The Box of many Colors

 By the way, the background in the photo is another project that is taking place as the box was built.

 

My brother said something on one of my last visits with him.

"MakerUnknown, I had a problem with that name for long time but I think I get it now.  There's more than one Maker Unknown."

My brother although a high functioning professional his entire life,  elected official in his town, running an architecture firm, was a waker and then a baker.  Blazed a bowl at 0830hours, again at 0900hours and so on.  So I put his comment in my head to think about it later.

 

Some old dear friends or is it dear old friends? got ahold me, they needed a box, a special box, to fit inside a suitcase.  A wedding present for their oldest, the newly wedded couple are moving to South Africa with what they carry in suitcases.

Asked a couple questions, are they vegetarian and did they have some special fabric they could send to me?

 Michelle fleshed out the son's journey into adulthood, I only knew him much younger.  Filled me in on the new wife.

Thought a bit on it, then started.  Pulled out a bunch of pieces of wood I've been saving from other projects.  Some of them decades waiting for me to do something with them.  Then I just begin to  put pieces together with the loosest of intention.  I wanted a swirling circular to it.  I knew that much. There's a center in there for you to find.

 Kinda did this with as little mind I could find.  Don't think too much, whatever you do will be right.

 

Made a-to-size cutout of the top and gave to Annie to crop it for me.  She did a crop that I hadn't considered before.  Sometimes you need that outside look at something to give you a new perspective.  I didn't choose her crop, but it suggested one to me.

So everything sorta just happened, the whole box is like that.  Glue things together, don't fuss too much.  And then you back design it, put the design into a narrative that fits the design.

 Two halves, two people.  Right side all straight and right angled, the other half all dynamic angles.

But still that swirling center connects the two sides.  Dig those arrows to the center that are coming from the central triangle. 

The top and four sides.  All different.

 The two halves needed an internal counterpoint to itself.  Each side needed to be tempered.  Tilt a square in the right half to balance that side.  Straighten up a small rectangle in the left half.

 Have a bunch of process photos but I'll just do one for sake of brevity.

 Intriguing though, isn't it?

 

 

 The outside of the box.  

One of the pieces of information exchanged at the beginning was to philosophically push the box toward simple truth and away from something highly polished.

 

Very rare I burn the MU into something.  

 

Who is the Maker here, who is the Unknown.  I get what my brother was telling me.  I picked up the name MakerUnknown from one thought but got fresh perspective on it from what a stoned out brother said to me.  

To me MakerUnknown came about from my philosophy that the thing I'm making is more important than who made it.  There shouldn't be an ego associated with the object.  My brother's take was one of a higher order, The Maker, who is guiding the build, the design, the narrative?  He was referring to The great Maker Unknown.  Not that I'm a follower but my point here is, I just let the box build itself.  I didn't plan nothing but let it happen.  And so who is the MakerUnknown?

 

The Inside.

The outside is sanded to 800 grit with three coats of Hassui Ceramic.  The inside is not that. The inside, the heart, is messy and loose.  So I designed stuff on the inside to fail, designed to see how these two react to the matters of the inside.   

The inside will need some maintenance.  At some point, something will need fixing. 

And there's no judgement here.  Will they let the inside go to weather and collapse on it's own, will they try and jerryrig a quick fix, will they totally redesign it?  Again no judgement on the direction that is chosen.

It's also a bit of a struggle to open it.  Good.  There should be some difficulty to access the inside, the center of something.

 

Eyeballed screw placement, fabric cut with a razor, sewn letting the sewing machine to have some fun, threads cut too long, button sewed on with a single thread,

It's a place for love letters, table of contents of life, of to do's and not do's, pictures, of sacks of spice, something broken waiting to be fixed, a hundred bucks, dried something, a ring.

 

Where's it going to require some maintenance?

 

Why does that dark arc in the wood match the curve of the hat's brim?  Whose design is that?

The Maker is Unknown.

 An Addendum 

There are but two people I've been following since 1970.  Speaking of maintenance, this just came out from one of the two.

 

The Compass Needle Moves

 

 

I'm thinking we should peg the beginning of this into SF soil. 20years ago?

