A few snapshots of drop-off and installation at Artomatic Takes Flight...

AOM14 set on Flickr

A Report on Our Recent Activities

The Extinct Flightless Arts Collective has been active in the following (and other, secret) ways:

• Tranquility
• Oracule
• Pigment II
• FilthyRusty

Transition

The mechanics of my regular art creation process have to do with cutting and then bending plastic. This is very easy to do when the material is a credit card; scissors work well for cutting thin PVC and the plastic is readily bent. With larger pieces, however, both of these steps are a little more difficult. Thicker PVC requires power tools to cut. Heat must be applied to the plastic in order to make it pliable.

I've been using a jigsaw to cut the plastic. This works pretty well. I've made improvements in this area by moving to a more powerful jigsaw and by using jigsaw blades that are specific for PVC rather than general use blades that will work on plastic.

The application of heat has been problematic. In order to make the PVC bendable, the entire thickness of the plastic has to be raised above 200°F. Until now, I've been using a heat gun to heat the plastic. A heat gun is essentially a really hot hairdryer.

Heating with the heat gun is a slow process because the gun only heats a small area. In order to heat the plastic, the heat gun must be held very close to the surface; within a quarter of an inch or so. The heat gun needs to be moved constantly in order that the surface of the PVC does not char.  It takes a very long time using this technique to heat the plastic enough through the entire thickness so that the plastic becomes pliable.  Also, when using a heat gun only a small section of the plastic is pliable at a time. For larger pieces, this technique is not practical. A particular piece that I'm working on, PVC 6, is 2' x 4' and requires quite a bit of heating in order to get the shape that I am pursuing. The below photograph shows the current state of PVC 6; I have bent about 1/16 of the amount of plastic that I need to bend and I have spent about an hour and a half with the heat gun to get to this point.

At the suggestion of a friend, I have started to experiment with a forced air kerosene heater. Last evening, I tried this technique for the first time and it was a rousing success.

This photograph shows a piece that I made last week, PVC 5. This started out as a 1' x 2' x 3/8" slab of PVC. After cutting it took just under two hours over several sessions with a heat gun to bend the plastic as shown.

I apologize for the poor quality of the above photograph; immediately after this piece was produced it was selected for a juried show (details below) and I did not have the opportunity to take good photographs of it.

The below photograph shows the piece I made yesterday, PVC 7. This started from the same size slab of PVC as the above item. I heated this slab for about twenty minutes with the forced air heater after cutting. This made the entire slab pliable all at once allowing me to bend it much more easily and to introduce much nicer curves into the artwork.

I will be using a forced air heater at least for the rest of this art season (melting plastic is an outdoor activity and so my art season is April - October). The heat gun will still be part of my toolkit; it will be useful for detail work or where I just need a small application of heat.

I am showing nine pieces at the Nuance Gallery in Windsor, Vermont from May 31 through July 12. This includes four tabletop sculptures and five credit card devices. The Nuance Gallery is located at 85 Main Street in Windsor. Should you happen to find yourself in the wilderness of Central Vermont, please stop in and check out the show.

Nuance Gallery Facebook Page

Hello.

My name is Bxiie.  I'm a Capricorn.  I like blue-green colors, being outside, and melting plastic.

The fine proprietors of this website kindly invited me to join the collective.  After subjecting me to the arduous initiation rituals, they have generously allowed me to post.  Here I am.  Hello.

Three of my sculptures will be in a show at the Upper Valley Zen Center, White River Junction, Vermont, on May 2nd and 3rd.  The item at the top ('Reflections/PVC 4') is one of the pieces that will be shown.  If you happen to be in the area, please stop in and check it out.  Twenty local artists will be showing work.

 

If you'd like to see some other things I've done, there's a link to my site up there in the right-hand side of the page.  See you later!

qotd

Jo Andres: 

"...how ideas come or when they come is when I’m in a soft, calm place, like in an alpha state, coming in and out of sleep. That’s where a lot of things move around; where there is problem solving and I relax my mind. I think it’s really a combination of problem solving and listening to how I feel, a visceral feeling about what’s coming through, an excitement that you can latch onto. I go, “Oh that’s exciting, let’s pursue that.” Sometimes I am inspired by reflecting back and forth with people, but for the most part I feel much more connected to my creative center when I’m alone..."

"The other thing about the creative process is showing up. You have to show up for yourself, whether it’s to a physical space, or to a space in yourself, because the creative energy is always there." (joandres.com) 

Gilding the Everything

SALISBURY:
Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess...

(Shakespeare, King John, 1595)

What I think people who talk about "gilding the lily" are missing is that gilding is really fun. I don't know whether that would have been relevant for Salisbury (I haven't read/seen the play), but I recommend gilding the fuck out of something just because you can.

The DJH Brand

Hot iron, seared into your flesh... Wait, is that not what they meant?

Your blogmaestra was just at CatalystCon East, a fascinating and somewhat dizzying assembly of bloggers, journalists, activists, filmmakers, purveyors and providers of various goods & services... I came away thinking: maybe my Twitter account (@crypticisms) needs to be under my Real Name. Maybe eeeverything needs to be under my rEAL nAME! [sorry, caps-lock issues]

I don't have a dayjob anymore. If I am very lucky -- or very, very unlucky -- I may never have one again. About now might be a good time for me to rustle up some writing credits and so forth.

This blog will continue to be a Collective endeavor, even if all/most of the actual postings are made by me. But elsewhere in webworld? We shall see...