Fitting ourselves to the world or having the world fit us.

Mayana, Keiran's wife, put this video on facebook and while I totally agree with what Amanda's suggesting as a way to live life I'm somewhat questioning of how artists, or anyone who puts themselves out there through creative work, who don't share the same popularity as Amanda might find themselves at the mercy of the givers if they worked in this way.

This then says to me, that in her case, her popularity obviously sets the level of the giving as the givers are enamoured of their proximity to said popularity and so have a default to give generously.

I do kind of work this way anyways, putting my trust in others to appreciate what I've acheived, but it would take quite a leap of faith to do it all the time as it becomes entirely dependant  then not on my ability to ask but on the givers notion of what I'm worth... which I kinda worked with whilst of the ill-fated Chinaman's Hill Bazaar and found that people readily defined their own worth against my own.

So yes, with a popular following and a product that can be reproduced cheaply then this way of doing things is, and will be, a godsend to establishing new ways to be within our modern post capitalistic societies but for the person who labours long hours on what are essentially items that can only be used by one or two persons at a time I'm afraid that in no time at all these makers would be unable to exist.

But there still is something very important within what Amanda is suggesting and for me it's the connectivity that being artists allows us. Selling art is one thing, and it's important because it allows us to keep doing what we're allowing ourselves to do, but creating the art and then being out in the public and connecting with the public with the ideas that have been brought forth is the icing on the cake.

What occurred to me at the Chinaman's Hill Bazaar  while standing around my own artworks that didn't seem to have a hope in hell of selling in that context was that I could have put out a hat for donations for the service I was providing which was spreading inspiration... being there when peoples eyes glazed over and they saw possibility for themselves to go home and start doing something.

And dare I say it that this is what I'm looking for within the Steampunk genre. That it is both worth and capable of taking the next step, which it has already in a lot of instances, and expanding itself from simply a time to play dress up and do role playing and become a way of life that features all sorts of everyday objects and needs with a perspective of being that rates longevity and a studious attitude as uppermost requirements in being in life.

So if I go to this show and put forth all I and my colleagues have made and sell nothing and just have to take all the stuff back home am I guilty of being unable to find an audience or do I count the glazed over eyes that would wish this stuff within the life looking at it, and if things go as they always have, eventually finding a way to do so, am I then giving a service worthy of remittance... even if it were just a few gold coins in a hat.

Then if someone stands before musicians and throws a few coins in the hat for the few minutes they have enjoyed the music is not standing in front of inspirational objects we might like to own and talking about such with the maker exactly the same thing?

I suppose what it comes down to is whether the artists might see their work in this way and whether or not to get behind such humble exhibitions would or would not belittle their own attempts to be in the established gallery system which relies on setting benchmarks of worth through exclusivity.

Kevin's warmin' up!

My brother Kevin has his business called Leathersmith's and usually has more than enough business refurbishing other peoples shoes, handbags and sofa's but he's actually quite keen to do stuff in his own way from scratch, as well as incorporate the ideas I have, so this Aethercom thing is a great way for us to start workin' together on something we're both interested in.
He bought an old heavily built lounge suite, two singles and a three, a while back on Trademe and this particular design is very appropriate for the Steampunk genre so for the past week or two he's been filling his spare time doin' his thing on one of the singles.

You can just see the hand painted octopus on the back and this is something we're really goin' to concentrate on as time passes, the fact that this paint system that he uses to recoat leather with spray gun's can be brushed on by hand and be as resilient to wear as we all know leather is. It's actually the elasticisers added to the pigment, carrier and resins that allow this to happen... if you didn't know yet that leather is covered with paint!

Here you can see some of the details with various nails and a strip of brass.

And here's Scott, one of his workers, branching out into metal work with a sheet of copper to cover over the hole in the side.

And this is Boy, Scott's dog, one of three dogs on site while I was there. Kev's old pit bull cross Bruno, Boy, the huntaway, and the old owner's, who happened to be visiting, little scotty... so it's quite the dog friendly place.

But on my drive down there, to get the above photos, I started thinkin' about how we're, the makers, are goin' to front up to sell our wares and how we're goin' to do the costume thing which is a curse I don't need so it occurs to me that we just find a nice woman willing to do the dressup anyways who can front for us. So I put it to Sharla, who does reception and is an old friend's daughter, and she's gone away to think about it but the offers still there, and made right now, if theres anyone out there who'd loved to do the Victorian dress up thing, or is goin' to do it anyways who might wanna spend the day fronting for us... for commission on sales I suppose and some pocket money.

The beginning of the end.

