Sitting Mobile sold

This piece was recently sold.

I first posted about it here. I was thrilled that it sold and was happy to ship it out, but was also quite sad to see it go. I’ve had it for some time and had gone through what is a typical cycle for me of really being passionate about it when I first made it, then slowly becoming very critical of it to the point of apathy, and finally, as it becomes almost a fixture in my studio, finding a real appreciation for it. It was sold on my Etsy site.

This cycle of like – dislike – like is something I’ve learned to watch for. I try not to make any disastrous moves that I may come to regret during the dislike phase.

What I find interesting is that the qualities of a piece that I’ve made, that I was trying for when I made it in the first place are often not the the elements that I come to value at the end of this cycle. And this cycle is not continuous, it does end. It’s important to trust myself, that my initial instincts are often valuable.

Some pieces, however, I am lucky enough to not to go through this cycle with, and I just like what I did.

Time for Art

Blue Clock #1. Available on Etsy.

Your new work is quite a departure from your furniture work. In a way it is. In another way it is kind of a bridge between furniture and art. After all clocks are functional household or office items.

Do these pieces function as clocks, do they keep time? Oh yes, absolutely. They have quartz clock movements. Here let’s post the second clock.

Green Clock #1. Available on Etsy.

In some ways these pieces could be considered sculptures couldn’t they? Yes, but I think of them as wall art.

So, to you they are primarily art despite their functional aspect? I think that the functional aspect is part of the art.

What is the message of these pieces? Is there a message? The pieces, at least these first two (I have ideas for more, but it may not be wise to discuss them until they are done), are expressing several things at once. One of things that is important to know about them is that they were inspired by a piece by Matisse. He re-worked “Bathers by a River” for seven years before he finished it. It is pretty easy to see the reference to that work in the green clock particularly.

I was struck with the way artists will work on a piece over a very long time. I myself have worked and re-worked pieces for years. So I thought, why not include the hands of a clock that actually work?

I am also thinking about art versus functionality. It seems that many people find that it is easier to trade some of their money for something that has a function that their friends and family will recognize as a “legitimate” function, in this case keeping time. Somehow people have a hard time recognizing the function of art itself. I mean, this is really a big topic and I just wanted to explore a little corner of it with this work.

Could these also be saying something about you turning back to making art? Yes, there is definitely a personal statement in them as well.

How big are these two pieces? They are each just under 12 inches wide by 11 inches tall.

You mentioned trading money for art, are these available for sale? Yes, I’ll be posting them in my etsy shop today as a matter of fact. Here’s a link: Etsy.Fillingham

Do you have any images of these clocks in a room setting? Yeah, that would be nice, unfortunately I don’t. However I did take a picture of them hanging on my studio wall. That is how I shot the above photos so this image is the setting for that shoot in case anyone is interested:

This studio view doesn’t look anything like your wood shop. This the other half of Fillingham Art Furniture Design. This is the more or less clean room where my office is and where I do most of my design work and art.

Well, thank you very much for your time. It was my pleasure, I always enjoy a nice conversation with myself.

Color and Form: paint on furniture

Designing furniture that includes painted surfaces offers opportunities work with color, painted forms and the sculptural shapes of the piece itself. The image above is a detail from a cabinet I made that my family and I use to hang our coats on and store hats, gloves, mittens and scarves.

Saddle Stool by T. Fillingham

I designed this piece to play with the idea of functional sculpture and 2D art. I call it a saddle stool. It may be sat on like a saddle facing the front painted surface or as a more normal stool.

It was never intended to be very practical seating, more to encourage a reaction to the expression of abstracted eroticism.

I’ve used this form, the shape of the painted surface in the stool above, many times.

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Oval Top Table by T. Fillingham

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Oval Top Table by T. Fillinghan

2 Oval Top Tables by T. Fillingham

I did a series of low, side tables with etched glass tops. Below are 4 of them with one of the tops. By using the glass I added another layer for exploring painted forms by creating clear windows through which some of the painted surface could clearly be seen while the translucent surface of the glass created an implied surface beneath it.

