Written off

Boy am i written off. Started at 9am & worked like crazy till about 3. Jen & Val came up from the Gong & helped out big time today. We covered the big fellow in clay. Incredible amount done in one day. He looks a bit robotic but the life will hopefully get in there with work. I found that one thing that i was wondering about, which is how crap will it look to have a ton of tiny finger marks on such a big figure, well it worked out that i used my palms instead, and really thats kind of the right scale for "finger marks". LOL. I'm totally stuffed now though i can hardly move my hands & arms. And have many many cuts. Dunno what hurts more everything stings & there's the itchybites as well. Anyway having the evening off tonite & back into it tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday which is the best day to work. There is absolute silence in Marrickville except for the airplanes, & no-one else in the studio. If i do as much tomorrow as we did today the thing will be finished. Of course i won't, cos i'll be alone, and probably still sore & whingey, but thats cool i'm going well time-wise.

Covered in fleabites from the cats flea collections. The house got fleabombed today & probably the only surviving fleas are the ones that were with me in the studio today.

No bludging today

Yes i actually worked like a whipped slave today. I dunno if it was guilt or i just need a day off between hard days (don't we all). Shopped for some hardware supplies, 10 bags special K clay, moulding rubber, got all that back to the studio by 11 & chickenwired all day till 6. Acetone surprise worked quite well on the foam & i wired the bloke up with some long strings of wire tied tight to hold the chicken wire better. Wish i knew how strong it does have to be to hold up 2 or 3 hundred kg of clay but i hazard a guess that it should be stronger than what i have made eh. Fingers crossed anyway. A cup noodle for lunch... a grand part of the new diet (not).

Now the clothes are in the washer, and i'm in the shower & off to jude's birthday party.

:)

:)

As the title

Bludged today. Shiftless sod that i am, i did SFA for the major majority of the day. My excuse , again , was i was doing my tax. i did like 5 minutes of tax in an extravaganza of monumental procrastination the likes of which haven't been seen even in my lifetime. It lasted from 9.30am til about 5pm. Then i had a nap. Then i was awaked by a phone call that crashed my phone completely. When i finally got the message it was that i had to get to the studio by 7 as had been prior arranged to weld something on someone's motorbike. So i had to haul ass then outta town or at least over to the studio... where i realised that the tiny surround of aluminium that was part of the swingarm would melt off way before i could weld the bit needed to be welded so i didn't do it anyway. Aluminium has a lower melting point than a steel bolt head & the chances of ruining the little circle were like about 100%. But you know its nice to be visited by a pair of handsome fellows with a motorbike. You do need that sometimes. Anyway then i did a few hrs of chickenwiring on the big bloke. Till my fingertips hurt quite a bit & i had a fancy new array of cuts on my arms & the cd player skipping like it took too much crazy drugs had about done my patience in. Also I went home specially to catch everybody as one of the housemates just got back from Antarctica. Of course i am here alone now & have been here an hour by myself. Young people, i dunno... they go out a lot don't they.

I had a cunning clever idea while driving about what to do if the foam body was still too big under the chickenwire. I could find out what solvent melts foam (acetone?) and fill a spray bottle with that & give it a spritz where i want less foam, and then a mallet hit on the chicken wire to cave it in & there you are. Ths job could get really too easy couldn't it... ah, no. I need about 800 more clever tricks like that i reckon.

Back to the usual

Back went on me this morning. Ah the pearleasures of being old, fat, & never doing any exercise. Been expecting it really. Anyway its just a warning but i'm now at home having tried to have an afternoon nap. Was woken by a large crashing sound & the blue cat has taken out the housemate's new addition a very large framed photo of the desert. And most of the stuff on the side buffet that had been nearby. One "i-didn't-do-it" cat that has learned nothing & a big mess.

This morn the people paying for the sculpture came flying in for a look & a meet up. They were very very nice & i even have an extra 2 weeks to do it in. Feel very relaxed now & entertain visions of going snorkelling once this summer...

Spent the evening wrapping the big man in chicken wire or more strictly, Vermin Netting. The new version is the same stuff only a roll is about 20cm wide & thus easy to cut & less blood involved. I used the whole roll & i'm going to tie it on with string or thin wire tomorrow. Forsee i'll need to peel some of it back to remove foam later. i skinnied it all down quite dramatically but there's bound to be some protrusions to deal with later. Still its good to get on with it. Will never find out i've f*cked it up unless i get to the point where i can actually tell.