I was visiting Doug yesterday and talking about finally getting round to just staying home and working on the house. Part of this was my current thinking that this Steampunk thing coming up will be my last foray into the gesture I started way back in 1992. It could be my time in the art world but it's not quite that so much as being... oh, I don't really know what it is but I'm just basically over making stuff and not having it go out into the world as it should. This could be entirely my fault simply because I ask too much or not enough and in doing so fail to meet the buyer in a place were the price of the thing is underneath the obviousness of having it in their life.

The story of the Mexican chap of the movie, who was recently in our lands, Chavez maybe (better google that just to make sure... sugarman, oops... Rodriguez) and how the man was this huge hit somewhere else and supported a generation but within his own life he had no idea and years later, well past the age when he should have been, he was found doing manual labour. Now this doesn't quite gel with me because for one I'm not entirely interested in being a big hit generational prophet of meaningfulness and I actually really enjoy manual labour but I'm really quite interested in how what we do finds it's time and how that time finds us.

So this may be the underlying question in putting a bunch of stuff together and stuffing it in front of a bunch of costume advocates willing another lost time into existence... and making it their existence. These questions of time and what's right for anytime are of utmost importance to me. Not so much being on time as the mixture of defining a time and then being ready to catch the bus that arrives with the set destination written across it's signpost.

Well, it's not that important but pondering such things has kept me within art, and it's adjunct of making, for 20 years.

It's kind of about realising, to a certain extent, that' I've been quite Steampunky for years, especially when it comes to furniture that uses old furniture again, and this current of revamping what's older is throughout all of my art, and going for an end to it all, not within the artworld, but within a context that possibly shares the intended outcomes more favourably, but without seeking favour as we might know it.

See, this is the trouble with both me and my writing, which isn't a trouble but it could be easy to see it as one, in that I just make it all up as I go along and eventually kind of realise where I might be going. Even this writing... I don't sit down and ask myself, what do I want to say?, I just start writing, usually 'cause I want to fill some time, and then while I'm just bouncing about letting the words fall out I kinda get an idea of what the underlying question is that is prompting me to sit here at a keyboard tapping frenetically without any real idea of why or how.

Because the question of timing is so bloody interesting. In one sense Steampunk is already dead because we're calling it Steampunk. Before it was Steampunk it was abunch of people just making something up as they went along, which may or may not have defied description, but when it wasn't anything it also could be anything. Now it is something it has an altogether different purpose... en masse. But does that mean that the people who made it have lost their baby?

Maybe this is why I've wondered what to do to fill in the Oval on this piece?

I think I'm saving it for last for some reason I've yet to fathom.

One more thing...

Finally got into the garage today to start the tidy up and, of course, it's been put off for so long 'cause I gotta rebuild the whole thing. Not the garage but sort out the benches and work areas so I can actually work in there 'cause winters comin' and I'll need a dry space to hang out in the evenin's. But while I'm pulling down a no longer used storage space I discovered some old timey 'lectrik boxes and realised, once the picture dropped into my head, what the final thing is I'm going to make for the Steampunk show is goin' to be.

I been thinkin' bout a coffee table of sorts for a centrepiece down low (gotta form the whole... what's Kevin say?, the vignette? but anyways the whole setupo has to be a composition that works to highlight everything.) but none of the stuff I've got has perked up with, use me, use me (well some have but I've said no nicely) until yesterday I picked up a huge lump of wood, round and about 1mtr across and about 60mm thick, from out front of a charming wee domicile in Remmer's then as soon as I see these 'lectric boxes the vision comes in.

Got lotsa cool old table legs which can be cut down to get the low stance wreck wired then I'll inset a bunch of these boxes and maybe even wire in some lights under glass portholes... rememberin' the show a few years back when me and Felix did some interesting light's for the blacked out show at Pierre's.

See, this is how Art works... not fancy shit to let everyone know you're flash, but down and dirty crap that been serving as furniture during ratty celebrations of fine dinin'... combined with flash Git's old buggersome castoff's.

Love your Dirt and it'll love you back!

What to wear?

The thing that really strikes me about the reality of steampunk as a people thing is that it's principally a look at me thing, and I don't mean to say that's wrong, but that at the moment it's mostly about dressing up oneself which then, of course, means you go to a place where people look at you.

But me and my little crew, or the crew I'm within to put it more modestly, aren't necessarily into being seen... we are into what we make being seen, but what we make doesn't hang off us so much as be built to hang around those who might want to widen the seen they are to the seen they are also within.