A series of small table bases by T. Fillingham

At some point I became interested in a more literal interpretation of colors and forms and created a series of fish tables. At the time I had 2 assistants working for me in my studio and I challenged them to develop painted designs based on my input. We visited a nearby store that had huge aquariums as well as studied tropical fish coloring from reference material. I carved the shapes and legs and worked with my assistants in developing the palette for each table, they did the painting. Here are a few of the tables we produced.

Collaborative Work from the Studio of T. Fillingham

This next piece is not exactly furniture, but it does show my interest in painted, sculptural forms that have roots in pragmatic objects. This is my canoe form.

This last piece was commissioned by a couple that had received this large copper pan as a gift while traveling in Africa. It had been used to roast cocoa beans over an open fire. They wanted to display it and use it in their home to hold magazines. I suggested attempting to indicate a sense of ritual. The couple were on their honeymoon when they received the pan. I researched some of the art of the traditional cultures from the region they had traveled in and used motifs of form and color to create the stand.

And here we get at something that I find fascinating. Traditional cultures around the world have expressed myth and culture by creating objects of color and form for a very long time. Even though I explore many forms of abstraction and am inspired my a great deal of modern art in this, the use of painted forms on 3D forms I feel part of an almost eternal tradition.

Three Rivers part 1

google maps

google maps

Milwaukee was built at the confluence of three rivers on the shore of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee, Menomonee and Kinnickinnic . At present there are 9 miles navigable by small craft before reaching the protected harbor. There is an additional 27 miles or so accessible by canoe or kayak up the Milwaukee River to the dam at Bridge Street in Grafton, Wisconsin.

The three rivers have been used for commerce and recreation for a long time.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

When I first saw the three rivers commerce had dominated for enough time to have turned them into something just short of open sewers. This was in the mid 1960’s, when I moved here with my sister to finish high school and live at our father’s house. Buildings along the river fronts had their backs to the rivers, waste was dumped directly into them. The rivers stank much of the time. River front property was less valuable for being on the river.

Around 1967 I took a part time job at the Knickerbocker Hotel Pharmacy, just north of downtown. It was one of those opportunities to experience a very colorful side of Milwaukee. The notorious Sally’s Supper Club shared the ground floor of the hotel with the pharmacy.Ā  Working there cracked open a chink through which I saw a world that was slowly dying and I wasĀ  intrigued and scared by its shadows. This was the last of a seamy Milwaukee of cheap hoods, organized crime, systematic exploitation and violence.

It was in this world that my boss, the owner of the pharmacy operated. I cannot remember his name now, so I’ll call him Mr. K. The straits he was in by the time I was hired were never fully known to me. His swollen face,Ā  stooped stance and scurrying gait though wereĀ  signals of much that lay unseen. He must have been seriously indebted to someone and he had to hustle to stay afloat.

I felt sympathy for this over worked man. He was fair to his employees and never indulged in the exploitation the milieu he was immersed in would have found natural. As a matter of fact he would often give quiet warnings of traps to gingerly step around, such as gifts that were anything but what they seemed. There were times when it was best not to leave the drugstore counter, at least not until the big CadillacsĀ  had left the street in front of Sally’s. Men in garrish suits would hang out in the soda fountain area around lunch time or on a lazy Sunday afternoon occasionaly making very sexist remarks about the waitress, sometimes bidding her to sit with them to discuss certain propositions. The drug store filled orders that I often delivered by dropping off inside a screen door, under no circumstances was I to knock. A young women’s residence was around theĀ  corner and on occasion I was told to deliver a couple of six packs of beer and “you don’t need to hurry back [wink, wink]” to one of the dorm rooms there . Mr. K. would get irate though about delivering boxes of condoms to another “apartment” in the neighborhood. Somehow he had a more mellow attitude about the daily delivery of a half pint of cheap brandy and a package ofĀ  Depends to a resident of the hotel (that was a very quick delivery).

