junk

Last weekend I realized a life-long ambition: to go on a road trip solely for the purpose of hunting for bizarre treasures!  CTP and I headed down to the San Fernando Valley region north of Los Angeles.  Besides being rather bleak, the area hosts a wealth of aerospace salvage businesses.  To sweeten the trip even more we stopped at the studio of Tal Avitzur along the way, and managed to round out the hunt with a trip to a barn in the middle of nowhere, and a flea market.  I can’t really describe why I love experiences like this so much, but I feel totally charged up from all the interesting things and places we saw (and hauled back).

Below are a few images from the trip.  The final series shows the weekends haul.  Click any image to see it un cropped and full size.

 

My upcoming diorama projects have compelled me to re-catalog a good deal of the smaller items in my collection.  A lot of this stuff just settles down to the the bottom of bins, and groups of similar objects drift apart into different areas of the shop.  Shown here are items that I’m hopeful will have futures as cephalopod tentacles and sea-floor life (plants and stuff).  Whatever happens, its fun to see all these treasures laid out side by side.

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I’m working on a new large piece that I would like to have four arms.  This is tricky because it means finding twice as many matching parts as usual.  I think I’ve settled on a design I like that I can replicate.  It consists of bean scoops, table legs, pipe elbows, coffee pots, and some strange industrial wooden spindle things I cant identify.  Ideally the wrists, elbows, and fingers will have a little bit of adjustability so that each arm can have a slightly different pose.

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CTP gave me these incredibly cool bomber pilot map lights a while back.  You can change the output from a clear amber light to blood red by rotating the lens.  It has always been my intention to incorporate them into a sculpture as eyes.  Its finally looking like I’ve got just the right project in the works to do this.  We’ll see…

Bomber pilot map light

So, I made these legs a few years back.  They were an early attempt for my Minotaur sculpture.  The proportions didn’t work out for that piece, but I held on to them in the hopes that some day I’d find a good use for them.  Last week I found this old radio and I’m hopeful that I can make them work together.

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The first Sunday of every month is the Alameda Flea Market.  It is vast, impossible to see one side from the other.  It has taken me several visits there to learn to pace myself, and not grab everything in sight.  The real challenge is hiking the mile back to the car with your loot.  This time I showed restraint and only picked up one old wooden radio.  The final image in this sequence shows an early concept of what I may do with it, though it is really too soon to tell.