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.

A Slide Show

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Carving/ Sculpture

Two views of another type of carving I do. This is a figure I carved as a gift for a very dear friend. My previous post got me thinking about my wood carvings. Now I really need to get back to work in the shop.

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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-ë” 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.