Jim Jangket gives us a few more details about the Transforming Culture Symposium. Most interesting in the post is a link to the local CIVA chapter in Austin. They are using Ning to power their website. This is something CIVA talked about last year and I knew was coming, but this is the first evidence of the idea I’ve actually seen.

Karrie Jacobs has a recent post talking about a challenge in the Texas city of Houston for architects to create a green house for $100k.

Cali Lewis of Geekbrief.tv interviews heavy metal handyman Brian Albert. Albert shows off his shop and a few of his wacky, found object creations.

This is a piece I’ve been working on for more than a year now, in small spurts. The wood came from a tree felled by a city machine almost four years ago in front of our apartment. I liked the way the narrow walnut trunk split and took my little handsaw out at dusk to cut off a seven or eight foot section. I later cut this into two halves. Only a year-and-a-half ago did I start working the piece, and a couple weeks ago finally stuck it in a base of formed concrete. The base will be covered in some kind of finish material, possibly copper. The inlaid squares are Yellowheart. I need to figure out how to shape the top of the piece and what kind of finish to apply to the wood, and then start on the second half of the original length.

My good friend Joel Armstrong recently started his own blog. He’s a prof at John Brown University teaching drawing and illustration. His own work is more three dimensional in nature — other than his art cards. He “draws” with wire and creates small iconic wall sculptures out of small found objects, such as the following “Rust Bird.”

I more or less finished a few pieces this weekend, some new wall sculptures out of my new clay work. The wood (or horizons, if you wish) was all salvaged in this case. I used Gorilla Glue to stick the clay and wood together; it was my first time using this adhesive and I think it will do really well. It does expand, however, so using too much can ruin a piece.

These works are very similar to my work from five years or so ago, when I last had access to a kiln. I like the way they turned out. It feels good to have some finished sculptures as products of the kiln. Finally.

None of these are titled yet.

Clay with inlaid cabochon sapphires, mounted
on salvaged, rough-sawn mahogany;
8 x 17 inches.

This is a fairly recent work of my own. My wife, as I recall, isn’t so keen on the dark blue oil paint around the seeds (which is probably difficult to see in this photo), but I’m quite fascinated with this small wall-hanging:

The blue and silver paint is the only part that isn’t a found object. The wood is part of an old shake shingle, the round silver seed pods are from our garden and silver dust on the background is from a bunch of screen-printing supplies left in our bungalow by the previous owner.

There was no intended meaning, but I hope the title causes people to consider how such common objects can be put to more extraordinary uses — even if they aren’t so enamored with the piece as I am!

Amending (1:00 p.m.): Per Darin’s comment, the sculpture is about (going off of my best guess and memory) 10″ x 3″. The depth is roughly 1″.