Spine 1

 Just finishing a large sculpture inspired by the human spine, made from surplus 4x4 truck parts.  I got to thinking about bones and their shapes and the relation to the desert during my time in the Great Basin and have done several reclaimed wood pieces in the same series, Bone II & III.

Prepping wood from trees

This is a log from a cottonwood cut several years ago.  I did nothing to it except let it sit, and you can see the cracks that resulted.  For some pieces it may be desirable to let it crack deliberately and use this pattern, but structurally it is compromised and would have to have a supporting base or framework so it doesn't fall apart.

Until recently I've used wood that's been milled (or more commonly, already used) before I got to it.  I've been waiting for a chance to try starting with the tree rather than the pre-cut planks at a wood supply house.  When a neighbor told me he was going to remove a giant apricot tree from his property, I jumped at the chance to try it.

Two of the greatest woodworkers of all time, George Nakashima's and Sam Maloof were experts at this.  Take a look at Nakashima's use of the live edge and butterfly insets in his work.

The original tree, marked with sections that I have sculpture ideas for.  I was inspired partly by a visit to James Surles'  studio in Carbondale (www.jamessurles.com)

Newly cut wood ('green' wood) is heavy because of all the water weight.  Slow, consistent drying is key to reducing the number of cracks and structural abnormalities.  Many sculptors either use a large kiln to dry wood or keep a rotating stock ready for use.  For air-drying, a good rule of thumb is 1 year per inch of thickness . . . so for large pieces the planning process can start a decade or more before the sculpting even starts.

Cookies chainsawed and ready for sealant

Drying cookies prepped with different sealants as an experiment

Cracks that showed up on an untreated log a day after cutting

Sealant added to the ends of cuts to slow the moisture loss.  Eventually I'll cut strips out of the bark to allow for more even drying (and fewer cracks).

Great Basin Table installed

Great Basin Table, 17" x 41" x 21", 2012.  Steel and plywood.

I had a great trip out the Great Basin National Park to install a piece, give a couple presentations on my work, and help out with the filming of a new documentary on the Park being done by North Shore Productions.

The table was inspired by several of my experiences during my residency there; most notably the idea that there are several visual geometries acting in the Park, sometimes in cohesion and sometimes conflicting with one another.  There are human-made as well as natural and organic shapes and the interplay between them is fascinating.  This of course, is no new revelation (William Fox describes it as 'one of the oldest dichotomies in history, the tension between the organic shape of the natural world and the mathematical grid').

Great Basin Table  at the lower Park visitor center in Baker, NV

I was specifically interested in the shapes we make on the land that are unintended yet beautiful anyway, and the relationship between mathematical forms that at first glance appear as human constructs but show up outside of our influence.

The base of the table is inspired by a specific Bristlecone Pine found high on a ridge of Mt. Washington in the southern end of the Park, and the right-angled forms are placed using the Golden Ratio, a mathematical relationship that describes natural geometries ranging from the curve of the human ear to the spiral of galaxies.  The top is a rough map of Baker, NV, showing dirt roads and the irrigation pivots as seen from satellite imagery.  Baker is the closest town to Great Basin National Park and home to many of the Park employees and caretakers of the Great Basin and its travelers.

table top detail showing satellite imagery-inspired carving

Satellite image of Baker, NV

Golden Ratio

Bristlecone Pine that inspired the table base

Film crew in the sculpture studio

Filming in the Park

Hiking camera equipment up to the Bristlecone grove

Table prepped for filming

Bones

Bone II, 10" x 7" x 35"

I just completed two pieces that had been germinating since my time in the Great Basin and delivered to the 3rd Street Art Center's "Feel Free to Touch 2" exhibit in Carbondale.  They'll be on display throughout the month of June.

Bone III, 5" x 17" x 20"

Each of these was inspired by bone fragments I found while traveling the basin and range of Utah/Nevada.  To make them I used wood scraps that I also found in the area; I thought it was an important symmetry to depict the forms with materials that were also cast aside and weathering in the same context.

Model/prototype in progress with original bone inspiration

Detail of  Bone II,  with bondo-colored epoxy accents

As a side note, there are many other fantastic sculptures in the exhibit, including those of James Surls and John Doyle.

