Talking about his inspiration behind Confess, New York-based George Lewis Jr. writes,
“One winter I crashed my motorcycle, with a friend on the back. I shouldn’t have been riding that day, but I was young and fearless of the black roads, fast and easy in my ways. As the bike slipped from under us my head filled with words. The slow motion moments of calm just after surprise and just before regret are bliss. I remember in that moment I wanted to say everything to him. How could I say everything in a split second? How could I bury my words in his heart?”
“I got a new bike and went to LA to record what is now called Confess. I took the bike out at 6am one morning after not having done much riding in the couple years between Forget and Confess. I noticed my head clearing as I came slowly down a hill where the road around a reservoir began. I pulled back slowly on the throttle with my right hand, and felt the bike start to come to life. My head was still crystal clear… nothing. As I kicked the bike into third, I pulled almost all the way back and jumped forward leaning in towards the gas tank, fighting the wind. I got up to 75 and saw that no one was out but the runners and their four legged friends, the sidewalks became a blur of barking dogs and heads all turning. My mind was empty. I put the bike in fourth and hit 90. The engine jackhammered under my legs. My mind was clear. I inched toward 100 on the speedometer and punch the last five. TON UP! My mind is filled with words. My heart is full of love. This is where I want to be. I want to stay here, and I want to tell you everything.
(via 4AD Store)
Dignity is kind of a strong word in this case. A look into the Swiss government’s “moral consideration towards plants” and the weird world of plantophilia.
The structure of the legs were essentially figured out, not to the exact degree of angle, but modeling it on the computer would figure all of that out. The look of something as precarious and slightly imbalanced yet solid was the forethought. Also something that may have stumbled into my head from a dream was a heavy ass pendant stone, suspended in the middle of the 3 legs, held by ropes that provided the tension inwards to have the extremely rough (think branches) legs held in place. Precarious? Yes. Creepy seance-like? Okay scratch that. If I ever need to reassemble this around a campfire, I’m certain this is what it would look like!
The lines of what I ended up with came from toying with the geometry in the model for a bit until I was satisfied with the proportions of the metal and wood pieces. The three wood dowel legs follow one another around the base and the very specific metal crutch/pins are the armature that holds it in relation to the next leg. Creating metal pieces, essentially brackets around the very plain and standard wood dowel looks clean and elegant.
The wood dowels were pretty straightforward to fabricate, only slightly modified. A cut to the right angle on the top and bottom and a hole drilled at the precise spot and angle by using a jig. Leaving some extra material on each leg for adjustment was important, as the leveling moment has to happen with the top secured in place. The metal armature, or crutch/pin pieces were much more particular. At the top, a saddle for the wood was bent and formed from a cut section of pipe. The tapered tube stem was bought from a bike framebuilders supply that sold sets of 2 tapered tubes used for the front forks of a bike. They added the perfect proportion to the dowel, seemingly a spike that was nailed through. The look would have been perfected had the end of the pin came to a sharper point, but I didn’t so much mind.
The bags hauled up to my friend’s shop full of hickory bits could have been enough for two of these tabletops I figured, but systematically inspecting, then with frustration discarding each piece, I barely had enough to fill even half!
My friend luckily had enough to fill the rest with maple flooring that he used for a table and chair piece that he finished in the most fantastic fashion - taking a torch to it and singeing the tops of the boards, instantly turning the surface into something pulled from the wreckage of a burnt out building, but also as delicate as a fine creme brulée.
It’s a method developed in Japan and typically used in exterior barnboards, like cedar. Shou sugi ban is said to prevent woods from rot, insect bores, and makes them flame retardant. Some gorgeous effects have been achieved in playing with fire, such as the feathered edge look as shown here.
I took the flame to the hickory and learned that it flamed over much more evenly than the maple because of the openess of the grain. The difference in grain when compared side by side was readily apparent in the two species. The maple has a denser and tighter grain, so it takes a bit of practice to apply the heat evenly and get rid of flame strokes, much like airbrushing I’d expect.
A jagged stripe of hickory down the middle edged by maple was looking pretty great. It was then glued up atop a sheet of MDF, clamped, and set to dry. The circle was then rough cut with a jigsaw and then more precisely with a router. Sanding it down involved an exquisite monster of a machine called the stroke sander, capable of leveling an entire sheet of 4’ x 8’ at a pass. 10‘ long sanding belts are quick workers.
The flaming process was quick and easy as the hickory accepted the flame much more evenly than the maple. I had to be careful to always keep the flame moving else the flame tip would show as a dark spot. Scoured and lightly oiled, the top sat at the shop while I went back to sketching it some sweet legs to sit on top of.
There could be a very cool variation of this idea where you could start with a flat piece that was heat and bent (at the joints) into place and retain that color difference from the other parts where no heat was applied. When working with a torch to bend a joint the red hot color indicates when the metal is retaining the heat and is ready to apply stress to.
“It has been proven beyond any doubt that harmonic sound waves affect the growth, flowering and seed yield of plants.” — Dr. T. C. Singh, Department of Botany, Annamalai University (India)
(via Wilder Quarterly)
