Thursday, January 31, 2008 This is a sampling of the bowls I've turned in the past few years. I love the mindless (to a point) process.....the shavings piling up on the lathe bed....the fragrant odor of the wood.....seeing something emerge from an ungainly block of rapidly spinning wood. It has become addictive.

Most of these bowls are turned from Pacific Yew, some from Alder..and the larger bowls stacked are black walnut. Oh..and one mesquite piece. I find as people become aware that I make bowls, wood magically appears from all over.

Now....I wish winter would vanish..and I could spend my early mornings turning wood again. The lathe awaits most patiently.....with a half-finished bowl in place.
Posted by BG Dodson at 9:17 PM No comments: Links to this post I Would Bespeak An Awe of Stars Mixed media on Masonite. Approx 7.5" x 10.5".

Posted by BG Dodson at 7:42 PM No comments: Links to this post The Cat Who Read Backwards... Digital Media. "The Cat Who Read Backwards"....and set out to catch rats.

The background is a Hubble Space Telescope image. The rest is all mine.
Posted by BG Dodson at 7:50 PM 1 comment: Links to this post Labels: cats, stars

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Suspension of Belief "Suspension of Belief" Digital Collage. 2007. Print size 16" x 12".

The time is the beginning of the new Age -- where the mysteries of Old begin to collide with the New Order of Rational Science.

Schematics clash with philosophies, magic with machines and yet, in the midst of this war, many of us find ourselves without a defined side....or, too fully aware that both sides echo our internal workings -- this is where the difference stands out - sails majestically onward despite the spears and arrows of society.

The figure holds the Raven (messenger of gods, scryer of souls, the darkness of the inner self) while traversing stormy seas. Bouyed atop the back of salmon (the Celtic symbol of wisdom)....and offers an unflagged sturdiness of being....while protected by the grace of flight.

This is a suspension of belief....the path of wide-open perspective in the face of a mounting pressure to see only one side. And time...ticks inexorably...also suspended above this plane of evolution - the secret strength of change.
Posted by BG Dodson at 10:29 AM No comments: Links to this post Life's Little Crucifixions "LIfe's Little Crucifixions" Clay and nails. Bisque fired to 06. Glazed with acrylic asphaltum and varnished. Approx 7-inches tall.

Everyman experiencing the stigma and crucifixion of life. All those things that impale us....make us bleed....and force us to seek beyond the norm...for some sort of meaning in this moment of realizing....purpose is biological.

And oh....if there were some grand scheme beyond the infinite wheeling of the Universe, but that is, of course, so very vastly unlikely. Trapped in our limited perspectives, seeing through eyes that feed only into our own wiring -- we invent gods and purpose...and attempt to impose a logical lattice upon those inventions. This is the curse of being human -- that point halfway between the beast and the god -- never to partake fully of either....knowing not the bliss of simply being....nor the ALL of existence.

Too complex for simplicity...we torture ourselves endlessly in want of validation of existence..invent religions and philosophies that allow us to pretend there is some reward for adhering to social directives.....but the cold absolute Truth would tell us the Universe takes no notice of us.

Purpose is only what we invent..for ourselves.....the reason we awake in the morning...the reason we continue to function as a viable species. Our biological wiring has evolved, cunningly balanced, to allow us this fragile state of knowing..and yet...forgetting.
Posted by BG Dodson at 7:00 PM 1 comment: Links to this post Labels: art, perspective, philosophy

Goodbye Houston "Goodbye Houston" 2007. Mixed Media. 14" W x 15" H x 2" deep.

This is one of my rare pieces that began with absolutely nothing in mind except experimentation. I began by fastening a circuit board to plywood with acrylic spackling compound and laid down some texturing. Over the next several weeks, I painted more or less random colors and scratched through the layers of paint.

At one point I'd pretty much given up on the piece -- the colors were horrible and I could see no direction at all -- nothing spoke to me.

Then....I found the wooden box that fit around the circuit board, more or less perfectly. I began to see the box as a spaceship and began assembling pieces to that end. The face..the vacuum tubes...the 'nose' of the rocket....and then...suddenly I had a vision of the finished piece.

I painted over the background with a metallic blue...added textural acrylic paint as 'dots' (stars) and spattered red across the sky. I stamped 'RESIST" and "ORBIT" in acrylics. The ship found a few more accouterments in the metal filagree and #9 gaming piece...and began to fit together. Using Spider Writers, I drew the tongue of flame at the base of the ship. Lift off....had been achieved.

Then...out to The Shop....where I built a frame and assembled the piece.

Now...this is one of my favorite pieces. It is a farewell to the safety of planning....the boundries of always having a safety net and a celebration of simply blasting off into a new area of creation -- where impulse and creativity can take the artist..to some brave new place.
Posted by BG Dodson at 7:00 PM No comments: Links to this post Labels: mixed media, process creativity I've decided to explore some of my favorite creations and share my thoughts on what I'm trying to achieve.

This piece is called "Crux" and represents the rapidly approaching point of the merging of humanity and technology. Circuitry implants are a certainty and will soon (within a few decades if not sooner) be a common 'wetware' addition to our natural wiring. One needs only read William Gibson to see some small slice of the future where this is a common procedure.

One possible feature not commonly explored is the enhancement of the senses..the cortex...the language centers....to seek a new spirituality...whether in a constant state of communication with the 'net' (aka..the world around us) or to simply seek God in every possible input via circuitry filtering.

At this point...this crux....we are poised to use technology for progress of the human race -or- doomed to fall into a singular state of isolation for individual excess.