John Doyle's  Walnut Hand

Great Basin National Park table models

As part of my 2011 Artist-In-Residency at the Great Basin National Park, I agreed to produce and donate a piece of work that was inspired by my time there.  I've been making some small-scale models of a larger sculptural table (that I'll bring out in a month or so) to explore different ideas before committing to the full-scale work.

I'm playing around with the geometries I experienced in the Great Basin:  the curves and swoops of the Bristlecone pine trees high on the exposed ridges, and the orthogonal lines and grids (farmland and road, for example) that were apparent from the air and on maps.

Bike parts + surfing = ?

Some inspiration for the next project:

Ritual Acts of Salvage

The author William Fox uses a particularly apt phrase to describe the (re)use of found objects: he calls it 'ritual acts of salvage'. I like thinking about it as a ritual because it implies something both habitual and unsuperficial. The salvage of found materials denotes that they are being employed in a purpose that is more useful or important than their previous incarnations.

Well-done graffiti murals and open pit copper strip mines both fall into this interpretation; both activities re-purpose materials for a use that is more important to a particular group. In one case it is to reclaim soul-less urban landscapes, and in another it is to convert the land into jobs and a standard of living. I think the important discussions occur when we disagree about to whom the reincarnated work is more useful; and this hinges largely on context.

I've spent a large amount of time in the Basin and Range of the western U.S., and have wondered how an artist that works primarily in recycled materials could make sculpture there, given that some of the best parts of it are protected in National Parks, National Forests, and Wilderness areas where collecting rocks and wood and such are prohibited. Here is where painters and photographers have the artistic upper hand; the landscape is the same for them having been there.

Fortunately for me, people litter. Especially by roads. Stuff falls off trucks, gets tossed out the window, etc . . . Hayduke, Ed Abbey's militant environmentalist, even tosses crushed beers cans out his truck window. I'm not looking to be a trash collector, though. It's not littering if I pick up stuff, change it, and return it to where I found it, right?

I found some wood scraps by the side of a road and carved them into tiny hubs, which I then used to create big tumbleweeds. I then put the mega-tumbleweeds out where i found the wood scraps and donor tumbleweeds and let the wind eventually carry them off to their next adventures. It seemed appropriate to use the symbol of traveling in the desert (a tumbleweed) to ritually salvage found scrap wood into something that would travel across the desert on its own.

If the original materials more useful in their reincarnated form, or if they will ever be seen by people again, I'm not sure.

The Organic Grid

Many parts of Nevada are big and open, and there are lots of signs that say things like 'Get gas now! No services 15,200 miles'.

The need to understand the landscape here goes far beyond a passing cerebral appreciation for the flora and fauna; you could run out of gas and water and have your eye sockets pecked out and tires stolen by vultures before the next truck comes along. Take a look at the fantastic account of the Donner party's 'cut-off' route through the east end of the Great Basin in 'Trial by Hunger' for an idea of what I mean. (To summarize: ignorance of Great Basin geography means snacking on each other's femurs by winter.)

"The making of such a map is an interesting process . . . fixing on a small sheet the results of laborious travel over waste regions, and giving to them an enduring place on the world's surface."
-- John Fremont, explorer of the Great Basin, mid 1800's

In William Fox's book 'Mapping the Empty: Eight Artists and Nevada', he addresses 'one of the oldest dichotomies in history, the tension between the organic shape of the natural world and the mathematical grid'. In the American West this can be charted beginning with Fremont's original maps of the area to Google Earth's view of straight roads bisecting and bending around landforms in the basin and range. Artists like Andy Goldsworthy have taken a different approach by constructing things out of the natural world that have some innate geometry to them that wasn't there before.

