Parabolic Facade

Twisting geometry always seems to toss the spectator through a loop. That's why it's so much fun but, it's also a reason to flog ones noggin whilst figuring out the next bend. What wasoriginally proposed as a flat with forced perspective ended up becoming an issue of bisecting, decreased radii. Sound tricky? It is. To further add challenge, This project was done without drawings. A crude but, elegant 1/12 scale model served as the only guide. This object was essentially done on the fly and with a crazy, tight dead line to boot. It bends both longitudinallyand vertically in order to achieve it's parabolic concavity. The upper arches were cut out toaccommodate pneumatically actuated puppets and, as if this wasn't complicated enough, the entire fabrication was designed to mount flushly, via birds mouth, to a convex parabolic shape. The finished construct was both formal and funky and weighed in at under 30 lbs. For more on this project please click HERE

The Prince of Saint Marks Place

So many thanks to all of my beautiful friends not only for their congratulations but, more for them being major components in making my life richer than I could have ever imagined.
The talent that graces my home with grooves that elevate the soul has transformed me on most every level. My home has evolved in so many ways to accommodate the gift of that grace.
The gifts often come in equal measure from those who don’t play but, so openly express joy from the energy found within this space on those magic evenings. In that, we are all equally part of this wondrous scene.
Every one who has participated, every song, every dance, every beautiful smile and, lovely expression has played a huge part in making my home worthy of Penelope Green’s superlative article.
A million thanks to all of you. More thanks to Ken than I can count for introducing me to an art form that I somehow, at the time, didn’t think I had genetic predisposition for. The same countless thanks to Joshuasuzanne for being so close to me and introducing me to Penelope and, of course, a bottomless thank you to Penelope for introducing our very special environment to so many readers around the world. To read the full New York Times article please click HERE

The Penny Throne

If you've ever been faced with the question of what to do with 15 thousand pennies, I seem to have found an answer. The Penny Throne started life as a model rendered in Super Sculpty. I had never used this material before and would only use it once again. It's a polymer clay that hardens when it's baked and is sort of sandable. The main attraction of it is that you don't need to make a mold in order to have a hard, stable sculpt but, the ardor of finishing this material radically diminishes that advantage. Being pleased with the plumpness and over all look of the 4 inch by 5 inch model, I set about the carving of the 4 foot by 5 foot chair.

I had originally carved the chair as an experiment. The design was initially conceived as a love seat but, the space that it was intended for wouldn't accommodate a 7 foot long stretched version of it. When the carving was completed and hard coated with a urethane resin, It was painted to look like malachite with a red velvet cushion. The problem was that I didn’t have the time to have the cushion made and, the chair was scheduled to appear in an exhibit that following weekend. My solution was to carve and hard coat a cushion shape and wrap it in velvet. It looked great, velvety and inviting but, it was in fact, as hard as a fire hydrant. At one point it was my turn to mind the gallery. I sat at the far end of the exhibit space and watched one person after the other throw themselves into this illusion of comfy, cushiness with candid abandon, expecting to be warmly absorbed by the chair. One by one, I witnessed the repeated birth of  broken asses. Now that the chair has a real cushion, coccyx bones are more safely cossetted from being cracked.

 As for the pennies, I felt that the chair needed a make over. I’ve always been a big fan of Tom Otterness’s sculptures. So many of them have used pennies as their recurrent theme. His "Real World" is a penny Magnum opus that can be seen at the Hudson River Park in lower Manhattan. There is also more than a modicum of Macy's Balloon design about this form, making the penny a perfect medium for the visual pun of fiscal inflation. There were other influences including Joan Miro's Moon bird and Johnny Swing who's coined furniture creations are truly magnificent.

 The penny is so many things to almost everyone. It's our smallest standard of currency, so seemingly insignificant that it's abandonment has been under serious consideration, yet it's the primary binary component in more monies than not. As it turned out, it’s a very dramatic way to cover a piece of furniture. When it darkens I simply wire wheel it with a power drill and it's bright and shiny all over again. Just like a penny, shiny and new. What I’d really like to do is mold and cast this in copper and photo chronicle it becoming green. The seating area would be covered in a cultivated moss. As an outdoor piece, I see it as one of a series of four arranged in a circle. With streaming rivulets of verdigris patina. It would seem from so many angles to be unearthly yet, organic, alien but familiar and above and beyond all else, fun and inviting.

