Stockin' up...

I just recently returned from my local-friendly-neighborhood furniture industry dumpster with a new load of goodies. Sometimes I have to wrestle large, awkward peices of jagged and splintery woodwaste while precariously surfing a huge pile of the above-mentioned material stuffed into an open-top, 20 foot industrial waste container. Plenty of twisted ankles, smashed fingertips and harrowing half-inch deep splinters to go around.

I developed a certain proclivity for this type of scrounging when I first moved to Greensboro in the Autumn of 1997. Teaching myself the basics of metalworking, I didn't really have the budget to buy new mill-grade steel for work unless I had a commission lined up. Fortunately, I didn't really need the new stuff since I had access to the coolest metal resource in Greensboro: The Myers Brothers Scrap Yard. It was a young metal sculptor's playground, with literally mountains of sheet steel cut-outs and stampings, twisted structural beams, retired industrial machinery and GOBS of residential detritus like rusted barbeque grills, ancient lawnmowers and the occasional Ford Pinto.

To say that this type of activity was dangerous would be a gross understatement. The entire scrapyard was a sea of rusty, tetanus-drenched steel shards. There was a railroad track that came into the yard to carry off bulk steel that had been reduced for recycling, and when you weren't dodging the speeding forklifts carrying 15-ton steel beams, you had to come to terms with the notion that you could actually get run over by a train in this place. The whole joint was one big noisy, belching diesel engine, so literally no one would hear you scream for help if a train car full of scrap metal was backing over you.

Despite the inherent occupational hazard present in my chosen profession, I still very much thrive on dumpster diving. It is not for the timid, and it often results in a net-loss. I've always compared it to mining, though I have no real experience looking for precious metals, with the exception of panning for gold with my dad and brother at one of those mines that seed the dirt with gold dust so everyone gets to experience 'gold fever'. My dad lost his wedding ring in one of the panning troughs that day. My mother, by her own admission, was naturally disturbed about the entire debacle, but that's a story for another day. Needless to say, rummaging through a dumpster full of plywood scraps and lumber cut-offs is not completely unlike scouring the North Carolina clay for bits of gold. And much like fishing and tradeshows, the key to success with the whole thing is location, location, location.

I enjoy it because it makes me feel good to fashion useful and value-added objects from waste. In one form or another, I've been doing it for years. I repair my own tools, bicycles and cars whenever possible and I am always adopting bits and peices of leftover furniture from this college town's roadsides. The dumpster in the photos is just the latest (and most productive) chapter in my book about the 'upcycling' of furniture industry waste and attempting to make beautiful objects with it.

I also enjoy it because there are very few trains in the dumpsters I frequent.

Norman Rockwell Show at the NC Museum of Art

I went with my mother today to the Norman Rockwell Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. While I was relatively familiar with his style and his catalog of work, I was amazed at the sheer volume of his portfolio. He illustrated the cover of The Saturday Evening Post for several decades, as well as providing illustrations for the Boy Scouts of America in their handbook and other training materials. As an Eagle Scout, I was very familiar with his Scout-related illustrations throughout my youth.

While I suppose that in the back of my mind I was somehow aware of this, I only just today made the "out loud" realization that Rockwell was not just a painter and fine artist, but also a social observer and commentator. His work (specifically its symbology) occasionally strayed close to the political, perhaps even the propagandistic at times, though I would never claim that his work was politically motivated. The messages of culture and politics can sometimes bleed together in images as rich in detail and nuance as his. Ultimately, his message is about humanity and the joys and travails of being human. As a student of material culture and design history, I find it refreshing to take a new look at his work; it is rich with overlapping layers of meaning, signifying and illuminating the varied class structure in America in the early to mid-20th century. His skill at portraying the human expressions of excitement, fear, boredom, despair, guilt, happiness, relaxation and countless others is remarkable. His use of his particular painterly style displays the patina of life as it occurs to the objects around us everyday, from shoes to baseball bats to pets to Us.

I really enjoyed the chance to see his work again, especially now that my graduate research has influenced my perspective on the objects we find in the built environment. Rockwell's work was many things to many people, but to me his examination of the material environment that surrounds us all showed his understanding of the place of OBJECTS in our lives. As Westerners in an increasingly materialistic culture, Rockwell understood that the cut of a man's suit or the condition and appearance of his shoes communicated something more that just the current state of his clothing. The same can be said of the early 20th century interiors that were the common backdrop for much of his work. These works were very much about the people portrayed within them, but aside from the humanity he expressed through body language, I found the objects and environments in his work to be extremely powerful devices for communicating the subjects' stories. It is this awareness of object and materiality (not materialism) that I found most stimulating and engrossing throughout his body of work. Thanks for listening.

New Shop Space...

I had my first chance to get into the workspace I will soon be using to work on portfolio projects over the coming months. It is in a friend's one-car garage, and while I'm very happy to have any space at all, I must admit that I was spoiled for several years using the school woodshop at UNCG. Nonetheless, I'm fortunate to have a space at all, and this one is free of charge. I will be handling tool maintenance and such in exchange for the space and electricity. That's better than the shop space I have right now...which is nothing.