I think we should be very wary trusting current culture with our experience of anything, especially when it comes to that weirdo art crowd. Unfortunately we can't all be out all the time seeing all of this amazing stuff for ourselves, and need to trust something to show it to us, or at least tell us how we can make money from it. Catherine Norman (yes, we are related) in her thesis on Goldsworthy's earthworks notes that:

" . . . we can see a prevalence of the preconceived image of nature: a postcard of the Grand Canyon, perhaps, some view of sweeping land that our society claims is beautiful . . . interstate highways alert us with signs when we need to pull over for a scenic view. Culture has become in this way the mediator of nature, controlling our views of landscape and detaching us from actual experience with nature"

Land and life are intertwined -- we've relied upon it for sustenance and safety for millions of years, and it is only recently that we have put so many intermediaries between us that, unless you are one of the lucky few, it is outside our experience. The mediators we use can intentionally or otherwise put the human geometry on landscapes: often times photography and writing are the principle culprits. Historically, this translated experience has run the gamut of intended effect from its authors: over the last three hundred years alone the American West has been symbolized as the playground of the devil (early Puritan settlers), the divine (Muir, Thoreau), an adversary to be overcome (Remington, Hemmingway), a co-author in the human experience (Goldsworthy, Wright), and an entity possessing of it own value and rights (Adams, O'Keefe).

In rural Nevada it is impossible not to have some aspect of nature impact daily life. The consequences of ignorance usually aren't cannibalistic in the Donner-Party-Lets-Have-Hank-As-The-Appetizer sort of way, but dire nonetheless. Many of the professions out here depend on nature: ranching, farming, tourism and mining to name a few. The problem is that nature doesn't use the precise boundaries and words that we like to use, so we have to figure out how to translate between the wilderness and our needs. The town of Baker, NV, just outside Great Basin National Park is a case study in the 'tension between the organic shape of the natural world and the mathematical grid'.

To wit: the US Postal service is facing the need to cut costs, and proposes to do so by eliminating select rural post offices like the one in Baker, as well as the one in Garrison, UT, 10 miles away. That would mean that residents, some who rely on mail for medications and critical ranch supplies would have to drive 60 miles over two mountain passes to Ely, NV. Why not just consolidate the two post offices instead of eliminating both? Well, there happens to be a state line between them. Each post office is in a different administrative district, apparently neither of which is aware the other exists and coordination between the two is difficult at best. The imaginary, arbitrary, and very straight line down the middle of the Snake Valley separating Utah from Nevada seems not only not useful but it actively undermines the welfare of residents on both sides of it. (Yet at my house in Salt Lake the USPS dutifully delivers ads for plasma screen TV's 6 days a week to my front door, and there are 4 post offices within 10 miles).

We can't talk about abstract geometric boundaries and people without addressing water rights. Underground aquifers are like the US Olympic Hockey team: we all share them whether we like it or not, and our life depends on their health. My grandfather was a lifelong rancher in Waco, TX and I have clear memories of lively kitchen table discussions about water issues: who's got it, who wants it, who's wrecking it, and who's stealing it.

In this chunk of Nevada, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been buying ranches in Spring Valley on the west side of the National Park and planning to tap the aquifer to supply Las Vegas with more golf courses and heart-shaped swimming pools 200 miles to the south. Yet this aquifer, like all good nature, doesn't care about property lines. It is intimately related to the ecosystem of GBNP as well as the water in the neighboring valleys which is critical to the farmers, ranchers, and anything else alive there.  (The question of Las Vegas creating more swimming pools and golf courses is another discussion altogether, one I think would be solved most expeditiously by relocating the Nevada Nuclear Test Range into the lobby of the Luxor Casino. But I digress.)

The solution lies, I think, in how Fremont originally mapped and named the Great Basin. He describes its boundaries hydrologically, not politico-geographically. ("[the area] containing many lakes . . . with their own system of rivers and creeks, and which have no connection with the ocean or the great rivers which flow into it.") In addition, William Fox noted that:

"Just as each audience in the East [in the late 1800's] had its own distinct uses for the art of the great western expeditions -- from scientists requiring accuracy to developers seeking the reassuringly picturesque -- so the artists produced works in response to those needs."

Not that all of our state and county boundaries should be altered to reflect aquifers or even communities of people, but perhaps those nutty artists in our midst can use the 'organic shape of the natural world' to provide a better future for the American West.

Negative Space in the Great Basin

I've visited every bar within 50 miles and finally found one of my favorite spots, a little place called Silver Jack in Baker, pop 60 or so.

