Crack That Whip

I've been working in pairs this week, first it was for a Guild order. Even though the catalog states "each is unique and will vary slightly" keeping to the original design is very important. To take the pressure off making a perfect sculpture that is representative of the photo the customer sees from the original, I make two and my stomach isn't in knots! Making two at one time lets me choose the one I want to ship and leaves me another for a future order. There is always so much pressure I place on myself when I have a special order or commission and I've found working in a series or pairs helps ease the self imposed stress. I've also been working in pairs so I have enough pieces for both Katie's Gallery and the Bad Girls of the North show coming up, one for her, one for Bad Girls. I've been super inspired lately and in the photo below there is a very cool Octopus that I just had to make that's also going down to Katie's Gallery today. An art girl has to have some fun, right?!

I've also been back and forth to SteelFab this week and "Bicycle Bloom," my public art sculpture, is coming together! All of the bikes are cut out of 1/4" steel plate and have been placed on the flower center. We added the misc. sprockets for placement and I will have plenty of embellishment parts. We'll weld those on in the final stage. After the bikes are welded in place the whole flower head will be wheel abraded and the 6" curved steel tube will be welded to the flower cap center. The stem tube had to be shipped up here and will make the sculpture about 20' tall. It was important that we placed all of the bikes in just the right place so each bike had 4 points of welded contact. I'm meeting with the crane operator at the site to confirm the install plan and talk about how we will negotiate some overhead power lines that did not get buried this year...

With a good couple of days plasma cutting last week I've had plenty of parts that needed welding. I was able to weld up a couple of "History Fish" or "Gilperfish" as I sometimes call them. One is for Katie's Gallery and one is for the Bad Girls of the North. Bad Girls is just around the corner and opens Friday, November 5 from 4-9 and Saturday 10-5. This year I'm a bit sad because Will who normally is so much fun to set up with and is such a good sport (not to mention a STRONG back) is turning 21 that weekend and he and his girlfriend are flying to Las Vegas to celebrate. Yay for him and boo for me, not only am I getting older but I'll miss his help. Hard to believe it's Bad Girls time already I better get busier!