Window Valences

My wife did away with curtains in our re decorated living room several years ago. The walls are all white and we have fancy paper and cloth insulating blinds in the windows. She wanted some high design looking decorative valences to go over each window. Over the couch on the opposite wall, is a black, wood abstract I created some years ago, CITY NIGHTSCAPE. The window valences were to be in a simular style. I created three of them--the longest goes over the main picture window in the living room, the other two are over the two smaller standard size windows. CLICK ON THE PHOTOS AND DRAWINGS TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS AND DETAILS.

Valentine's Day 1999

I must have been looking at a lot of Marc Chagall's paintings when I did this.
The line drawing became a watercolor, and the water color became a steel wall sculpture created as a Valentine's day gift for 1999. It hangs in our den now.
The steel piece is about 40 inches high (1 meter) The unusual finish on it is not a natural rust, but a special type of powder coat painting that gives it a wonderful texture that does not show well in a photo.
CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS AND DETAILS




In a bit of irony, I used a photo of the finished steel wall sculpture to make another card for lovers' in PhotoShop and Painter.

Whistler, the Peacock

My peacock, Whistler, was a masterpiece who graced our garden until I got every penny for him he was worth. The planning sketches were surprisingly sketchy.
After one of our trips to the Freer Museum in Washington, DC, I knew I wanted to make a peacock. The 19th century industrialist, Charles Freer, collected works by Whistler and Thayer, and amassed a huge collection of Oriental art. Freer bought Whistler's "Peacock Room" in its entirety from fellow industrialist Alfred Leyland and had it re assembled in the museum he gave to the nation. Anybody who has read a biography of James Abbott Mcneil Whistler knowshow well the image of a peacock suited him. CLICK ON PHOTOS TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS AND DETAILS.




The body is from an old freon air conditioning gas tank; the tail is old electric motor parts, bottle caps, and spoons. The head is a piece of cut pipe, th beak a bent nail, and the little yellow eyes, plastic dolls' eyes.
The wings along his sides are halves of an old shovel, covered with motor parts an old garden trowels. The neck, is the neck of the old shovel--it curved at the perfect angle. The base of the tail is an old masonery saw, cut and covered with electric motor parts.
The legs are from springs used on farm tractors and the little yellow claws are made from old nails. He is painted with sign painters' enamels.

The Blame Dial

Face it. Nobody really cares what time it is. We just want to know whom to blame, where to point the finger of blame. Originally, I was going to make a sun dial, but realized the market for BLAME DIAL was so much greater. The pointer thingy in the middle (called a "gnomen" on a sun dial) is made of sheet steel cut to the form of a pointing finger. Instead of hours of the face or dial, I simply used welding rod to create the words, "You, you, you, you, you, you." So, no matter where the shadow of the the blame finger falls and no matter the time "YOU ARE TO BLAME!" I am surprised I have not sold one to every state legislature and city council in the country. It is also very popular with recently divorced women.


The actual piece came out pretty much as the sketch, except I found I had a very heavy crankshaft from an old Honda auto to use as the stand. That kept the wind from blowing over the Blame Dial easily. It was painted with deep bronze paint and high lighted with gold. CLICK ON PICTURES TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS AND DETAILS.

Heaven or Hell Angel

This is a great piece to show the changes from a conceptual drawing to the actual finished piece.
Originally inspired by the 19th Century American Farmer's wind vanes atop old barns, which often depicted The Angel Gabriel blowing his trumpet on Judgement Day. I quickly realized, that for Judgment Day, nobody cares which way the wind is blowing, they just want to know if they're going to Heaven or Hell. So. Rather than put North, South, East, West on the wind vane, I just put "Heaven" and "Hell."



Now, being a liberal Episcopalian, I believe the way to Heaven or Hell seems to have changed a lot over the years, so whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, depends on which way the morality winds are blowing in society. To make things even harder, I labelled the spinning Heaven and Hell sign backwards on each side, so if one person sees it from the left, they think the "way to Hell" is one way, the person viewing it from the other side, thinks that is the way to Heaven! CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO SEE ENLARGEMENTS AND CLOSE UPS
This pieces stand about 9 feet tall ( 2.7 m) and is made from scraps of steel around my workshop. It is a good example of what I mean when I tell people that I drive the material, the material does not drive me. See the drawing is only a conception. When I go make th actual piece, then I have to look around to see what I have I can use for, say, a trumpet, or wings, or feet.



The Heaven --Hell sign is on a ball bearing and spins with the wind. The angel's hands are made from forks, the wings from knives, spoons and old gas can handles, the feet from rocker arms off an old Ford motor, etc., etc.

Dragonfly Trellis

An 8 ft tall steel trellis, powder coat painted in gold. Made for the garden of an ecologist and former city council member. I believe, he was planning to plant purple clematis to climb on it.

Here is the drawing submitted for the design. The damsel flys dance together in the moonlight over the pond----the damsel flys embracing form the outline of a dragonfly. Dragonflys are archaic insects (that does not mean they say thee and thou a lot) that is the species are so old they cannot fold their wings back like modern insects, including their descendents, damsel flys.

Not shown in the drawing, are the side panels set at 90 angles to the main panel to provide both suppert to the main panel and additional area for vines to grow on.

Click on the drawing and photos to see detail and enlargments.

A Children's Christmas Creche

For a project at our local church, Church of the Nativity (Episcopal), my proposal is to have the 3 to 8 year olds draw scenes from the Christmas story and then the men's group would use my metal shop to create enlarged version of some of the kids' drawings to create our own manger/creche scene for the church in December. I think it's ideal because you can never have too many sheep, stars, flowers, or angels, or shepherds in the scene, so every kid would have one of his or her bits of drawing included. Of course, it could be repeated in a few years and new kids' pieces added. It seems so much more personal and right to me than buying large plastic faux Italian creche scenes.

The drawing below (click on it see an enlargment) was done by me as an example only. The steel pieces painted white of an angel in glory, a shepherd, and sheep, are taken from the drawing as examples of what could be done in this scale or larger. I have no objection to including other items in the project, such as the three kings riding giraffes or exotic animals in the barn such as dinosaurs (a lot of five year old boys are obsessed with dinosaurs) or hamsters.

Tantrum Man

The above design was used on a tee shirt and was also made into a 5 ft 6 inch tall (1.6 m) tall steel sculpture. The original drawing was no larger than my thumbnail and done in pencil on a notebook margin. Two years after the original was sketched in that notebook margin, I had a bad day and was looking for an easy way to make a sculpture to vent my frustrations. I found the little TANTRUM MAN and translated him into steel full size. I sold several actually, and even had a husband commission one for his wife as TANTRUM GIRL for their 2cd anniversary present!!! To save his marriage, I suggested he rename it to DANCING GIRL!!!