It's the Begining of a New Year - Sort of - OR - Looking for Art Shows

Like many folks, I always have the idea that I'm going to share more information and write more every year, and as always, something gets in the way and I'll miss a day or six months. There are so many things pulling at us that it's tough to break old habits and start new ones. In my case, I always seem to question what to write about because somedays the shop appears to be routine, but hey, I'm thinking that people would like to hear more about my daily doings, because that's part of the magic of creating art, searching for shows, and in general just getting things done.

Many people have read about me creating art, or seen some videos while working in the shop, or visited Mackie and I at one of the many shows we do each year. But what does it take to even get to the shows? Good question.

Searching for The Gold
It's one thing to create art, but it's a whole other challenge in not becoming the greatest collector of your own work.  I didn't come up with that but I love it.  I recall when a store owner mentioned to me around 1995 when I was at a show displaying Mackie's pottery.

Searching for shows takes up almost as much time as creating, loading the vehicle, and actually doing the show.  It's not like I load up the truck and trailer, show up, and say, "here I am, where do I set up".  It takes finding as much information about the show, applying for it, paying a jury fee, and hopefully hearing something positive back.  Then it's sending them some more money and so on.

I mentioned the fees.  They've really gone up over past few years.  The average jury fee we pay is around $30.  That doesn't guarantee us a spot - only the chance to be considered.  Each year, we donate about $500 in jury fees for shows we don't get into.  The average booth is running about $350 for a 10' x 10' space.

 More Logistics
Now that we got into the show, what else could there be.  On yeah.  There's materials in both the recycled metals we use and consumables.  Each show at least a dozen people ask me, don't you just drive around and find things by the road.  Hmm.  Try doing 28-30 shows a year and driving around to look for things.  Fortunately, I have my wife that reminds me how uncommon "common sense" is.  I figure that about 20% of my selling price is tied up in materials and consumables.  Consumables are things like welding gloves, welding gases, welding wire, you get the picture.  I go through one pair of gloves a week at $10 per pair.  That's $520 per year in just gloves!

How about travel costs?  We drive a one ton dual wheel truck and pull a trailer.  Fortunately, we get around 11 miles per gallon.  That's real good for a rig this size and hauling all the steel we do.  I'm going to round this to 10 miles per gallon to make the math easy on me.  If we drive 300 miles to do a show, that's six hundred miles round trip, we'll use about 60 gallons of diesel.  I'm anticipating spending about $4 per gallon this summer.  That comes out to $240 for fuel for that show.  How about some place to stay.  Let's say we're gone for two nights and lucky enough to find a room that runs $50 for a total of another $100.

Now we'll add it all up.  Booth fee and jury fee come to $380, fuel is $240, and room is $100 for a grand total of $720 to do an average show.  That means we need to make about $1,000 to break even.

That's my post for day one.  Tomorrow, I'm heading to Mariner High School in Cape Coral where I'm mentoring some high school students on building a robot for the First Robotics competition.  More on this later.

Art Fair Insiders

www.artfairinsiders.com is a great site created, ran by, and for artists to share information with each other.

The site is broken into several links for sharing information on art shows, photos, artist's classifieds, and just general sharing with each other.  I discovered the site a few months back, and it's already becoming an absolute must in my daily art life.  I search for information on art shows and get real comments for real artists.  Additionally, I've met a number of great people through the site that I've met at art shows.

Visit it soon.

Manhole Cover

Every great piece of art work needs to start with an idea that someone passes by me, or I see some piece of metal about and then I build it.  In this case, this sculpture started out with both an idea I had at mind and a thought posed by a new friend.

I had two manhole covers that I picked up in a scrap yard to make into bases for a sculpture although I didn't have any idea what the sculpture would be.  There they sat at my shop for six months when Therese asked about making a seven foot tall fish sculpture.  Now here was an idea and a perfect base.  The manhole cover is approximately two feet in diameter and weighs about 60-70 pounds.  Perfect for the base of this sculpture.

I decided to use varying sizes of fence finials as a base for each fish.  They have a great round shape and will create some interesting fish.  I like these balls because they are hollow and move nicely when welded to the top of steel rod.

I welded one twisted piece of two inch flat bar to the manhole cover first.  This gave me a height that I wanted to work around.  A guide if you will.  Here I am twisting on the steel.  Yeah.  My back is still hurting after twisting on all that steel.  It's a real manual brute force process.

