Each time working with Patrick gets better than the last. Dumbarton Oaks has jaw-droppingly-beautiful gardens and Patrick's whirlwind design fit their ellipse garden perfectly. The Volunteers were top notch and Patrick ended up with an awesome sculpture.
Another great experience working with Patrick Dougherty, this time in my hometown. Struggling for a title we overheard a 5 year old say "This is Natural History" and the name stuck. I just returned from the woods of central Virginia, where we fought ticks, snakes, bees and poison ivy for our precious sticks for the next Sculpture at Dumbarton Oaks. Stay tuned!
Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of working with photographer Clay Patrick McBride, building props for his recent photo shoot with Zakk Wylde (founder of the band Black Label Society and former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne). Clay asked me to build a rusted, “king of the underworld,” crown and scepter that Zakk Wylde would wear and hold while sitting on a thrown in a gothic castle. Clay and I met, went over some initial details and then we checked in throughout the process to make sure everything was on target. Everywhere I go my eyes are constantly scanning for unusual pieces of metal, and I had a stockpile of beat-up, rusted goodies that I was excited to incorporate into this project. Clay gave great pointers and was always open to bounce ideas off of. When it was all said and done I met up with everyone after shoot, met Zakk Wylde, and clay took this photo of us.
I built the scepter first. Clay had a handmade ceramic skull from a recent trip to Central America that he wanted suspended at the top. For the main shaft I used an old sign post that I had found in a seashore town which had heavy pits from all the salt. The post didn't have the taper that scepters commonly have in the handle so I had to expand the steel out towards the top and weld in spacers to keep the correct shape. The end of the post was totally disfigured by the rust, it looked great, but it was tricky to find a way to resolve the wild end to then make a place for the skull. I ended up using a twisted metal sphere to pull the rusted mess back together. The knob that originally had been at the top of the sign post I welded to the base and added a fence spike to make it all come to a point. I then biked around for scraps of rusted flat bar and barb wire to surround the skull. I welded bead lines and wrapped barb wire around the post to accent the handle of the shaft. After assembling it all, I topped it off with the Iron Cross from a Black Label Society logo.
The Crown required more fabrication from stock metals than the scepter. I used a cone calculator online to figure out the proper cut to make in a flat sheet of steel to create the base. It's weird holding a rainbow shaped piece of flat metal and hoping that the two ends will meet together and make a cone shape, but I put it in my ring roller and it did it! I cut a 10 degree cut into the square tube posts to make the crown start to become more vertical. Then I added fence spikes, also welded in at an angle, so they pointed straight up. To rust the stock metal I submerged it in a salty bath and gave it 50amps of juice with a car charge. I left it in there Electroetching for a couple hours and it came out with a good amount of red/orange rust as desired. At that point I didn't know exactly how far to take it, so before proceeding I contacted clay and he gave me some pointers and the go ahead for a totally raw, mean looking crown with thick chain and barb wire. When I tried it on the heavy crown had some painful pressure points against my dome so I tied in some rubber supports cut from a blown inner tube. This peeked my interest to do some research and I found one King's crown that weighed 75 lbs!
Did you type the title of this post into Google only to find no instructions for rebuilding your leaking VW brake proportioning valve? I did! Well, rest assured, you don't have to spend $140+ for a new one. You can just clean it out and put new o-rings in it. Mine was leaking in the middle, where there is an o-ring band around it. I assumed that this is where the whole thing screwed apart, but I found that the o-ring actually just covered a tiny tiny hole. It screws apart from the top and you just yank that brass plunger piece out with some needle-nose pliers. The top of the brass plunger has what looks like a screw driver slot, but trust me, turning it with a screw driver does nothing. Pull it out, clean it up, get new o-rings, put it back together, fixed. My o-rings looked fine at first glance, but after further investigation I saw tiny striations that were letting the brake fluid by.
P.S. If you find yourself replacing a starter on a 3rd generation Jetta (or probably others), support the engine with a jack or some stands... those clever Germans thought it was a hoot to use the bolts from the starter to also hold the engine to the engine mount.
The last photo I saw of you was taken by a traffic cam on Queens Blvd as we blasted through a red light. Your photo was footed with identifying times and numbers resembling a mug shot! It was unbearable seeing you depicted like that. Where is the humanity. Money never really meant anything to you, and it surely doesn't now, but together, that day, we made the City of New York 50 bucks richer. Although at times things were rough, we really did have a good go of it, and you are missed. On SNL they reported that James Brown's body was not cremated, but rather donated to fix other sex machines... may your soul live on in the drivetrains of other Vambulances.
After a rough winter, things are starting to pop out of the ground at The Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is an amazing city and it hosts this fabulous arboretum, full of energetic, hard-working, welcoming characters whose vast knowledge of plants and driven work ethic keep the place looking breathtakingly beautiful.
This past winter PA had record-breaking snow both in feet and in weight. Patrick Dougherty's sculptures are designed to withstand the local weather, be it wind in San-Fran, a torrential rain up the coast, or northern snow. This year's snow in PA was so far above what could be expected in the area that the one-year-old Summer Palace took a premature slumber.
People remarked that it looked "deflated," "sat on," and "melted," but no longer. For the past three weeks I teamed up with the Morris Arboretum and pumped some life into the Summer Palace. We literally pumped it up using an automotive floor jack and then reinforced the weakened areas. For the most part sticks have a memory of the shape in which they dried, and most of them popped back into place. However, although strong, dry sticks are also brittle and some of the main structural limbs had to be replaced.
Knowing that we couldn't bring it all the way back up to its original splendor, we lifted the sculpture as high as it would spring back without causing further damage. It is now aesthetically approachable and safe to explore. Visitors are able to enjoy walking in an around the Summer Palace once again.
Many thanks to the Morris Arboretum and extra thanks to Patrick Dougherty for his initial creation and his personal recommendation for me to work on the reconstruction, Patrice Sutton for spearheading the rebuild, Imogen Anderson for her tireless work, Drew Hawkes and Dan Church for continually being on the scene with a needed extra hand, materials, and supplies.
The top photo is the rebuilt state, the next was taken half-way through the rebuild, the next is the fallen state, then the destructive snow, and the last photo is its first built state.
It's alivc! No lights, no insurance, no license, no registration, no helmet, no care... I road my bike back and forth on North Henry Street last night powered by diesel! I now rank among the few other nuts who need to put a diesel engine in a motorcycle. After years of lugging the frame and engine around, I finally just bit the bullet and fabricated the few extra parts needed to complete the bike, et voila!
Another great experience working with Patrick Dougherty, this time in my hometown. Struggling for a title we overheard a 5 year old say "This is Natural History" and the name stuck. I just returned from the woods of central Virginia, where we fought ticks, snakes, bees and poison ivy for our precious sticks for the next Sculpture at Dumbarton Oaks. Stay tuned!
After a rough winter, things are starting to pop out of the ground at The Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is an amazing city and it hosts this fabulous arboretum, full of energetic, hard-working, welcoming characters whose vast knowledge of plants and driven work ethic keep the place looking breathtakingly beautiful. 
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