My woodworking projects are slowing to a standstill, but I still managed to complete American Flag #2. There are some sins residing within the work, but I’ll never point them out, and no one will ever know what they are.
I have seen many wooden flags, but never one attached to a flag pole. This flag will reside in the office of a friend.
The next project I have is on my desk, rolled up, waiting for more work. I spend a few hours creating a pattern, which is the foundation of a work. This time I want to make a pre-pattern using colored pictures of the woods I pick. The title of the work will be “His Majesty.”
For several years now, I have wanted to build a piece of folk art known as the whirligig. I began the year by telling myself I would not stop writing until my book is finished. Then, the words slowed to a crawl. It was time to begin building a whirligig. For the past two months, I have taken a multitude of baby steps to complete my first piece of folk art. I call it Spenser and Mary. It actually works but requires a pretty stiff wind to drive. I tested it with a house fan in my shop and am satisfied that it will also work in the outside atmosphere.
I am disappointed that I could not attach a working video of the whirligig to this BLOG post. Each time I tried to transfer the short video, an error message appeared telling me “Sorry, but this file type is not allowed.” I think Apple has a major problem.
The ides of March are here and Illinois Nature is waking up. Our grass is turning green, and the bare shrubs are popping with tips of green. Daffodils have been in bloom since the first, and our Magnolia shrubs about to pop.
It seems that my highest priority of late has been the art piece I am working on. I’ve not written a word in a week, and I am ashamed. I am proud that this original art piece is coming together. The best way to describe it is as modern art. The woods that I have chosen to make the Lotus pattern are unrecognizable because of the complexity of their grain. Most of us will not recognize the Lotus leave form, and with the confusion of the many patterns, it becomes a splash of confusion. That may be what I will title it: Confusion.
At this point, I am still cutting and fitting pieces together side by side to hide the gaps caused by the cut lines. When I began the piece during the pattern design, I thought it would be a piece of cake, and it may have been had I not decided to use more than one type of wood. The original pattern looked somewhat bland when it consisted only of Zebra wood. To make it more interesting, I added some Bocote, like Zebra, but with a very dark, close-knit grain. Up to this point, the lotus consisted of twelve substantial segments with many veins running through each. All of the cuts were closely matched. When I added new colors (Paduk, Purple Heart) to discreet segments, it was impossible to match the shapes exactly. That is where the work got complicated.
Another issue I am dealing with is related to the saw kerf between pieces. On paper, all the pieces are separated by a pencil line, but in reality, that line becomes a void when the pieces are cut. Yet, I don’t want to see the void or gap when I put them together. Another way to describe this is to imagine a circular pie cut into equal segments, except the knife with which I cut the pie is as thick as your pinkie finger. You have a pie with equal segments separated by a wide gap. If I want to see a round pie again, I must squeeze the segments back together. The result is a smaller diameter pie.
I have oversimplified the example to make a picture of what is occurring. The lotus leaf is a curvy-wavy, complicated series of veins that grows into a large circular organic composite of up to twenty-four inches in diameter. There are no gaps between segments of the leaf, but I use cut lines to represent the veins in my piece. Every Intarsia piece I make takes hours of cutting and fitting to match pieces of wood to make them look realistic. An intarsia picture without gaps between parts represents a degree of precision and craftsmanship of the artist who produces it.
And so, my friends, I am behind on posting because “Confusion” has taken over my interest.
