Visit to Saltmarsh and some reclaimed furniture!

Last week I restored an antique piece into our new coffee table!

Making something old-new is a great sensation.. I think I'll do it again..

I just cut the legs short, sanded the top back to bare wood and painted the rest mint!

I was so excited to start sanding the top that I forgot to take a 'before' shot.

Visited Warnambool in May. This resolve of this patch of grass was a memorable visual from the trip.

I spent 2 weeks with my friend Glenistair in this studio/gallery that he built himself! Its called Saltmarsh you should go there for a cuppa if you're ever in Warnambool, Victoria.

We drove this beauty to the studio each morning where we made his 'bishops table' project,

an interesting project to say the least. It was good fun to hang out with his fam and was just really beautiful down there full stop.

machines dreams

I dont know why, but I have recently lost sight of something I really want/need to do-

Make built in glasswares for homes. Integrated interior outfitting/design is a direction i intend to re focus on.

Before I came to the jam in Adelaide, I had this idea I called 'Heat Treatment-Custom Glass Interiors'. To me it meant the endeavour to seek and create jobs where I would be designing glass to be built into interior spaces in a hyper customized fashion.. The ultimate fantasy would be to work with architects and home owners, to make complete ranges of objects; lighting, drink wares, product staging and built in glass art features- all built into the spaces, structurally, with a holistic approach to stylizing a space as opposed to just arbitrarily placing things on mantles and tables with no real continuity or cohesive design vision.

I came across these 2 photos recently and was reinvigorated and re oriented to the 'Heat Treatment' dream.

I have made steps toward this dream. Thanks to the supportive nature of my folks, the above snap is of their lounge/dining room, where my dad and I chewed a hole in a perfectly good wall in 2008 and installed a custom shaped nook and shelf to house a set of 9 grey forms titled 'Shady Characters' with LED spotlights in the depth to boot... very snazzy. Its almost hard to see in this photo but thats kinda the point,, they are so quietly placed in the space, that they are almost hard to notice.. I like that quality. Built in, customised, sweet.

I'll try to find a shot of it all lit up at night.. its a very cool night light and feature of the dining room.

This photo is from a 2010 client named Jane Clayton who commissioned two over sized Tangent bottles to be placed in these alcoves in her lounge room.. It looks like they are the only thing in there.

This arrangement is a little more pedestrian in that the glass was made to fit an existing feature but its still a step in the right direction!

Anyhow just thought I should post these to help get the idea back into my head (get some feedback) and maybe even score some action! You want something to this effect? let me know, we'll do lunch.

I figure if I could just be a better administrator of this idea it could surely turn into a good facet of my career. hopefully.

Heres a link to The Guild Shop in Toronto, Ontario Canada.

I have sent some work there to be in a show called 'In Formed By Fire'

It opens may 19.. If you are in the Toronto area, check it out!!

weddin' set

Complete!

Here are some snaps of the finished set I spoke of earlier this month. It's 8 wine glasses, 4 champagne glasses, 4 sherry glasses, 6 tumblers and a carafe.

It arrived in Sydney last week just two days before the wedding and as far as I know, was well recieved.

I also sent 2 boxes to The Guild Shop in Toronto, Ontario. They were scouting around on the Glass Art Association of Canada website and saw some of my work and asked me to be part of a glass feature in their gallery in May.. It was the first time anyone had sought me out to exhibit work so I couldn't say no.. even though it cost several pretty pennies to ship over there.. the box is in hong kong right now and i will be very relieved when it arrives safe at the end of the week...

I am heading to a mates studio in the town of Warnambool on the great ocean road this friday... hes got a studio and is hiring me to help him make a full table set based on a 17th century 'bishops table'

Its 2 weeks work, I will miss my sweet Monica... she's gonna hold down our Adelaide fort and continue getting ready for us to visit in Canada in June.

thats all for now,

a pickle under a palm tree!

These are a set of Tangent Bottles that were Machine Made By Hand for the Generate exhibition in Dec. 2010. alabaster with clear, grey with black, clear with white.

Sweet.

