Boris Bally

 So here's a recap for this past week of school. We had our artist in residence, Boris Bally, the kids loved him and needless to say, he was awesome.

He's a really down to earth guy, super successful and honestly struck me as me in 25 years. We were incredibly similar and had some really great talks during the week, I hope I get to work with him again in the future. So since he's a metal worker primarily he brought in all kinds of stuff and the kids dove in... I did too. The plan was to use circuit boards as a sort of canvas and then to add to them however you want, almost everybody was completely engrossed in the project and the whole week flew, it was really surprising how much some of the kids excelled. With all of them finished now it will get pieced together to make a patchwork quilt of all their work and the example that Boris made them and we will install is as a permanent piece in the lobby of the arts building. Put together all of their work is really neat and you can spend an hour or more looking at all the detail people put into them.

 It was a great experience and it really has kicked  me back into gear with my own work, in part because I really want to learn more metal working (it's one of the last materials I haven't really gotten into other than plastic) I can't express the amount of fun I had, I spent nearly all my free time up in the art room working on things and just tinkering. Part of the reason was I just wrapped up Mill Girls and this was the first real project that I haven't had to think about. I just sat down and started attaching and riveting things together. I didn't plan it out I just added a piece, looked at it and added another piece until I reached a point, 3 days and maybe 10 hours worth of work later, where I said... yeah, that's done.

This was my final piece (along with a small metal globe I made) It's got a lot of personal stuff so it really is stuff that I pulled out of my junk pile as well as little touches that are important to me. I think more importantly it has jumped me back into woodworking. In one of the talks we had he mentioned that his first real job out of college was making models for a company and he was burning out and he stayed sane by doing his own work at night when he got home. It made for long days but he was able to make something for himself and I think I needed to be reminded of that since I'm going through some of the same thing right now. So This past saturday I picked up my list of projects and un-tabled the "upcycled" door headboard.

I spent maybe six hours on this, but part of that was a couple trips back and forth to home depot and some head scratching because I planned something out, changed my mind, forgot I had changed my mind and then caused myself some headaches down the line. That said, I'm pretty darn happy with it, I'll do a step by step once it's actually finished, it needs a little more work and some paint and it will be all set.

With that mostly done I've started two more projects of my own AND I'm about to get real heavy into the build for Jungle Book. I think once that is done it may be my best scene design yet, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. More on that in a moment. The two projects in my shop which will also get some pictures later are a blanket chest made out of 1x3 furring strips very similar to the treasure chest I made Erin Moeller/Damm for her wedding, but larger. The other is another "upcycling" type project where I'm trying to turn a used pallet into and end table. I haven't done this before so I'm prototyping it and just kind of winging it to see what I can turn it into to refine for another attempt some other time.

For now I will leave you with my rough sketch for Jungle Book and I will get into the concept and all the work we are doing on it in another post. Just imagine a playground in the jungle or the part of Jumanji where the jungle starts taking over the house.