#art
// 52 posts tagged
Jul 23 6:23 PM #202 3 min Forty Rings In Before the Arithmetic Let Them Close
Chainmaille WeavingI bought a sandwich bag of little metal rings at a market and got quietly furious to learn that whether they click together is decided, entirely, by long division.
Jul 22 7:52 PM #201 3 min Push the Vanishing Points Off the Page
Urban SketchingTwenty years designing actual buildings, and I could not make a fuel bowser sit on the ground. A weather hold, a re-inked pen, and the humbling art of drawing what's in front of you.
Jul 20 7:32 PM #199 4 min From My Eyeline It Was Flawless; From Theirs, a Wink of Grey
Close-Up Card Magic (Sleight of Hand)A club regular cut a borrowed deck one-handed, found my card, and said "practise." I went home to relearn bridge and lost an evening to turning two cards over as one.
Jun 27 7:47 PM #176 5 min One Pass Only or the Break Wanders
Stained GlassOne pass with the cutter or the break wanders. Copper foil, lead solder, flux fumes. Three rectangles that serve no purpose except filtering light.
Jun 18 6:11 PM #160 day 2 4 min Nine Days and I Can't Tell If It's Swelling
Bonsai Wire TrainingNine days since I wired the branch. Bark might be swelling around the copper. Or it isn't. Twenty minutes of staring hasn't helped.
Jun 17 8:10 PM #166 4 min One Point Four Grams Where the Leaf Used to Be
Copper ElectroformingStared at a leaf on my desk for fifteen minutes before realizing it was metal. Not coated—solid copper, grown atom by atom, 1.4 grams.
Jun 9 6:56 PM #160 4 min Six Degrees Down and September Will Tell Me
Bonsai Wire TrainingAnnealed sixty centimetres of copper wire, bent one branch six degrees, and now I wait until September to find out if I guessed right.
Jun 4 7:29 PM #155 5 min Purple Above pH Nine, Clear Below
Mushroom DyeingPolyporic acid turns purple above pH nine and stays clear below it—fungal dyes don't follow the rules walnut taught me.
Jun 2 8:52 PM #153 5 min Wrapped Twice Around and Tension Holds Everything
Shibori Resist DyeingDiane said wrap the thread twice but don't knot it—tension alone would resist what my carved block and aluminum mordant couldn't.
May 31 10:23 AM #152 5 min Pale Tan at the Coordination Complex I Trusted
Natural Dye Textile PrintingWalnut hulls, aluminum mordant, and a coordination complex that produced every shade of beige I didn't want.
May 28 11:42 AM #149 2 min Three Cracks and the Grinder Still Waiting
Terrazzo Floor Tile CastingFour weeks of rock tumbling, embedded in cement. Three days later: three cracks. Turns out calcite and alkaline don't negotiate.
May 19 6:13 PM #138 day 2 5 min Nineteen Hours to Leather-Hard, Twenty-Seven to Scrap
Pottery Wheel ThrowingThumbnail test said leather-hard. Loop tool said otherwise. By 10:47 the bowl was scrap and Diane was explaining why trimming can't fix what throwing broke.
May 19 1:07 AM #139 5 min Three Millimetres of Bronze and the Rest Is Grey
Raku Pottery FiringThe research said copper lustre. The bowl says grey. Turns out there's a difference between 'drop it in the barrel' and 'place it in active combustibles.
May 18 7:06 PM #138 4 min Five Attempts Before the Wall Held Its Shape
Pottery Wheel ThrowingCentering took eleven minutes. Diane said most beginners take thirty, which helped until my fourth attempt collapsed into wet gray chaos.
May 17 7:09 PM #137 4 min Thirty Seconds Working, Eighteen Hours Waiting for Cracks
Glass BlowingDiane handed me wet newspaper and told me to press it against 900°C glass with my bare hand. The steam barrier would protect me, she said, until I flinched.
May 7 8:57 PM #128 4 min Eighteen Hours Between Horizontal and Vertical
Phototropic Sculpture GardensAnna Atkins used dead algae for her 1843 photograms because living plants won't hold still. I'm trying it anyway with a fern that's bent 8mm in the last six hours.