Maybe he sensed my nascent grasp of his predicament and maybe myĀ  naive sympathy.Ā  Maybe I was just a person that would listen. Whatever the reason he began to tell me about his youth and this reflection distracted him from the trap he wasĀ  in. I was amazed to hear about the days he spent swimming in the Milwaukee River, about the majestic swimming pavilions and the boats that would be rowed on the river to lazy picnics along the bank.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Wisconsin Historical Society

picnic

Wisconsin Historical Society

Mr. K. also told of the farms 1/2 block from where I was living at the time. That land had been “developed” into housing quite awhile earlier and I had never thought of it as farmland. The contrast between that pastoral land and river of his memory and the city I lived in was astounding to me.

I worked at that drugstore a couple of years and moved on. I went to college at UWM and got a degree in independant film making. I travelled some, was part of a travelling film and dance production (1/2 of it to be exact) and eventually wound up living in an old log cabin just north of the city of Milwaukee for a couple of years.

I had always sailed on Lake Michigan. I moved back into the city, right into the heart of downtown, and my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and I bought an old wooden sailboat which we sailed around Lake Michigan, storing it in a boat yard up the Kinnickinnic River over the winters.

Our boat tied up along the KK River

Our boat tied up along the KK River

I had never forgotten Mr. K.’s stories about the rivers of his youth though, yet I found it hard to reconcile those stories with the rivers I saw up close from our boat.Ā  The waters were filthy, and even though you would see the occassional musk rat swimming, more often you were likely to see a dead animal floating downstream.

And this wasn’t necesarily the safest place to keep a boat. There were gangs that motored up the river and would steal anything of value from any and all boats tied up along the banks. A group of us boat owners, particularly owners of boats of a certain vintage tended to watch out for each other’s boats and would have small parties and cookouts along our makeshift docks. We were on a part of the river that could be described as a desolate industrial wasteland.

An aside: As a matter fact, it was few years earlier that I used that area as the scene for a series of photographs I took and submitted as a non-written term paper about the Italian film maker Michelangelo Antonioni.Ā  I was particularly interested in his early, neorealist work. You can get idea of what I’m talking about by seeing this screen shot from his film Il deserto rosso (1964).

I have always been an artist, besides dabbling in film and earning a living at furniture design, furniture making and carpentry.Ā  Twenty years ago Milwaukee held a celebration of the rivers that run through it. A celebration that, it was hoped, would change Milwaukee’s view of and attitude toward the rivers. I participated as a sculptor and created a floating sculpture for the event. It was an attempt to add a bit of “jewelry” to the rivers, honor and celebrate what could be. I created a pretty wild looking canoe form.

Canoe Form by Todd Fillingham 1989

Canoe Form by Todd Fillingham 1989

I set up a small display describing the project then floated up and down the Milwaukee River during the celebration in this canoe. It was a small effort, more of a gesture I guess, but it was part of the beginning of a major change in Milwaukee.

More to come in this series.

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Viewing some of my art work

I have a hard time shooting pictures of some of my art work. The pictures never quite show what I see. I suppose that’s a common complaint among amature photographers. Just the other day I discovered a way to shoot some of my work in a way that I really like.

I realized that I don’t interact with my work from a distance and see the work in a static view. No, I walk around or past each piece. Sometimes my eye catches one or two elements. Sometimes I get drawn into fragments. So I started shooting details of some of my pieces, isolating parts from the whole. For some pieces it works nicely.

Detail from painted table base by Todd Fillingham.

Detail from painted table base by Todd Fillingham.

Detail from paper table by Todd Fillingham

Detail from paper table by Todd Fillingham

This last image is a little off-putting I think. It is really not out of focus, this is how the print looks on the table base.

Another way that seems to work for me to shoot some of my work is to include some of the context or enviroment that the piece is in. Sometimes I like the environment to be a little undefined. Here’s a sketch for a carving.