The beauty of small spaces is that they require you to keep an orderly environment: everything needs to be put away when not in use, otherwise a tiny space gets cluttered fast. Yes, its nice to be able to walk away from one project to work on another when you had your fill of frustration or failure on a given project, but learning to work through problems of this type is a skill quickly acquired in small spaces. Simply having less space to clean and manage is a blessing, though, and smaller can sometimes be better regarding overall organization. I'm certain that the transition will make me pay more attention to the sequence of operations than I did in the larger shop. You can't really move through a variety of unconnected processes in a small shop; you start and finish work (if possible) with little deviation from the sequence, and the whole endeavor moves much more smoothly. Above are pics of the new place; all 260 sq. feet of it. It's in a space originally slated for a one-car garage. It has no official heat source, but it is attached to the house and it has insulated doors, so I probably won't expire due to hypothermia...hopefully. All kidding aside, I'm very lucky to have access to space and tools on such agreeable terms. Thank you, Universe.

Heard a really great local public radio show last night about a Durham, NC man who runs his own design and fabrication company. He explained that while he was a student of architecture, he spent more time in the shop building things than in the studio drawing buildings. When graduation approached, he told his professor and mentor that he was more inclined to follow a path working with his hands, and knew that this was at odds with his professional education. When he asked the mentor "What should I do?", the response was at once uncomplicated and confounding: "Oh, you'll figure it out."
Upon hearing this, the student went on to set up his own design and fabrication shop. Instead of securing a financial backer or getting small business loans, he would chase the jobs that he could do with his simple array of tools, then use the money from these early jobs to buy the tools that would expand his range of services. His story and his description of events reminded me much about that business, as I was a custom metal fabricator until I postponed my future in said field to work towards my Master's Degree in Interior Architecture in 2006. While I value my education, recognizing that it will undoubtedly benefit my chosen path of product design, I long to make again. I welded, melted, ground, glued, sanded or painted custom furnishings and sculpture for nearly eight years before enrolling in grad school, and I miss it sorely.
What really resonated with me about the man's story was that there came a point when he had to DECIDE to pursue this path, to commit to it. I know from experience that it is a daunting task to commit to a life of self-employment. We all want to know that there will be a job to go to tomorrow and that the paychecks won't bounce. At eight years in, I wasn't able to make that decision, and I felt grad school was the next journey. It was the smartest thing to do for me, and it has contributed greatly to my design process, sensibilities and future.
I look forward again to making things, to cultivating the particular design philosophies and aesthetics that were the subjects of my graduate research. The notion of sustainability has opened my eyes to new ways of seeing waste and the unique opportunities that this perspective provides. As a result of three years of sketching, I have piles of drawings of things to be built. Currently, the material for construction is free to be plucked from dumpsters behind factories. Wood glue is cheap.
Buy more clamps.
Go like Hell.

Some images of my 2009 graduate thesis design work:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3176.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3031.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3028.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3183.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3236.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6909837/Thesis%20Work%202009/IMG_3044.JPG

Just heard a great news story on NPR's MarketPlace radio show. It was about the Freak-o-nomic's research on the idea of pay-as-you-throw trash disposal policies that have been set up through various cities across the country. The neat part about the article was the discussion on people's reactions to the policy (some positive, some not..) and how this policy lies at the crossroads of public/environmental policy, and the psychology of consumption and disposability in the US. The policy basically charges the user with a rate per unit of trash to be removed, as opposed to the standard flat-rate formula popular across the US. The rationale is, if use dispose of more stuff, you pay your fair share to dispose of it. This has had positive impact on municipal trash operations, leading to decreased operating costs and lower demand for ever-expanding landfills. Great, right? Yes, but naturally there is a pervasive opinion of American Privilege that sees this as a tax, not an operating cost, when in fact it's a business.

That's correct. It's a Business. It also has longterm ramifications that affect every human within a certain radius of each and every landfill. Yes, we should pay-as-we-throw, and we don't have a right to throw away as much as we want. You can breathe as much as you want, because that is truly free. However, the matter of waste disposal affects everyone, and the costs attached to it are real, externalized or not. When there are costs, it's not free. We should distance ourselves from the illusion that the disposable society is in any way free of costs or consequences...ttyl

Just finished an email conversation with my web guru and brother Chris Boggs, and we are to soon begin the production of a short video of still images that will describe the design and fabrication of my graduate thesis project. Since my undergrad degree was in Video Production from the Savannah College of Art and Design, I became immediately excited about returning to this medium for a creative endeavor. I miss video production, and while my heart lies in making objects for the built environment, video art still fascinates me. I get opportunities to express my interest in photo-visual arts with my Pentax DSLR, and it's nothing at all to walk the streets of Greensboro day or night and shoot pics of the curious aspects of the urban, manufactured existence. I'm really getting in to crane and power lines right now for some reason...ttyl