Behind me I overheard someone say there was 'nothing in Utah, we went to Arches [National Park] this morning and that was it'. I turned around to see a gaggle of middle aged travelers crying into their Chardonnay over the lack of easily accessible and postcard-worthy scenery at 70mph along I-70.
As I was draining the oil and putting drywall screws behind the tires of their Prius later that night, I reflected upon the idea of 'being in the middle of nowhere'. Perhaps the 'nothing', I thought, (whether it be in Nevada, Utah, or entitled vacationers' heads) is necessary to produce the sublime experience of the 'not nothings' -- the mountains, people, and grandeur that rises from the sagebrush between the Wasatch and the Sierra. It takes a long time to get to GBNP, and maybe it should. Otherwise we might not be ready for it. You don't just swing by here on your way somewhere else.

What makes GBNP so interesting is what's not here -- out of very flat, muted-colored sagebrush plains springs a 13,000 ft mountain 8000ft higher than the basin below. Not only does the 'Sagebrush Ocean' juxtapose the peaks, but there is also an absence of light, sound, people, and bright colors . . . the anthesis of Las Vegas, the unfortunate mental image most people have of Nevada. In other words, the holes are what make it a Whiffle Ball -- not the plastic.

As an artist, I decided I should be very concerned about what Willliam Fox in his book 'Mapping the Empty' described as 'the deeply conflicted condition of the postmodern artist living under existential guilt over conquest of the region'. Using that idea of the nothing-ness of negative space might be a good way to get over this existential guilt I didn't know I had.

Like all good and sneaky artists, I started looking for some other folks who had already explored this concept so I could steal their secrets. One name that keeps coming up is Michael Heizer, a nutty genius living out in the middle of nowhere building a full-size sculpture of a city. It's called 'City'. It's the size of the Washington Mall, including the museums.

He's been working on it for forty years, and instead of reasonable tools like a paintbrush or plasma torch, he and his crew uses earthmoving equipment. Unfortunately, the only way to view it (it's not done, you see -- it will only open to the public upon completion) is through satellite images. With a little probing I found the location in south-central Nevada, although I decided against an unannounced visit as Mr. Heizer is inclined to shoot trespassers (another sign of a fellow existential-guilt ridden sneaky
artist, I might add).  Take a look at the coordinates 38.03400 N 115.44100 W in Google Earth and you should be able to get a glimpse.

So, to understand what Heizer has to do with negative space and Nevada we must take a look at the works he did you can actually see without getting filled with negative spaces yourself. Specifically, the Perforated Object 27 at the Federal Courthouse Building in Reno and Double Negative, also in Nevada. Perforated Object is a huge steel chunk with a bunch of holes in it, and Double Negative is an enormous trench dug into the edge of a canyon (like 240,000 tons of missing earth enormous). Both are awe-inspiring and made me more aware of what wasn't there than what was.

By extension, it also made me think about things that aren't here in the Park that aren't physical: lots of noise, light pollution, traffic. For example, there is so little ambient light at night that GBNP is one of the US's premier stargazing locations. At a recent stargazing with a park ranger (self-proclaimed 'dark ranger', the second coolest phrase behind 'galactic core' heard that night), all of our eyes were adjusting to the lack of light when a flash lit up the line of people waiting to look through the park's telescope.
Everyone looked around, expecting an apology from the sheepish person who must have accidentally turned on their flashlight. The flash was actually a momentary reflection off the solar panels of an orbiting Iridium satellite passing miles and miles overhead. It's that dark here.

To read more about Heizer's inspired lunacy, take a look at:
doublenegative.terasen.net
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/magazine/06HEIZER.html?ex=1265432400&en=46be92f2c266e591&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.moca-la.org/museum/pc_artwork_detail.php?&acsnum=85.105&keywords=heizer&x=0&y=0

Bristlecone Pines

Bristlecones survive so long for several reasons. One is that they live in areas so extreme they don't compete with other plants. Another is that their cells don't show signs of 'senescence' -- an ancient cell from a bristlecone looks and functions a lot like a young one, unlike human cells which age. A third reason, I believe, is that they have survived because their habitat isn't useful to us. Once we find some use for windswept 10,000 ft rideglines (besides a context for personal enlightenment and metaphorical soul-searching), watch out.