Drawing by Todd Fillingham for a carving done in mahogany.

Drawing by Todd Fillingham for a carving done in mahogany.

Resin nude on Paper Base Table, both by Todd Fililngham

Resin nude on Paper Base Table, both by Todd Fililngham

And sometimes just shooting the piece in room it is shown in when the light is just right is OK.

Boy With Kite by Todd Fillingham

Boy With Kite by Todd Fillingham

And this last piece I had to “photoshop” the background.

Resin, wire and cloth figure by Todd Fillingham

Resin, wire and cloth figure by Todd Fillingham

I’ll get back to that post about the next table I’m working on soon.

Oops, I wanted to add this painting as well.

black_door1

the approach deja vu

Way before Photoshop was ever conceived of I use to spend some time in a dark room I put together while still a high school student. I would shoot 35mm black and white tri-x or pan-x film (terms of antiquity), develop the negatives then work at creating a print. I tried to make the prints evocative of the shape and patterns of the world around me. This was when I was approaching adulthood and a lot of the world seemed to swirl around me in a meaningless way. Maybe I was creating beacons for an older me. It would be nice to think that after so many years. Ego beacons bobbing up occasionally to tweak my normal, obsessively linear view of time.

I ran across an old acquaintance on Facebook and remembered that I had a few old images that he may want to see. While rummaging about to find them I came across several others from that era. This is one. One that I had created in the darkroom. It has it’s fair share of faults I guess but they show that it was hand crafted.

A lot was going on back then especially around that park. It’s a long story, but people were hurt, arrested, the cops rioted. I don’t know the woman in the foreground but her expression seemed to sum up some of what was going on. I scanned the print just as I found it, I didn’t even take it out of the old album page for fear of damaging it.

Once I put it on the scanner I realized that I was about to make some choices that would effect this new version of this old image. A couple of images had been formed on negative film. I chose the paper and exposure, dodging and burning to create the print, showed it around for a while then slid it into a page in an album. Years later I’m back to deciding how it will look again. I suppose your monitor affects the image you are seeing. Since I’m making choices I could “correct” some spots, old marks and flares, white fossils of a loose hair and lithe puddles from developer and fixer. No, I’ll pretend that this is a true representation of what I hold in my hand.

Once scanned I can zoom in. I see a pattern in a detail that I had never seen before.

Brachia like shadows across her face pattern her expression.

And reach down her neck and throat. Tattoo foreshadow? Something tactile in this image, a smooth surface covered in random texture. Marshall McLuhan wrote of this phenomena, the frisson created. He referred to fishnet stockings on a smooth leg. This is more ominous. It is with trepidation that one approaches adulthood. A knighthood of sorts, not to be taken lightly. Nevertheless a font from which so much will and has flowed.

Found Composition

found-composition.jpg

While digging through my flat files, looking for early designs for rocking chairs, I came across this accidental layering of drawings and thought it interesting.

Chair by Todd Fillingham all rights reserved.

I also uncovered some old drawings I had done, probably in response to having seen some of Gerrit Rietveld’s work in an exhibit of De Stijl furniture.

Chair by Todd Fillingham all rights reserved.

The drawings were too big to fit entirely on my scanner bed so I’ve cropped them.

Milwaukee Art Museum, art and wilderness

I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in an online chat today with the new, incoming director of the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM), Daniel Keegan. The format was casual and the event was obviously meant to introduce Mr. Keegan to the Milwaukee community.

Here’s my 2 cents.

Q: Todd Fillingham of Milwaukee – The MAM has a unique relationship to Lake Michigan. Beyond Calatrava’s kinetic, architectural expression of this how do you envision the influence of MAM’s wonderful location in the shaping of future shows and programming?

A: Daniel T. Keegan – Thanks Todd. No question that the total environment of MAM includes its beautiful surroundings, parks and the lake. The Board and staff of the Museum have begun exploration of how the outdoor environment can be further developed as part of the Museum experience. I will pick this up as one of the opportunities ahead.