Matter of factly, though, we're going to be about those things we are tryin' to sell, and being about them means we might have to create some guise that's suits the proceedings, to fit in on one hand but be backgrounded enough that that which we make shines brighter than that which we wear.

I went to the last Aethercon and I wanted to be subtle in the wears I wore so I had this little backstory whereby I was Victorian but I'd gone to India and ended up hanging with the natives so while my clothes were indeed handmade I'd got with the whole Nirvana trip and had given up on worldly pursuits... I never got the chance to explain that amongst all the flamboyance, so this year I'm wondering how we still might embrace a story of a similar narrative whilst also being of the workaday quality of our wares. Maybe something like the Muslim men wear with a leather apron. Whatever I come up with it's gotta be simple and cheap but at the same time kinda speak about us as workers... at least that's kinda what I'm following as a line of thought.

Basically I'd actually to kinda not be there while still bein' there, hidden or invisible, so the artworks speak for themselves... maybe we can employ someone, already steampunk'd, with the guise in place to represent us?

Charles Rohlfs

The thing with the Art's and Craft's movement is that it's an almost anti-victorianism, in that within the age of Victoria the makers, of A&C were rebelling against the machine and hearkening even further back to what may be called medievalism.

But with our perspective within the post-modern A&C is just as much Victorian as steam engines and the dark mills of the North of England. So will Steampunk, with time and the perspective offered by years, meld into the ideas we will have of the early 21st century... be unavoidably connected as it speaks of a way within an age irrespective of it's outward appearance?

In a book I have of A&C is says that Charles Rohlf wasn't accepted by the purists of that movement and yet, with time, he obviously is. Does this speak of a universality that already is but we are unable to see unless time gives us the range. Is universality always there and of everything?

Anyways I might have a go at copying this below which really does it for me. I have the Oak in abundance, old bedheads filled with the dreams of bedwetting children, and I know that no matter how hard I try it won't end up an exact copy... I can't help but follow my own line.

Isn't it just beautiful? A profound mixture of austerity and playfulness that would suit a witch within an Amish community. This is a bigger version to peruse.

It's all so flat, the wood, but he makes it roundy... this is what appeals to me, alike finding happiness in a mundane life.

These though, seem to be the most obvious as they turn up most frequently in a Google image search, but they seem to lack depth and be overly showy of skillfulness, like ballgowns unable to walk barefoot across the dewy midnight grass as the lights from chandeliers throw the shadows of hopeful escapes.

Dam fihn bit'a cahving thow!
So you got the name and a few examples... enjoy!

Having started at last...

Things are being done. Is it my affinity for laziness that means once I start work I actually acheive quite alot... is it all that time pondering this and that that actually allows the back half of my head to work out process? I have no idea but it seems the less I do, overall, the more I actually acheive... which is often argued against by those who think I could acheive heaps and heaps by working all the time but believe it or not I reckon that's counter intuitive... it's like without the rumination I'd most probably just create heaps of dross, but whatever eh? 

So indeed, the Vicky Victorola, or Austin Hillman (because there isn't a car called a Vicky Victorola so I can't get the badge without making one... later maybe), or maybe that'll be the pseudonym of me and Simon, is coming into being.

I like where it's going, but then again why might I make something I won't enjoy the outcome of... good question, and I hope whomever buys it takes the time to get it going though the fact that it isn't is actually part of the art content of the piece. How much of our lives are indeed just pure artifice? Knowing such may be the difference between self awareness and unconsciousness but that's another story.

Fretwork reminiscent of art and craft which might be highlighted with red on the face cut and maybe Simon will add some little flourishes in the corners or somesuch.

Always my favourite view, the backend, the nuts and bolts of supporting the needs and desires of the great consuming machine of identification and importance. Where what's actually going on is understood and defined through the alchemy of deeper desires.

But at the front we impress, we doodle and dance across the possibilities of flimflam, the potentialities of design and drafting to echo the ease with which nature tells it's story as we hide the great mysteries of the machine behind what might be elegance... as defined, so understood and accepted.

Um, basically an old shelf cut out with the jigsaw to go over the speaker and ending, edging out to an octagon so loved by the bright and the beautiful of that aimed for past age... don't ya love nostalgia. Just like kissing ice cubes!

And this too will go to Simon for paint applied decoratively... once I finish detailing it out with the detritus of my own convenience... style!

And last but not least is the two seater with exposed springs which my brother Kevin will upholster in fine leather with, what are they called, stencilled designs of a floral nature, red over dulled blacks with rivets and strengthening corners and wear areas then I'll get the wood burner out and carve a few blackened lines here and there and maybe even a small carving or two... The Chesterfield Springer?