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‘Impotent’, a movie I wrote and directed (and shot and edited), is going to be shown at Anthology Film Archives January 5th at 8:15 PM. Anthology is located at 32 2nd Ave New York, NY 10003.  Below are a flyer and a press release.  It took about three years to make.  Unfortunately, everyone involved has day jobs, so we were only able to shoot here and there on weekends.  It stars Josh Dooley, Philipp Wolter, Lauren Seikaly, Cotton Wright, and Candice Holdorf.  I’s almost guaranteed  to be a good time.  Lock up the children and come out to Anthology next week.

The Team Work show at Allan Nederpelt Gallery opened last night.  There was a huge crowd and it was a lot of fun.  Here are some images from early in the night before it was flooded with people and I forgot to take any more pictures.

There was also a very cool aerial silks performance by Francis Stallings.

The show continues next week.  There are three performances starting at 8PM on Friday the 10th and the gallery is open from 1-6 on Saturday the 11th and Sunday the 12th.

So, some exciting news, one of my sculptures is going to be exhibited as part of a group show at the Allan Nederpelt gallery in Brooklyn.  The show is up for two weekends, December 4-5 and 11-12.

Press release:
allan nederpelt is pleased to announce the opening of TEAM WORK—a group show that includes seventy-seven artists who work collectively to assist a major figure in the art world.

The exhibition functions as a social-artistic experiment to explore the similarities and differences in the work of this large group of individuals who spend the greater part of their day together. We may also think of it as a search for a common thread that could exist in the work through unified ideologies, aesthetics or artistic philosophies.

By gathering these emerging artists in a group show for the first time, TEAM WORK further explores the collective unconscious, celebrates diversity in a new context and opens up a dialogue for extraordinary conversation. This is a platform for the sharing of ideas and creative investigations.

TEAM WORK illuminates the necessity to create and reminds us of what power there is in participation and community—each voice, insight and expression of the individual is a contribution.

Opening: Saturday, December 4, 6–9 pm

Curated by: Eva Schmidt

Music by: DJ Kirmet, Albert Shelton, and DJ Mayonnaise Hands

Opening night Performance by: Francis Stallings

Performances by: Prema Murthy, Francis Stallings, and Eva Schmidt, Friday, December 10, 8 pm

On view December 4–5 and 11–12, 1–6 pm, or by appointment

Location: allan nederpelt, 60 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222Phone 718.928.4999, www.allannederpelt.com

I’ll be the one with the eye patch, drinking whiskey, and cleaning my gun.  Hope to see you there!

The new year is fast approaching and I wanted to relate what I’d like to work on in 2011.  I have two series in mind, one will include the sculpture ‘Two Figures Pulling Apart’, which will come under the rubric ‘GESTATE’.  I plan on doing a number of sculptures and drawings, and possibly a video as well, detailing the transformation of these figures from a single form into two separate beings.

This is a quick sketch of the single entity, the starting point, the two forms will pull and work their way out of:

The second series will be titled “Fossilized Remains of Imaginary Creatures’.  I will be inventing as many imaginary creatures as I can and writing histories for them.  This series will also be many sculptures and drawings, and perhaps maps, detailing where these creatures lived, if they’re still living, or if they’ve gone extinct.

Here’s a quick sketch I did of the first one:

It’s based on a dream my girlfriend had (Jana is a great sculptor and you can see some of her work at janastockwell.com). The creature must either consume human flesh or wear it in order to survive.

I’ve just started sculpting a skeletal structure for the first creature.  It’s still in a very early and rough stage:

My plan is to sculpt the figure in Super Sculpey and bake it.  Once the pieces are hard I can lay them into softer oil based clay to form the rock they were discovered in.  After that I’ll make a mold and cast them.

Just  a short posting today.  I can hear the collective sigh of relief.  At least I would if any one were reading this.

I thought I’d post a few sculpture pictures I’ve been goofing around with in Photoshop.   Mainly I’ve been altering the contrast and brightness.

This is the sculpture titled ‘Woman Bending Backwards’

I like that it’s dark and hard to make out on an initial viewing.  They’re even harder to make out in the prints because they became grainier.  I showed them to a friend of mine and his first thought was that it was a photo of a cathedral.  He was probably high though so let’s not talk about him.

Here are some pictures of the female god from the sculpture titled ‘A Two God Universe’.

I was playing around with pure colors.  About six years ago I did a series of abstract paintings using a different primary color for each one.  Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of them at hand, but I’ll try to find some in the next few weeks.

Although I think they are strong images, my main concern with the female god photos is that they aren’t cohesive enough to stand on their own. Are they dependent upon the sculpture, or can they exist independently?
Finally here are some images from the piece titled ’Two Figures Pulling Apart’.  They’re taken from a photo of the sculpture while still in the clay stage.  It’s the large connecting chunk of flesh located at the figures pelvic areas.  I used Photoshop to progressively darken the photograph.  Each sequence of darkening brought out a richer tone by creating more pronounced shadows, which helped to define musculature.

Cheers for now,

P.S. anything found on this site is for sale.  Including me.  Prices available upon request. Thank you

Hello to the unlucky few who may have accidentally stumbled upon this site. It seems appropriate to do my first ever posting on Halloween. My goal with this blog is to present an unpremeditated flow of thoughts and ideas, provided that I ever have any. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this thing with photos of new work and works-in-progress on a regular basis and rambling fashion, however I’m sure other responsibilities (that evil word) will occasionally get in the way.

Here are some behind the scenes photos of the molds I made for the piece ‘Two Figures Pulling Apart’.  I’m far from the best mold maker in the world, but these examples should give a good idea of one way to produce a bronze sculpture.

This is it in Super Sculpey:

I cut the baked Super Sculpey figures into a number of pieces then built simple boxes around them.

Next I packed clay around the bottom of each box thus creating a division where I wanted the two piece mold to separate. I also placed a small tube of wax in the area I wanted to create a spout, or pour hole.

After that I mixed up a two part rubber, sprayed a little mold release into the box and poured the rubber over it. After the rubber catalyzed I turned the box over, removed the clay, mixed up some more gooey, grimy rubber, sprayed in a bit more of the old mold release and poured it in. Once that hardened I had a nice easy two part mold, ready to produce a wax positive.

Wax was melted and sloshed around the inside of the mold. After it solidified and cooled it came out of the mold as an almost exact replica of the original sculpture.

Each casting however has a number of imperfections, such as holes which have to be filled and the seam line which has to be removed. This is called “wax chasing” and it’s basically cleaning up the wax in order to make it look like the sculpture again.

After the wax was ready I carted it off to the foundry where they added sprues and vents, then created another mold, this one out of silica, around the wax. The sprues are a system for controlling the flow of the melted bronze as it is poured into the mold.

The bronze is poured, then the silica mold is broken off. The sprues are cut and, as with the prior wax casting, all imperfections from this pouring must be addressed.

Finally the piece can get a patina, achieving color by alternately applying heat (from a blow torch) and various chemicals.  After the patina is applied wax is brushed over it as both a sealant and way to bring out the colors.

So, at this point you can slap a price on your little bit of artistic spewing and sell the bloody thing, the true measure of any artistic undertaking.

Happy Halloween!

Welcome to my website – some finished pieces are in the gallery, and check back as I upload more photos of my work and work-in-progress. Please contact me if you’d like more information about any of these pieces.