LPKaster Reviews and Observations

LOGON: I am excited by this construction, have just added the detail connection between the parts.  For months I just looked at it on a shelf, deciding the exact placement, adding the burnt collar and spot and just leaving it alone.  Then the little wood circle with just that one tiny hole.  It’s all held together with 1/8″ square metal hand forged nails that I worked on my little anvil with a torch.  The wood is so beautiful, it has no need of a finish or other treatment.

It is now available on Etsy, along with several other new projects.

In August my drawings on graphite began to pile up. I began to scan and play them against each other with transparency and color.

To begin with, the lines were just about extent and depth.  Between the beginnings and ends there is a gap that describes another line.

On each page there is a space defined and shaped by each of the lines reflected in the next.

At the  same time, I was working with the torn paper collages, so I began to draw my lines to reflect the meander and separation of torn paper, but in only two dimensions instead of the three that tearing paper  creates.

Again, essentially the lines look straight, but from an imagined perspective they would change directions but you can’t see that in two dimensions.

It appears far-fetched! But i also found it interesting that between the change of direction on each side it was unclear that they were not separate lines, but one continuous one.

So to continue, by overlaying these elements with reverse and transparency I create a deeper sense of space, and perhaps a little mystery.  The colors are what appeal to me at the time I am making these.  There is the inevitable decision as to how best work one thing against another.  I think that’s what keeps me going, always the open question, “What happens if I do this…?”

In so many ways the lines I was drawing then were a reflection of the kind of torn edge, but the torn edges seemed to become a little richer for the time spend rubbing grease and graphite into paper.

It’s not easy to describe how many decisions have to be made before I feel like I’ve done anything good with the beautiful wood I find.  The wave action on the surface and the total transformation of the structure of the wood itself through bacterial action makes it almost an intrusion into the natural process.  My minimal drawing style with a torch or hot metal does, I feel, complete a process that started many years ago when the tree dropped a limb that wound up in water, floated across the lake and then came to rest at the shore before my feet.  I eagerly search the shore as I walk along, but it is only when I stop for a very long time -and wait-  that I actually see anything.

My current form of personal meditation is aided by the sound and sight of waves.  They are never the same.  The sound is a kind of music, but not composed music.  It is wild music; untrained music.  The solidity of this music is trapped in the wood, and when I draw on it the musical score that is in my head, I feel like I’ve at last expressed something that can’t be put into words.

My approach to sculpture is inevitably connected to my pottery and claywork of the 70′s.  What I always admire in clay is the close relationship between the local terrain (under the ground is always some kind of clay) and the forests above -wood turning to ash transforms the clay into glass.  Ash, then, can become a kind of glaze, and part of the clay.  It’s a cycle that begins with water, of course.  That’s why wood, for me, is closely related to clay.  It’s also why gazing at moving water is related to wood.

It is the Chinese five-element system that I realized one day while sitting out on the site of a brush fire.  The local clay had turned an orangey-red around the edges of the burn, but at the center, where the carbon collected, there were dark bluish bands, and then nearly black.  The black is simply the presence of ink-like carbon, but the blues are the unmistakable alchemical properties of iron.   Iron is the secret ingredient of most pottery glazes, including the beautiful celadons of infinite variety, and the many kinds of of iron glazes that range from rich blue-blacks to warmer reddish blacks to a persimmon color.  As important as color, the textures of iron glazes is a result of the stages of melting silica into glass while the iron itself is transformed by the atmosphere of the fire.  Unless the materials have already been melted into glass, then pulverized and reduced to powder already, the chemical interactions create many stages of bubbles and flow. The exquisite textures of many traditional glazes are the result of the interaction of the elements of glass; silica, alumina and flux.

When it comes to savoring the qualities of wood, it is as important to be aware of the process of growth and decay.  When wood that was once part of a living tree falls to the ground, a lot of things can happen.  It can be eaten, and slowly disintegrate.  A lot of microscopic activity can transform wood in complex ways.  When a particularly beautiful effect is discovered, it is possible to remove the wood from the original process and work with it.  In this way the process is continued in another direction.

The grain of a piece of wood reveals the process of growth, then to re-present it is a deliberate act of creation.  How much to interfere with something already wonderful is a challenge.  How to present what has been found is an act of revelation.

The best treatment that I have found to interact successfully is to return to fire as a process of transformation.  Pyrography is the deliberate burning of the wood in certain ways to create a sense of human interaction in a minimal way.  I like to use several kinds of torches and branding tools to create marks that are not just added to the surface, but combine with the substance intimately.  I like to use beeswax as a finish- it (temporarily!) stops the process of disintegration and often reveals things I see in the wood when it is wet, but as it dries out the surface seems to die, too.  Using such a basic finish seems to bring back that life without covering too much, or just sitting on the surface.  With the judicious application of heat, the wax can melt deep into the pores of the wood and become part of it.

It is similar to the sense of what to me is a good glaze on pottery; it does not sit just on the surface of the clay, but becomes a deep aspect of the clay itself.  When the clay sits slowly transforming in the fire the glaze combines with it and they become one.

There is no real difference between clay and glass, except refinement.  Clay is a little more resistant to melting, but my  favorite thing is to break down that difference until there is only enough difference to keep the form of a vessel from collapsing.  In a Japanese Anagama kiln, pottery is fired for several days until the ash collects and melts into the clay; the pot often becomes so soft the shape of the pot itself is transformed. In a similar sense, the difference between picking up a rotting chunk of wood and presenting it as an art object is only a slight difference, one that could also collapse but for certain deliberate factors.

These factors have something to do with the dynamic interplay of conscious transformation of the wood into something nearly something else.  It may be this delicacy of intent or collapse that keeps me occupied with spalted wood.

I’m reminded of some conversations I’ve had with people in the framing industry. The conversation goes “I don’t like abstract art.” says the guy (a sort of carpenter, specializing in art presentation furniture) He is making 200 frames for the art bought by a hotel chain that will be the centerpiece for a room. The room will have a bed, a TV with 57 channels, a lamp and a big window with a thick drapery and one big work of art above the bed for which he built the frames. Maybe a couple of smaller pieces to one side to balance it.. Of course there’s a small bath adjoining the room with another small etching and a mirror.

The picture framer is thinking, perhaps (Emperor’s New Clothes!) But not- because he is unfamiliar with the tale or the possible application of the allegory’s illustratiion of alternate points of view! He never got that lecture, even in a High School class ’cause the teacher was a “Phys Ed” coach who never got it himself.

Now if this guy goes on a trip and needs to settle into a hotel he will probably glance above the bed, and if the art is a landscape he will give it a once-over and think to himself “That’s nice… I like blubonnets.” But he will lie on the bed and stare at the TV for hours, and exclaim aloud “57 channels, and nothing’s on.” The weekly football game is tomorrow, so he thinks. I’m wondering if TV channels will ever need “test patterns” again. I should design those, I think.

The last time this fellow went to an art museum he walked past some of the most groundbreaking examples of 20th century art and went straight for the portrait gallery, then to the gallery of Barbizon School paintings and then to the Turner’s, the Hudson River School and other American Impressionists. Then perhaps a quick scan of French Impressionists nearby, not realizing what a scandal this kind of painting caused, not an inkling of what came next… And this trip to the museum was 10 years ago.

So then when he confides to me, “I don’t like abstract art,” do I dare talk to him about music?