I'm still working on this piece buy you can see where I'm going with it.  Mackie is creating glass eyes for each fish and I need to spray several coats of clear sealer to finish this piece off. 

Esther

I got a phone call, is there another kind, from a friend that was interested in a giraffe.  He wanted something large for his garden.  Now I'd never made a large one but it came into my mind instantly on what it would look like and how I would do it.  Esther, she's the good looking one on the left, and I are in this photo in Mark's garden - what a great setting!

A lot of folks ask me to build something and ask for a sketch.  I laugh because I can't draw straight or curved lines.  They get it as I show them my sketchbook of pieces that I've created in the past and compare the two.  They don't look anything alike to most people but ring true with my mind.  Hey, it's an artist at work.

Esther started as a propane tank for the body and steel pipe used for the legs neck and head.  I've used my plasma cutter to cut the pattern into the parts to create the giraffe look.  I've used bolts for the giraffe's head and pipe for ears. 

I love challenges and never turn anything down.  It's the journey that I love.

The Camper

Oh the life of an artist.  I chuckle at the comments that I get from people at art shows about my art or me!  This year its been: "can you really make a living at this"; "do you drink alot before you start working"; "do you sleep at night"; "oh, I would like to work that easy"; and my favorite "I'll take it"!

The reality is that here's never time to be bored in a real artist's life.  Even when I'm slacking there's something that I really need to do.  Whether it's planning for a show or getting work ready for shows or the gallery, working around the jungle at home, or repairing a piece of equipment.  This weekend it's repairing our floor in our camper.

Mackie found this treasure about four years ago, and we've spent about 80-90 nights each year during that time.  I was taking it off the truck when I returned from the western US, and the bottom aluminum frame fell off when I took it off the truck.  Unfortunately, I know that was the start of a slightly larger project.  It was a good bet that the floor was starting or completely rotten. 

Our camper was made by Citation and is built like a tank.  I've been in several friends campers that is newer than  ours but not near as solid, so there was no doubt in my mind that we'd invest a little sweat and about $50 to make her like new again.  It was a fairly easy job to complete and we'll gear her up for this weekend.

Mackie and I are participating in our first east coast jaunt to Birmingham, Alabama.  The Barber Vintage Fest is this weekend and we'll be there!  www.barbervintagefestival.org

Model T

 Awhile back I got a call from a friend in Iowa to discuss a present for his father's 80th birthday.  His father is very interested in cars, and he wanted to know if I could make a replica of a model T his father had.  After a few photos and some discussion I started to build the car from a variety of recycled materials.  I decided to document my process and took photos of every key step.  Here's the link to my Picassa album http://picasaweb.google.com/jl12118/ModelT#.  Each photo has a description of what I'm doing.

I started by creating the spoked wheel from some pipe and 20 penny nails.  Then I built the body from the ground up.  It took me about three days to create the piece. 

This was a real challenge but I sure had a great time creating the piece, and it was even better when he called me and told me what a hit it was and how pleased his father was at his party.  He especially liked that the wheels and steering wheel worked!

Check out my website at www.cliftonmetalworks.com and let's talk about something special for you, a member of your family, or a special friend.

Tiki Fire Pit

I have an interesting life and have made numerous friends over the past 30 plus years through my art work.  People appreaciate my efforts and have thrown my all sorts of curve balls in thier ideas that they would like to have turned into reality.  It was June when a young lady approached me to create a special piece for her husbands birthday - she decided on a Tiki fire pit. 

Now I had to find the material to create her dream!  That's one of the biggest challenges when one is working with recycled materials.  I searched for over a month to find the right items.  Fortunately, I've build a number of great relationships over the years with scrap dealers all around the country and able to scavenge around their facilities.  I found a full size air tank in one state and half of it became the fire pit you see with me in the picture.  I then found another piece of curved steel plate in another state and created the Tiki figure on the top step.  Look closely and you'll see his flaming hair.

I cut all of the pieces by hand with a hand held plasma cutter.  Each piece came out great.  I then added propane plumbing for the fire pit so they can enjoy the piece year round outside their home near Kent, Washington.  This is a perfect choice for this area as it sports about 9-10 months a year of gray weather.

Fire pits can be created to be used with propane or wood for primary fire source.  Check out my website at www.cliftonmetalworks.com to see samples of other work or send me an email at joe@cliftonmetalworks.com and I'll be happy to work with you to create your dreams.