Steampunk Lamps

LOTS going on lately that I want to write about.  Started a mixed media fiber sculpture class, am branching out into other kinds of yoga (with interesting results), and finished a fun and very strange piece that I haven't photographed yet.

But for now I want to step aside and show off the steampunk lamps I recently found out my stepfather started making.  Head over to Bilmore Studios and take a look at what Bill has been making out of re-purposed vintage items like Clayton Lambert blowtorches, Kwikway floor heaters, and a Hamilton Beach sewing machine foot pedal. 

The Lambert

I really like this one a lot, and because I can't word it any better, I'm just gonna plagiarize the description right off of his blog: 

"The base was salvaged from a vintage Clayton Lambert blowtorch, circa 1921. It features a porcelain socket, tubular bulb, bakelite rotary switch, and copper and brass accents. Measuring just over 10 inches tall, it offers a unique focal point for any home or office setting."

The Aerovap

To the right. . .well, again, just let me steal a description from Bill: 

"The base was salvaged from an Aerovap pest and germ eradicator, a device leased to hospitals nationwide circa 1943. The lamp features a forged aluminum housing, chrome top bulb, vintage toggle switch, and the unique red-letter art deco Aerovap logo. (Other bulbs may be substituted for different lighting arrangements.) At almost 15 inches tall, it offers a unique accent for any home or office setting. Note: This is an extremely rare piece of repurposed Americana. "

There are many more creations to see at Bilmore Studios.  Check them out.  Great work Bill!

Sheep Dream of Gold in Heaven

In my last post on "Li Symmetries" I mentioned how "wrong" it felt to drench wool in paint.  One of my favorite things about wool is how it feels, so destroying the way it feels by sealing it under dense layers of paint and resin seemed unthinkable to me.  Which meant it had to be tried. 

"Sheep Dream of Gold in Heaven" started out as raw wool that I stabbed together along random clumps and whorls. It's affixed to canvas with thread and glue, and painted.  I posted a picture of the unpainted wool piece previously in "Li Symmetries."

I have no idea if I like it, or if it is likeable.  It's impossible to be objective at all yet.  I wanted to share some pics anyway because I had a lot of fun doing it.  It's been good to get away from literal creations both cute and monstrous and just do something totally different.

This was more a learning process and an early experiment.  I can't say for sure. . .but I'm thinking of doing more of these because this just feels like a doodle, like there is SO much more to play with here conceptually.

Li Symmetries

You MUST read the Quadrivium!

The Quadrivium is a superb coffee table book.  The Quadrivium are the four classical sciences of number, geometry, music, and cosmology, "studied from antiquity to the Renaissance as a way of glimpsing the nature of reality.  Geometry is number in space, music is number in time, and the cosmos expresses number in space and time."

I'm not a math or science person, and you don't have to be to enjoy this gorgeous book's one page topics.  I like to just open the book at random and read one.  This morning was the concept of Li Symmetries.  Li Symmetries are patterns found in nature that are self organizing, and differ from "static symmetry" in that "they are primarily caused by interaction between processes and materials."  Some of the most readily recognizable examples of this in nature are tree bark, or the ribbing of the sand in the beach caused by wind.

Clouds are also an example of this, and I've cited clouds as a reference point many times for how I often approach working with wool.  I see symmetries in raw wool that arise in the sheep's coat as it interacted with the elements and the sheep's movement while it wore the wool.  So further when I'm am looking for pattern's in the wool (meaningful or otherwise), a second "interaction between process and material" occurs between my felting needle and the inherent symmetries in the wool..

It struck me as odd (I don't know why, because this is just how my life works) that I opened to the Quadrivium's entry on Li Symmetries this morning, because last night I got sucked into working in a really different way with the patterns in the wool.  I'm working in an abstract way at creating a 2.5 dimension piece of patterned wool which will likely be attached to a canvas and covered in paint and or resin.

It seemed a little "blasphemous" to me at first because part of the joy of wool is the tactile nature. . . even if you don't touch it, it's "tactile to the eye" somehow.  Covering it in paint. . .it's like it isn't wool anymore.  But I've been playing around with painting it anyway, and I think the results are interesting, even if it is far, far away from the material's roots.

