The Canyon Table -- Part 3

Spanish Bottom carving detail

Main table legs rough-cut and welded

Rough carving detail of the Green River and Confluence

Year of Used

Tired of rampant consumerism? The Year of Used project is set to start Jan 1, 2011.

http://www.yearofused.posterus.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Year-Of-Used/172474152775721

The Scoop Table, part 2: Completion

Materials:  Baltic birch, powdercoated steel

Julie Lucus

The following graphic explains how I view the world.  It’s rare that I see something that fits where the red ‘X’ is – there’s a lot of art I like that I wouldn’t want to have.  Julie Lucus’ Burning Man Skull is an exception. 

See her work online or in person at the Sugarhouse Gallery .

http://julielucus.30art.com/ 

http://www.artisticframingco.com/

Nox Contemporary

'untitled', Tyler Spurgeon 2010

There's a new gallery in town.  I had the good fortune to attend the opening of Nox Contemporary and meet John Sproul, one of the directors, and Tyler Spurgeon , an exhibiting artist.  I was especially taken by several of Tyler's paintings depicting (and I'm paraphrasing his comments here) 'the struggles we have with ourselves'.


The current show will be running through Feb 4, 2011.  Please see the 15Bytes article/interview for more information.








http://noxcontemporary.com/default.htm


http://TYLERSPURGEON.COM/home.html


http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/10dec/page4.html

The Canyon Table -- Part 2

I try to prototype like I vote – early and often.  The sooner I can see what the materials/volumes/finishes are going to do, the better design decisions I can make.

The Canyon Table will have a map of the topography formed by the Green and Colorado Rivers.  It is a location that is important to me, as well as a metaphor for our journeys through life, their twists, and confluences with others.

3D modeling programs have their place, and as an artist I find them useful for a quick, inexpensive gut check as to sizes and shapes that might work well.  Google Sketchup is intuitive and has a ton of on-line support.  After that stage, I have yet to find a good replacement for actually trying scraps of the material I will use.

Collaborative Consumption

What would life be like if you didn’t have to actually own the stuff you use everyday?

Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers’ book What’s Mine is Yours: the Rise of Collabortive Consumption explores companies who are trying to provide just that.  Imagine the Netflix business model applied to everything from apartments to cars to lawnmowers, and that’s what they’re talking about. It sounds like a great way to save money, time, and the resources that go into making stuff that sits unused for most of its life in our garages and closets.  But, it requires a fundamental shift in thinking from valuing the ownership of the things in our lives to valuing the utility they give us.  Do we want the powerdrill or do we want the holes that the drill makes?

Some examples:

Airbnb is a site that coordinates travellers with people wanting to rent out anything from couch for the night to a villa for a month.  There are rating systems so that you can rest easy knowing that your host probably isn’t an axe murderer.

Zipcar is a service that allows you to reserve a car any time of the day or night for as little as an hour.

Freecycle coordinates people who have things to get rid of with people who want them.  Their tagline:  “There’s no such thing as waste, just useful stuff in the wrong place”.

TechShop is a series of  workshops on steriods -- they have the space, advice, and tools that any tinkerer would want but few could afford.  Monthly fees give you access to half a million dollars worth of equipment.

Swap.com matches you up with people who have books, CDs, and DVDs you want while coordinating others who want the ones you have.


Now lest anyone gather their pitchforks, burning torches, and mobs and start screaming ‘Socialism!’, let me assure you the collaborative consumption model doesn’t involve government ownership or intervention.  It is a way of organizing group behavior that preserves the individual’s autonomy and freedom, perhaps even more so than our current economic model (credit card debt from the garage full of stuff, anyone?).

There is a high degree of trust required with consuming collaboratively, and hence mechanisms like eBay’s user ratings system have emerged.  In fact, trust between strangers is one of the four principles of successfully collaboratively consuming.  The three others include critical mass (enough people participating to make it work), belief in the commons (the more people that participate, the better it is for everyone), and idling capacity (the stuff being shared needs to be sitting ‘idle’ enough with a single user).

I foresee two major resistances to the collaborative model.

First, companies that make products (cars, toasters, iPods, etc) have built many of their core competencies around the production, marketing, and distribution of that stuff rather than the re-distribution and maintenance of it.  I expect a large resistance from manufacturers as they are asked to profit not from producing and selling but from organizing and redistributing products.  We are, after all, known as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘users’ (or even ‘people’).  Consumers consume things, after all; in the Collaborative Consumption model, we might better be described as ‘sharers’.  It will require a fundamental shift in the corporate DNA of many companies to address this change, from selling the product to selling the function it provides.

Second, many of the profitable business models now using collaborative consumption rely heavily on the internet and its related infrastructures.  Should access to that infrastructure be disrupted or inhibited (by cost, natural disaster, or Godzilla) the geographically dispersed collaborative communities cease to function.

Botsman and Rodgers contend that ‘ . . . the more space and time we spend dedicated to accumulating stuff in our lives, the less room we have for other people.’  With the rise of collaborative consumption, I hope the corrollary is also true.

