Month: February 2010

So the sound thing is taken a backseat to the making of artworks.

Of course, in my own head it’s all totally interconnected and the sound things are artworks and what I do with them when they are finished is also hopefully artwork but we live in a world totally ignorant of many of the finer balances that need to be made so I have to change tack and redefine what I do along the lines of being more interested in how something looks than how it works.

I’m still making utilitarian objects but the balance has moved from performance to appearance and while I don’t necesarly mind that, it’s all just problem solving after all, it’s somewhat like cutting off the hands to over emphasise the face and thats seems a bit of a pity.

So it’s a compromise. I am compromising myself to make money… in a purist sense, but I’m also quite keen to have some sound making facility in one or two art objects as well as doing music during the opening so maybe it’s also about backward steps to allow people to see the directions that have led to me to where I am know.

Whether or not any of it is important is debatable but I really have to go outside to make things so I won’t be joining the debate.

The story I wrote yesterday about going to Howick was read by the tube man, I did leave the blog address with him afterall, and he wasn’t too happy about how I portrayed him. Fair enough to as in re-reading the post it was fairly obvious that I’d used a situation that was alittle fraught to highlight another situation that was the opposite… and I’d taken no responsibility for the first situation and heaped all onto a busy man just trying to make ends meet and by taking no responsibility I’d even transgressed by using him to build my own behaviour into something without question.

My first thought was to change the last post to show him in a more favourable light but then I thought that thats really just more of the same and it’d be better for all if I got honest and admitted my failings.

I do suffer from the need to tell stories and in those stories I often want to define a moral. That the subjects are pushed and pulled to suit my own objectives is the actual truth distorted to suit my own definition of it. Sometimes its alright to do this and sometimes it’s not and in this case I have been caught out as a hypocrite because I often state that the means do not justify the ends. But I often also state that I am a hypocrite because I sincerely believe that we can only learn things by the depth to which we hold them as truths and then find them failing and have to change our ideas of reality and therefore be humble and honest about our always apparent and obvious, though we forget so conveniently and easily, risk of failing.
But in this case, and I know it too be true for I did feel the twinges of doubt as I wrote but disregarded them, I have been guilty of stretching the truth a little too far and not at my own expence but at anothers and that is blatantly a wrong on my part.

So I offer my sincerest apologies to a man who is obviously a fine craftman and who can choose to do what ever he wants and feel how ever he wants in this world. His actions are not subject to my judgements and I’m sorry that I was so arrogant as to believe that my own actions are beyond reproach. I saw only from my own eyes and did him the discourtesy of believing that his own view and views were unworthy of my own lofty worthiness… arrogance.

Should I be punished? Well the fact that I have lost a potential friend may very well be punishment enough as this man was obviousely talented in that he was not only trading in a competancy that people needed and self employed to boot, which is a totally under rated challenge in itself to carry on with even mediocre success, but he had a passion for another feild, allied but considerably different, in which his level was the equal to practitioners of which only a handful exist and are at the top of a field held in considerable esteem by the professionals lucky enough to afford the talents they exhibit.

So I stand cap in hand and my eyes downcast hoping I will be forgiven and that this backward step I have been caught making was and is a mistake on my part that I am willing to learn from and will eat any humble pie I am deserving of… and then some.

So I’ve finally in a position to get into building some stuff for the upcoming exhibition in honour of the late great Peter Sauerbier. I did the invite in Photoshop and got nowhere near the amount of info that I thought I needed but, as usual, not having alot to work with ended up being a good thing.

So it’s at the now renamed Pierre Peeters gallery in Parnell, formely Aesthete gallery in the courtyard at 251 Parnell Rd from the 9th of March to the 6th of April with the opening starting at 5.30 on the 9th.
But there we go, while I was doing this I had a call from Pierre and had to do some changes to the above artwork… can you spot the changes?

So thats hopefully all done and out of the way now and I can concentrate on building artworks at last. And yesterday a set of circumstances came together that gave me the absolutely excellent place to retrieve old bits and pieces to go on these found object artworks. The day before yesterday I’d finally fired up my latest valve amp and it went mostly except for the 6AU6 pentode. I had a look in the book and found another valve with similar pinout and ratings that I had on hand, a 6BA6, and tried that and actually got signal but still faint. From that I deduced that my 6AU6’s were a little worn out, though I had other problems, but for the moment I needed another 6AU6.
So theres a guy on trade me that sells valves in Manukau City so I ask him on one of his auctions if he has a 6AU6 and he says maybe and come visit… so I find an auction for a bunch of HV capacitors for 10 bucks buy now and do so and I get his address in Howick. He says hes at work 7 days and drop in anytime. The next day I had money so got in the car to go to Howick which is a good thing because I’ll be a able to pay a visit to the lovely Bogusha at the Uxbridge art gallery who I haven’t seen for a year.