I don't usually show stuff still in process, but this is just playful and fun, and I have no idea if it will be remotely successful in the end, but the process itself has been really rewarding and freeing, to just play in anyway I want with any materials that occur to me.  I love the strange patterns in the locks, and so just randomly capturing them rather than vision questing  "cloud dreams" and affixing them as the surface of a 3-d base sculpture is divinely meditative.

I LOVE walking in the woods and noticing symmetries in the bark, and the symmetries of branch-growth as affected by the ocean winds.  So as different as this wall-hanging piece is (whether it ends up affixed to canvas, or to a quilt even) I feel like it's absolutely a continuation of my past explorations with wool.  Which, even if it ends up as bad art, is a rewarding growth process.  Which is all that is really important.

Catharthsis

Meet Avril, the music box ballerina I've been working on for half the month of April.  (I was going to name her April, but my wife thought French would be fitting since it's ballet.)

This custom request was a frustrating and difficult challenge, but ultimately I'm really happy to have a project that pushed me this hard.  This is not a wire-frame doll, or pose-able. . . it is a very densely needle-felted sculpture.  Her tutu was cut from a piece of fabric I wet-felted.

Though there is no wire, to mount the piece I embedded a felting needle in the wooden base, and it goes up through the point toe and part way inside the left leg.

AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR EVIL CLOWNS!

I don't have anything against creating cute or beautiful things, but I have a special spot in my heart for the slightly (to extremely) bizarre, and spending so much time working on the ballerina, I sat down to doodle and without even trying out popped this evil clown.


 A kind woman whom I met at fiber club (at Urban Fauna), after seeing one of my Wool n Spool dolls,  gave me a number of vintage spools of thread that had belonged to her mom. 

This clown is in stitches!

I have promised to make her a beautiful "Wool n Spool" doll which honors the history behind the spools, but she requested rather than fabric which I normally glue around the spool, that I leave the original thread on the spool for the piece I make for her. 

  I did a practice run at doing something "dressed" in the original thread and this clown is what came to me.

I am still going to make her something beautiful to express my gratitude (this clown is SO wrong considering the context) but I must thank her for the inspiration, because the thread is beautiful, and additionally I was able to work it into the head itself.

When I started stabbing around at a head for this spool of bright red thread, there was a retrospective about Charlie Sheen's career on TV, from his childhood to the recent poetry filled outbursts in the press. There is no conscious correlation between this clown and Sheen, it just happened to be on. . . but it undoubtedly imbued some kind of essence. 

So, I present to you, "Winner the Clown."  All clowns (evil or otherwise) love hookers, cocaine and beckoning to children from storm drains with the raspy promise that "We all win down here."

WINNING!

Avril, music box ballerina

Winner the Clown

Video Games

I love electronic gaming, and I love wool, so it's been a delight to have two games released in the last six months that are visual homages to the textile arts:  Little Big Planet 2 on Playstation 3 has a LOT of textiles in it's texture palette, and Kirby's Epic Yarn for Nintendo Wii has visuals that are drawn entirely from yarn, felt and wool.  Both are incredibly cute, simple side-scrollers awash with gorgeous visuals and infectious music.

We just had the Game Developers Conference here in SF and I got to spend a little time with a friend who contributes to the PSNation podcasts and finally got to show him my needle felting work in person.  When he mentioned that he wanted to plug my etsy site on the podcast, I thought it'd be cool to make and upload at least a couple gaming related items. 

Needle felted Kirby and 1-up Mushroom by Wooliverse

I know the original monsters I make also appeal to game and comic fans, but I thought it would be good to have a couple actual gaming related items, if for nothing else than to have a point of reference for anyone who wants to custom request a video game character.  I knocked out this Kirby and a Mario 1-up mushroom (which now that I think about it, by definition fits into my "spirit mushrooms" series!) And in a few weeks when I've finished some special requests will do a Yoshi and Mario for the fun of it.