The Scoop Table -- part 1

There are a few materials that have held my attention for the past 20 years, and plywood is one of them.

Individual sheets of birch plywood

Plywood is really the workhorse of furniture and construction, yet most times it gets covered by a veneer or painted over.  It is the weird old uncle of the wood world, the one everyone likes to have but no one wants to see.

Layers of birch plywood being laminated together

My first explorations into plywood were to make a series of boomerangs – when sanded the plys emerge and make fantastic patterns that visually accent the airfoil shapes needed to make the boomerangs return.  High-end cabinetry often uses birch plywood, which differs from construction-grade plywood in that it has many more sheets laminated together and has virtually no voids from the gluing process.  It is a fantastic material – because of the cutting and orientation of its layers, it expands and contracts very little with the seasons and moisture content of the air.  The grain of each ply is oriented 90 degrees to the last, so it can be ripped on the table saw in any direction without much worry of splitting, and it can be loaded across each axis as well.  In addition, when sanded through the plys, the end-grain alternates and gives the edge a striped pattern.  Why we would want to hide such a fantastic material underneath a veneer I don’t know.

One of my current projects is to make a steel-based table with a carved plywood top.

 

Metal can actually deform significantly when welded, and I take a lot of precautions to insure that it remains in the shape I want it to.  Often times I will tack weld all of the pieces together before giving it the full weld bead, this way it holds itself in proportion as the individual parts want to expand and contract with the heat of the welder.  In this case I even tack welded extra supports for stability on the cantilevered parts that will be removed later.

Tack welds

Full weld beads ground down

The Canyon Table -- Part 1

A quick peek into some of the inspirations for the next work:

Trevor Southey

I had the good fortune to meet Trevor Southey and hear a few of his thoughts on art at the Thomas Kearns McCarthey Gallery  in Park City.  For those unfamiliar with Southey’s work, take a look at his website here .

A couple of his thoughts really struck me.  The first:

“A work of art is a conversation between the artist and the viewer, each confessing their sins to the other”

That approach certainly helps me when exploring themes that are emotional and possibly divisive (see a review of the Ammo Table here, which made me realize I missed some very enlightening conversation(s) with people who were frustrated by my work).

Another:

“I have found it very rare that honesty needs to be cruel . . . ”

Art is honest if it is nothing else, and perhaps while cruelty is effective (see Francis Bacon’s portraits of the pope), there may be other approaches that invite conversation.

Trevor’s work will be on exhibit through Dec 13, 2011.

http://trevorsouthey-studio.blogspot.com/

http://www.trevorsouthey.com/biography.html

http://www.mccartheygallery.net/

http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/10nov/page7.html

Traveling Benches, part 2

The benches have a fresh coat of paint and I’ve decided on a set of stencils to re-create some of the visual imagery of the original lettering, but with a theme that fits their new purpose.

Next stop: fabric and upholstering.

Design Manifestos

At some point in their careers, most artists and designers acknowledge a set of values they find paramount to doing their work well.


Compiled here, by our friends at the Social Design Notes Blog, is 100 years of design manifestos.


A few examples:


"Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry."


"Death to everything stuffy!"

Traveling Benches, part 1

While (partially) stymied on other projects, I decided to begin a set of benches that has been sitting in the back of my mind (and in the back of my shop . . .).  I have two very industrial military metal transportation cases originally used for transporting explosives that are a perfect starting point.

They got me to thinking about the separation that happens within families when military service members are deployed far from home, and what it means to be ‘home’ or ‘away’.  I suppose in a larger sense it also involves when any of us leave our loved ones, either to go get milk down the street or to move cities or countries.

Doorways and entry (or exit) hallways seem to be where these disconnection and re-connections happen often.  We greet folks into our home there and bid them adieu in the same context.  

These benches will be designed for the entryway of a home, specifically as a place for people to pause during the entry and exit of visitors and family members.   Shoes will be taken off and put on here, leftovers handed over, and goodbyes and hellos exchanged.  I’ll use big casters on the benches to emphasize that they are Travelling Benches and that they are involved with the movement of people.

The original paintwork on the cases had lots of interesting stenciled codes and stern instructions (‘CERTIFIED EMPTY’, ‘DO NOT DROP’, etc).  Visually they made the cases seem a little more industrial than I wanted -- perhaps I’d leave them if they weren’t in a home.  I am also repainting the cases a dark grey in place of the military olive green; hopefully this will provoke more of the visual language of ‘travelling suitcase’ than ‘explosive warhead’.

This project has also got me thinking how amazing would it be to design waiting rooms in hospitals.  Where else do we welcome new people into the world and say goodbye to others?

The 'Greenest' Companies in America

The following was submitted as a response to Newsweek's recent article on the '100 Greenest Companies in America':





I was surprised to open the recent issue of Newsweek (Oct 25, 2010) and find Coca-Cola, Raytheon, and McDonald’s listed in the top 100 ‘Greenest Companies in America’ (ranked 54th, 75th, and 79th respectively).  I understand that your ranking system used many experts, numerical metrics, and number-crunching algorithms, but what about common sense?  How is it that a company substantially involved in promoting obesity, a weapons manufacturer, and a fast food chain are ranked so highly?


