to create a spreadsheet/ database and use Windows Explorer to add key words, i.e. product ID numbers, to the image files. This means that I have to save all the images that will be uploaded to my new web site as jpeg files. I use Paint Shop Pro to edit the images and optimize them to a resolution of 29 pixels/inch as well as to minimize the colors used. I cannot use PSP to add key words though because if I do it wipes out the key words Windows had as well as  the key words Picasa, another image sorting application I use, uses.

It became tiresome entering all of the file paths and file names into the spread sheet as Windows Explorer only allows you to copy the path, then to separately copy the file name. I decided to nose around a little on the web and I found this cool utility that adds an option to copy the path (with file name) onto the clipboard when you right click a file in Windows Explorer. It’s called ClipboardPath.  It saves a lot of time and aggravation.

Bid process

I’m working on a bid and design for a small project today. A client called and asked about toy storage and book cases. After a site visit to discuss the project, get dimensions and take a few pictures I generated a quick study in the form of block studies of the proposed pieces. I want to be sure that the client and I are thinking of the same thing before I start working out the details and a bid price.

Here’s one of the views .

I use Rhinocerous nurbs modeling for Windows to create the models and Flamingo for rendering.

I understand that the budget will be tight for this project so I’m thinking of building the cases out of baltic birch plywood. You can simply round over the edges and sand them smooth with out having to add solid edging. This not only is nice looking but saves time.

Here’s a stand up desk I recently made with a top that was made from baltic birch plywood. The edge detail isn’t really clear. but you can get an idea of what I’m talking about from this shot.

sitting mobile

Here’s a small, self standing mobile I did several years ago. It’s an abstracted figure in 3D. At one point I replaced the little wire “S” curve connectors between the moving elements with brass ball chain, I’m going to go back to the “S” curves. I wanted to get a 360 degree turn on the elements but it looks a little clunky.

This piece is one of my metal sculptures in which I try and create something of an abstracted narrative within the piece.

-Todd

sitter

I’ve brought a drawing I did some time ago in from home to repair the frame and thought I’d take a picture of it and post it today. There’s a little key stoning as I didn’t quite get the optimal set up for shooting it but I’ve cropped it so you won’t really notice it.

 

I drew this back in 1983 while taking a course in figure drawing at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. This model was great for what I was trying to express in my figures. I have another drawing I did of him that I actually like better than this one and I hope to shoot it soon.

 

 

 

There is something about figure drawing that changes the way my brain works, the way it looks at things and the way I draw. I need to do more of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Master in the art of living…

The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does. leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.

-Zen Buddhist Text

-page 41, volume sixteen, number four of “The Surfer’s Journal” , a magazine worth every penny, surfer or not.

Other’s have said this or have quoted this (google) but this magazine has such a nice way of presenting it.

update:

I flinched a little at the epigrammatic-ness of the above post, I’m not usually prone to passing epigrams. However, after writing about entropy below I felt a need to try for a little balance.

Making things for other people requires a viewpoint that considers the end, the final product and a completion date. Much of how I like to live my life is with a viewpoint of the path, the moment, the dance as it unfolds. Somewhere in between is where I fall.

Whether the above was originally said by James A. Michener, a Zen master or the guy next door (well, in my case I can hardly believe he’d say this) it works for me in my balancing act of business, life, art, fun, work.

boat wreck

Forty nine years ago today the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sunk in Lake Superior.

University of Wisconsin

Detroit News

Great Lakes and Seaway Shipping

I thought I’d post a picture of the Chinook 34 wreck here in Milwaukee as a small way of commemorating the wreck of the Fitzgerald. An earlier post has more about this boat.

As I walked down among the rocks along the Lake Michigan shore this morning, looking for the wreck, wondering if it had already been salvaged I heard the irregular clang, …clang of a steel halyard hitting an aluminum mast, a doleful signal, a warning of yet another losing battle with entropy. There it was, maybe a little north of where it had been the last time I saw it.

A boat like this is a combination of a wide variety of parts brought together and maintained to create a unitary whole. It is a system of fiber glass, steel, aluminum, Dacron, nylon, wood, glass rubber, brass and much more organized to handle water, fuel, electricity and wind to allow people to move across bodies of water. This boat, this system is slowly being dis-organized, it is slowly becoming unified with the universe as undifferentiated elements. The waves and rocks are entropy’s mill, grinding organization out of this being.

As a builder, a maker, as one who seeks to dance a kind of jujitsu with entropy, to put together matter and forces to create beauty and usefulness, maybe a message as well, it is painful to hear that irregular clang announcing what I know is always inevitable, and often, inevitably on some lonely shore.

Todd

wave dreams

This is a picture taken by I don’t know who but I will give credit when I can. It was taken in Lake Superior a few years ago.

If you’re a surfer you dream of waves. I dream of big, fast glass peeling lines and peaks.

The night before the wind built out of the northwest. A school near my house recorded gusts to 50 mph. The lake was building a swell that would wrap back towards the western shore. I checked the beaches close by around 10 AM as I drove down to the yard I have Orca stored in to tighten her tarp lines. Clean peelers were starting to show.

All day at work I kept checking a web cam that shows the beach I saw the peelers rolling in. I was threading the needle between allowing enough time for the swell to build (and to get some work done) and having enough light left to be able to surf. Finally I closed up shop and headed down to the lake for an on site surf check.