Then i got a takeaway Pho soup down the shops. The dang thing come with a bag of raw meat which kind of stumped me. You got to wonder if they taking the p*ss. Anyway i boiled the soup on the stove & chucked the raw meat in & cooked it. Weird but i guess thats what u meant to do. Lucky i had a stove handy. Was very nice though.

Brought to my attention

It has been brought to my attention that i am perhaps being a little intolerant with my last post there. Maybe i am, but its my blog, dudes! And i'm not saying people shouldn't talk to each other i'm just saying i don't wanna be there where they're doing it, at certain times. I wanna be in my own studio alone where I get left alone when i need to be alone. Ain't that what everybody needs?

Also being looked at like i'm some strange species by a printmaker is something particularly offputting... Its like they totally have no flamin idea where i'm coming from whatsoever & consider me just such a weirdo. I'm not that different, geez. Can't they just ignore me. People ignore me just fine in my normal job.

Concentration & irritation

This morning got on with it. Finally the planets are aligned & I have my concentration. Sadly I also have a studio in a shared area & the printmakers came in after i'd been there a few hrs & was fully absorbed in my work. The more annoying one was in first, she broke in on me once for some reason (probably to say hello) and then a second time when i was fully furiously working to tell me it was ok if i turned on the cd player. Then she noticed i was wearing my ipod when i reefed out one ear to listen to WTFH she wanted. I reckon I might have a particularly cold slack vacant look on my face when i'm working & cos i'm off somewhere else & it takes quite some time to use my face again when i get waked up. Not to mention to effect on me of being suddenly violently disturbed for anything less than a friggin house fire is much like having a bucket of cold sick poured over my head & i probably have the appropriate expression for that somewhere in there as well.

And then once she'd totally stopped me in my tracks & f*cked up my thoughts she stood there looking at the half done bust i was working on. I totally can't stand it to the point of utter homicidal apocalyptic destruction when people look at my unfinished work without being asked to. Its still inside my head at that point & once someone else beholds it, particularly if its not someone i know or like, then its broken far as i'm concerned. I start looking at it critically too & it just makes me stop. Its just so lucky she didn't say nothing.

There is no judgement til its done thats how i like it. No higher brain activity allowed whatsoever. And no third entity in the picture. Just me & it & no third person's expectations & dislikes & smartass comments. After its complete i welcome every single-celled organism & upwards to come give it some, but til its done its not bloody done & its not out there.

Anyway once there were 2 of em there I decided OK i was distracted now & i packed up & left. My dream studio is one where i'm Bloody Well ALONE thanks :) Passing traffic of humans is OK & i do like company but just cos i'm in the same room doesn't mean i'm in the same headspace eh... i mean fairy nuff i do chat sometimes but surely a person can see when another person is really hard at work. I dunno maybe printmakers never get there.. (lucky no printmakers read this eh).

Sunday fire

Late start due to sleeping over the parents' & it being junk day i had to do some cleaning up about the place. Picked up some cool junk though.

On the way to the studio i let a pizza scooter in front of me. I like to take care of scooter riders cos they a bit easily damaged. Anyway this guy went straight ahead at the next right turn & was totally collected by the car beside him & splayed off down the road in front of me. Leapt up he was OK but a bit worried he would lose his student visa if the cops were called. Anyway he was OK & enough witnesses so i left. So i probably shouldn't have let him in, eh. Who knows, maybe he would have hit me instead. That probably would have been cheaper for him though cos of what a bomb i drive. Oh well how can u read the future.. what would be the best even if you could read it. My car is a lot harder than modern ones, he mght have got hurt more.

Studio.. set to on removing the glued on foam on the legs... that was a brutal & not very satisfying experience though it come off like a jigsaw & should fit mostly back on again.
Then I welded a cross piece for a hip type situation & promptly set fire to the torso of foam. I was kind of expecting it, to be honest, tho i didn't quite know what speed styrofoam went up at. I'd cleared a route to push it out the back roller door into the street & let it fizzle away to nothing, or if it wasn't that bad I also had a bucket of water nearby. The one thing i didn't quite expect was that using the magic helmet, when there is a bright light in front of me the visor stays dark. Thus i stood there after welding for some seconds in complete darkness until i realised it actually MUST be on fire, or i'd be able to SEE it. Hmm logic.. Anyway a few cups of water or 10 put it out & we were good to continue on, though its melted a love handle right off the poor bugger. For the next weld i got a bit of plywood offcut for shielding & that went fine.

