Sorry it's been a while, but I'm not much on blogging. I'd much rather paint and build things. This post is about my last piece that I recently finished called Event horizon.
The diameter is 47"x47"x1.5. Inspired from the M87' galaxy's Black Hole. which was the first photograph ever taken of a black hole. Each of my three conjoined canvas pieces were created on wooden frames that were made possible with a custom bandsaw jig I designed to cut any diameter circle, at any angle. (Think of a banked turn on a racetrack). This enables the canvas to be mounted just like a standard square canvas. I then searched for the blackest paint/coating on the market. I went with the second blackest substance as the first was a carbon nano tube coating which would have not been possible as you have to heat it to 400 degrees F and was too fragile as well. Not to mention $900 for enough to do a 2-foot dia. circle. I went with Black Nextel 4-part coating, (the 2nd blackest substance). It required exact environmental conditions for applying with a spray gun. So exact, it took me 3 times to get it right. I finally achieved a striking Black hole and painted the perimeter with a gloss black acrylic to simulate the point of no return or the " Event Horizon". Each frame is made from hand selected pine and covered, stapled on back, and primed with professional grade gesso. Then painted with high grade acrylic paint. The 3 canvases were then attached together with stainless steel tubes, nuts and bolts. Another interesting note, The Messier 87 black hole is a super massive type. So large that if you take the 24" dia. of my painting and put it to scale, our sun next to it would be 30 microns across, about the diameter of a human hair.
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I have been fortunate enough in the past to not only create and make many beautiful and unusual things, but to have people pay me to make them as well! As a young man I had an employer who saw I was gifted in building just about anything. He put me to work as his set designer/builder for many of his commercials for television as well as several unique projects for his home. Many of the projects were 3 dimensional re-creations of heavy or expensive objects in common materials I have always been fascinated with how objects are made and how to make them. My younger years were spent exploring just about every material and the best ways to work with them. Needless to say, I own a lot of tools. They are natural extensions of my mind to my hands. I don't know if you would call these things abstract art, but the learning experience was a necessary part for my future directions. I am mostly self taught. I have read several books on many creative subjects, but printed instructions are no match for getting your own two hands in there and through repetition and experimentation, realize the final imagined product. I get no better satisfaction than dreaming up something and creating it from start to finish.
Thanks for reading my blog. There is more to come. Kurt Ya at eeh! (Hello in Navajo) I have always been attracted to those things complicated but simplified. An example is my passion for Native American Petroglyphs and pictographs, carvings or paintings on rock surfaces that appear as simple geometry or abstract lines and squiggles, but when studied at length, reveal much complexity. I have studied on how to read and interpret them, which is fascinating in itself as you don't read them from left to right, or up or down. You must take in the elements of the work piece as a whole, and only then figure the meaning of the message. Often the carvings are direct derivatives of their sign language. With over 500 dialects in California alone, sign language was the universal form of communication with the many tribes here..
I traveled around with a fellow enthusiast to photograph some of these works as at that time I wanted to write a book about Petroglyphs in Northern California. The proposed cover of the book is in the attached photo. Out of over 200 petroglyphs at this site, this was the only one that was carved vertical instead of flat on the ground rock. I like to think it was someone who was an artist in the tribe. They way it is grouped and carved vertically, . This picture roughly translates to a story of a journey by a group of people. The circle with the dot in center and radiating arms, denotes "A group of people moving outward" The "M" shape is likely a mountain pass. Next to that is a river symbol. Above that is a crescent shape like a quarter moon. This could be a moon. But in most Tribes symbolism, this crescent stands for "turned aside". So the story could read as " A group of people went on a journey over a mountain pass only to be turned around by a raging river on the other side". The area is not far from a river on the other side of some mountains in the Sierra Nevada. Anyway, I have a lot of interests. Too many for one blog post. These are another examples of illusions created with light. In this project, I painted some items on a piece of plywood to appear as if they are actual objects on an end table. They are painted anamorphically, with contorted perspective to create the 3 dimensional illusion when viewed at a precise height and angle, (preferably with one eye closed). You would then see it as the camera does with no depth perception. I named this painting 'Intermission' inspired by the T.V. series X-Files. Intermission is available for purchase.
The image above is a medical device I invented utilizing LED's. I'm not saying what it is exactly as it is still undergoing testing. It is just another example of my obsession with light. This laser pictured is a 2 watt violet laser 405nm that I built to test optics and just because it was a fun project.
Light has fascinated us from our very beginnings. From the moment we were born and opened our eyes for the first time and experience the world around us. Everyday that inexplicable ball of explosive energy the sun, rises and shines it's life giving energy on the little blue dot the Earth.
It's power pushes into our windows and we come to life again. It fills all the shadows and the colors begin to emerge. (This reads much better in a Carl Sagan voice). Speaking of Carl Sagan, he is one of my few personal hero's and left a legacy of brilliance and sober solidity. I miss him.Light has been a major influence in my life with the many ways it presents itself. From the Sun's fantastic spectrum of colors visible and invisible flying through space at incomprehensible speeds to our world where it slams, crashes and bounces off every object without even hurting a fly. A very strange particle light. This is what we are seeing when we look at a painting. Endless bouncing of countless particles off the paint, reflecting colors in the pigments and slamming those colors into our eyeballs. We do not perceive all this high speed chaos and slamming around. We see gentle stability, colors playfully interacting. An artist utilizes this phenomena mixing and playing with colored pigments to produce something that satisfies emotionally, spiritually and mentally. This is my fascination with painting, manipulating light. Making something from that which made me. The sun gives me life. Light has made me and now I make and manipulate light. Not just with paintings and paint. I have delved into other forms of learning light. From reflections and refraction's, optical illusions and coherent laser beams. You name it. It all just fascinates the hell out of me! So to show you a little about where I have gone with it, I have a picture here of 3 lasers I put together. One red, one green and one blue to combine to make white light. Just like the colored pixels of your computer screen. From these I can make any visible color. Light mixes differently than mixing paint. Red and green light makes yellow. Red and green paint makes a brown color. Yellow and blue makes white light. Red and blue paint make purple. Violet cannot be made with paint. Violet is a pure monochromatic color from the visible light spectrum (and invisible such as ultra violet). Think of a prism or rainbow, these colors are assigned numbers for their wavelengths in nano meters. as are lasers as they too are monochromatic. The 3 lasers I used for RGB are Red 635nm, Green 532nm, and Blue 457nm. These lasers were setup to make full color holograms. Not like the little hologram on your credit card, these are big and full color and can jump right out of the picture at you. Or for that matter, can dive deep into the picture. I have owned one that looked 4 feet deep. I continue to experiment with holograms today. Hopefully in a future blog I will show you some of my results. |
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