This is my friend Clare
This is my friend Clare. This is his studio. These are the paintings we moved to make way for his WALL-SIZED CANVAS!
I'm helping Downstairs Clare transform one of his sun lit studio walls into a painter's delight. Yesterday we rearranged some of his lumber and stuff to clear everything away from a wall. Today we used his drill press to prep six 1 x 3's planks. These will get about 12 dowel pins inserted each that once applied to the wall will become a rig for stretching canvas. The 10' x 20' wall will act as stretcher bars. Can you imagine?! Tomorrow I'll help him install the rigging to the wall. After that, he'll take miles of canvas, stretch it like a giant Inuit seal skin and commence to paint with gargantuan implements like mops I'm guessing. What fun!
And this, This my friends is why I'm happy to help Clare. Happy to serve he and his wife dinner tonight. What is it, you ask? This is a compound cut in my beam stock that Clare cut for me today.
I showed him the set and splained how I wanted the six beams, which by the way are convening at different angles and are not equidistantly set apart, to meet in the middle peak like a thing of glory. Then he splained me that the only way would be to take a protractor (!), measure each beam for it's angle, number and cut them on a tilted table saw blade, in order to cut two surfaces at once. You can see two sample beams joined in the photo, the additional four beams would fall into the cluster like a faceted pointed tip.
He and I are heading off in the morning to NOVA COLOR*, (which, if you don't already know about--I'm sorry to have held out on you. They are a wonderful local pigment/acrylic paint manufacturer that sell direct out of a little ally near us (and online) the most vivid amazing array of paint and mediums you have to see to be inspired by for easily half the cost of lesser quality product. If you paint, check it.) I'm going for duh, gloss medium and gel. And I want to try a black matte gesso in a syringe for the faux leading test.
Oh, and I went to a big art supply store today and got a 5 lb. brick of JollyKing Plasteline (what I'm used to from Michael Curry's shop--love the stuff) and a 2 lb. block of No 1 (soft) Roma Plastilina. Isn't is romantic the way it's wrapped in paper vellum? Makes me feel like I'm back in 1742 Italy. Hang on Tarn!
Tomorrow it's also going to be about wall to wall... well, walls!!!
*Nova Color Artists' Acrylic Paint is made with a top grade pure acrylic binder and is heavily saturated with the best pigments available. Nova Color Artists' Acrylic Paint is strong and brilliant.
Oh my god. I can only imagine if I had tried to cut those wood strips like that! It woulkd look like a Picasso rendering of a Rube Goldberg device on acid. Go Clare!
ReplyDelete...It's awesome to know a real honest to goodness craftsman, isn't it?
Tewtelly. I should be going in and out of his place everyday, learning how to use all the machines and using his brain for all dis shazizle.
ReplyDeleteHerself's dinner was heavenly tasting blessed with loving as only she does ever so well
ReplyDeleteThanks Nab
*blush* Jeane, I didn't know you visit here! I'm serious, your Clare is heaven sent. I can't imagine two more perfectly perfect nabs than you lot. Glad have a chance to say so publicly.
ReplyDeleteTheers math in them thar cuts.
ReplyDeleteA thing of beauty.
Yep, beautimous...and wall sized canvases?....sounds dreamy...
ReplyDeleteI know, Mark! When Clare said the word protractor my mental sphincter bunched up. I have to go buy one tomorrow. If I can pull off measuring these degrees?! I will feel so superhuman.
ReplyDeleteJeffery, you too can have a wall canvas, just move into an affordable artist loft where you don't have to worry about spilling paint on the floor! As long as the Mrs. doesn't need fancy, it is so dreamy for us mess makers.
My art teacher used to paint on unstretched canvasses laid out on the floor, using pushbrooms squeegees and mops etc.
ReplyDeleteProbably not recommended for apartment dwellers.....
There's tremendous freedom in living gritty. Once I experienced it, I looked back on all my normal apartments and made a firm new rule for myself; "Carpet Is Wrong."
ReplyDeleteCarpet is evil for an artist :) I don't think I could paint on the floor like that, I need to be up-close-and-personal, face-to-face with the canvas...even use my hands/fingers sometimes instead of brushes etc when I really need to get in there :)...as for my Mrs, I'm all the fancy she needs :P
ReplyDelete....lucky for me :)
(very very lucky....have I mentioned we havent eaten at our kitchen table since I started this stop-mo bizness?...yikes...)
I nominate all satellite bodies in the cosmos be sainted for the things they patiently put up with.
ReplyDeleteI like some of Clare's paintings does he have a web site?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip on Nova Color, do you like their paint?
It looks great, Oh to dream of buying quarts of acrylic instead of 4 oz tubes.
I hear you on the Roma clay, I have a bunch of the number 4 which is way to hard for
most work, but I love the old world feel and look of the glassine paper.
The perfect comment, Mark, yes, Clare does have a web site clarezero.com. It shows a few of his mixed media/watercolors. He's works on gorgeous large canvases as well. I've got to get after him to post more there. I know he sells high quality ink jet prints of many of his "God Pages" (A daily art meditation he did in 2004) $25 for an 8.5 x 11 inches on photo or watercolor paper.
ReplyDeleteNova Color is da bomb! You get giant pint jars of luscious inspiring rich color for a few dollars! It's unreal and addictive. The place is so cool. It's a little store front in front of the factory in an alley in Culver City that has a few white book cases with the containers of paints and mediums in various sizes, smallest being pints, quarts and gallon jugs of some. Brushes, bottles, tubs, buckets, canvas and a cat--that's it. As you're there, artists of all styles roll in from their studios, in ragged clothes and bad bed head hair. AWESOME!! You just want to go hang out and have coffee with all of them. The place rocks hard and when I told Barbara (the nicest sales woman there) that I mentioned Nova on my blog she didn't say thanks, she said; "Oh, are they gonna thank you for that--everyone who discoveres us is thrilled". Man, that's a truth.
I knew that I knew you from Italy! Fratello dell'artista! Ciao.
I think you may have mentioned Clare's web site previously, thanks for the link.
ReplyDelete< "Oh, are they gonna thank you for that...">
That is funny but probably true, Nova sounds too good to be true. I have got to try some of their paint.
I think I know what you mean, the vibe in that store must be great. So much color, so many artists!
Anch'io Sono Pittore! Ciao.
Yes, please try Nova's paints and tell me what you think. I find them a thrill, I have to say.
ReplyDelete