Then i thought to myself how i was welding on a wet floor in holey sneakers & setting fire to stuff & i was alone in the place. Those printmakers wouldn't like it if i burned all their papers; though i can't really see any great loss there myself... they're prints right? they can just print em again... but tripping over my corpse tomorrow morning was probably not good for em & would be tedious & a bit of an anti-climax for me. I went & sat down for some rice crackers & cashews lunch & read an Art in Australia from 2000 for a while so the floor could dry out.

I've put the leg armatures a lot closer together & maybe they're too close now. I find this stuff very hard to work out, but keep trying is the only solution.

Late in he evening went to Talldave's as he is about to leave for round the world bicycle trip with his GF Gaby. I will miss them a lot. He gave me some useful sculpture stuff like measuring calipers, an industrial fan, a leather apron & some moulding rubber. And a bagful of wax :) Yum.

Now its late, and the cats are bored again.

Rainy day

Today i slid down a couple of stairs & pulled every joint in my left leg by landing on it funny. I blame the cats, but it was my own stupidity, and the fact they are slippery stairs. Just cos the damn cats are being cute & i was playing with them at the time & one stabbed me with a claw. These cats really are like satanic aren't they. They are Distractions, cause me a lot of Pain, Annoyance, Time Wasting and make me Sneeze. The good part is they like to pat my finger with their paws. OK i don't think it weighs up does it.

Anyway i went to the studio & sat down to do tons of maths calculations on the sizes of various limbs etc & i've stiffened right up. Gonna give today away & call tomorrow a busy one. I know what bit i want to adjust first, the way the legs join to the base. After that it might not need changing, and i can actually get on with it. So step one is remove a bunch of carefully glued on foam so i can get to the steel & then cut it off & reweld. I wonder if polystyrene foam can catch on fire?

Sitting

The subject of the big sculpture came today. I been packin it for ages about meeting him & people have said he is 2m high & u cannot put your arms around his thigh thats how huge he is. Anyway he is about my height & a big bloke but not terrifying, & very nice. There was one bit where i said, get the thinnest bit of wrist, and they said, well there is no thin bit. But anyway. He was very patient with us & Talldave measured him all over & i drew around him onto the wall for measurement & then we got him to do the pose. We discussed how he would have walked & i didn't realise i got his leg so wrong as what i did, though its not real surprising as i only had a pic of the side view for the lower leg section, no front on stuff.
I ended up driving him to the airport cos we couldnt get a taxi for him being it was 3pm & shift change time for the whole of sydney.
The head colds come back & i was exhausted after that.
But thats excellent, cos now its all up to me. I should have met the subject a while back, would have made it easier, now i have to make some major changes, but from now on its up to me to make this thing, i've got all the info & what i don't have now i will invent based on what i have. Which is good. Next appontment is the committee coming next week to see what happening. Til then i just work.

Got home & the cats looked so bored & wishing to go out that i let them. The fat one got stuck on top of the damn shed & i spent hrs trying to get the bloody thing down. I got countless mozzie bites & spiders on me & tree stuff down my shirt. Eventually i just left the damn thing up there & it worked it out.

Guess who's not falln for the cats sad little eyes again.

New found strength

Today i moved 220kgs of clay into the studio. Picked it up from the shop, it came in boxes of 2 bags each, for some reason. The girl there tried to help, she managed one box with 1 bag in it, but was sittin on the floor cradling another box, stumped that she couldn't lift a full one. The rest of the time she was on the phone so i basically did the lot myself which was a bit f'ed but there u are. To tell the truth if i had read on the side of the box the bit where it says "50lb" i wouldn't have picked them up either, but i managed the lot from the shop to the car. Then from the car into the studio i did most of them but i opened some of the boxes & done them in 2 trips, cos i suddenly had read the bit where it sez 50lbs & thought, hey that sounds like a lot more than 22kg. I dunno maybe in america they don't have OH&S or something, here in Aus 16kg is sposed to be the limit on a box or else it should have a warning on it. Not that i didn't feel they weighed something, but hey they look nicer in boxes than seperated out.

Anyway i survived that & seems the head cold isn't holding me back at all. Wonderful.

Then later went to see the subject of the next sculpture. Nice man, the pose is a bit of a worry but since the last one was no worries & turned out to be an arse, this might look bad yet turn out OK yet.

