The Lab
Everything here was built with one eye, a torch, some copper and a lot of orbiting. Two lines under each piece: how it was built, and what had to be worked around.
Impossible objects
Escher shapes that exist. They only work from one spot, and I only have one spot.
Impossible cube, copper rod
Twelve lengths of quarter-inch copper rod, brazed. Two edges are cut and offset so the crossing reads wrong from one spot.
It only closes from one angle. With one eye and no depth perception, that angle is the only one I see anyway, so finding it got easier.
Penrose stairs, wood and copper
Four flights carved from one cottonwood block, copper risers riveted on, the corners cheated so the stairs loop back on themselves.
Cut every flight twice. The first set didn't close. Fine measurement with one eye means marking by touch and checking with a square.
Nine-foot playa sculpture
Steel skeleton, copper skin, trucked out in pieces and bolted together in the wind. The cube, scaled up until you could walk under it.
Couldn't see the far corner while bolting the near one. Built it in halves on the ground, stood it up once. Left it on the playa. That was the point.
Multi-pencil drawings
Two pencils, then six, then ten. The rigs are copper and they are sized to my hands.
Six-pencil landscape
Six graphite pencils in one copper rig, one pass per ridgeline. The valley is drawn in about four moves.
The hand goes where the rig allows. You stop steering the line and start steering the whole hand, and the drawing is whatever the rig gives you.
Ten at once
Ten pencils, two hands, a rig on each, the paper taped to the floor so it can't move.
I can't see the right edge while I'm drawing the left. Learned to draw by count: four beats across, lift, back.
The rigs, version eleven
Hammered copper strap, soldered, with finger rings sized to my own hand. Ten versions before this one.
Version one cut my fingers. Version four dropped pencils on the turn. Eleven is the first one I forget I'm wearing.
Two-pencil study
The first one. Two pencils wired to a strip of copper, drawn on cardboard because paper felt like a commitment.
Nothing to work around yet. This was the test to see if the idea held. It did.
Fire, copper, wood
The materials I knew from construction, used for something that doesn't need to hold a roof up.
Pyrosculpture
Juniper from the hills, burned with a torch in layers, then brushed back to the grain between passes.
Can't judge the depth of a burn by eye. I go by smell and sound: it crackles differently when it's deep enough.
Copper jewelry
Sheet copper, hammered, folded, pickled and left to find its own color. Rings, cuffs, a few pendants that are tiny impossible cubes.
Small work with one eye means a magnifier on a stand and the lamp six inches from my face. Slow. Slow is fine now.
Carving
Cottonwood from the river, hand tools only. Mostly the stair pieces, sometimes a face that shows up in the grain.
I keep the gouge on the far side of the work so I can see the edge coming. Learned that one the hard way, once.
Digital
Blender and a resin printer. Learning 3D with one eye means no depth perception and a lot of orbiting.
Blender models
The cube and the stairs rebuilt in Blender to test whether they still read on a flat screen before I cut material.
No depth perception, so the viewport lies to me constantly. I orbit the model until it stops lying. That's most of the time spent.
Resin prints
Elegoo resin prints of the cube, palm-sized, washed and cured. Some come out wonky.
Can't spot a lean on the plate until it's done. The wonky ones become drop seconds: same object, cheaper, honestly labeled.
Want one around?
The drops are numbered and small. The Discord is where the next piece gets built in public.