Families of Oakland

Not too long ago I get an email come in.
"I'm a photographer in Oakland and I'm looking for a photo studio to use for gratis.  I want to give to families in West Oakland who may not be able to afford it a holiday gift of a portrait session."
He says what non profit he is associated with.  

All ready for Young Wenlock

He's young.  Never really shot in a studio with big strobes and such.   So I set everything up for him.  Showed him where to plug the snyc cord into his camera and left him to his thing.
He tried to get the word out on the event via the churches of West Oakland....and there's a lot of churches.

He had some friends over to help him.  First up was a mother of one of the helpers.

Mother and daughter sharing a moment that almost brings tears.

Next was Wenlock's sister...

But eventually people started to arrive.

How cute is this?  Matching outfits!

So I fade into the background and let it roll.

Art Imitating Art

This is Ed.

Henry and I did a video awhile ago on Ed...Here..

Ed is one of the premier framers of art in the US.  The highest of the high modern art.  Some of his clients buy houses..big houses... not to live in them but to only house their art collections.  They have the art hung and have their people watch over it.  Maybe a party is thrown every now and then in the house.

So Ed's latched onto an idea, where feasible, that he builds a frame that goes over the art piece, I photograph the real art piece, we have that printed and then that print goes onto Ed's oversized frame.

The art is somewhat protected from the degradation of light and whatnot but it can still be seen in facsimile.

Today I was in a very nondescript warehouse in the Bay View doing just that.  Shooting Art to imitate the art but hide the art.

Ed, pulling out the pieces.

Ed, handling the pieces.....no, I do not handle the pieces.

He flips them over to show me the history of who framed, reframed, repaired, restored, etc each one. This one was at both the Guggenheim and the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice for some exhibits at a couple times in it's existence so far.

Next Up

I am beginning to see the last stitches to sew onto the Iron Bark Kimono.  Yesterday, I picked up the finish I wanted to shoot (spray) on it and as well with a five minute drive away, the next in line project material.
10 ounce premium veg tan for Jon.
What's funny is a wine client was down the day before dropping off a carload of things for me to shoot and I was telling her about the next project and she said.
"Make me two as well."

Blue Marble Super Moon

Morning Sun after Evening Moon.

How I do(did) it.

Not that I do a lot of inlay work but this is how I did this project.

Stuck down some painters tape where I wanted the leaves to go and with a couple small drops of super glue on the tips I glued them down.  With an Exacto I traced the outline around the leaf and peeled the leaf off with the help of a chisel.

It left the exact outline of the leaf but also provided a "ledge" almost that allowed the chisels to register against.  I'm finding I'm using the tape and knife method more and more to mark out work. Much much easier to see as well, as opposed to the other methods of layout.

Routed out the shape as close to the line as possible of course.

Mostly used a 1/8" chisel on it's side going downhill on the grain.  The above leaf's point wasn't too sharp so this one was easy but the others where the leaf ended in a very small point I sort of hacked away at with the Exacto knife and an engraving tool I ground down to a very tiny point.

The binocular close-up headgear (can't seem to remember it's real name) of course is paramount for this scale of work.

Glue up and the leaf right after taking off the clamps.

I like to do a rough trim down with a gooseneck Japanese chisel.  Very satisfying to feel the chisel peel off the wood and watch it curl up and away.

This is straight off the chisel work with a bit of moisture to see the grain better.

And that's that.

Archetype Leaf Inlays

I thought I would put some Iron Bark Leaves inlayed into the Iron Bark Kimono.  Have them scattered along the bottom half of the piece, situated around the slow curve that flows from side to front to side.

I don't have a clue as which of the Iron Bark species I have so I combined some of the different leaf shapes into one that is longer and slenderish.  Pointy tips with a bit of curve one way or the other.

Glued up some appropriate end grain from the left overs and hand penciled in shapes.

Arranging on the two lower drawer fronts to determine placement.
I'll real lightly glue them in position so there will be no shifting as I exacto out the shape.  The sharp tips need to steadied somehow to stop any lateral movement when the knife is against them.

Next up...cutting the recesses.

Off the J.O.B.

Took a short break from the J.O.B yesterday to work with Henry and Steve on a promo video featuring the new incoming president of an online airline/car rental/hotel room discounter.
You've heard of them.  I know you have.


Always such a good vibe (read inside jokes, ribbing, riffing, guffawing, no-none-zero ego)  being on the set with Henry and Steve.

Waiting on the corner. They were late! 

HMU

Which stands for Hair and Make Up.

Henry with his requisite pencil in the hat look.

Steve....and his assistant, the phone.

And check it.  It's nice to be in a building right smack dab in the middle of San Francisco that still has sash windows that open up.

And on set.

Back on the J.O.B

As is usual what appears to be a deficit is actually an asset.  Got real busy with photography jobs which pulled me away from the Iron Bark Kimono.  And the first big 3003 party.  So progress stopped on it.

Which is a good thing.

Love doing one thing for a few weeks, then changing horses in midstream to doing something totally different.  And coming back to something after a break is like hooking up with an old lost friend.  You circle each other for a bit and then it's like you've never had a break.

Fitting the drawers to the wooden slides.  Often at a single swipe of a plane on the wooden slide type of fitting.