Strangely enough i was sure i had bought a motorbike from this very house some yrs ago. They reckon it was gutted & renovated in '04 & they moved in in '05, which seems about right to me. How strange that is. But my mate reckons i'm dreaming & all the streets there look the same & have the same elevation & same sorts of houses & maybe he's right. Sure looks just like it though, with a lick of paint.

A sick day

Chucked a sickie today. Didn't have to ring anybody to tell them i just didn't turn up to myself. I suppose nobody caring about you might get sad after a while but its nice for the moment. In the evening i took the big table Juz gave me to the studio in the back of the chariot. Nobody there so i carried the mofo thing by myself. I guess that was the entire day's energy spent in one hit. But i did it. It was like the energy expended turned into sweat immediately & dripped off me. It seem like a lot of energy involved. As long as my back don't seize on me tomorrow I will asume i got away with it.

Now to find some cheese for tea.

Massive

Had a massive day in the studio. Having spent half the night trying to breathe thru this new cold, and thru a miasma of toxic cats piss tear gas, which seems to be the overwhelming personality of my shared house at the moment, i got to the studio a bit late, via Mascot steel to get a respirator for the melted foam chemicals. Perhaps the respirator could be useful at home as well. I don't think they make a cartridge for cats piss though.

I soon realised i need some liquid nails that actually works as opposed to the useless shite fake liquid nails that i got in marrikville hardware that was double the price it should have been even though everything in the store is 40% off for renovation sale..... won't bother going there again, even after the renos, thanks... can't imagine paying full price in there. How do inner westerners deal with the gouging they get? Have often wondered that, being i'm from the blurbs, & while a small locality tax is OK, since rents are maybe higher (but maroubra ain't cheap actually), its not usually a reasonable markup is it..

anyway enough warning people off there, it sucks ass, but its 10 minutes drive to big hardware & i got some fast action liquid nails and some cans of expanding foam (love this stuff). Then spent the day gluing foam slabs onto the big bloke & then trimming him with the hot wire. And sweeping up massive amounts of foam offcuts into a huge pile.

Anyway a massive day & the fact i stayed upright during it a plus. Hopefully this cold will just be loads of sneeze & not much else.

The day was remarkable in that i actually felt like i was enjoying myself sometimes. Hope i feel that way more often as the project continues.

Posing

Val made special delivery of a book on bodybuilders Posing. An older 70's book, its notable for the peculiar facial expressions as much as the physical expressions.

Today was spent getting over yesterday. its funny how tired you can get & not realise the problem is that you're tired cos of yesterday until you've wasted half the day trying to get started, and you would have been better off staying in bed watching movies. Sigh. Antihistamines to stop the allergies but the sneezing continues. I guess non sleepy antihistamines are also not very working antihistamines.

Stated cutting and sticking big foam blocks on the armature. First thing happened was i busted a crap weld & then i removed all the foam & rewelded half the bloody armature & added some strengthening braces. I won't want to do this later so best do it now.

Anyway got to feeling a bit crap from the formaldehyde that apparently is a chemical you get when you cut foam with a hot wire, i dunno why a preservative would be bad for you, when we eat so many preservatives, but there you are. i guess formaldehyde is the preservative you get when you're dead, maybe its to make sure you are or somethin. anyway shoppn list for the hardware is liquid nails & respirator with some heavy duty mofo cartridges that filter out EVERYTHING.

Skeleton

My Assistant & me made the skeleton today. I spent some long times bending my brain around the calculations & could not readily repeat any of em. This is not very professional but there u go. The numbers worked out the same or similar by doing it a few diff ways so I take it as OK. I had to take the model, which had been made according to no dimension in particular, and measure it all up to scale up to 240cm high which is 1.25x the height of the subject including 5cm for shrinkage.

Then we had to work out the angles of stuff. Argh. Ended up using a template. But some people do this enlargement thing by eye, so maybe its possible that the stuff we bodged will be OK.

Its pretty tall. I'm going to have to work out some kind of scaffold to work up a bit higher, milk crates are not that great they kind of wobble a bit.

Big day's work. Tired.

Electrickery

Ben come over in the morn & built me a hot wire foam cutting machine in like 1 hr. Amazing. Sadly he tried to explain me some stuff about how electricity works & that never helps much.

