Getting Into the Real Work

This has been my first week of actual fabrication work on Homes for Everyone. Of course it has also been the first heat wave of the season. Yesterday it was 104F in the shop. It was an interesting day! The truth is when you are deep into a creative journey you hardly notice any of the uncomfortable issues that come hand-in-hand with metal fabrication. 


Right now I am working out my fabrication system. I have one full house plasma cut from the .25" aluminum plate. It took a few tries to get the plasma set up just right and the same with the new Spoolmatic welding gun, an essential tool to mig weld aluminum. At first I just melted my test pieces. It was pretty comical, but after a day of practice everything is fined tuned. Changing from steel and stainless steel, two very hard substances, to working with super soft aluminum is a challenge, but one I am loving.


Even though the work is hard I am very excited and finding that I really like aluminum. Here are some images from the first week of fab work.

Ahh, pretty. Aluminum plate just waiting to get cut up.

More raw materials.

Layout and cutting with the plasma torch.

The Miller Spoolmatic mig gun, a dream to work with.

Me, plasma cutting.

Test cuts for the windows, pretty crappy, I'll be using a template to make them cleaner.

Homes for Everyone

Homes for Everyone is a new sculpture installation that I am working on this spring and into summer. This outdoor sculpture work is generously funded by a faculty research grant from the College of Arts and Letters at The University of Southern Mississippi. In brief the grant will supply all materials, tools, hardware and installation needs for the work. I plan on having the sculpture installed on campus for one year starting in September 2012, and then hope to exhibit the work at other outdoor venues around the country after that.


Here are a few sketches of some of the "homes".

The homes will be made of aluminum plate and tubing and there will be 6 to 7 of them in a range of sizes and shapes, they will be bunched together in a make-shift village. This work is a part of a series I have been working that addresses my own personal experiences of the inadequacies in affordable housing and issues of lack of safe homes and the number of foreclosed homes in today's negative housing market and poor economy.


Viewers will be able to interact with the works by getting up under and in some of the homes to read statistics about the current housing crisis.


I will be fabricating the works myself at the USM sculpture studios over the 2012 summer.

One of the fabrication layouts for the larger of the "homes".

Grand Opening (X2)!

First was the Grand Art Garden Gala and two days later the Town Creek Arts Festival, all to celebrate the Art garden and the artists whose work was installed. What an amazing couple of days!

Sculpture Installation

On the Thursday, September 1st, just before tropical storm Lee hit my friend James and I installed the Garden Boats on site at the Art Garden at the Mississippi Museum of Art. It was sunny and probably 110F during most of the install. We got there at 10:00 AM and started working.

James and at the site. Photo: Julian Rankin

Photo: Julian Rankin

Photo: Julian Rankin

Photo: Julian Rankin

Of course I was worried that something would go wrong but everything went like clock work and by 2:00 PM we were done. Of course I spent the rest of the weekend stressing out that the tropical storm was going to wreck the Garden and my sculptures but everything made it through just fine.


I have gotten some amazing feedback and people are really responding positively to the works, and the Garden is not even officially open yet. Sherry Lucas from the Clarion Ledger came by and did a great article for the newspaper, the print version came out in Friday's paper, real nice. Here's a link to the on-line version of the story.


The grand opening celebration, Town Creek Arts Festival, will be from 10:00 to 10:00 on Saturday October 1. It promises to be a super fun filled day with music, arts and entertainment, and food and beer too! Admission is free, I plan being there for the whole day. I know lots of friends are making plans to drive up from Hattiesburg and join in the festivities as well. It promises to be a very fun event!

Working, Working, Working...

You get the idea. Welder issues taken care of I have been able to get some good work done. I now have a check list and yesterday got a lot of items accomplished. There is light at the end of the tunnel! All the parts are made for the bases and now it's just fabbing everything up. Tomorrow I will cut all the pipes to length, drill and insert the pins and then weld together and attach the internal sleeve bearings. I have a few of the internal sleeves made up and will do the last two tomorrow. After that I can start welding all the bottom supports together. By the end of the week all the fab work should be done and then I have a good chunk of time for clean up and sanding. I feel satisfied that all is going according to plan.


I may be making a few small adjustments to the height of some of the works. You can see in one image that I have my friend John Mark standing next to one of the 'shorter' pieces, he's 6'3". It looks pretty tall to me and I may make some adjustments to keep the works at better relative heights to each other. Also to eliminate the sense of back and front to the works I am installing the support bars randomly. Not that it matters since they all will turn in the wind anyway. More up-dates soon.

My "tall" friend John Mark The shop does not make a good backdrop! Although it might look heavy I can put this up and take it down by myself. However, I will have help when I do the final install at the Museum.

The three 2' pieces with support bars.

Bottom parts.

Top parts, bearing sleeves for the support bars.