So I arrive at this car audio workshop in the commercial district of Howick, which is still alive and well with small businesses (theres a guy round the corner who is basically a panel beater but does restoration and has an English wheel which I must have a go on at some stage), and the guys not there but the woman says he’ll be back soon and have a look around. In retrospect I think she meant his wall of valve amps, which I didn’t see, but I thought she meant his working area so off I went into the workshop with valves and transformers and broken open valve amps all over the place… heaven!
But without the owner about I’m always tentative in other peoples spaces, it’s just rude to be otherwise, but I was invited so I had a good look about with minimal touching and then this guy comes in and it’s obvious straight away that I’m not supposed to be where I am. I’ve been respectful so I don’t feel in the wrong but this guys definitely off on the wrong foot. So the guy has a job on that he wants to get on with so my order for assorted capacitors is a bit of a chore for him so I say forget it, I’ll deposit the money in your bank account and so can send them to me at your leisure, I’ll gladly let people off the hook they choose to get themselves caught on, but I’ve got a 20 dollar note and what I could do with is an OA2 valve voltage regulator for some SV83’s I’ve got. Has he got one of those? Yes indeed, and they are wonderful because when they do their job they glow purple and you don’t get that with SS. He wants 20 bucks though, which is actually quite steep but what the hell… ask and though shall receive. I pay the man, whos incredibly busy but still has time to then show me his wall of finished amplifiers… which I’m only vaguely interested in. Workshops over retail anyday for me.

Bit of a bad taste there but only because he was busy, and as usual I’m not, but I get in the car with the brand new NOS OA2 and go see Bogusha who is really pleased to see me. I just love women from the east of Europe, and can spend whole days just listening to their accents… I love it! And then when they reciprocate it’s almost heaven. So we talk for a while, being constantly interrupted ’cause shes actually at work, but thats okay ’cause we make some connections and intend to make time in the near future to be together some more.

I’m in a better mood when I leave, not that it was bad at all, and then by a series of turns, after checking out the Howick opshop, I spot this little antique shop right down the back of Howick, and even go past it but reverse dangerously back down the road and go in.

What a brilliant place! After 2 minutes I’m offered work! The old fellow sizes me up old school style and within five minutes we’re out the back for a good long chat all about life and I’ve found yet another old friend!

On leaving I say I won’t have a good look around today but I’ll wait until I have my artworks started then come back and find what’ll be obviously needed… And he’s mentioned quite a few times that his sheds out on the farm are absolutely loaded with piles of the old and precious and we’ve completely established that good stuff is better where it ought to be than the simplistic notion of just having lots of cash in ones pockets…

Don’t you just love being alive….?

Exhibition sorted… Thankyou Pete!!!

Last thursday I was in at the gallery tlking to Pierre and he mentioned something called steampunk and that someone had mentioned it to him, an american, as a place to sell my works.

I immediately thought of the movie steamboy, that anime film about the future as a steam driven adventure, and low and behold theres this thriving sub-culture out there where people all play dress up, mostly, but by affiliation there are a few builders of art doing interesting things.
This guy seems to be the king of suchlike and I like it!
I kinda reminds me of a phase I went through in the nineties with the newton rd crew just after we got into doing lotsa metal work so the kinda music making and alternative fashion got mixed up with the metalwork ethic with goggles, leather and sparks flying.

And then low and behold it becomes a fully fledged fashion and role playing reason for living in more first world parts of the world.
Just have a look through here to see what I mean

And me, how do I fit into this, that is the question I ask myself and realise with a little twist in what I do I could quite easily fit into this genre, but more significantly, sell objects to these people on places like Ebay and as an aside I have a ready built platform to make artworks for an upcoming show that is a tribute to Peter Sauerbier.

It would never work in New Zealand as I think we’re all a little too individualistic (when we are inclined towards bent) and the population base is just a bit too small but I’d be inclined to hazard that the idiosyncracies we do exhibit may very well have done alot to inspire the rest of the world towards these ideals. But such an idea can only remain an idea because to back it up with tangible fact is beyond reason and would be incredibly boring to try and investigate anyways.

One could also say that New Zealand, with its isolation and remoteness, combined with many first world activities, is obviously a seed bed for the new and inspiring, but thats not to say that the rest of the world hasn’t also got its outposts of obscurity where individualism can feed on itself and also have access to the detritus of medernity to play with.

It’s really that I do have to create something akin to bread and butter to fuel my forays into music making apparatus and have kept away, somewhat, from building the instruments purely decorative, and have kept to what could be termed a pragmatic approach.

Finding the Steampunkworkshop and the idea of just sugar coating a modern appliance with the ideals of a fantastic false world aesthetic is actually quite appealing and engrossing to me and even though I say false world its not in a demeaning way as I actually think that these people have a valid point to make in the underlying ideals that were prevalent in the victorian mode. The Victorians themselves may not have felt that their wares were built to last and built in obselescence was not even a possibility but the fact remains that so much of the stuff they made has lasted and did so because it was well built, used repairable materials and was usually specific in it’s functionality and did the job well. I agree with this and the underlying motivations in my own works hearken back to these ways of working where that which is built even lasts simply because it’s well built and in lasting it begins to take on an interplay between user and article that builds something else…possibly mojo!

Mojo? a relationship between object and user that becomes one of respect and care. Surely some other unmeasureable quantity, an aside to quality, comes into this that is a feeling that enriches our lives?