Then i went to an engagement party, it being old V day, so there was pink balloons, and the cakes were in the shapes of a pink & a blue motorcycle helmet, but luckily that was as far as the pink sh*t went. I chatted with many old BEARS motorcycle racing people & the bride to be was laughing at young Tom with his terrible limp cos they both broke their legs on the same weekend at the track & she was pretty good now but he'd just got off his crutches & was a bit crap walking.

And then back to the studio for a crit from my mates from the Gong. They picked out a bunch of stuff for me & i fixed that. Very helpful. This sculpture is going to be a full team effort, cos everybody i know on planet earth is contributing something. I'm going to be doing 5 hrs of speech just thanking everybody.

Big Plans

OK so i have big plans for the next 2 days. Since again today not much got done.
I spent an hr or 2 calculating the steel i needed, and calculating body parts & how far out i was in my work when compared to photos. Then i went & got some steel. While waiting for it to get cut up i started a chat with a car dude, i realised he was a car dude cos his outfit matched the flash paintjob on a riced ute outside. He'd left his lights on so there u go immediate opportunity to break the tedium of standing there staring at nothing by tellin him he left his lights on eh. And i found out his car had an s20 engine in it & i exposed my complete ignorance of those kinds of japanese utes.
So then when my steel was ready the steel guy sez hey you wanna back your car in so i went to do that. And hey as soon as i chucked it in reverse my car was runnin like poo. I backed it in to the place going Putt Putt Putt & obviously not too good. After having chatted car stuff i guess if i had any shame i would have been embarrassed about it all. Not to mention the missing bodywork off the back that flew away in the airport tunnel the other week.
So then i drove this malfunctioning POS toward home & popped it into a car repair. They worked out it was the coil. OK i walked home from there.
So i got some steel and some exercise, and those things cost me total 500 bucks.

Big nuthin

Did bloody nothing sculptural today. Uncovered the sculpture model a few times. Poked it with my finger twice.

Found out that the subject is actually shorter than 2 metres. Rackin my brains now to figure out who told me 2 metres so i can punch them, i think that stat has caused me a lot of issues. Latest is he was 182, 185, and the guy himself reckons he was 188. Still not 2m though he is more like a real human now, i think i can do this.

Bought some household dimmer switch parts for the electrical device Ben is going to make for me to melt foam so i can cut out chunks for the big version. Also got some RCA & din plug sex changers that i have since lost, hopefully they are in the car someplace, so i can run the electronic musical devices into the speakers and the macbook at oncet, thus putting weird noises into garageband.

Has tea with Talldave in the studio. He thinks its a great studio.

Cracked it

OK finally, after much days of work, reckon i have finally cracked it. Its finally looking like something similar to what it should. So after i done that, i made a cat to celebrate. Its going to hang on the wall by its tail & look at passers by.

Assistant

I had the aid of an Assistant this morning, the nite before I filled the small fridge there with iceblocks (that never froze), cordial, cold drinks, and we started early this morn 7am to beat the heat, but luckily it never got so hot we needed to quit. I sent her packing at 11ish cos 4 hrs was enough to get done the stuff I aimed at. We welded up a 1m x 80cm base with big wheels & a tall stick coming up off one end with props to make it strong. Thats the basic base & prop to hold the figure steady & then off that prop i'll weld the skeleton once its fully realised where the bones have to go.
Wow it was lovely to be there alone (with my excellent assistant). Those printmakers worry me a bit. When i mention doing any real work there their noses kind of wrinkle. They looked horrified when i mentioned 55K for casting costs. Its like they think i'm crazy & made it up, or else they don't like the idea of art = money. Gawd knows. Gawd only cares, though. They want to throw a studiowarming & they picked the very night my subject is probably coming in for the one sitting, tho he might do it that night or the next. I might have to be heavy on them i guess. I'm happy to work around people but as someone said, hang on, its a workspace...

Anyway i'm getting the welding knack back again. You have to be as empathic to metal as you are to humans when they ring you at the Helpdesk. They are all different & they all have their quirks & problems & if you treat em suitably it all goes smooth. Its way cool cos welding is something you can get good at like driving. Learning welding & driving were the 2 things that made me feel independent & capable when i was growing up.

Good things

Things are moving, they will pay me, the studios full of useful crap i'm about ready to start work there, and i got a mattress! Wow its like the planets are lining up. Not thats its been easy, its a bit like i've had to line them planets up myself, but the end result is the bit you remember i guess.
Drove friends van to get the mattress took a year off my life when i suddenly thought i'd put ULP in a diesel van but that come OK too.

