It's Moving Day!!!

 Might as well start out with the bonus pics first.

I try and polish the copper on the liquor cabinet every two weeks or so in order for it to become a glittering eye magnet when it's open.

And me! on Moving Day.

Ok, enough with the eye candy!  Let's get to work.  Picking everything up, putting in/on two trucks and heading over the bridge to SF.

The elliptical counter is taken apart.

Getting it in the trucks.

Ken spins his own spiderweb.

So this is the front door of a quite large new apartment building where we're reassembling the lobby.  Seems oddly tiny to me.

One section of the 25' counter top.

And the angle that said counter top is bolted to.

Installation begins in two days.

Quintessential California

 Spent this morning gripping and gaffing for a muy tiny production of political ads for the right side.   By right I meant the correct side, the side on the correct side of history.

Up a ways in Northern California, with a former United States Presidential candidate speaking his mind into the camera.  He's on his great grandfather's land from the 1870's.  He and his father were governors of California multiple times.

That's him sitting, waiting for us to set up.  Earlier, as we rolled into the property, a family of Elk walked the ridgeline here, the bull Elk with a magnificent rack, the sun behind them.  Pure beauty.

I've been living in California for 41 years and the quintessential California landscape of golden hills with trees sparsed never gets old.  Even better when the hills just keep rolling and folding.  Did the best I could given the no trespassing signs preventing a more studied composition.

Edit.  I talked of the golden hills but only showed black and white. 

As Of Yesterday

 The first wash coats of shellac were shot.

But leading up to the wash coats of shellac

The final working of the surface of the wood was to be done by cutting type tools.  Fine sandpaper will take out the irregularities of the shellac but under that will be the successes and failures of a sharpened blade on highly figured and interlocked grain.

A Japanese rasp was used for a portion of the legs but that rasp is essentially a whole bunch of sharpened edges.  Flat surfaces were planed with Western style planes. The Japanese planes sat waiting for a project with more forgiving grain structure

The WoodRat used to cut the mortises for the drawer pulls.  The width of the mortise varied as to the overall size of the drawers.

The carcase was made from one board, the pulls were cut out of the end of that board.

An action shot!!!!

Sawdust on Chisel Handle

MakerUnknown  2020  copyrighted!

Brought this out of retirement to cut the pulls

Burnished the pulls on leather

Final swipes on the drawer fronts before gluing the pulls on.  The surface just gleamed.

Drawers are lined with leather

And the final surface cut onto wood.  Shavings consistently measuring in .002-.004 range.

That brings us up to date.  As of yesterday.

Bonus pic!

The cut offs from the legs made into a trianglely sort of thing.

Advancing toward the Metaphor

Had a little family gathering last night up at Nephew Will's crystal garden place in the Berkeley hills and was saying to Taylor I was going to take her piece to a certain point but would have to set it aside for another project.

She said, "So, it's going to be another 7 years?"  Had a good laugh at that one.

The carcass will be mitered but the miters will be truncated pretty heavily so for strength I inlayed some finger joints.  These are just sitting there before glue.

A slight dry fit to see if it's going to go.

Thin spacers (.045") on the drawers so I can mark the proper distance of the runners on the carcass side.

The drawers in cross communion while the carcass is glued.

Carcass in clamps on the right this morning.

Drawers roughly fitted.  And the metaphor for the piece starts to take some physical presence.  Explanation to follow when it's completed.

And this is where it will sit until I finish up something else.

Bonus pic!

Last jam night with the random horizon shadows down the side

Revival!

This is one of those projects that started with pages and pages of sketches and hours and hours of thought.

I started making it with great gusto.

Maybe 6 years ago.  Maybe 8.

And something got in the way, probably had to do with someone wanting me to do something for some money and then another thing came along and another.   I moved and took the various pieces with me and still it sat.

Wrote a bit about it here.  Correction, I see now it was 7 years ago.  I've given up on the idea of twisting it, way too hard and I'm not sure if I could do it to begin with.

Looks like I'll need to do another trip out to see my wood sensei for one more signature piece of something.

Medium Format shoots Large Format

A primary Studio Manifesto of mine.

Keep it fluid.

Put it on wheels.

Try not to make it permanent.

For the past three weeks, the only thing that hasn't been moved in the studio is the table saw, the liquor cabinet and kitchen stove.

I named this restaurant Large Format in my head to keep on point messaging wise while I built the photo.

Going back to another of the early mantras that was pounded into the head at photo school was...

"You don't take a photograph, you make a photograph."

And this is why I love studio work.  Every single thing within the format is on purpose, every color, every shaft of light, every prop.

You build it.

To non wine folks, Large Formats refer to oversize wine bottles.  I included a quantity of Large Format bottles in the shot but I also used it conceptually with large rough textures and other big elements.

The kitchen taken apart so I could shoot across that space.

Of note is oh maybe a hundred napkins in the foreground of every color and print that has been amassed over the decades.

I'm particularly smitten with myself on the solution of flipping over a dragon because this "table" needed a base.

You don't take it, you make it.