Aside from the whimsy and dreaming of setting scenarios there was a practical side to doing this if you can believe it. Good fabric is not cheap. Leather would have been interesting, somewhere between base ball mitt and American Indian bison artifact but, the patterning and seaming would have been a nightmare and a half and, elaborate paint jobs are never simple. Both of those refinishing routes would prove too fragile. This is a chair that's seen a lot of use. The paint had already been damaged and repaired a few times. This time around I wanted something permanent and impervious. 15,000 pennies sounds like a big number especially when being pain stakingly applied individually to compound curvatures but, it's really just $150 and a case of adhesives. While it's true, the chair has gained considerable weight, my guess is that it may tip the scales around 160 lbs. or, roughly the weight of me. That may sound more portly than practical but a copper cast might weigh in closer to half a ton and require specialize equipment  to move it around.

All said and done, the penny throne is a monumental sculpture that's practical enough to be lounged around on in the comfort of my home and no matter my economy, I can sit on this small fortune.

In this last illustration I've re-sculpted the Penny Throne in Zbrush. Now that it exists as an stl. file, it can be printed as small as a Monopoly piece or, robotically carved to actual size

Greenwood Legal

Designing this site for Ken was an interesting challenge. We sat down and looked at a variety of different legal websites in order to get a sense of what the industry standard and layouts seem to be. We found a number of nice looking sites, simple, direct and to their points but, all a bit on the bland, washed out side. Anyone who knows Ken knows, Ken's not bland or washed out. Ken is colorful. His business base has rapidly expanded to encompass most of our nations major city's so, as you click from page to page, the backgrounds change from city to city and, from sunset to sunrise. This allowed me to make use of some of natures most saturated pallets without being overly garish. When I think of established law firms, dark woods, rich leathers and fancy brass plaques spring to my mind but, at their best, there is always a sleek, succinct simplicity. I believe that those assets contrast very nicely with the deep hues of the background city scapes.

Ken is also a world traveler and is promoting his next Inca adventure. If there are any hard core, jungle trekkers out there, visit Greenwood Legal and click on the bottom left link. Please click HERE

Beaded Chair

I had originally intended to paint the fourth sculpture chair a deep cobalt blue in the same vein as Yves Klien but, in the end, I felt that that was too simple a solution. I had never tiled a piece of sculpture before. I thought about Niki de Saint Phalle and her wonderfully mosaic clad happy shapes, so off I went to the my local tile show room to see what they had. It was a real eye opener. In one way or another, I was impressed with everything that I saw. In the end I decided on metalized cobalt glass droplets. The droplets came glued to 12"x12" mesh sheets. The hassle of separating the beads from the sheets was a tale of toil that I will spare the reader. Suffice it to say, the entire endeavour of tiling this chair was toil intensive. A few days into the project I found my self running out of materials. on the way to the tile show room, I stopped at the hard ware store to buy more adhesives. Much to my shock, amazement and, delight, I found bags of the same droplets, unbound by any meshed sheeting, as they were intended for lining the bottoms of fish tanks.

Denizens of the Deep

Every year, during the holiday season, I am graced by the gift and great pleasure of having my niece Jessica Vliet, visit with me for the better part of a week (for the past 2 years, she's come with her lovely boy friend, Joey). It is always among the happiest  times of my year, when she crosses the continent and devotes a more than fair share of her attention to her eccentric, middle aged uncle who loves her so.

Part of her annual trek to NYC is always devoted to cultural outings of one kind or another. This year it was to be the American Museum of Natural History. For me, this hallowed place is by far and away, my very first museum memory. My mother tells me that at the age of 2, I had to be physically extricated from the tibia of a brachiosaurus by a security guard. As I clung to the giant, ancient leg bone, not wanting to be removed from it, I proclaimed " But, I love this dinosaur! I love this dinosaur!

This year the "Halls of Oceans" inspired me to take more shots of it than any other hall.
It's dark and eerie. Veiled in the deepest, azure shades, rippling rays of light breaking through the ocean's surface are projected from the floor to the soaring ceiling, from which hangs a 100 foot long, Fiberglass Blue Whale.

The denizen's of these displays are all so masterfully executed from the meekest to the most menacing. The above composite is an image I've recognize in my head for more years than I will count, so many memorable monsters in a single pane, strangely cooperating rather than eating each other.

