blog
No comment
Preliminary sketch for a new Base Camp Box, edition of 4- winter 2017-18. Two are claimed by Jovi and Misty. The Camp Box design has moved to a place where I will make cubbies (with open backs) as components that slide into the main form rather than use shelving supports for horizontal pieces of ply. This more modular design adds a little weight to the box, but will also increase the vertical strength. I’m going to play with using corner wedges as fastening points for the cubby walls as well as connecting points for whatever the user desires: a tight line to hold back items inside the cubbies, etc. I’ll probably also paint these slightly different colors.
Two completed metal stands for mirrors. A Patagonia commission.
I’m working on a new optical viewer series, for color slides. The viewer-slide holders are longer, more elegant and the vertical support is much more svelte. Each viewer head will rest on a small horizontal wood piece attached to the stand that ultimately is meant to be planted in the ground (another Pacific Crest Trail destination). I’m exhibiting 6 of this series in Toronto. These will be supported by svelte legs-as-tripods.
One of three commissions in motion: Metal mirror stands for Patagonia. Cut, weld, grind. Two heavy mirrors were brought in from the Portland store, but there isn’t any wall space left in the brick industrial space in Reno. Metal stands on casters.
A fall Yosemite excursion brought us to an eastern Sierra Nevada cirque lake. I have to process film from Yosemite.
I don’t regularly profile my student’s projects here, but I’m beginning to shift what I do on Instagram to this online presence. My 3-D art class is in progress. This is an object from John. The objective or parameters to work within were to use fabric to create an object that holds volume and has mass (or suggests it). I also included an image of Sherri’s larger object in progress.
New curatorial project: Tent of Curiosities. Plumas Sierra County Fair 2017. I inserted contemporary art into the fair-carnival context. Eight art objects from eight artists inside small plywood boxes that had to be opened. An optical viewer I built for the Tent of Curiosities was placed outside as bait to draw people towards the tent. This project also served as a warm up towards using the tent in other contexts for other objects and work, specifically near the Pacific Crest Trail as an extension of my work in that Sierra Nevada context.
(see my New Genres page)
Commissioned Base Camp Box (winter 2017) I believe out in Wyoming, in use by Casey and Sarah.
I had two great darkroom photography groups this semester (2 out of 3). As I fear the demise of this darkroom I’ve been teaching in for 7 years, I celebrate what kind of educational, emotional and artistic work space it has been. Seen is a preliminary 8×10 print from Nathan. He then moved on to print a 16×20 image of the same negative seen in the developer tray. I gave these two groups of beginning photo students the name Darkroom Dames, one dude included. A darkroom is a communal work space that cooperates with also being a very private place to pause, think, evaluate. It’s this dynamic interchange that in part makes it allow for plumbing deeper photographic understandings in a shorter time frame than a digital studio (set up like digital typing labs in almost all higher education fine arts departments… which doesn’t help the cause).
I’m finishing up a new limited edition optical viewer (4th in a series since 2015) intended for site placement on/off trail in the northern Sierra Nevada. The objects will be even more svelt than the prior edition I placed near the Pacific Crest Trail. I will likely find a snow trail due to the tremendous snow pack from this wild winter.
As part of my series of photographs I’m working on that document work spaces, I recently stopped by a former industrial shop space that sits next to the transcontinental rail. Three artists are moving into this space. It’s now being retrofitted to accommodate three distinct spaces with a shared use space in the mix. A painter, new genres artist and ceramicist are moving in. This shop space is part of a string of older industrial shop spaces that have been mined by artisans, tradesmen and other artists. It’s a self- grown (urban organic growth rather than a bureaucratically fabricated possibility) economic and creative corridor.
This large Camp Kitchen, for Casey Clark, is just about done. It’s beefier than the editions I’ve made in small batches. I wanted it to hold up to being stood on, sat on, etc.. I sacrificed a lighter weight unit for this kind of interior structure however. It will be heavy when full of gear and provisions. I also made custom cubbies for all of Casey’s camp kitchen gear. This is a one of a kind. The 4th edition Base Camp Box I’ll produce in a small batch came out of my studio just a few months ago in fall 2016.
Winter 2017
Guiding with the Gateway guide group at the summit. Clair Tappan Lodge was basecamp. A group of youth from tribes north of San Francisco got to experience the high alpine environment at the summit, buried in snow.
Quinzhee built by Jen in the Sierra Nevada this large winter 2017. Of course a sleep over.
“Quagmire” -2016, taken in the Plumas National Forest, is up at the Patagonia in Reno for a time. The frame is my own design.
I took some of my photography students to visit Cuddleworks, an urban studio collective in a still active industrial district of Reno. Casey Clark and Sarah Lillegard were present to talk about their work and the space.
5 days in the high elevation Nevada Great Basin, Nov. 2016: Arc Dome Wilderness to the Ruby Mountains.
New edition Base Camp Box (The Scout). As the first it’s a bit of a warm up to better options. I still want to keep these simple (reasonably affordable goes, in part, along with this design mindset). I made this new version with remove-able (and with all future Scouts, moveable within the box) cubbies.
I returned 15 months later to see how my 2015 wood opticons were fairing on the PCT. I didn’t expect to see any one of the five I planted in the ground early in the summer of 2015, but there were still two there. They were placed in the ground several feet from where I had initially installed them. Awesome! This meant individuals had interacted with them with some degree of curiosity and care. The slides were no longer in the viewers however. And one of the slide holders was on the ground…no longer attached to the top of the vertical element. Last month in August while camped down from the trail I came back the next morning after the initial find to see that a PCT backpacker had already interacted with them and placed the slide holder on the ground back up on top of the vertical element. So this interplay happened just overnight from when I first spotted them… which makes me wonder perhaps if one or more of the other wood opticons are elsewhere, placed by a backpacker’s hand with a curious eye.
A client commissioned a Base Camp Box as a gift. I used it as an opportunity to redesign the chuck box as the first of a new edition I’ve had on the back burner. There are a few details I’ll change for the new edition, but the cubbies as removable inserts will remain as well as a few other details. It’s basically the same volume as the 3rd ed. Base Camp Box. I also built a smaller camp box as a marketing object that I will keep for a while and use. It has the yellow panels.
