Making things, like my brick panels, provides me with a time in which I have to contemplate what I am doing and although I do have to think about the task at hand, it allows me to think about what I am doing on a broader spectrum. This is sort of a like a meditation in that it seems I have to do it everyday, thus my obsession. I mix, match and pour, but while thinking of the steps and doing them I seem to get a perspective on my work. If I have the time to write about what happened, literally what is happening with my work, then I am somehow purging the data and it allows me to go on with an understanding that if I need to go back and look at what I did, then I can find it on these pages. Although these pages are linked here and there to topics that might be relevant they are just pages of stuff I thought of while working. I don't want to call it meditation, but contemplative introspection is more or less what it is.
After this morning's work I see the folly in my efforts to create an external shell that is more durable or artistic than what is available in the local hardware store. I just don't have the machining to make things look finished, nor the money to do a big project, so half projects are strewn around my yard, waiting for me to pick them up and break them so that I can toss them on my pile in the corner of the yard. I added up the price of my trinkets and just thinking about the work to make them finished is more than I have to do to make a t-shirt print. Nobody really buys the weird stuff anyway, so why spend money I don't have to make these things that I can't get rid of and that only take up space? I counted up the money it would take to finish my brick structure and if I just go and buy some plywood I can finish it in an afternoon and cover it with some shingles and go back to making t-shirts so that I can pay the rent. It just doesn't make sense to keep manufacturing the brick panels and spending my time on them, except as the hobby that it is.
I have made some progress in my skills and materials that I can carry on to other things, like the mold making methods I've developed and the thin layering of epoxy and plaster to make a shell like panel with a photographic design built into the exterior. I can test the panels that I have on the back of my truck with a minimal amount of additional materials, but with the cost of a new batch of stuff I can get some wood on my curved printing room and start printing some t-shirts or stickers. I'll rummage through the work that I've made over the past couple of months and see if any of it looks usable so that I can clean them off, drill holes in them and use them as trinkets. If I sell these pieces for even a buck it would be more than I can get for the brick work, but at least the trinkets don't take up much space.
Some other thoughts of the day are:
1) It's easier to do things when you wake up around your stuff, versus if I end up having to give up my house and work out of my truck, store or sleeping at random places, then having to go to my truck to work. This is basically an argument for finding a way to keep the house if only I can find a way to pay for it.
2)I pulled out an old photo from my box of negatives and prints form the 1980's and I placed it on the back of a brick panel. To have a house is to have a basement and in the basement I could print my own images, which are now retro, and see if I can make something artistic from those prints. I have the darkroom equipment and a photographer is what I used to want to be. I haven't taken real photographs in years, but my box of old negatives does have some cultural interest to me and possibly others. I know if I have to move from my home I will never get around to that project again and it has only been about 30 years since I printed any of these. Frankly I am surprised that they have survived, or have they? I won't know unless I break out the dark room and make some prints.
3) Working my photos into something is an extension of the process that will most likely distract me beyond just making some prints, but I can't stop with just photos. I hate making all the regular products like magnets or stickers, but if I can print or scan some images then place them into a different product that I like then I can push these instead of trinkets. A buck is a buck, so I may as well reduce my other skills to something I can push out the door.
4) I have started making Oatmeal for breakfast to reduce my cholesterol. I lost my life insurance because of the cost, but am applying for a new policy that may be cheaper. I don't think I have high cholesterol, but it might be borderline. The funny thing is that I like making oatmeal almost as much as I like mixing plaster and epoxy, but it is good for me. I think of it as eating mush and that it is going to harden in my stomach like a brick or cement blog. It's cheap and it's fun, if only I could make trinkets out of oatmeal then I could kill two birds with one bowl.
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