hanging artwork

turns out it's not so easy to take pictures of this kind of work so please forgive the quality of the ones below.   this work was commissioned by a couple of friends who just had a baby and wanted a sort of stimulating experience for her.  they said they wanted bold simple colors and a palette of black, white and red which are probably my favorite colors to work with.  they thought my style suited the subject so here you have it.

the pieces are made of a conifer that was cut nearby.  i sliced them and sanded to a smooth finish.   i used nontoxic tempera paint and left it untreated (we'll see how long it lasts).  the supports are made out of spring steel harvested from discarded windshield wipers.  all wood pieces are painted on both sides.  

this was a fun project.  i like making mobiles and i was pleased with the look of the bold colors on the wood surface.

embracing the obsession

i would not consider this the crowning achievement of my obsession with homebrewing (that has been going on for a bit more than a year now, err, unblogged) but for some reason it feels like something to be mentioned.   this thing now inhabits my kitchen.  it is known among beer people as a kegerator and it's just a refrigerator that houses kegs with a convenient way to serve the beer.

what's remarkable about this one in particular is that it embodies that homebrewer DIY ethos that i enjoy so much; it is nothing new or particularly original but it is heavily repurposed, hacked if you wish, and the process of making it taught me a lot.

the fridge came from the free classifieds on craigslist, and it was naturally not meant for kegs.  i had to strip the insides and move the cooling guts towards the back so i could fit two soda kegs.  i added a computer fan to recirculate the cold air since the original fan wasn't working, i painted the whole thing, changed the hinges on the door and screwed a piece of thin stained plywood, just for looks.  the shiny tube with the taps was given to me by friend and partner in brewing Ben, but i had to figure out a way of making two taps fit.    the drip tray is an inverter aluminum cover that i scavenged from my previous job at the solar company.

i spent very little money on this thing but a lot of time.  if the equation was time equals money, then this thing was really expensive, possibly more than just buying a unit off the shelf.  but the gains in the learning and skill refining variables are hard to factor in.  and i did it mostly for that, the learning, perhaps even the rewarding feeling of "i built it myself".

this was also an excuse to build a temperature controller.  i had an arduino lying around and i ended up expending a few days building a simple thermostat to keep the beer at somewhat proper serving temperatures (around 38 degrees fahrenheit).  i will not go into extreme detail since there are really well written and googable tutorials and builds out there, not to mention the fantastic support of the arduino community at http://arduino.cc/ but here is a picture:

 i housed all the components (arduino, power supply and solid state relay) in an old VHS tape case (it closes neatly without screws). for the temperature sensor i used an lm335a from sparkfun kindly supplied by my friend Josh.

so this thing a mishmash of brewing, plumbing, electronics, wood and metal working and tons of scavenging.  it's an object that is not pure in any sense; it doesn't come from a single realm of knowledge or practice.  which is probably true for most things in our world today. nonetheless i love that reminder, in a way it reinforces the way in which my obsessions and explorations come and go.  dooming myself to never becoming a true expert on any single subject but leaving the door open to being curious about anything.

how to: useless bicycle rack to coffe table

start with a useless, wheelbending bicycle rack.

disassemble and arrange in a pleasing, stable manner.
make it stick; if no welder i suggest zip ties.

add the top of your choice.  i decorated mine with markers

move next to your other DIY furniture, have coffee.

recent work

this is just a miscellany of things i've made or repurposed recently.  i didn't want  to let them go undocumented.

let's start with yesterday's build.  a few months ago my friends Joe and Bobby dragged this bench from the most recent remodel of the bowling alley down the street.  it sat around legless for a while until one day i decided to make it useful again with help from the welder and some bed frames.  i had to cut it in two pieces and yesterday i got around to the smallest section.  i made the legs with 3/4'' emt, i'm very happy with the paint job:

here is the larger section:

the construction of this one was somewhat "additive", that is, i didn't really plan it that well and just kept on adding things to make it stable.  it ended up being very triangular.
detail of the paint job with the corn/dna theme:

i've been collecting windshield wiper spines from the local auto store trash for a while, they are pretty nice pieces of springy metal, you can even make lock picking tools with them.  but i never paid much attention to the wiper itself.  the other day it struck me as a very good starting point for a mobile so this is what came out (the orange pieces are shredder wheels):

on the sewing side of things i fixed this clothespin holder with some mesh road sign fabric:

and made a kilt following this great instructable:

i'm already planning on making a red one with some modifications to the design.  i'd like to use velcro instead of snaps in some places, make the side pockets a bit lower and construct symmetrical pleats starting with a box pleat at the middle. 

three oscillators in a wooden box

i think this is my favorite build to date.   it's a little noise box i built based on a CD4093 chip following chapter 20 of previously mentioned book Handmade Electronic Music.  the three faders control 3 oscillators that modulate each other.  the bigger knob is volume control and the smaller knob is a battery starver -  meaning it diminishes the voltage going to the chip making it behave in unstable but interesting ways.   the box is a repurposed music wooden box (oh the irony) that i sanded and resealed.  installing the 1/4'' jack was challenging given the thickness of the wood so i cut a big hole and added a piece of stainless steel i had lying around.  the rca jack is meant to connect an analog sequencer (i will build in the future) and the hole to the right with the shy little dot is the power input.

i'm very happy with the way it looks and with the way it sounds.  the faders were a serious pain in the ass to install but they make up for it with the playability they offer.   you can control the three of then with one hand in ways you couldn't with your standard knobs.

