VMI Timberframing, 2013

Featured

So last year I went with MassArt to Virginia to take part in a collaborative project between said school, the Virginia Military Institute, and the Timber Framer’s Guild.  And this year we did it again.  Most students, more cadets, and more fun.  The students designed the structure for a Habitat for Humanity community that was being built not far from where we all stayed and worked, on the Mullen’s property in Rockbridge County.  It’s always a treat to do these projects, a real escape from life into something idyllic and workmanlike, and this was no exception.  Check out some photos below.

Straps smithed on-site

Straps smithed on-site

Continue reading

Assorted lifecasts: plaster, alginate & cement

Featured

I took a moldmaking class this past semester, dealing a lot with making and using plaster molds and casts of live things (body parts, faces, animals, etc.) and moving into rubber and multiple casts of inanimate things.  This is part one of that work. Continue reading

Footstool (as birthday present)

Featured

One of my roommates had a birthday recently, and when I thought about gifts it ocurred to me that she reclined in her family’s old armchair pretty often.  She’d told us a story of how it had once had a matching footstool, but nobody in the family could seem to remember what happened to it, so I decided to make her one.  Full of figuring and learning the lathe (yay!), this project brought some challenges, but was an overall good learning experience.

Upholstery?

Upholstery?

Continue reading

The Gwozdziec Synagogue in Sanok, Poland

Featured

IMG_5157 Yup, I went to Poland.  To help build a timber frame synagogue.  A replica of the 1731 place of worship.  It was pretty awesome.

The Timber Framer’s Guild was commissioned to build this structure, and Handshouse Studio organized a student volunteer opportunity to help with its construction.  My group flew into Warsaw, where we stayed for about three days, and then traveled to Sanok, where we were for about twelve, to build.  We then went to Krakow for about two days and headed home.  There are plenty of pictures and memories from the trip, and I will do my best to summarize them here :) .

Continue reading

the Cave

Featured

Open assignment, must have an element of narrative involved

Mid-second semester, I became interested in the idea of creating spaces, especially spaces that are completely unusual in their context. Like converting a work studio space into a cave that’s still completely functional as a work studio, so trees and rocks would open to reveal cabinets and drawers, etc. That would be a far more complicated version of what ended up being my final for Visual Language 2. Continue reading

Bones & Body Chair

Last semester I tackled wood from as many points of view as possible.  I made a wave-shaped bed form using an ArborTech grinder, I made some thin bent kinetic straps, a cradle that rocked diagonally, a creature head from a basswood log, and finally, this chair.  I’d been tempting myself toward furniture for some time, and had yet to make a real leap into sculpting or owning a piece, and this was it.  In about three weeks, I went from log to finished upper-half of a chair (for class it wasn’t to have any legs), and am very proud of the results.  The joints are still strong and tight now, months later, and once I get a chance to build stretchers into the legs it’ll be out in public and usable once again.  Check out some photos below.Chair in progress Continue reading

A Barn for the Old Stone House

Brownington, VT.  The Old Stone House was constructed back in the 1800s by Alexander Twilight, the first black college graduate of the U.S., out of massive stones, to be a schoolhouse for the children of Brownington.  A barn used house the students’ animals which they would use for food and money for their schooling, but had fallen into disrepair and was disassembled in the early 1900s.

Raw;

Finished

Continue reading

Moldmaking: Objects & Multiples

Second part of moldmaking was getting into object casting, dealing with releases for different materials, how to make various rubber molds, from injection to zipper cut to simple glove molds, and brush molds with added colorants and polyfiber for strength.  We had to do two materials of one object, a waste mold (not shown, but it’s a clay sculpture that gets a plaster mold – mine was 4 pieces – and then the clay is broken/washed out and the mold is used for another material), and 15 casts from a rubber mold of an object. Continue reading