Sculpture Chair 4

One of the most rewarding aspects of creating abstract compositions is free association. As I assembled this image I thought about banyon roots and tangled forests and what mysteries may lurk beneath and behind the bark clad bars and beams. I found myself drifting through medieval notions of folklore's irrational fears and Hieronymus Bosh's garden of earthly delights. The skewed matrix of limbs and branches became tendrils and then nerves bundles, steering me toward pharmaceutical illustrations and animations of neuro path ways and the "Incredible Journey". The nerves became columns merging seamlessly into groinless vaults and, as they did I found it reflexively natural to imagine this setting populated by people and creatures. I could almost hear musical strains, wafting and swelling through one oval opening only to be pulled through another and then gently diminished. There is so much strange dreaming in such an abstraction, especially when one considers, at it's heart, the sole component in this image is only a chair. For more photos of this in a more easily understood context please click HERE.

Poster Chair

These hand carved prototypes were created to explore the manufacturing costs of producing a fairly large volume art chair design. Poster chair was born from the challenge of how to completely change the look of a piece of furniture so that it matches any given decor in as little time as possible. The design utilizes reversible vinyl graphics that easily slide into an integrated track. I felt that as long as the poster area was kept to a universal size, the chair could be any shape beyond the seating plane. The subject matter possibilities from a graphic stand point are pretty much limitless. The chair may easily accommodate fabrics, wall coverings and carpet remnants. In order to keep costs down, These prototypes were created as child size versions or, approximately 1/4 the mass and material required for the adult version. The finished chair would be produced in roto-cast polyethylene, an extremely tough, color fast, light weight resin used largely in farm equipment and children's play sets.

Not the Chrysler Building 3d model and SLS out put

This 3d model and rapid prototype were produced for a display. The finished output stands 34" tall. The photo above is the SLS out put. Every window is opened so that light may pass through them. The client wanted a building that would emulated or be equated with the Chrysler Building without it actually being the Chrysler building, as the Chrysler Building is trade marked. The client was most emphatic in their ordering that there should be no gargoyles for the above stated reason.

As I built the model I thought, how far does one have to modify a building till it's not technically that building any more. The Chrysler building doesn't have trade marks on all buildings with gargoyles. I would imagine that as long as the gargoyles were motifed in a way other than winged wheels or eagle heads I'd be on safe ground but, I made no argument in that regard, the rest of the model presented challenges enough.

In these following illustrations I've changed the building till it bends over backwards to scratch an itch while it screws and twists like a length of liquorish. There is no fear of trade mark infringement here. As I began building these acute deformations I dreamt a whole city. Placing the re-imagined buildings together seems to create a conversation. In studying the composition, I found myself thinking about old, moody religious paintings in which Christ is central, surrounded by the  different attitudes and expressions of every other character sharing the canvas with him. In answering the question, how far can one modify a building, it's fair to say that a building, in this application can be twisted till it's most vertical planes are pushed to such extreme, horizontal lengths that the building can surround it's self with great spiralling concentric rings composed solely from it's lower floors.

Gears and Frank Gehry's

Sonia had been out on her own for a couple of years. My place had changed substantially in her absence but, as is so often a blessing and the case, the chick returns to the nest. Sonia was moving back home. One of the first things that crossed my mind was, where will I put all of her stuff. Every available cubic inch was already occupied with either an object or allocated to a  purpose. The answer presented it's self in the middle of my living room. The old purple, peanut shaped, polka doted Coffee table had to go. The space it occupied would now be re-purposed as prime storage area, a relative gold standard, rare and precious in the East Village of NYC. More than a purple, peanut, I needed a 5' long foot locker with a hinged top. It couldn't just be a boring box. It would have to be interesting. There had to be a kink to it. I also wanted  the box to appear longer than it actually would be by forcing it's perspective thus necessitating that the furthest end of the top would have to be narrower. The design gauntlet had been dropped.                                                                    

My brother in law had constructed an intriguingly dramatic coffee table out of an assortment of unrelated gears and odd machine parts that he had stoutly welded together. By all standards of known masculine measure, it was a very heavy, rustic, man table. Some what less than enormously practical and certainly not conceived with the hope of conserving space or being filled with a young woman's clothing but, I liked it a lot. I wanted some of that table's atmospheric elements and, spirit but, I wanted something a bit more urbane, a top design that echoed a message about the city, a sublimated skyline fantasy of sorts. Frank Gehry sprang to mind. NYC. is lucky enough to have 2 of his incredible buildings now. One is as outrageous and out side of the box as the other. I thought, what would a whole skyline of Frank Gehry's look like? I envisioned a great expanse of shimmering, billowing, irrational, titanium ribbons rising like blades of grass, bending in the breezes. Gears returned to my mind as an allegory for the city's inner workings, a megalopolis machination of whirring clock mechanisms and meshing cogs seen through the metallic, twisting sheets as if they were made of glass. As I combined these elements, I began to realize a similarity between the overall effect of the composition and the modernist cubism of Francis Picabia. I also recognized that the image was developing a kind of rhythmic, kinetic kinship to Marchel  Duchamp's more painterly efforts. The project began as a coffee table but, in actuality, it was now as much about designing an elaborate mural as it was about finding another 10 or so additional cubic feet of storage.

