Because I never have before: I decided to do a whole bunch of deco for Sol Invictus – the fundraiser for our yearly free outdoor summertime park parties in portland. Im working on a number of ideas including: 2x 6 foot tall window paintings, 32 suspended tealights in madrone trees, and stretch fabric installation. Im posting the updates here as they happen
Hanging Votive Lights
Due to the fact that we would be hanging these lights in large madrone trees (flammable) and the firecode in the venue is semi-strict we needed to make sure the flame wouldn’t be exposed and that at no point would there be a risk of burning whatever it was suspending our lights. I came up with a system of bending these wires to allow for easy hanging as well as ensuring the wires we were using would stay put (in a triangle for maximum support)
Cat Tested … Mother Approved – First test run of the hanging lights
BRANCH!! Quite an adventure getting this thing
Raw Branch pre-trimming
First Light hung
15 or so hanging lights.
Window 1 of 2 – Waterfall city
Here is the progress from start to finish on this piece – the windows you may recognise from the “Waves” window which was lost in the end by me putting too thick of a coat of spray paint on it
I’ve been wanting to find a nice medium in between the computer and the physical and the medium of painting windows is just that for me. It allows me to exercise what I know how to do on a computer to execute what would otherwise be beyond my means in the physical world.
It started with me finding two very nice 6′ x 2′ rectangular single pane windows at a rebuilding center. I thought these would make amazing art pieces so I bought them – that was nearly 2 years ago and Ive been carting them around ever since. Our landlord replaced some windows in our house and Alisha grabbed one that she wanted for us to paint together – little did she know what she was getting herself into – I am aware that Im nearly impossible to work with in a creative setting, my neurotic controlling side comes out and then I argue outloud with myself because Im simulataneously trying to be fair, creative, open and do things my way, which as far as I can tell is impossible to do. The window didn’t end up coming out that great – It was a cool idea and took several days to do but in the end your first piece will always suffer. It did set the stage for bigger and better pieces and I decided to tackle the large windows. I started by converting the garage into a studio. We furnished it with random odds and ends procured on the streets of Portland – It will always remain a mystery to me how Alisha managed to get the table which is easily twice her size home without help but she donated that to my cause – I went out and started figuring out the best approach to all the dilemmas – masking, layers, cutting, securing the windows etc etc and within a week I was off and running.
I didnt really stop to think I should try some smaller pieces first and went for the Big Cheese right out of the gates. I started on the 6 footer as soon as I could; patiently cutting the mask in zen like states of focused relaxation until at long last it was ready to paint. The first layer went on like a dream – It was even better than I hoped
However after removing the mask tape and I was laying the second and last coat down the horror of horrors started happening – the paint was bubbling up and acting really strange and there was nothing that could be done to stop it. All those hours of work undone in mere seconds due to some unknown physical reaction – it could have been mixing of multiple types of paint or the fact that it was on glass – but through further experimentation I realized it was preventable by doing multiple coats of paint just dusting it rather than laying it on thick. see below for my rude awakening, (the super cool fractal patterns weren’t lost on me.)
Rule 1: There is no Command Z in real life, no matter how many times you say it in your head when things arent happening the way you want there is no changing that fact.
Actually I take that back i did command Z this painting… with a razor blade.
Determined I put the tall windows aside and tried a few more hands at it – some more fun than others.
The first is a Celtic knotwork piece which seemed like a great idea at the time (like so many of my ideas) and remained so until about halfway into it when I realized just how much tedious work it was requiring – I eventually finished it and was pretty sure I never wanted to see if again, though currently its adorning my friend Liz and Jazz’ wall and looks quite good there.
After this I wanted pieces that were very simple to execute and rewarding to work on so I did these two mountain scenes where I got to focus on technique a little – worked on fades and speeding up the process of cutting the mask. Both were sold to my good friends at Astral Buoyancy and shipped to Asheville North Carolina where one broke in transit despite being packaged to survive just about anything. The other is mysteriously missing in action – FedEx claims it was never picked up from my friends house so it might have been stolen – So Ill let it be known that if I end up at a house party with this painting on the wall – I’m first taking it off the wall and then I’l do something worthy of praise from Tucker Max. Oh the gifts that keep on giving. Thanks tuna in a ventilation shaft.
anyways thats all I have for now. thanks for reading
When I was last in Boulder, we hit upon the idea of doing a custom piece of art for a Conscious Alliance poster for this show. Most of you probably already know how great Conscious Alliance is, but for those of you who aren’t in the know yet, this is how it works: you bring 10 cans of food to the show and in exchange you’ll get a limited edition poster (created by yours truly), this food then goes to where its needed most. I think its brilliant, personally and I’m honored to put my energy towards the cause.
So I wanted to write a little bit about the design I ended up creating, but I should warn you now, I don’t end up showing the full design and I kinda start nerding out, but that’s just how I roll.
My main area of interest lies in 3D fractals – These are 3D objects that can rotate in 3 dimensional space. The banner at the top of this site was made of a collage of different 3d fractals I created with a PC based program called Xenodream. While most standard fractals are 2D, even the ones you can zoom into – the addition of a 3d dimension allows for much more expression and control in creating images. I started off by remixing the 3d fractal I used for the Younger Brother flyer and spent a few days rendering it (it takes a looooong time to render the size I need to do full resolution 18×20″ print) – This is a section of the fractal – Click to see more detail
Once that was done I started collaging it all together, I hit up all my friends to see who had a copy of the first Shpongle album to scan it for me so i could integrate the shpongle mask into the design, I am a bit shamed to admit I just recently sold my copy of it on vinyl to fund my gear addiction. From there it was some simple design work to make the whole design cohesive. Below you’ll see some sections from the design and some links. That’s all from me – If you want more you can always check out my site.