When promoting environmental stewardship we cannot loose sight of what these companies do, regardless of how they do it.  Otherwise, we could pat ourselves on the back for clubbing baby seals with sustainably harvested  trees.


Sincerely,


Joe Norman

Recent Press

Blue Boat Home has been in a good amount of press recently.

The 2010 City Weekly Arty Awards were a few weeks back, and we got one for ‘Best Recycled Works’.  Keep in mind that we were somewhere in between ‘Best Zombie Podcast’ and ‘Best use of Chocolate’.  Still, it was a fun night and a good chance for the Pallet Bench and Ammo Table to be on display and get some use.

I also started showing in the Sugarhouse Gallery.  Stop by and you can see the Bomb Planter, Crankshaft Table, Tractor Table, and Pallet Table on display.  Also at the Sugarhouse Gallery is the work of Julie Lucas, an incredibly talented and insightful sculptor that also works with found objects and three-dimensional mosaics.  We took a field trip together to find new material and both had a blast trading ideas and thoughts on art.

The Ammo Table is currently showing at the Rio Gallery for the Utah Statewide Mixed Media show, and got a Juror’s Award.  The show will be through Nov.

I was also recently interviewed by Shelterpop and Design Milk’s Jamie Derringer about Zero Waste design.  The article focuses on designers’ attempts to reduce their ecological impact and make fantastic stuff with purpose.

Blue Boat Home is now also listed with the Nine Dot Arts, a corporate art consultancy based out of Denver.

In addition, I’m represented at Gallery MAR in Park City.  Stop by and enjoy their fantastic location and wonderful collection on Main Street.

The Ambiguous Family, Part 6

Prototypes of connection methods and cutting techniques from a donor  truck hood.

Connections and edge treatments are important.  I realized I don’t have enough information or experience with different concepts of alternative families to make a good artistic decision on what method to use to attach the truck hoods to the structure.


I plan to interview and visit a few folks in the next several weeks and hopefully that will help give me some resolution about how to continue.

The Ambiguous Family, part 5

While working on this sculpture over the past week, the issue of gay marriage and the question of biological determinance of homosexuality have been in the local and national news.

Boyd Packard, one of the highest-ranking Mormon church leaders, condemned same-sex marriage and insisted that same-sex attraction is a lifestyle that can be changed through prayer.  Previously, Packer had authored a pamphlet that advocated violence against gay people .  Many have criticized the LDS church’s stance on homosexuality as a contributing factor to Utah’s disproportionate rate of gay teen suicides.

Protest outside the gargantuan LDS office buildings

4500 people were estimated to attend the protest

I traveled to a silent protest orchestrated several days later in response to the LDS position on gay rights.  It struck me how many of the participants were youth from the community; my previous experience attending rallies and protests had relatively few youth participating.

In national news, the Supreme Court is also hearing a case that pits free speech against privacy in a case involving anti-gay protestors at the funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq.

What, exactly, does all this have to do with a hunk of welded steel taking shape in my shop?  I’ve found that while working on any project I’m making thousands of decisions every minute.  Just a single brush stroke on the finish of a piece involves considering the type of brush, its angle, pressure, length, etc.  So, the decisions that surround actually fabricating sculpture multiply exponentially.

7 ft sculpture structure awaiting its skin of reclaimed pickup truck hoods

One of the larger decisions I’ve facing now deal with methods of attaching the plates of metal from the truck hoods onto the skeletal structure of the piece.  Welding, riveting, bolts – each method imparts a different visual language and emotional impact on the folks looking at the sculpture.  All of the recent news makes me lean toward attaching the plates in a way that stresses the defensive posture non-traditional families under attack have to take to protect themselves and their children.  

The Ambiguous Family, part 4

While continuing work on the Ambiguous Family sculpture, I had NPR on in my shop.  Completely serendipitously, the program was “The End of the Macho Man?”  on Talk of the Nation.  Neal Conan was interviewing Guy Garcia  and Hanna Rosin , two authors who have written about the changing role of men.  The basic consensus was that jobs often held by men are disappearing (manufacturing heading overseas, for example) and jobs traditionally held by women are increasing (nursing and teaching).  This labor shift, along with data showing that more women are enrolled in higher education than men, portends a shift in men’s roles in society.  That shift means that the provider and protector roles that men have traditionally had, and had been modeled by their fathers and grandfathers, will need to be met in other ways now that many men are unemployed or will shift to ‘unmanly’ jobs.

It got me to wondering if the arguments against gay marriage and hostility towards gay couples are fueled by a societal fear of the changing role of men.  It seems that two men having a family would be a very obvious lightning rod for latent angst over job, direction, and gender role loss.  Of course this in no way excuses the blatant bigotry involved with anti-gay proponents, but it does offer a theory of how it got that way.

NPR story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130190244&ft=1&f=5

Guy Garcia’s The Decline of Men:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/item_e2dpetSthO3HZcGrWR2ZUK

Hanna Rosin’s The End Of Men:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/