Sometime you gotta take a couple steps backwards

I got back from Pilchuck, mostly revitalized and ready to get back into the studio.   I had a few set backs during my trip home, my valiant stead or perhaps valiant slow plodding pony Ethel (my 1999 mazda protege) died in Texas, may she rest in peace.   About a week before that on the first day of climbing post Pilchuck I sprained my ankle.   Making driving and life in general less awesome than it could of been but I did get to camp in some truly soul affirmingly beautiful places mostly lakes and rivers.  If you can only hobble a river makes a good icepack/place to drink beer and watch the sunset.

Bear Lake Idaho

 Lake Granby Colorado

 The Snake River, Celebration Park Idaho

 The Snake River, Celebration Park Idaho 

Here are a couple of the places me and Ethel hobbled to on our trip back from Seattle.  There are worse places to convalesce.   But as said I got back mostly ready to work, maybe a bit less hours than I normally do.  My foot tells me to sit down and stop working after about 5-8 hours.  

This one needs a couple more pieces of glass (i think) but I don't think I have anymore so I might have to wait for Tulane's furnaces to go hot again.  

 Being that I am a bit more stationary than I would like I've also been doing a lot of drawing.  

So first I had to render a piece some of you might have seen.  In order to figure out what the piece which I am thinking of calling Single Spoked Wheel but not sure if that will be the title or not.  So then I did some preliminary drawings about how I think the stand/ramp should look.   I will do some drawings based off which CNC router I can get access to.  The art building has a 4 foot x 4 foot CNC router but the architecture building has a 8 ft x 4 ft.  Since the wooden parts of the wheel were cut on the CNC it makes sense to keep the same material sensibility.  But my cut list/illustrator files to generate the wood for the ramp will have be designed around the size pieces I can cut.  

Let me know if you like one of the drawings more than the others.  I will probably do a couple more.  

In case you didn't see them here are 2 of the 3 pieces I made at Pilchuck, I still need to photograph the third.  But the Neon survived the death of my car and 3000 miles of travel.  Well the neon for 2 of the 3 did and I photographed the one that no longer lights up.  

This one I am thinking of calling Rock'n Lines which is sorta punny and terrible but it made me laugh.  The tubes are Neon Mercury, which means when it first turns on it is more like the top image but after awhile it goes all blue and sometimes does this crazy wavy blue lightning magic.  

This one is called Powerlines.  Unfortunately the neon did not survive the trip home so maybe I will remake it or maybe it will just exist as is.  One of the main things I tried to do with neon was make objects that were not dependent on just the fact that Neon is sexy when lit up.  I wanted to make things that were sculpture with or without electricity .