Back In the day we used to create Sand Circles on Ocean Beach in San Francisco.
We used simple geometry to create scalable shapes which we could make large scale on the beach. My friend Tony Grisey filmed the making of this from the top of Sutro Heights cliff as we tried to finish the piece before the tide rolled back in. (we didnt make it and Tony ran out of battery power right before the water ate the edge of our piece.)
Want to know specifically how we did this? Below are the sheets I made and printed out to my partners in crime with step by step instructions since the view from inside the piece is pretty confusing… A maze of lines.
Heres an archive of other circles we’ve done in the past.
I am currently looking for collaborators to work with in the oregon coast area. Currently looking for a video monkey to do the timelapse video, and collaborators. Please email if you are interested in collaborating late spring in a camp out on the Oregon Coast and making some epic sand art.
I broke just about every rule I knew in making this webpage – the graphic is huge, taking up a huge amount of screen real estate, you have to scroll to get the content – the navigation is all sideways.
But it fits with my friends jewelry style, i think hes breaking just as many rules so we balance each other out. It’s amazing all the people I meet who find the fractal in their own way… these guys find it wire and minerals – collaborating with tyler is great because he challenges me to wrap pixels the way they wrap wire and I think we both learn quite a bit in the process.
Not as in Barkley but as in gnarled. The color is my favorite part. This and the image below are colored versions of a series Im working on (Click here to see the series)
Another Robo Snail?
Sure, you can never have too many. Click to view the hi-res
Intensities in Ten Cities
This is a remix of the Sierpinski buildings that are now included in Xenodream 2.0 thanks to Garth and Dirk. To create this ethereal image I zoomed in quite a bit and clicked render. I waited two days on this one. The haze comes from the cloud/haze overlay. Be sure to click to see the full detail.
Space Junk 5
Another patently ridiculously long render. Its not really complete as there are still some holes here and there. I gave up on this after two days. This is another in the series of stacking metamorphs by way of extending and freeing a holon to get a total of 4 stackable metamorphs.
Darkest Night
This is the last thing you see before it attaches itself to your face.
Inspired by encouragement from Fluid Dynamicist and all around awesome guy Mark Stock I’ve decided to submit an entry into SIGGRAPH. I am planning a series of simple very high resolution 3d fractals totally devoid of color to focus on the details. If not SIGGRAPH I’ve been planning on doing something like this for years anyways. Maybe Ill give a test run at a gallery here in Portland.
These images are all variations of the same seed image – I plan to connect them all and show my artistic process of mutation and permutation which works on the of continual refinement of and honing in on the concept which is ever changing. This particular batch focuses on the Z-axis depth of the main shape (holon) that is repeating through out the structure. By adjusting this I am able to bring out specific form through all the pieces. Anyways enough geeky jibber jabber here are the images
If theres less than 15 images here this post is incomplete and Ill be updating it!! Stay Tuned
I’ve writtenpreviously on how I think the Processing design oriented programming language is the kittens pajamas. Braving the dangers of the Powells Technical bookstore (the greatest place on earth) I broke down recently and bought the book Ive been drooling over. I resisted the calls of detailed mathematical deconstructions of MC Eschers works, a two part book entitled Mathemusica (50 bucks each), and a few pretty amazing fractal related books.
So I read about 130 pages of this in a day and Ive got the general idea. Of course it’s really simple to start; a bunch of functions with ranges of random numbers for size and overlaying a stroked black circle at differing opacities to create depth. This is inspired by both Gustav Klimts amazing colors as well as my curtains.
I spaced out the occurances of the 4 different types of circles by a conditional statement giving each type of circle a probability factor. ie every 15 out of 100 show up; The circles are drawn relative to the mouses position on the screen
So while this looks cool, it didn’t stay interesting for too long, so I decided to change the color up and add a few more features. In the second working of the code the main random circle activity hovers around the mouse coordinates while the random vertical bars are all over the page.
More coming soon! I am so excited I can barely lay in sleep for all the tossing and turning with what ifs and lines of code writing themselves in my head. For those who are asking me “What program” I am using. This is the interface =)
I’ve been spending some time exploring the animation feature of Xenodream so I decided I would create seamless video loops at the same time and offer them with a Creative Commons License for my VJ and video friends.
This one owes a special thanks to Richard Schenk for the inspiration provided in his Xenoship XEP with the simple but elegant one holon .boxed constructor and Wyrl metamorph. This is the second of a series of these things as I have a project in mind for them. My favorite so far.
You must link back to this page any place your use of it appears, this
is part of the license and if you fail to do so that is violation of the license
agreement.
I’ve been spending some time exploring the animation feature of Xenodream so I decided I would create seamless video loops at the same time and offer them with a Creative Commons License for my VJ and video friends.
This one owes a special thanks to Richard Schenk for the inspiration provided in his Xenoship XEP with the simple but elegant one holon .boxed constructor and Wyrl metamorph. This transparent animation reminds me of something my friend Xavi would draw. This is the first of a series of these things as I have a project in mind for them. I’ll post on the blog
You must link back to this page any place your use of it appears, this
is part of the license and if you fail to do so that is violation of the license
agreement.
