My dad reads the Wall Street Journal

Every couple months or so my dad sends me a clipping from the Wall Street Journal. Usually he sends me  something that has to do with furniture making or the business associated with it.  This time he sent me an ad for an antique Jupe table, named for its designer Robert Jupe.  This table reminds me of an earlier e-mail Wendy sent of a table opening up by simply spinning it around.

 Check out this link to the antique dealers website to see it in action.  (click on the little video button in the lower right below the picture slideshow.)  I couldn't believe how this thing was patented in 1835!  Pretty cool...  The website looks to have some wild stuff for sale too.

Amplification

I like this assignment.  The piece I am going to amplify (no surprise I am sure) is this clock:

I am thinking about really addressing the surface of a furniture piece.  I am wondering if it is possible to make the surface that the dots rise from undulate one way and the dots change shape and size to describe a surface that undulates a different way.  The goal being to make two different surfaces appear to exist in the same place or at least very close to one another. (Maybe pass through?)

This idea is kind of funny to me because I recently downloaded a sample of a book to my Kindle app on my phone titled, “The Hidden Reality:  Parallel Universes and Deep Laws of the Cosmos.”  I have not read very much of it, but from what I have gathered so far, it suggests the possibility that all things that could happen do happen in an infinite amount of parallel universes.  The construct of time is also called into question as that may only be an aspect of our consciousness.  So what if everything that could happen, does happen, and it happens all at the same time?  Whoa, blew my mind there a little bit…  (In undergrad before I was an art major, I considered astro-physics for a semester.  I liked astronomy,but didn’t like physics.)  This book does a good job of explaining the ideas as the author does not presuppose any background in physics or mathematics. 

To bring it back to furniture, I have become more aware of how a three dimensional surface can be described two dimensionally.  I am on the lookout for patterns in space these days, and they are everywhere! The camera is going to be an important tool in my “research.“

I was talking to Rachel in metals about this new idea and she lent me this book for inspiration:

Its pretty fun to look through.  It’s on my bench if anyone wants to check it out. 

I was talking to Dr. B about this idea too, and she suggested looking at Op Art form the 60’s.  Like these people:

Richard Anuszkiewicz

Bridget RileyVictor Vasarely

Anyway, I am going to do some samples over the next couple weeks and try to have a furniture piece that begins to explore this direction for my advancement show.  I think I am going to start with a blanket chest form.

Words and such…

First I wanted to add to Adam's bit about the flu shots in his post.  I was going to Rite Aide in O.B. the other day and there was a sign for shingles shots on one of those sandwich boards out front.  On the other side of the board was a sign advertising swine flu shots.  I mean, seriously, I know there are a lot of painful and bad diseases out there, but do I really want to go to my local drug store and get a cocktail of vaccinations in addition to my soap and toothpaste?  Nope, I don't.  It’s a little weird to say the least.

Totally unrelated, but the other day I showed my housemate, George, thisplywood piece I made for Digi Fab last semester.

He thought it was interesting, and reminded him of something he did when he was in school.  So he went to his files and brought out a newspaper page.

 

I thought this was way cooler than my table.  He made that chair in the back out of Baltic birch ply wood and synthetic webbing.  At the top left there it says Los Angeles Times with the date of July 22, 1956.  So mid-century modern…

And to reiterate what Adam has posted about shows in the student galleries here at school, beside this coming weekend, there should be some good work to look at almost every Saturday night until the end of the semester.  Whoa, it is going to be crazy!

Damn computer

Two nights ago I was working on some Rhinos at home when I decided to restart my computer after some updates.  The only problem was that when it rebooted I could not log onto my profile, the only profile.  ARGH!  This is a pretty big problem seeing as how I do a lot of work on my PC.  I was able to log on in safe mode with the help of Chris in interior design and get my files off.  Evidently I can probably fix it by reloading the operating system, but now I don't trust the thing.  So I ordered a new Dell, same size, way faster and better in all aspects.  It was $500 cheaper than when I bought this last one, and $1200 less than a comparable Mac.  Hell of a time for my computer issues to happen, but new is nice.  The computer is coming in the mail soon so I hope to not lose too much time getting back up to speed.  Just thought you all should know...

Furniture Designers

I googled "top furniture designers" a little while ago to see what was hot on the web.  These are eight that one blog said were doing pretty well.  Great pics for inspiration!

Michael Dreeben

Darrell Peart

Nolen Niu

Pinch
(When I lived in England in 2005, I made 5 or so of his 'wave cabinets' when he was winning awards for them.  Glad he is still doing well.)
Garvan De Bruir

Liliana Ovalle
 (Erin, I showed you this lady the other day.)