for a cool looking diagram that explains how this works check out the excellent tutorial on building logic ic synthesizers from beavis audio research (found via GetLoFi).

little painting

a gift for my friend Irma.  size 2x4 inches.  acrylic on wood.

our first car

and no, i don't own the thing. it's the first car i laid a marker on with permission from it's owner. man i love those paint markers. the line work is similar to the stuff i posted the other day but it's so satisfying to do it on a big surface since your whole body is involved in the making of the lines. the van used to be a swat team vehicle which somehow adds to the glee of painting it.

game controller transformed

 

i bought a cheap ($2) second hand usb controller the other day and gave it a new shell.  the first time i saw a project like this one was in make magazine vol 15 (and article written by Brian Schmierer).  there is a similar instructable and i also read about it on chapter 28 of Nicolas Collins's excellent book Handmade Electronic Music (seriously, Excellent book).   

my controller was a saitek p880, it had two thumb joysticks that i turned into four pots.  the box came from an old printer data switch i found and repainted. it had a couple of LEDs that i left inside and hotglued to the bicycle reflectors covering the holes preexisting holes left and right:

it looks better with low light.   the RCA plugs you can see in the corners are meant to extend two of the switches.  this can be handy if you want to extend a switch with a cable or if you want to prototype other switches.   

i made a quick PureData patch to organize and route the controller's signals (screen shot to the left).  i'm really in love with PureData these days.  the initial learning curve is somewhat steep, but once you get the basic idea it can allow you to do many things, and it just works, and it's open source, and its free.   the FLOSS manuals site was of great help to me while getting started. it even has a section on using game controllers as input devices.   there is something very satisfying about making/modifying electronics that can communicate with a computer.  i really like the aesthetics of handmade and circuit bent analog music devices but i don't necessarily support the analog/digital divide.  there are many tools/intruments out there. if you like how it sounds/works, i say, enjoy it.

lines, brush pens

i've been drawing stuff like this for months. i think i was obsessed with all the decorative patterns i saw in japan, specially the one that looks like scales or waves. i started replicating some of them and the lines became longer and longer. these were drawn with brush pens. brush pens are great. portable, they come in different colors and allow you to flow without stopping for ink and you still have the control of the line width and expression you would have with a regular brush.

 

 

my first APC

here is the atari punk console i just built,  also know as a "stepped tone generator".  it was a very simple circuit to build and painting the altoids tin was probably the most fun part.  i used the kaustic machines schematic with a little help from getlofi's diagram for reference since i'm kind of new to building this kind of thing.  i added a photoresistor in series with one of the pots that can be switched on and off and a separate blinking LED so it would function a little bit like a poor man's thingamagoop.   i extended the LED by wrapping the wire with some pipe cleaners.  the LED is not to bright so the functionality is limited but you can still control the sound with other light sources.  here is a sound test video:

the fluid

the coolest thing from checking out R. Crumb's exhibition at the hammer museum was getting to see how much correction fluid he uses on his drawings.  the show has 207 well framed pages of his recent work "The Book of Genesis Illustrated" and some of the research material he collected for inspiration.

you can still see pencil markings and lots of correction fluid used not only for, well, correcting, but also outlining some things, marking folds in fabric and suggesting falling rain.  on page 61 (on the left) it looked like he drew the background and then added the fireballs by painting them with correction fluid and then outlining them.

i wonder if there is some computer based graphics editing involved to make it print well.   anyway, the drawings are great and the originals have a lot of texture.

delirium

el Midas McAlister en la Hacienda Nápoles:

"Dios mío, que no me adivinen  los malos pensamientos, pensaba, porque me cocinan a la brasa a mi también.  Y entonces Pablo se quita a las garotas de encima, me llama a un ladito y antes de despedirse me dice una sola frase que me abrió los ojos de una vez y para siempre, Qué pobres son los ricos de este país, amigo Midas, qué pobres son los ricos de este país.  ¿Entiendes las implicaciones que eso tiene, Agustina chiquita?"

en Delirio (p82), escrito por Laura Restrepo

cute meets evil

here are some characters i drew inspired by the cute mascots you can see almost everywhere in japan (the Cuteness in Japanese Culture article on wikipedia is very enlightening). they were drawn with a brushpen on  a small moleskine sketchbook (i'm starting to dislike that paper, maybe they don't make them like they used to).

Sarariman

 

this particular one was inspired by this interview with Mayhem members Necrobutcher and Blasphemer (around 1:10).

 

a break...

Suddenly the baby started bawling in the next room and i heard the bed squeak as Ella Mae got up to feed him.  I wondered if they knew how well I could hear them through the thin partition.  If they did they didn't let it bother them.  I heard Henry mutter sleepily, 'Goddamnit! Goddamnit!' Then all I could hear was the sound of the baby sucking greedily, and I thought if they really wanted to give him a break they'd cut his throat and bury him in the back yard before he got old enough to know he was a nigger.  Then i was ashamed.  Ella Mae loved that baby.  If anything happened to him she'd die. 

from If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes.

metal messenger logos

my friend Jimmy who works as a bike messenger (and who is also the author of a widely read story about bike theft in downtown L.A.) recently got a very light bike frame he wanted to decorate with a metal band inspired sign reading "messenger".  here are a few proposals i came up with. they are all symmetric.  i'm particularly fond of the inky-drippy one i colored to resemble an old xeroxcopy-like old school black metal album cover.