Category Archives: Portfolio
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Black Mask
Untitled Bust
Untitled Bust
Sunrise 3
Oak, steam bent, lathe turned, colored with essence of magic bean, and containing the secret of the next sunrise. Continue reading
Painting 2020
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These paintings are explorations of color, gradation and texture. Various application techniques were used, and the reflective nature of the steel and aluminum substrates, where used, add a depth that dynamically changes with the angle of view that static photos cannot capture. Continue reading
I’m Not Xapno / Intro
In the 1930’s, Harpo Marx visited Russia in the combined role of ambassabor and performer. The Cryillic alphabet rendered his name as something like Xapno Mapcase. I read this years ago in Harpo’s autobiography, and have often used it as my online identity. In reality, though, I’m not Xapno. Continue reading
Photography
A Collection of My Photographs…
Shop & Field: Bench Vise
After years of clamping work-pieces to improvised benches at various jobsites, I came to favor the endless versatility of clamps over traditional vises.
Now, however, I’ve decided it’s time for a proper vise.
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Maple Mask
Maple Mask
Excelsior Junior
I decided that it might be fun to replicate the Excelsior No.1 table entirely in wood. I did; it was.
Shot Blast Blades
This is a study of worn out impeller blades from an industrial shot blast machine. They’re cast from incredibly hard and abrasion resistant material. As hard as they are, though, the blades do wear out, resulting in some of the patterns captured here.
Tall Three Legged Stool
This stool was built spontaneously. No plans were made or referred to, and virtually nothing was measured.
The Circus Beyond
The hot, busy summer of 2018.
We went to the Guilford Fair on the first cool day in what seemed like forever.
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Quick October Trip
We set off for a trip to New Hampshire without realizing it was the peak of the fall foliage display. Living in Connecticut. it always seemed redundant to drive around to see more trees in the fall. I was, however, surprised both by the flamboyant beauty of the colors and the number of cars out for a look.
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A Few More…
…as yet uncategorized photographs.
I may try to bring some order to this grouping if it reaches some currently undetermined density. Until then, whatever.
Shop & Field: Toolbox Rescue
A classic old Craftsman toolbox came into my possession in a sad state of neglect. I came very close to simply scrapping it, but I made the mistake of hesitating, of thinking about it. Continue reading
Blue #85
Fish Eye
Vase with Blades of Grass
Satan the Waster
My best guess is that the New Haven Police Department dumped these guns in Long Island Sound. Continue reading
Tension, Painted Wood
Tri Color, Painted Wood
Shop & Field: Cabinet Heater
If you don’t keep your shop heated all winter long, a heated cabinet for water based paints and chemicals can keep them from freezing. Here’s mine.
Utixo
I
got into the habit of giving names to my computers long ago, once I learned how useful a recognizable identifier can be in a network setting. I’ve named machines after Ansel (Adams), (Thelonius) Monk, Euclid and other figures that resonated with me for some reason.
Pine Bench with Green Top
Bench Dog
A bench dog is a piece of hardware that fits into a workbench for the purpose of holding or steadying a piece of material. A woodworker might use a bench dog to clamp a block of wood in order to carve it, for example.
Small Round Triangular Stool
Shop & Field: Sandpaper
Barber Museum
The Barber Motorsports Museum in Birmingham Alabama is quite a place. On a recent trip there, I took a bunch of photos, but didn’t want to end up with with a series of conventional motor vehicle shots, however rare and unusual the subject might be. I knew I’d never be happy with awkwardly lit machines, and backgrounds cluttered with fellow visitors. I did, however, capture a few impressions and images abstracted from the whole that I think are interesting.
The Sloss Furnaces
I had the privilege of visiting the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark and industrial museum in Birmingham, AL.
It’s a unique destination. The sprawling industrial complex is largely open for unsupervised investigation, despite being in a state of decline that occasionally seems, well, only marginally safe.
Pacific Coast
My wife and I took a trip to celebrate our anniversary. We flew to Seattle, rented a car and drove to San Diego, hugging the coast as closely as possible.
In the spirit of a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, here are some photos.
Gibson Inspired Sunburst Coffee Table
I acquired a factory produced Queen Anne coffee table some time ago, and it hung around the shop serving as an overflow storage surface, buried under paint cans and unsorted hardware.
I forgot all about it until the day I finally got around to cleaning up.
The Sportsmanship Cue
Legends are born in events that we rarely take personal part in. Actions that transcend ordinary lives always seem to occur when we’re not there to see. Those near enough to bear witness later share their tale with a circle of friends, and eventually the word reaches our ears. This is such a tale. Continue reading
Mystery Toadstool
I’ve had a short section of a log in my possession for years. I have no idea where it came from, or what type of wood it is, just that it’s very light in weight. It’s also light in color, yet it produces dark brown chips. It’s a mystery.
13 Crimes (A Memory)
The holidays, and a co-worker gave my wife a bottle of 13 Crimes wine. Something about 13 types of crime that the English courts punished the guilty by banishment to Australia. I guess that could be historical fact, but a strange name for wine.
Refractory Refurb
I was tasked with making the patterns to be used in casting new refractory cement in an industrial furnace.
The job actually included the entire scope of renewing the insulating cement, but making these patterns was far and away the most enjoyable aspect of the project. Continue reading
Boarding Ladder Shelves
I welcome the whole ‘re-purposing’ movement. It makes fashionable what people all over the world have been doing for thousands of years as a matter of instinct and survival: simple conservation. Continue reading
Scribble and Scrawl
A box of my old notebooks passed through my hands recently. The pages were filled with thoughts and impressions in the form of words and images. Most had lost whatever had made them originally worth committing to paper, and I had no hesitation at tossing them, notebook after notebook.
One Hundred Years at Hard Labor
I’ve been trying to figure out where the time went.
So I put together a chart of the major blocks of time that I can account for. Continue reading
Unpacking the Truck
I’ve noticed the changing meaning of the word ‘unpacking’ in the last few years. It used mean simply removing items from the container in which they had been stored. Like unpacking your bags after a trip.
Increasingly, reporters endeavor to ‘unpack’ the contents of a complex story, hoping to separate and clarify the interlocking layers that give the story context and meaning.
Public Domain Images
I have a great fondness for fairy tales, and even have a modest collection of old fairy tale books. I have vivid memories of reading these fantastic stories as a very young human, fretting for the safety of the characters as their rambling adventures brought them to far-off and impossible places. I remember feeling wistful, even at that age, that I would never be able to travel there with them. Continue reading
Dream Cruise
This is less of a story of a technical undertaking, and more of a muse on human nature.
A few years back, I had occasion to work on a couple of run-down sailboats whose owners remained stubbornly blind to their vessel’s overwhelming list of flaws. Continue reading
Leaning Tree
Number 3
People were busy making things in the 1980s. This is just one example of what they were up to. Continue reading
Lobster Dan
Behold the intrepid fisherman… Continue reading
478 Door
Shadows move quickly, especially late on a winter afternoon. We forget, or maybe just don’t notice, just how fast the earth spins. Continue reading
Oyster Sloop Hope
For almost fifteen years, I performed maintenance work on the F/V Oceanic, a 41′ research and teaching boat owned and operated by the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, CT. Continue reading
Did I Dream this?
This image might seem like a fantasy created in Photoshop, but I captured this scene with my Canon A550, pretty much as it appears.
For reasons I can’t explain, I never got around to adjusting the camera’s built-in calendar, so the date recorded in the image file’s metadata is an improbable January 1, 1980. The probability of that being the correct date is very low, considering that the A550 wasn’t introduced until 2007. Continue reading