$

Sent an email asking when they might pay me something. I foresee this project being much like working in ICT. A (member or 2 of a) committee wants something... nobody will sign off anything... massive fail potential... no input... failure to commit resources in time... much stress throughout... unpaid OT at death knell... unknown result, burn out after. If it looks like its sailing down the river of crap in the next week then i'm just outta there. I got to make that decision early, cos its physically impossible to do this thing all at the last minute.

Nother hot day

Gosh i miss the air con at work. Today I parked at work, went out early met the team at their morning cafe, then left them to their torrid workday & walked up the rd & got some Keane Special K clay to test, couldn't carry the "Wed Clay" as well, but it sounds really good on the net, not really firable but specially made for sculpting big stuff as it takes a long time to dry out & the shrinkage is smaller % than usual clay apparently. Sounds great. Grab some of that a.s.a.p. Then moving stuff from old home to studio to new home & from new home to studio.. blah blah blah. Gawd will it ever end. The cats in the new place are strangely absent last few days, tho traces tell me they are in residence.
In between residences stopped to organize a bike pickup for a total stranger who'd been wiped out on his previously spotless much loved & expensively modified but sadly now written off R6. He got carted off in the ambo swearing & i diced with trucks on Sydenham rd picking up bits of his bike while waiting for the pickup. Felt like a long wait cos it was so hot. Sadly the shade had an ants nest, i stamped my feet there & rung some friends i'd been slack about contacting. Emma's having another baby and a painting show. To have a new kid, start another, and manage to paint for a show, we really don't know the meaning of working hard.
Bloody hot day but they reckon the weekend is gonna be 40s both days so i better get some stuff done before then eh..
Apologies for the tedious contents of this blog..

OK then

OK the plasticene model is looking reasonably OK after about 10 hrs work & last nite mum sitting down & studying many photos & peering at it & we discussed arms & legs. Today it started to come ok. Sent some snaps to the customer.
Did a nice little head study for the project, out of loads of little plasticene blobs. Its got a wild grin thats kind of cute. Dunno if it looks that much like our subject but its a nice start to give me back my confidence.
Have some strange ideas that i'm a professional cos i'm being paid therefore i can't ask for help when i need it & its shame to admit can't do something. Have to throw that away. Gawd knows i don't hold back asking dumb questions in my computer job.
Got my dad to help me move my big old filing cabinet into the studio. They are great for storing tools etc cos they can take weight. Also got him to help me rearrange my rented room, cos since the sofa arrived, comfy & beaut as it is, its a bit of a puzzle to get everything to fit. I may have one too many tables. The wax table needs to go to the studio, since thats 'art'. Lets pigeonhole my life, maybe it will work better.
Will continue furniture removals tomorrow, maybe both places will become usable spaces. Hooray :)
Next problem, need some milk crates.

Start over

OK i threw that plaster dude in the corner (rather, carefully lifted him onto some milk crates cos if it goes on the ground it'll never be picked up without a forklift).
Disorganization meant i had to go half hr drive to the studio to get my welder & bring it back home to make a new armature. Though i did return via Stonevilla & check out what they had in "studio" space. Not bad eh but the ground is a bit uneven you wouldn't be rolling anything out of there. Anyway got home, 2 minutes cutting steel square tube, 2 min grinding off paint, 3 minutes of welding (now that i've turned up the amps to blow it away setting) and - walla - a new armature... That sort of thing can take me an entire day when i take it too seriously... Then add a wire skeleton 1/2 hrs work, & there we are. Then 5 hrs of adding plasticene & we're about half way....
Still it looks deformed & i think its just an incredibly hard pose or something... or else i've suddenly lost all my skills... or i'm stressin the hell out too much.
At least the subject ain't sitting for me tomorrow as i feared so i got a little more time.

Soundtrack... Skeptoid podcasts & Dr Who audio books.

Something so wrong

There's something so wrong with this plaster man that i made a wax one last night to compare it. Yes its very wrong. And it cannot be renovated. So i cut off its arms. OK now i think its head got to go too. Crikey its a devastation with the angle grinder & the Big Chisel & chunks flyin everwhere.
Moved my most precious possessions into the studio last nite. My welder & the magic electronic hat that i got recently to weld in. This is a very trusting thing to do as did i mention these are my most preciousssss possessions. So hell i better get there this evening & make sure they are still there. Oh, and do some welding maybe, just some o that stuff you do in yr studio, not that i ever had one before i wouldn't really know. In other people's studios tho i have sat about drinking, so that could be another activity i can do there.
Bought a bunch of steel today. The slowest man in Australia cut it for me. I mentioned he wasn't the fastest bloke they had, to somebody there & apparently he's on medication which has really slowed him down. Well thats OK then, i'm glad it ain't me. Count your blessings, mum used to say.