In this, I have portrayed the new Saint/Martyr -- the symbology of the circuitry into the cross upon the forehead....the trinity of CPU processors and golden IC of the One True CPU. Each finger imbued with god-touch technology and a new mankind emerging from the motherboard. Struggling....smirking in self satisfaction and ulitmately....no better off in any respect. We shall become slaves to an electronic god-machine.

The time is coming to evaluate if we are going to grasp for the stars in the body...or simply attempt to find some feeble emulation within the mind....and I think, personally that we need to ride thunder into the heavens and stake the universe with our own unique brand of unadorned raw humanity. Technology shall play an important role..but that of servant and not master.
Posted by BG Dodson at 7:28 PM No comments: Links to this post Labels: art, process, techshaman mask

Shaman Time Shaman Time. Mixed Media. 18.5" x 17.5" x 3-inches deep. Functional clock.

This is Shaman Time. The frame we capture with the ego, id, memory at this juncture of space/time -- the plane we are wired into, anchored in a certainty of numbers....ONE spot - inviolate - within the shifting quantum nature of the Universe.

And this is merely one frame of a larger film -- the thing we call our life. This is the root directory of storage of self - a narrow slice of Read Only Memory at the base from which we re-boot daily.

Awash in the patina of time, surrounded by the constant stream of numbers that define our coordinates, we are not immobile, but a matrix in motion. Fractal and quantum - we are humanity.
Posted by BG Dodson at 7:43 PM No comments: Links to this post The Shop. How it came to be. The shop.

A simple name...and that's what I call it. I don't know when it began life, but the Shop existed for many years as a 12-foot by 14-foot garden shed. It was used to store the various bits and pieces of yard maintenance items and simply existed.

I decided in the summer of 1998 to tear the shed down -- the siding was in disrepair, the roof leaked and the wooden footings were rotten. My plan was to purchase a pre-built 'barn' and sit it where the shed used to stand. After tearing the siding off, my neighbor, Joe (an unknown quantity at the time) poked his head over the fence and suggested simply remodeling using the existing 2x4 frame.

At the time, Joe was in bad health and offered to lend his knowledge as long as I did the work. So he sat (mostly) beneath the prune tree and told me what needed to be done. We added an 8-foot x 10-foot "ell" off of the main building, wired the electricity, added insulation, windows and sheetrock. At the time, I thought I'd use it only for woodcarving and was quite happy with the size of the shop (as I'd come to think of it). Using the new 'ell' for garden storage freed up the 12x14 area for plenty of space.

Then....of course, I had to buy a bandsaw for roughing out carving. And I already had a drill press and various other shop machines I moved in. Over the years I've added a full-sized Jet table saw, joiner, jig saw, radial arm saw, sander, et cetera...et cetera. And the shop has shrunk from the glorious vastness....to a labyrinth of wood and machines.

But....I built it. And in that I have pride. And I gained a new friend in my neighbor that was a good friendship until he passed away in 2003. So, the Shop is more than just a building - it has become a symbol of what one can do with hard work, friendship and a few thousand dollars. And I made my livelihood from the shop for a few interesting years -- building everything from beds to benches to adirondack chairs. All things I had never even considered I might ever create.

One never knows the future...and the Shop has taught me this. And in that magical nexus of the Shop....all things are possible.
Posted by BG Dodson at 1:26 PM 1 comment: Links to this post Sunday, January 20, 2008

This is What I Do lag bolted to reality
my muse writhed winter musty
shackled in rusty underpinnings
I croak sheet-rolled thunder
sweat drips in four flimsy dimensions
hissing spitting sparks

I am slick skull wired
via networked neurons
to this haunted heuristic hell

and float in the ether,
stapled to stars;
slide slowly over the edge
to cockroach crept darkness
where God's spinnings softly gleam

tactile feedback enhanced,
to feel light's edge on shadow skin,
I would surely softly sigh
had I an operative oral transducer
not lost to evolutionary misfortune
-- a tactical technological malfunction

vacuum insists on sturdy silence,
- conserved dark matter -
embraced by starlight;
nebulous gas clouds whisper
among the ravaged reefs,
washing wreckage onward

wired, sheep shanked and soldered,
corroded circuit multi-band connected
listening on a thousand crackling channels;
blinded brilliantly in the 300 nm UV band
transistor tearless tortured eyes
scan heaven for Salyut salvation

downside, birds bounce buoyantly,
feathered fools in atmospheric innocence
unpinned from the collective fabric;
physics ignorant Icaria
burning in re-entry

perceptions pinned, pegged and perforated
categorised via choked cell regurgitation,
each myriad microscopic chemical current
illuminates environs one atto-amp at a time

I'm on a two-step wired Space/Time path
danced in Shaman shoes on slippery stones

inertia at my back
atomic mass in each pocket
a severed lifeline to "When"
and ... I'm never going back

wave at the next falling star
it might be me...
Posted by BG Dodson at 8:09 AM No comments: Links to this post Saturday, January 19, 2008

This is Who I Am An eater of Technology. As are we all. Supping at the edge of tomorrow with the components of today......slightly obsolete...but so very hungered.
Posted by BG Dodson at 9:53 PM No comments: Links to this post Hmmmm......what to say...what to appear (idiot, savant or android prey)?

This is the beginning of what could be quite interesting, or the end of what seems a bit presumptuous on my part....as if...

Let us begin with a dance of the techno beat. Flashing lights. Euro-dance. Raised synthetic voices in a drone of melodic chant. LEDs that burn the retinas and leave scars upon the cortex. Let us shed these skins and become part of the machine -- a purpose. A path of electricity.

And so it begins.
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