The first beach I checked had stomach to chest high rights racing in before closing out. Steep and fast, but it looked like the lake was so low that the wave was closing out in very shallow water. On up to the next beach north. From the parking lot at the south end of that beach I could see waves breaking out over a rock reef about 400 yards off shore. I met up with a fellow surfer, Peter, who really didn’t know the local spots that well and didn’t get why I was so excited. I raced home to get my gear, it was getting late with just about an hour and half of light left and told him I’d meet him in the parking lot or he could go check out the break just south, maybe with his short board he’d prefer the fast, steep zippers down there. I wanted to make the paddle out and slide down some of those big ones.

I live pretty close to the beach so it wasn’t long before I was back in the lot and Peter was dejected. He said there hadn’t been anything breaking out there since I’d left. Cool, go ahead and surf the other break, I’m sure it will be good, but I’m paddling out there. OK, he’d meet me out side.

It is a long paddle out there, but with the waves refracting along the shore from the swell far outside the water was glassy with very little swell for most of the paddle out. My heart started to beat a little faster as I started feeling the thunder from the breaking waves the closer I got. I’m a strong paddler for a man my age so I don’t mind mentioning that I measure my paddles by how many times I take a break to let the blood come back into my arms. This paddle out was about 4 breaks, maybe 5. These are good chances to assess the situation and alter my course. I chose to paddle north east around behind the reef and the area the waves were breaking. Peter, still thinking the waves were not that big paddled straight out into the dead center of where the biggest waves were breaking.

When you get out to where waves from deep water meet shallow water you can sit on your surf board and ride the swell up and down something like a roller coaster. As the wave lifts you up the air it’s pushing brushes back sending light spray into your face. You get a really good view from the wave peak of where you are, where you want to be and who else might be around. Peter was working hard to paddle through the whitewash of wave after wave, but he made it.

The setting out there is almost surreal. Waves come in groups called sets and last evening the sets were about 5 to 6 waves each. The sky was dark and overcast, not menacing any storms, but low and moody. The horizon picks up a little more light from below the cloud line and appears lighter than the dark water and gray sky. The sun was below the bluff to the west and setting fast. The wave sets first appear as slight, undulating lumps on the far horizon. You know the direction the waves are coming in, you can see towards shore the line the wave peaks break on and by projecting that line back out into the lake you can see where you have to watch. The lump appears, very dark but only briefly and you know this is going to be good. Then nothing, quiet, smooth water with a little swell and you wait. The first waves approaching in the train before the set are tempting to try for, but you take the risk that that lump you saw is till out there, still coming. You’re riding up and down as the waves get bigger in the train and you start getting a sense of where the real set is. It hides from you behind the early waves but every once in awhile you see the tops of the waves out there.

This is when you have to start watching the wave troughs. You want a really clean, deep, wide trough to start sucking up the face of the wave behind it. The water is slate blue, the sky is dark gray, the waves you’ve let go have broken and are thundering down the line with neon white foam flashing and this trough comes at you. You turn and paddle. A look to the side shows the wall behind you getting steep, steeper, almost vertical and you can feel your board starting to slide and you have to decide, no, you have to feel when to stop paddling and when to get up on your board. Your feet swing under you, you grab a rail and turn hard to angle your descent down the face and you stand. Half the board is clear of the water and in the air, you are standing on the rear half as it pounds down the face, you look for the breaking section, turn a little left, step back on the tail to stall a little then lean hard right and shoot across the face for an eternity.

You start to shout, to whoop, to holler. Life is so good. The city, way, way in shore dressed in lights, glistening in the shrouding dark is like a magic fairyland as you sail across the water, legs pumping to absorb the shocks of the bouncing board you’re riding into the dark. You turn hard, pull out the back of the wave and eventually, after maybe one too many waves start your long paddle back to shore keeping an eye on the fellow surfers that have joined you and Peter to get a glimpse of another’s ride, but it is dark and the others are somewhere out in the big swells.

The dark, glassy, swelling inside rolls you on to shore.

Folding screen

Here’s an image of a screen I made quite a few years ago. By folding the panels in different ways the reclining figure takes on slightly different look, sometimes aloof, sometimes embracing. I had intended this screen to be the first of a series, however I haven’t yet continued the series. I still would like to work on these and will…eventually.

Surf Board Table

In searching and reviewing all the images on my hard disk yesterday to find the ones I want to put up on my web site I remembered this great coffee table I designed and made for a fellow surfer. This was something I wanted to be sure and show. Unfortunately I could not find it on my computer. Eventually I started looking in various CDs I’d burned and finally found it in a zip archive. Actually, the file I found was the Rhino file I’d created to do the design work. After all that searching I though I might as well put it up on my blog today as it will still be sometime before I can show it on a new web site.

Rhino let’s me create simple line drawings like this:

as well as renderings using Flamingo. Here’s a rendering that I created then used Paint Shop Pro to reduce the number of colors used to slim down the file size. By doing that it made a nice ring pattern reminiscent of water on the floor.

In designing a surf board coffee table I wanted to express some sense of the curve of a wave under the table top. I chose to abstract that curve and make use of the negative space around the structure to give some dynamism to the design. The curved space varies as you change your view point.

This is a good example of a design that really has to have several jigs to accomplish the joinery. Now that I have worked them out and have saved my construction notes I hope to sell a few more. The price for this table would start at $1,000. The price will vary depending on the wood species used.

I would love any feedback on this design.

Todd

Fillingham Art Furniture Design