Could've Been Christmas Eve...

In fact, it IS!

Have I mentioned that I am a BIG James McMurtry fan? Those that know me personally have some idea. Ha!

The State Room here in SLC (FYI, one of the best places EVER to see live music, especially in this town) just announced that James would be doing a solo show on Friday, February 22 of next year (5 months to the day since the last show at The State Room, pictured above). Very exciting. I've never had the pleasure of seeing his solo show (not so easy to just pop in to the Continental Club on a late Tuesday night... yet another reason to envy Austinites...) and hope to hear some of his older material that he rarely plays with the full band.

Most of my life and much of my art is fueled by the music of the man that Stephen King said just "may be the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation." A bit laconic in person, he is anything but in his lyrics and guitar playing! Genius.

Get your tickets HERE... you can thank me later. Maybe I'll see you there...

A quick and blurry iPhone shot of James signing things
 in the lobby of The State Room, September 22, 2012

Nuggets from the Analog Blog™ — #1

For several years I ran what I called my Analog Blog out of a steel box between the sidewalk and my back fence. I would load the box with 20 copies or so of something I had recently found inspiring or entertaining on the web. Usually it was a manifesto or something that could easily be shared on one page.

Apparently I gathered a small following, since I would often meet strangers in the neighborhood and they would say something like, "Oh, you live in THAT house. I really enjoy your artwork and that little 'TAKE ONE' box you have." I can't even count the number of times I'd be doing yard work or hanging in a lawn chair by my backyard pond/fountain and I'd hear the metallic screetch of the un-oiled piano hinge on the back of the box creaking open, someone taking a copy and then the gentle thunk of the lid closing as they walked away.

Sadly, some neighborhood kids (apparently) started finding pleasure in taking all of my copies and throwing them on the ground in a pile or individually across the area. As a result of this, and a few potentially embarrassing things that people would leave in the box like condoms (still new and unused thankfully!), I finally removed the box after several years. But it was a good run and a cool project while it lasted. Since I now have a "real" blog, I thought it might be fun to share a few tidbits from that earlier, analog version. Here's the first one, Keri Smith's "How to Feel Miserable as an Artist," first placed in the Take One Box on March 8, 2008:

Literary Inspiration #2

"But Axelrod's basic message never left him during those long hours on the chindi. Life is short. Even with the treatments, be aware that a couple of centuries is a desperately brief time in the the grand scale. You get a few visits from the comet (he meant Halley's), and nothing more. Embrace your life, find what it is that you love, and pursue it with all your soul. For if you do not, when you come to die, you will find that you have not lived."

—Jack McDevitt, chindi

"Adventure, as it skirts the unknown, can at times bring forth art."

There are many sculptors, past and present, who inspire me on a number of levels. I'm particularly drawn to those that work in steel or iron like me, of course. David Smith, Richard Serra, Anthony Caro, Mark di Suvero, Cordell Taylor, Sophia Pitakis, Bernar Venet, Beverly Pepper, Dave Malone, Melvin Edwards, Neil Hadlock, Alexander Calder, John Bisbee, Jin Man Jo, and on and on.

But this post is about Eduardo Chillida...

I didn't discover him or his incredible body of work until about 2001. But I made up for lost time, collecting all of the books and articles I could find. I haven't yet made a pilgrimage to San Sebastian, Spain to his museum but it's still on my list. Hopefully it will endure the current economic downturn. It would be a great loss to sculpture if it were to remain closed.

Anyway, here's a quote from Chillida that I've always found compelling and inspiring, especially the last line:

From Space with its brother Time,
under the pressing heaviness of gravity
feeling material as if it were a slower space
I ponder with amazement over my ignorance.
I work to know. I value learning over knowledge.
I believe I must venture into making what I know not;
Seek to visualize where I do not see;
Strive to recognize what I cannot discern;
Attempt to identify within the realm of the unknown.
Along the unfolding of these processes,
which resemble those of creation in science,
many hardships arise.
We have the hands of yesterday
but we lack those of tomorrow.
I have a conception of the work before I undertake it,
but I do not know,
nor do I want to know at the moment of creation,
how will it be.
I possess many facts about the work in which I am living,
but will not allow this knowledge
to inhibit my freedom nor the breath of the present.
I believe works conceived a priori are born dead.
Adventure, as it skirts the unknown,
can at times
bring forth art.

