Recycled furniture: Chest of drawers

Aaah, colour! I could have removed the jelly bean background of this photo, but it goes so well with the colours of this chest of drawers...

Blue Confetti is yet another sample of my work with recycled furniture. This piece was a custom order, so it didn't need much fixing up, just surface sanding. I painted the original wooden handles and screwed them back on at an angle. This slightly "deranged" look is matched by triangles and a sprinkle of confetti dots.

Wood, acrylic paint, acrylic varnish. 1998.

Printmaking: Intaglio print

Here is another print done in the hard ground / lift ground technique (see entry 11 February 2010). I tried out a different grease medium this time: olive oil mixed with a small amount of artists oil paint. Parts of the figures in Encounter are drawn with this oil mixture, other parts with vaseline. Vaseline renders rough brush strokes quite nicely. The non-toxic etching solution is a mixture of copper sulphate, salt and water.

Aluminium plate, acrylic hardground, lift ground, 

waterbased Akua etching ink on Fabriano etching paper. 2010.

Painting: Acrylics

I often went for a walk across the bog while I was living in Curryaun near Swinford in County Mayo, Ireland. The path lead past a shallow valley with tumbled-down stone walls around small fields, once used to grow flax in. Beside the path stood a near barren willow tree with bizarre withered branches, grasping the sky. I needed to paint this.

Flax Valley

Acrylic on board, acrylic varnish. 2003.

Fabric design: T-shirts

The theme here is Rain, obviously. After all, I designed this series of T-shirts in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Canadian province of rain forests. People with umbrellas are walking past the highrises of this beautiful city.

Cotton fabric, Procyon fabric dye, Setacolor fabric paint.

Stamps carved in Speedball Speedy Cut block. 1997.

Recycled furniture: Chest of Drawers

Great quality: beechwood! I swapped this chest of drawers years ago in Canada for some graphic design work. But you wouldn't recognise its original look: base and top plate with arched lines... My trusted cabinet maker Alex Marcuzzi in North Vancouver beautified the piece with a pedestal base and a straight top plate according to my specifications and was kind enough to drill about 130 small holes along the edge of the top. I had this idea that I wanted a piece of furniture with beads.
I bought copper wire and beads and started threading. This decor explains the name Wired.
Then I started thinking about knobs. I made a design drawing and showed it to a welder I knew, Dan Llewellyn in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada. He made the knobs for me. He even thought it was fun work because he was allowed to be much less precise than usual.

Beechwood, acrylic wood stain. 

Steel knobs, copper wire. 2000.

Size: 81 x 43 x 125 cm

Printmaking: Intaglio print

The marks on the plate Ash Grove were made using a combination of hard ground and lift ground, the etching solution is based on copper sulphate. This non-toxic intaglio technique is explained further down (11 February 2010).

Aluminium plate, acrylic hard ground, lift ground, 

waterbased Caligo etching ink 

on Hahnemuehle etching paper. 2010. 
Size: 17 x 21 cm

Clay sculpture: Gossip

If you look up the blog entry of November 26, 2009, you'll find a group of talking females very similar to this one. When I sculpted the first set, I made three figures, but decided to use only two of them. One was left over and I modelled a companion for her. 

The body language of these two definitely says something about their conversation. Unlike the more philosophical topic of the older group, this scene is mundane. It is about gossiping.

Air drying clay, acrylic paint, beeswax, concrete. 2010.