Aureljia, who has done a fantastic job of handling the social media and marketing of my different social projects, 80,000 trees and Bantayan crafts etc is often reminding me to post more to my Facebook page - an image or two of something being made, me welding some metal or something along those lines. I try but my heart is just not in it. I don't mind showing the finished piece when it is looking as I want it to look but I hate showing something that is half baked.
I'm not, however, worried about sharing my process and take any opportunity to explain how I go about making something. Call it bravado or pride if you will - personally I just like to talk about what I do because I think long and hard about it and have a one track, dedicated mind when it comes to my craft which I love to share. I have no problem with people copying me - inspiration comes from somewhere after all and we all copy to some degree or other - it's called history and learning - and hopefully once we have learnt or seen or been inspired we will take what we have been gifted by our predecessors and move it forward - make it our own so to speak. In the great words of Steve Jobs, who rightly or wrongly attributed it to Picasso, who might have plundered the same from Shakespeare... "Good artists copy, great artists steal". So by laying out what I do perhaps someone somewhere will get a little inspired and make their own new steps forward to arrive at a different goal.
Jim sitting on wing of Pegasus
So here goes for a little lesson in what I do. The structure is always important and often overlooked in driftwood sculpture relegating whatever made from this fantastic material to the realms of mere craft. If you want something to stand the test of time build it right. That is why I only use the highest quality stainless steel and weld the decades dead very hard driftwood onto the structure using bolts and embedded metal. Over the course of 18 months I made a 5 ton sculpture of Pegasus, a commission from an anonymous donor for their children's wonderful school in Ojai, California - Thacher School. He stands 5 metres high on a hill overlooking the playing fields. Here is a video of the making of Pegasus which shows the structure. Please feel free to email a question or two...