While we're on the topic, here's a chance to give some recognition to my favorite gaming related textile artist, San Francisco's NerdJerk, who makes--among other things--the coolest Amigurumi Bob-ombs.  Check it out.  You will want one of her creations to set next to your gaming rig.  Trust me!

Amigurumi  Kirby by Nerd Jerk.

Now. . . the only thing we need is. . . . .FREE TIME AND AN EXTRA SET OF THUMBS!

To finish, or not to finish?

ARGGGHHHH!  Working on an idea that's turning out to be difficult to execute, and for all that, I can't even get a good sense if it's really going to have the effect I'm going for.  It could be an epic fail.  Is that why I'm hesitant to sit down and work on it?  Should I push on until I do "feel it" or set it aside to work on something easier. . .light, fun, quick, cute and easy to sell (the joys of instant gratification versus potentially failed attempt at a fulfilling achievement?)


The other thing hanging me up a bit right now is a growing "to do" list of mundane stuff like photographing and posting new creations on Etsy as well as blog and Etsy promotion, taking some inventory to Urban Bazaar and picking up unsold items, new business cards, creating and setting up "print to order" postcards based on a couple really cool pictures of Cthulhu, and blah blah blah.  Also have a couple of pounds of wool I need to start dyeing. 

I do literally have ADD, and I was most productive when all I was doing was sculpting and sticking finished creations on the shelf.  I really think it's all these other little procrastination-things I'm trying to do now that are occupying my headspace and killing creativity.   This other stuff is making my creativity as fickle as a panda bear's libido. 

Uhg.

Post Holiday Blues

Haven't updated in a bit, and had a big creative slump after the holidays.  Just got so busy in November and December (mostly with custom requests) but also with really fun original stuff. . . and it was exciting and fun.

But then. . . the elation dissipated and I just felt exhausted and gloomy.  Spent the first two weeks of January in an uncharacteristic mopey couch/TV state.  I didn't create anything new, though I did continue the "factory" like task of making the "Love in Bottle" things (along with the 'Shroom in a Bottle.) 

But, maybe that was for the best.  Maybe it's like a field lying fallow, or how in yoga the resting corpse pose/savasana is how you restore and integrate the hard work you've done with the active poses.  I've finally been working on a few things recently, but I felt my creativity "click" when I spent 5 hours sitting in the cold sand at Ocean Beach the other day just playing in the sand and making abstract sculptures, erasing them, starting over, enjoying the pure play of immediately disposable art and the "connected feeling" of having my fingers in the ground beneath me while listening to the crashing waves.   After I got tired,  I just sat for another couple hours in open eyed meditation, watching the surfers.  It might have been the most "clear" and connected to "the big Om" I've ever felt.

A little over a week ago I had a custom request from a friend and artist I really admire.  It was not a complicated request. . . it was for an Amanita mushroom.  I have been primarily doing magical creatures, and the mushrooms I've been doing lately include faces and are called "Spirit Mushrooms."  I asked my friend if he had a specific image he wanted me to work from or how he wanted it to look:  realistic, or cute, or like the Spirit Mushrooms, etc. . . and he said to make the Amanita Mushroom in any style, fashion or form I wished.

This stressed me out a bit because this artist/shaman/poet/philosopher/wild man  has been a big influence on me and I wanted what I made to be "right."  I literally pondered for a week when I settled on pushing myself to do something different and make the mushroom as realistic as possible, including little details like the gills.  I looked at lots of photos and then remembered I had a deck of "Famous Mushroom Playing Cards" my wife and I found at Far West Fungi.  I pulled it out to see if the deck included an Amanita.  Of course. . . and fittingly, the Ace of Spades!  It was exactly right, and was what I based the sculpture on. 

This mushroom has an interesting mix of wool. Some of the brown wool is plant dyed locks I picked up in Chile, and the white wool is raw wool from a farm in Oregon, and the creme merino locks are from a farm in Illinois. Finally, there are mud and moss effects done with translucent thin layers of hand-painted merino from the Etsy shop handsandnotion, a fiber artist from Michigan. Lastly, the red wool is corriedale fiber I got at Urban Fauna in SF. 

I feel like I'm myself again and have several challenging and fun idea's I can't wait to start working on!