Nacho Carbonell

Loved this "tree chair"

Jamie Hayon
(This guy seems like a real nut!)

Enjoy!

sketch on a napkin

This past Wednesday we had a critique of the objects we made during a week long assignment.  The assignment was assigned over margaritas at a restaurant up the coast after we had visited with resident artist, Alison Saar at the Lux Art Institute.  We all doodled on napkins and were asked to continue this practice whenever we went out to eat or were watching American Idol.  After our ten minute doodle session, we exchanged napkins and were asked to make something for our next class meeting that was inspired by imagery there.  I was handed a napkin made by Vince, which looked like this:

I was really intrigued by the random pattern of circles on the lower right corner of this napkin and how it described a 3 dimensional space on a 2-d surface.  I set out to make something based on this idea.  

I have had clock parts on my bench for a couple of months so I decided to use them in this project.  In hindsight, the clock part was kind of lame, but the pattern has lots of potential.

Also on the napkin by Vince was a compelling image of a bird with a ladder as its legs.  I thought this was too good of an image to ignore so I whipped out a bird with ladder legs too.

As far as the pattern idea goes, I am really into it.  What I like the most is the potential to make a surface look three dimensional where in reality it is flat or at least very low relief.  Oh, the possibilities...  Here's one potential credenza where the pattern goes all the way around:

I would love some feedback on this idea.  I think I can go even crazier with the patterns too, but I like the negative space aspect where there is no pattern.

And evidently, this is me:

Please don't hit me...

Gift for President Weber

Back in the planning stages of the Diversity Awards, we budgeted to make 24 awards, 20 of which would be given to the people they selected.  Of the extras, one will be given to President Weber later this semester for his work on diversity.  (He does not know about that yet, so don't spill the beans)  With the other three, we changed the graphics and gave one to ourselves (Lyuba is the graphic designer behind the text work and images) and one to the art office to add to their collection of student works.  The folks in the office really liked the little box, and, seeing as President Weber is both retiring and a woodworking enthusiast, they thought it would be nice to have Lyuba and I collaborate again in making him a gift. The idea was to give him something on behalf of the students to thank him for his support of the Student Award Exhibition.  Lyuba and I agreed to do it, of course, because, as two students of many who have benefited from the exhibition, we considered it an honor to return the favor. 

The art office wanted something like the flavor of the box we had already given them.  After a little brainstorming session, Lyuba and I thought this little box should hold something and it would be nice to include more departments in the quick project.  We first went down to ceramics to see what kind of moulds they had available, and found an avocado mould.  We asked Justin and Stephen what they could do with the mould.   Porcelain was the decided material because, as Justin puts it, “it looks yummy without a glaze.”


Stephen had the slip ready to go and Justin was ready and willing to take it on in our time frame.  Lyuba came up with the design of the wood pattern on the box and how the text would go.  I had the material lying around and went to work with Lyuba’s layout.   I used the CNC router to do the inlay and carving work and traditional methods to miter the outer box together and make the little dovetail box inside.  We were going to have someone in metals make a sterling silver pit to place in the porcelain avocado, but the first avocado was destroyed when it was fired which did not leave enough time to get the pit made.  Plan B was to use the casting that had the pit still intact.  Adam loves how gold and white look together, so I asked him to the gold leaf the pit of the avocado after it was fired.  The box turned out really nice, and President Weber looked pleased to get it.  Thanks everybody for the help!  Here are some pictures of the box and the video of President Weber getting it.

CNC inlay is awesome.

 The materials, if anyone is curious, are:

Claro walnut, cherry, maple, brass, porcelain, imitation gold leaf, milk paint, and magnets.

Here's the video.  Tanks for the cinematography, Erin!

Cool article

Some of you may or may not know that I am taking a basic sailing class on Fridays at the the Mission Bay Aquatic Center this semester.  Sailing has been part of my history in various ways, but someday I would love to charter a boat and sail around the Caribbean...  I'll keep dreaming....  But sailing is pretty awesome.  For me it can be quite a meditative activity because most of what we do is simply jump in our big bathtub sized sail boats and cruise around the bay.  You only need to worry about keeping your sail full and not hitting anybody.  We're learning sailing terms and basic concepts too.  One of the basics is that you can sail down wind/ with the wind, but it is the slowest, most inefficient way to go.

My roommate, George, has a subscription to Wired Magazine, and, when he done with the month's issue, he passes them along to me.  This month's issue had a really interesting article on a guy who made a wind powered "land-yacht." that can go faster than the wind going in the direction of the wind.  We were told in class that this was not possible, but this guy did it.  This article does a good job of explaining how he did it.  Makes me want to build my own!  Check out the article through this link:  Faster than the wind!