As coincidence would have it, I found a great shot of one of Damien Hirst's giant polka dot paintings
and, as my new image was intended to replace what had once been polka dotted, I placed a cropped version of my composition over his and, for the first time had the pleasure of seeing the image fill a heroic viewing field and work with in a large gallery or museum context.

If you've ever been to a freak show in a traveling carnival, you may have seen the torso girl. The poor and woefully truncated creature is usually perched on top of a table in a room which has straw strewn about the floor as it would be in an animals cage. She seems to be missing her body from her belly button on down. In truth, she's a perfectly whole girl, sitting on a chair inside of a mirrored box that is reflecting the straw on the floor. The upper portions of her body poke up though a hole in the middle of the top of the box which is not mirrored. As such, she seems to sit on a spindle legged table with no lower body beneath her. The spindle legs have a 45 degree wedge cut from their length so that they may fit perfectly over the corners of the mirrored box, hiding not only the edges of the mirrors but, also reflecting the spindles as if they were still whole. The sharp contrast between the crispness of the reflected table legs and the haphazard textures reflected by the straw work together in superb unison and further fool the eye. At first glance, it's a convincing illusion. In the spirit of freak show Tom foolery, I employed mirrors to reflect the carpet in the hope that the rest of the table would be visually mitigated and create the illusion of a floating top while hiding a hundred pounds of my daughter's clothing beneath it.

Statue of Liberty, 3d Model and SLS Output

This 3d model and rapid prototype were produced for a display. The finished output stands 32" tall. It took 3 and half days (very, very, long days) to model in total. A week after I had sent the .stl files to my vendor, I was holding the finished object in my hands.

It's not an exact copy, to pull that off would take twice the time and as pun would have it, certain liberties would still have to be taken. For this project, Lady Liberty needed to be simplified and softened. She needed to be immediately identifiable but, she also needed to be less severe and seem a little more happy to see you. As the original stands, she's a bit of a frowny, pouty girl.The torch and the base had to be similarly considered and handled as the object in it's whole  needed to match the other components in the scene.

Framed Fragments

The first pieces in this cycle will involve life castings of figures, staged within frames that are designed and constructed specifically for predetermined poses. No two should ever be the same. There should be a gentle intimacy that molding of this weight has never known before. As figures span the inner holds of their yielding frames, a parallel is drawn between them and how the Hellenistic order of columns seem to bulge under the weight of their entablatures. Ultimately, it is my goal to learn how to sculpt and design objects entirely in the computer.

Joan Miro's Moon Bird

Moon Bird is one of my earliest childhood art memories. When I was 4 or 5 years old, my mother would take me to the MOMA and let me climb all over it. It really is such a playful shape. It's almost balloon like, an inflatable in bronze, cool, smooth and very friendly. Graphically, it's an enormously, strong shape composed of convergent arches and crescents. I set out to recreate the sculpture from photographs in Zbrush. When the model was finished I had the need to see what a couple of my favorite Miro paintings would look like reflected into it. I was delighted with the results. Birds and wonderful creatures dance and stretch, sweeping through rippling waves of undulating forms. As seen in these photo composites, many stills from this  animation experiment would serve well in the filling of large canvases.

Sonia with Eyes Opened

The breadth of characteristic information held by a resting face is hard to imagine until the eyes are opened. It becomes apparent how relative and connected each feature is to the other in this delicate ballet that we call facial expression. The only features on Sonia’s face  that I changed were her eyes and all of a sudden there’s new significance to the corner of her mouth , the weight of her cheek or, angle of her brow. Perspective and light further the awakening and change the expressions with every turn. Her face seems to  express changing notions at every angle.                                                                                                 

For more on this piece please click HERE. For photos of the original with eyes closed please click HERE.

Party at the Plaza

VanWyck is an amazing event and party planning company. The parties, events and weddings that they are most known for are lavish and exquisite beyond most imaginations.
They came to me in need of a dozen classical statues but, they needed them within a month for the event. Sculpting a project of this scope would take a bit more time than that.
In fact, even if digitally modeled and out put through a carving robot, it could take the better part of 6 months and the costs would be prohibitively expensive for this kind of application.
Fortunately, being a sculptor for so many years, I have my sources. All of the statues in these photos are very sturdy Fiberglass reproductions. While they are not quite museum quality in all of their surfaces and details, they are all still very good and served splendidly for this event in one of the most opulent rooms in New York City.