Its Official

Its official.... its too hot. Think i'm going to be doing the work early morning - sleep all arvo - work evening into late night work shifts when i finally get started.
Move in to studio this evening. Don't have that much to carry unless i do take the filing cabinet. Have coffee & cup. Very important.
The welder appears to come with many peripherals, far more than seem reasonable.
Planning on paper the cut lengths of steel i'm going to need to buy tomorrow. My steel shop they cut to size, might even get some 45 deg angles cut on some pieces, to treat meself.

Day 3

A hot day down the Gong. My last procrastinating moment before i have to fully knuckle down. Lunch in honour of my b'day & Jen gave me a Salt Box she had made from wood & painted, full of salt things.

I hit my head during extracurricular activity. Thinking back to where i was then makes me head ache again now.

Discussed the project, its good that everybody i speak to gives me another hint on how to do it. Eventually i will have the full story & that is good.

Tomorrow move into studio. I joke that i will take a chair & pair of scissors as really don't have much to take. Don't have a chair though so that joke ain't very funny.

Day 2

Work up in weird place. On the floor in Petersham. Though on the floor is correct since i still have no mattress. However the fact i still have no coffee there is a bit of a comedown. Cats try it on when i leave, attempting to sneak out. Their new hobby is the back yard.
Decided on a studio in Marrickville :) Move in Sunday.
Hacked at the model, tried to make it more 3d. Went & bought plaster.
Went to tea in Leichhardt with Tom's family, with the 2 maggotty little tackers throwing spaghetti about & bringing me rocks. Rode the bike over there. Discovered most of the engine is coated in oil. Argh it has always been implicitly dry as a chip this engine, clean as a whistle, dry as a bone. Tom reckons its cos i never ride it. Learned about the Case Study Houses. Got allergic to the dog & went home.
Gosh hope tomorrow is not as boring as this Blog..

Day One

Its day 1 of 6 months leave. I travelled 40 mins to see a possible studio... seems good, tho the 40 minutes is not ideal. Then visited the foundry, ordered a bust cast in bronze & they cut me a deal on it since i'm going to bring a fair whack of bucks thru their place in the next little while. And they hate doing fibreglass, & that was the other cheaper option. Planned out the next few months & deliverables. Pic of my sculpture is gonna make their photo wall when its been thru the laminators'. Makes me very proud i been staring at that wall for years.
Went home had a coffee & escape the heat.
Went back out test rode a motorbike for a mate & he bought it... flogged it around the back streets of Alexandria. Then i found a mattress & bought that... $150 off. Then got a phone call that my loan is approved. The yoghurt maker has arrived in the mail. Hellacious - seem to be Getting Stuff Done. Let's run with that!
No... sadly have come to a halt at home trying to explain things to a parental unit. Speed hump... amazing how they can kill your momentum innit.
Ash birthday. Nice nite out. Fun at the Trivia nite. They don't ask the questions they used to in my day though, the ones i know the answers to.

Last day of work

Hey so that was my last day of work. Think i got some stuff squared away like the DHCP changeover crapola but i guess the only people who will know the extent of my slackery will be the people in my team who get lumbered with whatever i didn't think of. But they would be used to that by now i imagine.
OK so now i have 1 less thing to worry about i.e. work & feel good about that. The RPM Challenge kind of intrigues me but i never did thing dot about it last year & highly unlikely to this year either. http://www.rpmchallenge.com/
Make an album in Feb.... yes highly unlikely. But still somewhat alluring concept.
We got mum back yesterday. In a massive effort managed to drop dad at hospital, pickup mum from airport & give her a cup of tea & some kugloaf, then pick up dad again & entirely spend only 22.90 on being screwed for parking. Walla a mighty mighty effort & success. Missed Judes farewell lunch but caught the pub after & dropped her home.

