Yesterday, Sam and I went to the Salem Art Works to see an event that Sams friend, Pat Quinn was involved in. It took place at The Salem Art Works, an up and coming local arts place. It was my first trip there and it seems like the place has a lot of energy with a focus on glass, metal, wood fired pottery, and general fun and funkiness. On the choice to SAW, Sam and I stopped to see Sue and Bill Clarys shop, Maccartees Barn , a shop with a mix of fine antiques and really fine, fine art. Their roster includes local artists Penny Viscusi, Brian Sweetland, and many others ... Worth a stop if youre in the area. Click the photos to enlarge them ...
The event was billed as an iron pour with, I think, 3 or 4 four colleges represented by at least 30 art students who had prepared sand castings that would be poured. Here Sam checks in with Pat
In conjunction with the pour, for $15.00 SAW offered a blank for you to carve that they would then include in the pour ... Above, one of the directors carries one Sam and I whipped up out to the staging area. Interesting process. You have to visualize the reverse of what you are carving, a fact that stumped me for a minute. The tools available, a couple big nails and some mangled clay trimmers, showed that it could be as crude or as detailed as you wanted. The sand was surprisingly hard to carve and held fine details surprisingly well. They poured it, but it was still hot when we left.
While we were waiting for things to heat up, we toured around and checked it all out ...
There was a funky, summer only large and well lit gallery space ...
and a great glassblowing hot shop where Leif Johnson , a local blacksmith and glass artist was leading a workshop ...
Leif does incredible combination of forged steel and hot glass.
Back at the furnace, the pour was about to begin ...
fantastic to see the liquid metal rushing out of the spout.
pouring some of the student molds
Thats our sand, but we had to run ... Pat was going to pick it up for us at the end of the day ....
when last we left you reader, on the subject of pools tables, (almost a month ago), the pool table was set up in the shop and ready to go ... last tuesday, on the urging of our client, will and i took a long road trip to virginia to set it up. it was definitely the longest trip to install one yet, but on the whole, interesting, relaxing and rewarding on a lot of levels. its amazing what a difference a smart phone with navigation and an ipod with spotify can make .. conjure a song; listen to it. get lost .. find yourself .... amazing ...
back to where we left off ... after laying out the cuts on the cushions with a jig we made a few years back, we trimmed them on the chop saw and trued them up ... pictures of that operation in the previous post.
then comes the tricky part .. click the photos to enlarge them ...
will created the series of photos and notes above and below to document the process some time when we were making a previous (green felted) table, and he still reviews them each time he does the rail felting. its an important, fussy, tricky, part of the project that makes the table what it is. below are some larger versions of the same photos
the pucker ... see notes in the fine woodworking article about that .. you may need to be a fine woodworking member to view that ... $15. well spent ...
then for us came the set up ... in a very nice room i might add ...
the felt is stretched from the side pockets and centers of the end rails out to each of the corner pockets ...
and then the corners are stretched and stapled to the slate liner pieces ...
bolt on the rails and pockets and rack em up ...
above is a page of photos from our slide show of some of the pieces we completed in 2012. heres a link to view the 2012 slide show. once the window opens hit the slideshow button in the top left hand corner and then you can click through them as quickly or as slowly as you like ...at top speed, it takes about 2 minutes. all of the photos in this slideshow have corresponding posts about them somewhere in the 2012 section of the blog ... 
well, another 3 years, another camera. i think i got my first kodak 1 megapixel camera in 2001. what a novelty that was ... i used that for a couple of years, and then a friend who worked for field & stream sold me his e10 olympus. that was really the camera that got my attention. it took (and still takes) incredibly clear and detailed images, but it eats AA batteries and takes about 60-70 seconds from when you push the shutter to when you see the photo on the 1.75" screen. that one got me started though. click the photos to enlarge them ...
in 2006, i bought a nikon d70, which took some great pictures, and then in 2009, the d90 you see below with the scotch tape over the shutter release. it will take a minute to get comfortable with the canon, but im pretty impressed so far. these handheld, casual snapshot images are compressed from 6 MB to 200K and they are still incredibly sharp.
after briefly and unsuccessfully trying the nikon d7000, i went with the canon t2i, which as mr moore prophesied, more powerful (18 mega pixels) and less expensive, than its predecessors. this brand new t2i was less than either of my nikons.
it seems to do really well in high contrast situations. all photos here are handheld on the P for program setting which automatically selects the asa and exposure ...
our dining room at sunset
the kitchen, same sunset
my d90 ... i ran over it with the electric seat in my convertible, and after about 4 months at the repair shop, waiting for parts, it came back and the shutter button shot across the room two weeks later ... it still works though and will be fixed when the part comes in. it seems that nikon is shutting out its independent repair shops from receiving new parts, which is sad ...
the new one ... ive already dropped it once .. no problem !! havent tried the video feature yet ...
ill leave you with this one, a zoomed image, shot from the same seat on the couch as the shot of the dining room above, cropped and lightened ... its all there ...
Interested in spending a day or so looking at a bunch of humbling woodworking and artwork? A trip to The Shelburne Museum would be worth your while then ... I big recently went to see a Ansel Adams show and found that that was just a small part of how I spent my time there ... I had been a long time ago when the kids were small (15 years maybe ??) but had forgotten the depth of their collection ... I do remember the Dentzel carousel though ... probably the best carved and painted carousel youll find anywhere ... They have extensive documentation of the ongoing restoration and conservation on Facebook and there is more info there ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
the artistic color choices and details are really good ...
In person, they sort of seem almost alive ..
and they are housed in a beautifully detailed round barn at the entrance to the museum ..
with beautiful framing
and a wonderful quilt exhibition on the lower level of the barn ..
Two other displays of interest to me were regarding painters who lived and worked for years in the Manchester, Dorset, Pawlet area, Ogden Pleissner and Jay Connachoice ... They both had a whole building dedicated to their work and Pleissners actual studio (below) was assembled there on site
on to the tools
and metal stuff
and the working blacksmith shop which Kits counts as perhaps one of the things that sparked Sams interest in blacksmithing and metalwork
Then there is an excellent collection of carved decoys in original paint, with info on the makers as well as at least a half dozen sneak boxes and market guns displayed in a house moved to the museum from its original location in North Dorset.
Then theres The Ticonderoga, a 220 foot long steam powered ferry that was moved from the lake across a mile of frozen cornfields to its present location ... It has recently been re-restored and is a gleaming example of curved and angled ships carpentry ...
I didnt have time for the Electra Havermeyer Webb mansion which houses Electra Webbs high Federal furniture and other objects from her New York City apartment ... Been there, done that ... Its beautiful ...
There is much more to see than I have covered here .. check it out if you are in the area ... Youll be glad you did ...