[bold text mine...]

Sadly (and much too early), Eduardo passed on at age 78 in August of 2002. I had just discovered him and then he was gone. I will never meet him now but would've liked to. He continues to inspire me...

Urban Vintage

Just want to give a shout-out to my buddy Josh at Urban Vintage in Salt Lake City. He has a keen eye for pieces that will ROCK YOUR WORLD! A real breath of fresh air in the vintage scene here in my opinion (and I've already spent way too much cash there...).

The first time I walked in I thought I was on Abbot Kinney Blvd. in LA. An amazing collection of collectibles and the selection turns over constantly so there's always something new.

Urban Vintage is at 221 East 300 South (Broadway) and they're open from 11 am – 6 pm, Monday – Saturday. While you're in the Broadway zone, be sure to check out Ken Sanders Rare Books, my favorite local used and rare bookstore and The Green Ant, the best mid-century modern furniture in town.

And don't forget to drop in to Melissa Sanders' new shop, Red Queen Book Arts, while you're in the area. It's just around the corner from Ken's and a few doors west of The Green Ant on the north side of Broadway. Good, good stuff!

MAKE. GOOD. ART.

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors and his recent commencement speech to the graduating class of the University of the Arts in Philly is one of the most inspirational talks I've seen in years.

Thanks, Neil...

In fact, I was so inspired that I created a custom steel and glass frame to hold the message of "MAKE. GOOD. ART." that sits in my window so I see it every morning.

This is NOT my window...

This IS...

Literary Inspiration #1

From time to time I'm going to be quoting things from assorted novels that I find to be creatively inspirational. Who better to start the show than William Gibson?

His description of the AI-produced boxes in Count Zero is at the top of my list for inspirational passages in recent memory. More quotes from other authors will be coming from time to time...

From Count Zero, William Gibson, Arbor House, New York, 1986:

Marly stared. Box of plain wood, glass-fronted. Objects. 

"Cornell," she said, her tears forgotten. "Cornell?" 

She turned to Virek.

"Of course not. The object set into that length of bone is a Braun biomonitor. This is the work of a living artist."

 "There are more? More boxes?"

 "I have found seven. Over a period of three years. The Virek Collection, you see, is a sort of black hole. The  unnatural density of my wealth drags irresistibly at the rarest works of the human spirit. An autonomous process, and one I ordinarily take little interest in.    

But Marly was lost in the box, in its evocation of impossible distances, of loss and yearning. It was somber, gentle, and somehow childlike. It contained seven objects.

The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuit boards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A finger-length segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin but the thing's face was seared and blackened.

The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience.

A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe

If, like me, you are remotely interested in numbers or sacred geometry, you simply MUST get Michael S. Schneider's A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Harper Perennial, 1995.

I can also highly recommend the companion volumes called Constructing the Universe Activity Books for really getting into the mix.

An amazing collection of material and highly, highly recommended... You can check out his full website HERE.

The Mystery

There are certain words that inform and describe (sometimes) my work. Here are a few of them:

Multi-dimensional, embedded, emergent, secret, encrypted, fractal, symbolic, concealed, hyper-dense, occult, aleatoric, arcane, incunabulic, enfolded, alchemical, holographic, concresced, attractor, ecstatic, epiphanic, multi-layered, palimpsest-like, archaic, nested, novelty-ridden, enigmatic, ancient, accreted, patinated, hidden, sacred, unique, extropic, encapsulated, ineffable, unique… 

“Or words to that effect.” –TMcK

Self-portrait Shaka

A recent shot I took of my own reflection in an iron bowl at my favorite scrap yard. I took the shot during an EPIC collecting visit on September 1st with my friend Catherine.

In fact, here we are in another reflection shot on site. This is a large chromed steel drum on some kind of press or finishing machine.

My New Hero

A good friend forwarded this YouTube video to me yesterday. I LOVE this guy and I'm sure he's 100 times the welder I'll ever be. His energy, confidence and passion are PRICELESS! I wanted to share it with "all" of my loyal readers...