I thought Mr. Keegan, gave a good answer, especially since he was responding quickly and had many topics to respond to. My question however sought to go deeper than simply expanding the museum experience into the outdoors. I was thinking particularly about how this extraordinary work of architecture is sited within this city.

Orca under sail.

The significance of this location cannot be overlooked. Prior to the Calatrava addition the building designed by Eero Saarinen was and still is momentous not only because of it’s design but also because of it’s site. I do not want to discuss the relationship between architecture and site here, what I do want bring up though is the relationship between a building that houses and displays art, a great building that houses and displays art and this particular location.

The MAM is situated right at the water’s edge. At the edge of a great lake, one of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan. This juxtaposes an institution dedicated to one of the civilized world’s highest accomplishments with the wild. For Lake Michigan is a wilderness. And yet this is not completely disharmonious, in fact it reflects a relationship between civilization and wilderness that art mediates. Cryptozoic impulses infuse art. Feral energy animates art. “Fear no art” the bumper sticker says, but who among us faces art unprotected, unshielded, undressed?

Art museums also govern much of the relationship society has with art, they create the means by which most people evaluate art, they offer access to art, they influence the creation of new art, they are gate keepers. MAM is at the gateway to the city of Milwaukee. Traveling from the wilderness into the heart of the city travelers must cross this threshold.

I highly recommend…

I opened my latest issue of The Surfer’s Journal last night. I always have to wait until I can sit down for at least an hour to open that magazine, because it takes me at least that long before I can tear myself away from it, at least. Even if you are not a surfer I highly recommend opening at least one issue sometime. I love the paper they print on, the images are magnificent and the writing stands head and shoulders above most “surf writing”.

This December- January 2007-2008 issue has a story about Tom Killion’s woodblock prints. He uses what he refers to as a “faux ukiyo-Ć«” method of printing. The Surfer’s Journal prints full page images of his work. Really, go find this.

Although I don’t really have the time I went on a web search for more information on Japanese style woodblock printing as it rekindled my interest in it. I use to do some woodblock printing, even printed our wedding invitations on a press I made from a wringer washer roller-wringer. Here’s a good website on Japanese woodblock printing how-to.

Another highly recommended item is again Bob Reitman’s radio show- see my links.

I’ve got to run now, I need to buy some wine before Holly and I go for our run.

Surf Board Table III -iii

The legs are cut to fit up against the center arc at a 30 degree angle and mortises or slots are cut on that beveled face to receive the tenons that fit through the arc. I use the arc pattern to locate the slots in the arc.

legs1.jpg

After cutting those I do the final shaping on the arc. The convex curve is shaped on the belt sander table.

belt-sanding1.jpg

And the concave curve is shaped by hand using a spoke shave.

p1010016.jpg

A test assembly of two of the legs to the arc reveals an interesting form.

p1010018.jpg

I often take a little time to consider the forms created by accident when assembling furniture elements. To some degree there is not that much “accident” involved as I intentionally created the parts with the goal of creating an interesting or compelling shape.

I use to whip out an old Polaroid camera and take a few shots. Then I’d pin them to my office wall. I still study them for ideas.

p1010001.jpg

Now I use one of digital cameras and my hard drive has become the studio wall. I actually like the studio wall better.

Adding the second set of legs makes it easier to see how this could turn into a coffee table.p1010019.jpg

Next I’ll shape the top, add some cross pieces and I can glue up the base.

Next post is here.

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?

Todd by Johanna

My mother painting

Me

As I lay in her womb.

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.

Intrepid

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.

3 legged stool by Todd Fillingham

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.

3- 3legged stools by Todd Filingham

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

Sitter2

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.

enigmatic view

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.

Gozanoishi Gate

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.

Shaker Bed

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.

18japan6001.jpg

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

image4.jpg

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.

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.

sittingĀ mobile

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.

 

 

Sitter

 

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…

buddha.jpg

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.

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.

Nude screen