Bristlecone pines have what's called sectored architecture. That means a particular clump of roots at the bottom provides a particular clump of branches at the top (or side) water, through a stem channel specific to those parts of the tree. So, when a root section is damaged the part of the tree associated with that section dies.  Often old Bristlecones, and especially ancient ones (a term which generally applies to trees past the 4,000 yr old mark -- the rest are merely 'old') display a section of living tree wrapping and winding its way around a mass of dead wood.

One thing that keeps the dead wood from disintegrating over the millennia is the trees' resin, which effectively seals the wood like a sock dipped in candle wax. The resin also helps the tree seal up wounds. It is for this reason that scientists can take core samples from the tree with an increment borer to analyze its rings and make an estimation about its age and the climatic conditions it has experienced.
The increment borer is like a hollow drill bit, so it can remove rods of wood the diameter of a pencil and several feet long. Because the hole is so small, it seals up with resin quickly. These rods of wood, often indicating thousands of rings, are then compared to other hollow rods of wood from other interesting trees. By combining overlapping patterns in core samples from different trees, scientists can assemble a climate history tens of thousands of years old. These folks are known as 'dendrochronologists' and 'extremely patient'. Interestingly, these patterns can also be used to date core samples taken from roof timbers in ancient dwellings.

Given that these techniques have been around since the 60's, it is fascinating that a guy named Donald Currey decided to cut down what seemed to him an especially interesting tree in 1964 just near Wheeler Peak in what is now Great Basin National Park. To make a long story short, the tree he cut down was the oldest one we've ever found. It was 4,862 years old.

It's a fascinating story involving different measures of science, ignorance, and politics depending on who you ask. Take a look at Michael Cohen's "A Garden of Bristlecones: Tales of Change in the Great Basin" for a good overview.

To see more photos, visit the Blue Boat Home Facebook site:

http://www.facebook.com/BlueBoatHome

Great basin artist in residency begins . . .

Great Basin blog

9/13/11

Great Basin National Park (GBNP) is a small part of the actual Great Basin, which stretches between California to Utah and Mexico (plus a dash of Oregon and Idaho). Roughly speaking, that's about 150 million acres.

That's a large charge for a relatively small 77,000 acre National Park.

That gives us about a 2,000:1 scale for all us math nerds. In other words, if you put your palm on the ground in GBNP that chunk of earth you have coved up is responsible for representing two thousand times its size, or the handprints of 1,999 other people.

One of the things that fascinates me here is that sense of scale; both the scale of what this park represents as well as the sheer magnitudes of size and age here.

Take Bristlecone pines, for example. Oldest single organisms on earth. Many are 4,000 years or older, although we don't know for sure without cutting them down (which happened to the oldest one we've found so far. Oops).

Rather than living in the arboreal land of milk and honey, they are found at extreme altitudes where the lack of soil, 100mph winds, and sub-zero winter temperatures give a Honey Badger smack-down (YouTube it, you won't be disappointed) to lesser competitors, diseases, and creatures that would end them.

Interestingly, climate change may be the biggest threat to the trees. As it becomes warmer and warmer at these high elevations, it makes infestations and competition from other species possible.

The other thing that strikes me here are the superlatives. Specifically, GBNP has been called both the quietest and darkest place in the continental US, and I believe it. Where I'm staying looks out over a valley that separates us from Utah, and it is quite the experience to look out for miles and miles at night and hear . . . absolutely nothing. I'm sure the folks at the visitor center hear the White Stripes a quarter mile away from my iPod.

There are many folks who have written much more eloquently and profitably than I have about this area. Here are a few I'm reading that I'd recommend:

The Void, The Grid, and The Sign: Traversing the Great Basin by William Fox
A fascinating exploration of the metaphors we use to explain this area; I'd recommend to people who have actually been to some part of the basin and range. Without having the physical experience of being here it wouldn't make any damn sense.

Basin and Range by John McPhee
I love me some McPhee, and this volume doesn't disappoint. It avoids being long, dense, or boring, which has been the fate of many a geology book. His story follows I-80, more or less, and almost makes me want to drive on it.

The Bristlecone Book: A Natural History of the World's Oldest Trees by Ronald Lanner
An interesting quick read on these fascinating creatures, and beautiful photography.