The backside without the back to allow access to both sides

The Unbroken String

This morning's last night

Tony came over last night for a couple hours of cocktails and talking.  Ice cold and warm and fuzzy at the same time.  Elation and tears of sorrow at the same time.  Past and the Present at the same time.

Everything before leads to everything now.

We started talking about a street in Berkeley that we both lived on, just houses apart but also a couple years apart.  It's a story we talk about quite a bit, how close we were in distance and time before knowing each other.

That led to me talking about a photo I took.  I did a two year photo project and the very last photo I took for the project was how I got to this photo.  Using things I collected on a beach one morning, I tied a string of people to it.

I assisted Alan Krosnick for five years, he often hired a prop stylist...Alyson.  When I struck out on my own I used Alyson almost exclusively as a producer.  She had a good friend, Barbara who was a designer and Barbara gave me a job one time shooting for winery.  That job brought Vicki, the director of marketing for the winery.  Vicki eventually asked me to spend a full year shooting their vineyards during the different seasons.  Vicki also hired Tony to design a label for her and that was when Tony saw my vineyard photography.  He told another wine client of his, Cynthia to hire me for vineyard photography and that is how I came to start a two year art project as Cynthia talked me into it.

Six people tied together with shells and seaweed and driftwood.

And then Tony started in on his story.  He said he wouldn't be sitting right here, right now if he hadn't had sex in Ireland close to 30 years ago.  But that's his story and he'll need to tell that one for you.

 

Infused with a bunch of Stuff

Past two days shooting a yet to be released Vodka and Gin infused line.
Infused with lots of stuff, distilled from grapes. Seven times distilled!  Is that a lot or just normal?
I dunno.

I've yet to taste some it.
Probably won't be able to be found on the shelves of BevMo! or as they started out Beverages and More!
Or maybe they didn't add the exclamation point to the original name.
I dunno.


That's the packaging on the left.

edit....there some confusion about that being the actual shot.  Those are just sitting there on the prop table waiting to be put on set.

Stardust Journal

Lying immersed atop latticed thorns,
under the immensely clear Milky....Wayness.

Shooting stars streak to their final flare,
sprinkling down their dust on me.

Feel the stardust enter my lungs, enter my bloodstream.
Becomes my skin and teeth, liquefies into marrow.

See it glitter on the crow's feathers, see it sparkle on the rocks.
Hardens the tips of thorns, softens the coyote fur, lines the nests of the birds.

Gravity and wind pull and push it into the tiniest of spaces between the spaces.
Covers fingerprints, coats DNA, paints everything in shades of everything.

Constantly, always.  All the time.  From all the way from here to all the way to there.
One life, nothing is separate.
One long thread spun from eons of stardust.

and then I sleep.

I Came with the Rapture

Saturday's Rapture came in with glinting golden magnificence.  And Damian came in with me.


Good friend Damian Samuel and I traded some work for a piece of his art.  Me getting a haircut in Porto, Portugal.  Dripping LSD like from Damian's life or whatever is taking place in that mind of his.  Pretty sure I owe him much more work to cover his year long painting process.

And no rapture would have happened without David (little bit of Carol too).  So thank you.

Waiting for the Rapture

First party for 3003 coming up in a few.


And soon, the Family will descend as the sun sets and as we all search for the rapture on this high point of the vineyard known as Shotwell. 

Consequence of Workmanship

 Committing to a chisel chamfer

I bought both of David Pye's seminal books on Stewart Brand's recommendation probably 1972 and they're both still rumbling around in my head.(One is missing at this point). On design and workmanship. 
You can jig or machine everything up and get repeated results or you can trust (and live with) doing things in a way that will show your handwork.
I jig and machine the crap out of stuff, no worries.  But there are times when I want to live and die by a couple degree dip of a chisel or a commitment to strike the center of something in one strike.

On the first piece of furniture I built for J&D, I had rasped some what I thought looked like stylized tree roots in the bottom of the legs.  They wanted the same detail on the Iron Bark Kimono.  I did it again this time but wanted them to be more from the hand so how they came off the gouge is how they will be.  One proved to have gotten the best of me and so it shall stand as my failure.

The chiseled chamfers on the curves

From this morning.

The drawer dovetails.  Half blind in front, through in the back.
Cut them on the WoodRat.  I know you won't know what that is.  Nobody does which I can't understand but there are those objects that are so sublime but which nobody can see.  The WoodRat is one of them.
You dance with it.  It's a machine, it's a jig but at the same time there is a consequence of workmanship involved.  It's not rote, it's intuitively fluid and light.  It's so sublime it twists your head to see things differently.

The template (which you make) is on the left, the piece you're cutting is on the right.  They are tied together.  Move one, the other moves the same distance.
You judge where things are with your eye.

A trial piece to see if your calculations are correct.

Drawer fronts, sides as they come off.

Starting to chisel rounded corners to become sharp corners.

Finished drawer fronts.  Glue up tomorrow.

Edit.
Glued up one of the drawers last night.  This is straight out of the clamps.  A teensy tiny gap on the top half tail but once it gets finished you won't even see that.  The rest of what you see is a shadow around the tails and pins.