Momz' really likes these and it looks like they might go back to Canada after all!
This is by far the coolest thing we own. Our most recent art acquisition, a thing by Tom Moore.

Also, i was just about to post new photos of a full set of cups but they are a wedding gift to be given later this month. And, although the internet is a huge place, its not that huge! i can't take the chance of spoiling the surprise. I'll post them at the end of the month... :(

there is boats of other stuff on,

-currently assisting in the glass studio more than ever with more artists, its awesome.

-got a new business card

-Formocentric opening Wed. 6th

-made some sweet new marble designs. Marble Merchants blog coming soon- for now find us on facebook

-Marble Merchants will be at the Barossa Living Vintage Festival later this month. slangin' marbles, t-shirts, and rad marble goblets.

-preparing to go to Canberra Glassworks in August for 6 week residency.

-currently have 15 bowls on order

-new gallery in Prospect, SA to stock work soon

-new gallery in Syndey, NSW to stock work soon

-have been invited to exhibit work at The Guild Shop in Toronto, Canada for glass feature in May (first invitation to exhibit, tick!)

the machine is definitely alive.

Formocentric!

Its alive! Today I set up the show, finally! Nothing broke and the work is all shined up and locked under glass cases. Looks swish, I reckon. There are only six collections which I initially thought was too few but the work is well spaced out and I figure that is better than a cramped cluster fuck. y' know?
These guys are called 'Estonian Totems' Kind of a hybrid of the notion of 'heritage' as it pertains to my Canadian and Estonian lineage. They are assembled from 3 separate pieces and stand about 52-56cm tall.
This piece is titled 'Tangy'-Simply driven by its ultra offensive citrus colour, lemon yellow, It's the punchiest set of the bunch.
'Hollywood' Once this collection was complete, it just struck me as a grouping that represented substance abuse, usage, and vanity. I broke the flute shaped goblet the day after this photo was taken (it was the weakest link anyway.. the glass gods wanted it.. and sometimes its good to make a sacrifice) so it has been replaced by a black 'Axis bowl' similar to the bowl from the 'Tangy' collection. ...Hopefully some rich movie star buys it..
This set is called 'Eclipse'. It was made for the Generate exhibition at the end of 2010. I feel it fits the bill for this body of work and though it is not part of the 'Formocentric' show, it belongs in this post as it is from the same family of thought.. The idea behind its title is has to do with the relationship between clear and black. Clear and black are the same but opposite. Black is, in a way, void of colour. As is clear. However, they are visually opposite from a tangent perspective. I had pondered this relationship for months and one day it just hit me that the binary between black and clear is parallel to the concept of an eclipse. An eclipse is an instance where light becomes dark and opposites align. Furthermore if you visualise these 3 forms from overhead, they kind of undulate and have an ocular, halo type appearance where the sections of black and clear cleave together and do very much cross over one another in an eclipse type fashion.

'Eclipse' ........bam!

I will post some photos from the opening next week.

Well thats the show folks.. the 'machine made by hand' ethos is intact and for the first time i have developed a cohesive body of work that directly emits my style; presented by the earths original synthetic, glass.

Formocentric

Chameleons, 2010.

This trio was made for Generate 2010, the Jamfactory associate end of year exhibition.

the idea is that clear glass is amazing because it can adopt and transmit the colours that surround it. kinda like a chameleon, get it?

the time has come.

i know, i know it has been like ages since my last post, I'm a pathetic bloggist but we're gonna change that! I promise to keep posting as much as i can from here on out.. i hope i can get some crew on board following this thing again and hopefully keep my practice updated on line all the time cause thats what all the cool kids are doing. right!?

This is 'Futurenaissance'.

This piece was started about a year ago and i have been fine tuning the shapes and the title since then in preparation for my first solo show, 'Formocentric' which is going up next week!

Yea I like making up words, thats one of the perks of my profession, its allowed Ha!

I have been saving this photo until now and I just got some more photos done yesterday so they will be up wedz or thurzday. Then you can see almost the entire show in pro photos right here on the e-web!