Cleaning up like i partied like its 1999

Cleaning up like i partied like it was 1999. Sadly there was no party but hey who's to know that. In spite of being moved out i'm somehow still here cleaning up for mum's return tomorrow. Godwilling & there is no disturbance in the force she should be touching down 7.25 tomorrow morn. Hard to believe after the amount of deliberate & accidental postponements over the past months. The house in need of a scrub with dad rattling round in it dripping tea all over the place & its getting another going over today, broke the mop, bucket leaks, washing machine won't wash, but carrying on regardless in order that mum don't spin on her heel to walk straight out again. Australia day - what could be more Australian than scrubbing the floor cos your mum is coming back from some heathen country, back to the cradle of civilization, back into the armpit of Maroubra.

DVD

Finally got round to putting on the DVD they sent me of this dude playing footy & surprised to find there was my man out there on the field. Having been making a semblance of the guy for a week i felt like he was mine when i saw him on tv! How silly is that, cos its not like i got it right or nothing. He has even bigger shoulders & his head is bigger. And his legs. Well everything i guess. How can you make this big fellow anyway? I guess 1.25x life size IS the correct size.

Annoying weather

Well i dunno who can do anything useful on a 40 degree day... so i went out looking at what is affordable in Sydney houses instead of trying to work. By golly what a total load... even these cheap ones are so overpriced. Went to see 2 in Bexley. They are falling down, smelly, badly fake wood lined, tinged with asbestos, and in need of nothing short of a bulldozer. Yet down the 'gong you get a semi-mansion for less, with a spa & a pool & a view. Argh Sydney - talk about a love/hate thing.
Look forward to cool day tomorrow. And no real estate.

No studio

My planned studio is now hosting a couple of printmakers. I foresee some problems as printmakers have to be even more anal about dust & dirt than painters. So looking for another spot now. Looks like Greenacre or Unanderra at this point. There's a huge building down Unanderra & could live there while i work, if they willing to let me have 6 months instead of 12 on the lease. Sounds like quite the getaway. Or Greenacre there's a big warehouse & they want artists, would be a long commute. Its only about 6 weeks worth of work to do tho so commute schommute who cares. Only 6 weeks. Yes i have to finish it in 6 weeks. Eeek.

great timing

Great timing - a DVD arrived of the game in question featuring the bloke in question. I can spend some of the 39 degree day thats forecast for tomorrow, sitting inside in front of the fan watching that & yet still be working. Now if only i can enjoy football. But it will be interesting cos i need to see this.
Meeting is lined up with subject, this a bit scary actually as never done a live one before & this guy is actually someone i heard of, and he's big.
Testing adherence of clay to polystyrene foam today, as well as repairing the arm that i accidentally smashed off old fumble fingers yesterday. that was a bit disappointing. But mainly cos i really shoulda known so much better than that, that its professionally embarrassing. Of course if you whack it there, really hard, repeatedly, where you have forgot that its reinforced, then its gonna break somewhere where it ain't. My excuse is the sun was low & in my eyes, but really... :P

Organizing

My organizin dude came over & we worked out on paper the timetable for the next 2 months for this big statue. Its going to be the biggest i ever made & the time is less than half the usual. So i better stop writing this & get out there & do some work :) Noticed one arm is too short so thats my first task. Its exactly like in the photo, but yet in 3d its too short. Hm. Well you do get that sometimes. 3d has the last word tho, since 3d is what the final product will be.

Letter from the ex-

Letter from the ex arrived yesty. they have finally worked out that i have gone near the tipping point from them owing me to me now owing them in their tiny minds cos hey look I'm still making stuff & they want a piece of it for doing fuckall. Hey, have i had a lobotomy since their last letter full of utter BS? If i have, then this letter must be true!

6 months to prepare for 6 months

trying to finish up work before i leave, don't want to leave a mess. Yet since i spend a lot of the day attempting to avoid making mess when cleaning up other people's mess its pretty likely i'll leave some when i go.
you need about 6 months to prepare for 6 months off.

Snowman

Little kids came to talk about the 1m high man i'm plastering. i gave them a hand sized ball of plaster to take, to make a snowman. Parents will be pleased.

Today i got a new 5" grinder... i like to think the old one committed illicide cos it nicked my finger the day before & felt remorse. Poor thing. That and the 1/2 kilo of plaster dust that it must have caked inside its guts. Its a Bosch that supposedly is low vibration. So of course with this new one i can feel every remote vibration in it as a sign, a precursor to its eventual death as with the last. Its the same model in spite of the last one only lasting 6 months, cos the vibe thing really buggers my hands.

Getting started

About to start 6 months off work to pursue my Art. Woo-hoo!