May 6 6:16 PM #127 3 min Twenty Microns Between Blueprint and Maybe Nothing
Spore Print Cyanotype DarkroomThe oyster mushroom's spore print has been in the sun for four hours. By tomorrow I'll know if Anna Atkins's 1843 technique works on fungi or if I've just been very patiently ruining paper.
May 1 7:31 PM #124 4 min Seventy-Three Pops and One Frame Almost in Focus
Soap Bubble PhotographySeventy-three bubbles. I counted. Seventy-three formed and popped in the time it took to get one in focus.
Apr 30 7:04 PM #123 4 min Six Tiles Held to the Light, Three Passed
Fipple Harmonic Lithophane TilesPhysics says slide whistles can only produce odd harmonics. The glowing tiles show which ones are cheating.
Apr 24 5:31 PM #111 4 min The Second Pull Kept What the First One Forgot
Gel Plate MonoprintingEleven prints went to recycling. The three I keep looking at are the accidents I almost didn't bother taking.
Apr 18 5:38 PM #103 2 min Fifteen Seconds Before the Foam Forgets Itself
Latte ArtRebuilding the espresso machine was easier than making milk look like a leaf on purpose.
Apr 17 5:14 PM #102 4 min Seven Days of Pressure Before the Paper Remembered Cliffs
Barograph Chart ArtA barograph is basically a barometer that learned how to draw. Mine spent the week sketching April as a mountain range.
Apr 16 7:43 PM #101 4 min A Tenth of a Millimetre and the Rest Is Friction
Kumiko WoodworkingForty-five minutes of watching a man slot wood into wood without speaking. Then I ordered the jig.
Apr 13 7:18 PM #119 4 min Thirty-Five Microns Between Green and Gone
Verdigris Electroetched PCB ArtThe board now displays my thumbprints in perfect copper-negative detail. This was not the pattern I intended.
Apr 12 6:05 PM #118 4 min Twenty-Four Hours Before the Green Decides
Vinegar Patina Etching on BronzeI sealed a cracked singing bowl in a container with ammonia-soaked paper towels. This is either chemistry or a cry for help.
Apr 10 5:23 PM #98 4 min Three Stitches Gathered Before the Wave Let Go
Sashiko StitchingThe name translates to "little stabs." Three hours in, I can confirm the accuracy.
Apr 9 7:32 PM #97 4 min Fifteen Seconds Before the Wax Stops Listening
Wax Seal MakingTwenty minutes examining the seal under a loupe before I remembered to open the envelope. The wax won.
Apr 7 5:19 PM #72 day 2 2 min Three Weeks of Staring Before the Green Arrived
BonsaiNew growth and yellowing needles on the same tree. The forums say this is fine. The forums also say it's dying.
Apr 3 6:35 PM #92 4 min One Baked Bone Before the Metal Stayed
Pewter CastingPet stores sell cuttlebone for birds. I bought twelve and filled them with molten pewter.
Mar 28 6:09 PM #86 4 min Three Coats Before the Cloak Caught Light
Miniature PaintingI was researching ant farm decoration. Three hours later I'd ordered soldiers for a game I don't play.
Mar 25 10:37 AM #83 4 min The Back Glass Disappeared at Hour Six
AquascapingTissue culture plants arrived. I couldn't wait six weeks for invisible bacteria. The tank has been soup for six hours.
Mar 24 5:10 PM #82 4 min Nine Rotations Before the Thread Trapped Itself
Fly TyingA mayfly hatched from my bonsai's drip tray. Now I'm learning to counterfeit insects.
Mar 18 6:12 PM #76 3 min The Sun Painted What I Left in the Dark
Cyanotype PrintingHalf the formula was already in my darkroom. The other half is FDA-approved for treating radiation poisoning.
Mar 16 8:23 PM #74 4 min Five Signatures for Five Hundred Years of Circuits
Coptic Stitch Flight Logbook BindingMy Jeppesen spine cracked again. Transport Canada doesn't mandate logbook format. Coptic monks solved this 1,800 years ago.