3d Oscar

It seems that almost every year I bid on an Oscar project or 2. I've never landed one though. It's true what they say, the Oscar is illusive. The issues have always been more about time frame than budget. The Oscar is a deceivingly complicated sculpt in that, beyond the figure it's self, all of the shapes and surfaces are highly developed and polished. As it's so well know, there is no room for interpretation. It has to be spot on, which is never cheap and speedy.                                                                                            

In my quest to become proficient in 3d modeling I often choose subject mater that is either based on past analog projects or something with a marketable potential. Now that this model exists, the next time an Oscar job arises, time will be a much lesser issue in that all of the most difficult work has already been done. Over sized copies can be milled out of foam in various densities by carving robots. Actual size versions could be rapid prototyped in a number of material from plastics to bronze. Miniature could be printed in silver or gold. An Oscar could even be carved out of marble, remarkably, all from this one model.

As I pondered how many ways Oscar could be reproduced, I considered how many times he actually has. It must be thousands. Strangely, in the illustration below, they all seem to be leaning a bit to the left.

Deco Parallel

At first glance, one might be hard pressed to guess that this was a video cabinet but, it is. It was a wonderful design full of tangents and transitions. Every time I looked at it, it reminded me of the paintings of Tamara De Lempika and certain details of Rockefeller Center. It doesn't get more deco than that.

                                                                                              

All of my abstract compositions are conceived as large scale works. They are all designed to answer the question: What would the piece look like commanding a space by filling a large wall and what new environment will be the result. In this it is my intention to create an image that can be visually climbed into, somewhere between architecture and landscape. Photo compositions like the one above quickly answer that question.

The video cabinet held 2 monitors for a window display. the cabinet was made from I lbs. density Styrofoam and then skim coated with joint compound as seen in these photos. The form was then coated with urethane resin before being delivered to the client.

For more on this series please click HERE

Sadie's Loft

One of the great challenges of living in New York City, if you're not completely flush with cash, is fitting your life into a little room. Fortunately, in the East Village, where Square feet are at a premium, cubic footage in the way of tall ceilings seems to abound. In that this spacial transformation was made possible.

By dividing the space vertically, a 96 square foot room gains 64 square feet or, roughly, 2/3s it's usable space. While it's true that the stairs take up 18 square feet of floor space, it also serves as storage  to be fully utilized. In it's double purpose there is no loss.

Opening up a Space

In the good old days I would have built a foam core model on top of a xerox copy of the floor plan. Sometimes, it's nice to say goodbye to the good old days. In this illustration the floor plan was brought into Sketchup, where only selected walls needed to be erected and in so doing the space is opened up and easily pre-visualized.

By removing the closet in the middle of the apartment and opening up the kitchen to the rest of the living space, what was once a very dark and closed off entrance has now become opened and airy and gives full view to day light and the unit's furthest lengths.
I originally want to use the intro to the Who's Baba O'Reily for the sound track but, had little success in piecing it together with out flaws. Instead, I took the very beginning of it and created a loop. I then added classical loops of clarinet, flute, viola and the like over a strong but simple base line. This is also the first time that I've composed a piece in Garage Band without accompanying drums and percussion. Being a drummer it was hard to resist but, I must admit that I'm pleased with the overall effect as we walk though the re-imagined space.

Snoopy to Abstraction

This post is dedicated to a series of extremely abstract images derived solely from this very silly Snoopy sculpt, shot in natural light. Much of the work that I've done though out the entirety of my career has been commercial in nature, a lot of cartoony sort of stuff but, that is not to say compromised sort of stuff. It has long been my feeling that a shape is a shape, regardless of what part it may play in the whole or, for that matter, what the whole may in fact be. All shapes have similar needs and properties. They all concern surfaces and parameters. As they become more complex, they bend to their transitions and relationships, regardless of their infinite applications. I take great pride in how I handle my shapes. To paraphrase Michelangelo: Shapes are the lantern by which all images exist. Above and beyond that, for me, it’s about poetry and the harmony of numbers singing their volumes as they dance, roll, collide and merge. Beyond our finger tips,They are born in our eyes as light traverses every bump and valley, every crease and swell, every compounded curve or, flatted plane. Within the human form and it’s situations, there are enough shapes to build a universe. I am able to speak through my art because the nature of shapes has been my language.

For more on this series, please click HERE