The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin by Stephen Trimble
I know Steve, and the book comes alive for me because I can imagine his voice reading it. He also took the fantastic photos, just to rub it in that he can be the Bo Jackson of the art world.

National Park Residency

Take a look at the recent news:

http://www.parkrecord.com/ci_18815192

Road Conditions Mobile Registration Mobile Edition Subscribe Advertise Weather: PARK CITY, UT | Now: 82ºF | High: 75ºF | Low: 51ºF | 5-Day Forecast This Site Web Search powered by YAHOO! SEARCH Home News Entertainment Sports Business Submit content Obituaries Opinion Real Estate Classifieds Advertisers Jobs Print   Email    Font Resize Local artist chosen for Great Basin residency Joe Norman is a Gallery MAR artist Scott Iwasaki, The Park Record Posted: 09/02/2011 04:38:17 PM MDT Click photo to enlarge (Grayson West/Park Record) Sculptor Joe Norman, whose work is displayed regularly at Gallery MAR... 1 2 3 » Sculptor Joe Norman, whose works have been showing at Gallery MAR since 2009, can add a National Park as another venue in his resume. Norman has been named the autumn Artist-in-Residence for Great Basin National Park in Nevada. The residency starts in two weeks and will last until mid-October. A resident artist is nothing new to the National Parks, Norman said during an interview with The Park Record. Each National Park puts out a periodic call for entries, he said. "Some parks are focused on specific types of art because of the people who established them," he said. "For example, some only look for writers because a writer established it and so forth, but it depends on the character of the park. "It's a way for the Parks to communicate what they are about through artistic mediums, rather than newsletters and the more traditional means," Norman explained. "It's also a way for artists to get exposure, which is always nice." Norman applied to a few and was contacted by Great Basin National Park, which protects approximately 77,180 acres of east-central Nevada, 290 miles north of Las Vegas. "I'm excited about this because the geographic range of the Great Basin is huge," Norman said. "There are so many fascinating things in the park. It has glaciers. It has caves, and it covers basically all of Nevada, but is fairly young, having been established in 1986." Norman, whose sculptures are usually structured from used materials, doesn't quite know how his art Advertisement will fit in with the park's ideas, he said. He plans to use the first two weeks to wander and absorb what the park is about, before starting a new project. "My works are usually made from old wood from shipping pallets that are made with colorful wood from China, and India," he said. "I also use bullet casings, bomb fins, a lot of military hardware, actually." Norman repurposes those items into something functional like a bench or a table. He has also created non-functional sculptures from truck hoods, he said. "I enjoy taking materials that have a (past) story and giving them more of a center stage to be looked at," Norman explained. "If you've never owned gun or bullet, you still know what a bullet casing is, so you have an emotional connection to it. As an artist, I take that emotional residue and use it to make something." Norman was born into a creative family. His dad is an architect. His uncle is a portrait painter and his brother, although a rocket scientist is also a photographer. "My sister also has two degrees in Art History," Norman said. "Creating things was always part of our story." Still, Norman didn't become a bona-fide professional artist right off the bat. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in product design. "I went down that road finding ways to make the world a better place and using business as the basis of social change," he said. "As I went along, I found I enjoyed turning up the volume on the artistic expression part and turning down the volume on attending the meetings where I had to wear a tie." Norman jumped ship and became a teacher when he and his wife moved to Utah. Two years ago, Norman took a leap of faith and became a full-time artist. "I started with encaustic painting that uses beeswax and pigment," he said. "It's a fabulous medium because you can get these thick and deep colors, which is fantastic." A combination of the encaustic textures and working with objects as a product designer pushed Norman into sculpture. "I developed a feel for three-dimensional objects and learned the context of space," he said. "I found how you can direct how people interact with each other by designing a table. "There is a specific table size that helps conversations flow if two people are sitting across from each other," he said. "If the table is a couple of inches wider, it feels too distant and if it's a couple of inches narrower, people feel too close to carry out a comfortable conversation." Norman is looking forward to actually creating the works in the park. "I know I'm not going to be collecting wood from a National Park to make something," he said with a laugh. "That will end up with nothing but trouble, but I am curious as to what I'll be using and what I'll be making that will help enhance my relationship and others' relationships with the park." For more information about Joe Norman's works, visit www.blueboathomedesign.com.