 

That's when I started to build this reproduction of a 18th century French Marquetry Saw.  

 Foot and hand operated.  Push down with your feet to squeeze the veneers together tight and the hand pulls and pushes the saw.

Built it and made one tiny thing on it and disassembled it and put away.  But I think it's time to bring out of deep storage and begin a dialog with it.  Need to speak the language a bit before I make something in earnest.

Here's a TED Talk moment.  Keep learning new stuff.

 

 

in the meantime, did some cleanup on the bench top

 and put another layer of boiled linseed oil. 

 

Beginning the self study of processes and procedures.

 

 

 Bonus pic.  My niece decided to liberate this from my brother's shop wall. I questioned if she received  permission from the estate.  One out of three members of the board said it was ok.  I'm going to make a frame for her but with a bit of dissension.  In the meantime, it's hanging in my place.

As It Was Left

 

This was the darkest corner of his workshop.  Chair well worn from the sitting and the thinking.  Mini fridge close by, a little table to hold his other helpers that helped him during the day.

 

Brother F had a way about him and how he composed his shop.  The entirety was an art piece, crammed with items that he arranged just so, each relates to the thing next to it.  You can't really isolate one composition, because the whole place was one big interrelated piece.

  

Photo of my father

 Not sure why he was into the church, sure it was part of life growing up in our childhood but

still I was surprised of his religion/spirituality.

 

 

 

 

He left one thing unfinished here in the shop.  The building he owned downtown was being converted from his Architecture practice to a gallery.  A family gallery.  Seems art runs deep in the Kirchners.

He was making a sign to replace the old Architecture business sign with the gallery sign. 

He was almost through hand painting the sign.  Did a full size mockup first....hand painted. 

 

He was expecting to come back and finish it and hang it.  His son Will is taking that on now.

 Let's say adiós to BroFred with a couple of his pen and inks that were hung on his walls from early 70's.

 And my print I did of one of his pieces.

 

 

 

Model 500 Miniature Elephant Display Cabinet

 

 

 

We'll get to the Model 500 later on.  But first let's discuss the elephant in the room.  My brother's kids decided to put some of his art work on the memorial postcard that got handed out at his service.

One of which was a pen and ink he did while being a teachers assistant for his Architecture Professor in Austria 1970-1971.

 

 

After the Europe trip, my brother came back and painted.  His stuff was stunning, visionary, new, fresh, exciting.  From the early 70's to 2010's I held my brother's artistic stuff in the highest regard.  Coming back from a daytrip in the wine country somewhere in the 2010's Annie and I decided to stop in one more winery for a tasting.  We picked it randomly while driving back down the Silverado Trail.  

It was set way back from the highway, couldn't see it until you came right on it.  The winery looked like it came out a Dr. Seuss book.  On acid.  We go inside and the place is covered with my brother's artwork.  Reality was quicksand, could not figure it out.

Well, it turned out the building was designed by an Austrian architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser.  And it turned out that Hundertwasser was also a painter.

 Friedensreich Hundertwasser 

Got home and called up my brother and said WTF.  He came clean, he was captivated by Hundertwasser and copied his style.  Brush stroke for brush stroke.

And with that, the luster was gone from my eyes about how great my brother was.

But I cut an engraving block of the pen and ink.  Traced and tried to follow the construction/path of his pen.  It was a nice exercise of getting inside his head.  Upon careful thinking about it, each figure was mostly done without taking the pen off the paper.  At least the major outlines and whatnot were done in one path.

The block, the memorial postcard, a quick proof pulled

 

Jules came back to for a quick bay vacay.  Four of us @9Agnes 

 

Now to the elephant in the display cabinet.

An old friend had a collection of little elephants that I think she got tired of dusting off and wanted them inside something.  That's what this is all about.

 It's made with some left over maple from a bigger project.  I glued them together to get them thicker.  Dovetailed on the WoodRat.

 Ok, that's it.  Now for the bonus pics.

Traffic sign emphatically says do not turn this way.  And I agree. 

 This block plane gets used a hundred times more than the other planes.