Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Trees equal Life





In the pacific northwest, trees come and go; in the coastal hill mountain range trees are the life blood of soooo many families. It's how we heat are homes, mill lumber for your houses, make telephone polls, cabinets, doors, beams, firewood for portland and the coast, fire kilns, and many other things. Trees are beautiful and majestic and inspirational, and incredibly useful; the grain, the species, the bark, the chips, the heart. It's pretty amazing to mill a tree into lumber, my friend Matt and I spent the weekend milling logs into usable lumber for several of his customers, cedar that had been sitting in water for 80 years in Canada, now milled into boards for a fence and arbor. Pine milled out for...who knows what they want to do with it.
It's always a treat to work with one of my best friends, conversation, laughing, and his new puppy "hash brown" never quite always on the scene. The boards are heavy and big (20 feet) and green, but the benefits are more than most would ever understand. The off-cuts of the orders go to me, more than a lot of the locals, anyone who "needs" wood, Nils Lou, and others. I LOVE working with my good friend Matt.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Aviation Visuals





A trip to our local Evergreen Aviation Museum (permanent home of the illustrious spruce goose) offers some fun, a good space movie and some interesting visuals. I'm pondering how to incorporate some of this into my new series of ceramics and/or screen prints.

Sunday, June 27, 2010





Well, after many months of being away from the computer and taking care of a lot of personal things, I finally finished the 9th and last firing of my kiln. It was without a doubt the best one yet; some very interesting results and some very successful experiments with obsidian and other glasses in the pots. Two of my friends have offered me space on their property to build my next kiln, I believe I will take them both up on it and build two different kilns that will be modifications of the last one.....sounds like a busy summer, eh!?