July 11th. I discovered that it would be hard to get a CNC design for the legs and arms. So I decided to carve them instead. In this photois literally the first carve with my drawknife. I wanted to memorialize the moment. This was before I had a work bench. I hadn't received my grant money yet, but I wanted to get going as soon as I could. I got this piece of wood from an old pine log from the side of the house.
July 12th.The first complete day of carving on the right bicep.
July 17th. I realized that I had the perfect model for my robot. Here I am measuring my friend and fellow artist, Ellen Flynn. At nearly 6' and with perfect proportions, I could not have asked for a better model!
July 17th. My model, Ellen Flynn in the pose of Creu Hudol. The hands of the sculpture will be facing out like this instead of inward. Such long limbs she has! :)
July 20th.I had to geek out a little after receiving my grant money! Here is the check with a little model I made in early July.
July 20th. Wood shavings from the day. It takes patience to carve pine. But well worth it.
July 22. Out to the woods near Fallen Leaf Lake to source some felled wood. We were just on the edge of the biggest hail storm I have ever seen. Heard the rumblings from above. Then, as we were leaving, we saw all of this near Baldwin Beach! But alas...no wood to be found for my project. There was plenty of wood, but not a whole lot of wood that wasn't splitting. That is hard to come by!
I also got a connection to a wood laser cutting specialist out of the Generator in Reno who will be creating the torso of the piece. Yeeesss!!!
July 27. Start of the right leg during the Tahoe Art League's Artists Studio Tour. My metal sculpture work can be seen in the background. I went between welding demos and wood carving demos all weekend.I couldn't use power tools during the "demo" so I used the good ol' fashion way of hammer and chisel on the knots. De-barking the piece was a ton of work on a green log.
July 30. The hands and crystals arrived!! I bought a lot of strands of crystals to experiment with. They came from China at a fraction of the cost of American ones. The hands are the perfect size! My friend Marianne, an amazing friend and furniture maker came over with some awesome power tools for me to use: an angle grinder and high-powered drill. We came up with the solution to drill holes on the ends of each join, place rebar inside and join them together with TiteBond II. Women power!! :)
July 30. Worked on the right leg some more with shaping and getting rid of the knots. With power tools this time ;) The knot on the side of the piece near the middle where the jawhorse clamp is will be the knee.
Here I am with my drawknife working on the right leg. I don't know what I'd do without that knife! The most used tool in my collection.
Between the end of July and the first ten days of August, I spent all my time shaping the limbs.
August 12th. The torso was a CNC laser design from an artist in Russia whose Etsy.com's shop name is, WoodForGoodMood. She sells incredible cnc wood designs for CAD. The cnc design had to be converted from cm to in which wasn't a problem. The cnc person in Reno who cut it though, had a bit of trouble with it and decided to cut out every third plank and use thicker wood. Because of this, the piece was pushed over a good 4 inches to one side. This made my work of carving the torso much harder. But I was up for the challenge!
August 12th.I brought the torso to my friend and fellow artist, Malcolm Tibbetts who is one of the world's finest wood turner. He made a piece, "Woodturners Dream" for Burning Man 2017. Who better to help me out with figuring out how to rectify this torso!
We did the best we could and laminated the piece together with Tite Bond II then clamped it overnight.
August 13th. In the meantime, while the torso was drying, I worked some more on the limbs.
August 14th.I got my friends and family involved in sanding some pieces :)
August 14th. I brought the torso back from Malcolm's studio and switched my work area from the deck to the side area off the deck in order to contain the mess better. This photo shows how much I had to shave off the side of the torso. The trick was matching the two sides.
August 14th. Getting closer to being how I imagined it.I had to plane the bottom (by hand) to rock her back slightly to be in line with how I wanted the legs to be under it. I also shaved the neck to fit the glass head.
August 16th. My woodworking friend, Marianne Rosenfeld came over to put the hands on the arms and shape them a little more. She is an amazing friend and artist. She makes these cool Adirondack chairs from old ski's. Check out her website here!>>>www.ForestFurnitureTahoe.com
August 18th. I spent 4 days shaping the torso. Putting me off schedule by 3 days. But on the 18th, I finally felt for the first time that I was going to be able to finish. The routing out around the knees is for the fireglass pieces that will be inserted into the joints.
August 19. It was pretty funny to wake up and look out our window to this scene below. Like a scene from the show, Dexter. :)
August 19th. I moved my entire operation to Marianne's house in order to cut the pieces to size and attach them to the torso. Here she is with her partner, Gary aligning the torso over the legs before we cut them to size.
Woohoo!! It stands on its own!! It's level!
Ellen, the model for the measurements of my piece stopped by to compare the size of the limbs to the sculpture.
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