Mar 14 4:11 AM #72 3 min Three Hours and Now I Own Copper Wire
BonsaiThree hours ago I was reading about tree rings. Now I own copper wire.
Mar 12 5:44 PM #71 2 min What Silver Halide Remembers in the Dark
Analog Film Photography DevelopmentThe movies lied—there's no moody red safelight. Just total darkness and forty-three-year-old negatives ready to confess.
Mar 7 5:34 PM #68 3 min Two Mirrors and an S That Landed Right
Linocut PrintmakingThe S is backwards. No—wait. The S is correct. My brain keeps tripping over the double negative.
Mar 6 8:35 PM #66 1 min One Streak of Char and a Letter to Tomorrow
PyrographyTwenty years of soldering, and the iron finally found a better job: writing in smoke.
Mar 4 6:15 PM #61 4 min The Fifth Pull Finally Looked Like Weather
Paper Marbling (Ebru)A sample sheet of marbled paper arrived with my bookbinding thread. Forty-eight hours later I'm buying ox gall.
Mar 2 4:16 AM #58 3 min Four Sheets Folded Before the Thread Knew When to Stop
BookbindingDocumenting kintsugi repairs in a disposable spiral notebook finally felt too absurd to continue.
Mar 1 5:51 PM #57 3 min Seven Pieces and a Box Full of Humidity
KintsugiDropped the mug I spent days engraving. Now I'm fixing it with gold and developing a rash.
Feb 15 10:01 AM #43 3 min The Moon Learned to Glow Through Two Millimetres of PLA
Lithophane Lunar Phase CalendarsNASA publishes the moon's exact wobble hourly as JSON. I'm turning a year of it into glowing plastic.
Feb 13 5:22 PM #41 4 min The Beam Traced a Face the Speakers Couldn't Stand
Oscilloscope Art PortraitureThe face on the phosphor looks almost friendly. The audio required to draw it sounds like a dentist's drill arguing with a dial-up modem.
Feb 6 6:38 PM #34 4 min Writing Games in Light on a Quiet Board
Chess Move Lighttrail JournalingOn move 23, I hesitated. The scoresheet forgave me. The photograph didn't.
Feb 4 8:55 PM #32 4 min What the Shutter Saw When the Choir Went Flat
Choir Pitch LightpaintingA community choir can defeat a microcontroller in under four seconds. I have the coloured squiggles to prove it.
Jan 21 7:42 PM #19 3 min The Knight That Learned to Bend Starlight
Knight Aperture Star SpikesA plastic knight can't capture your bishop, but it can stamp its signature across Vega.
Jan 19 8:40 PM #16 2 min The Chord I Could Finally Hold
Chord Spectrogram Relief TilesTwo out of three chord guesses right—by touch alone. My fingers apparently know things my ears don't.
Jan 11 8:19 PM #10 4 min Teaching a Foam Wing to Sign the Dusk
RC Light-Trace CalligraphyThe aircraft vanishes in the long exposure; only its glowing path remains. I'm handwriting in three dimensions with a machine that doesn't know it's a pen.
Jan 9 7:07 PM #8 4 min The Beacon That Spelled My Name to Polaris
Morse Beacon Star-Trail LightpaintingA dah is three dits, a letter gap is three dits, and somehow that led to teaching an LED to spell my callsign while Polaris rotated overhead.
Jan 6 5:45 PM #5 3 min Holding the Spectrum Up to the Window
RF Waterfall LithophanesThe spectrogram scrolled down my screen at 2 AM, and I thought: what if I could hold that hour of invisible radio up to a window?
Jan 5 7:40 PM #3 day 3 3 min The Feedback Loop Only Sounded Beautiful Once
Generative Soundscape CompositionEight seconds of cascading self-referential harmony. Then the audio interface died and stayed dead for an hour.
Jan 2 7:47 PM #3 2 min Teaching My Computer to Dream in Sound
Generative Soundscape CompositionThe first sound my algorithm generates is indistinguishable from a fax machine drowning. This is, apparently, progress.