Spring is here, well just about anyway so it’s time to work on the motorcycles, and the first picture is the empty crankcase of an 82 honda 350 RFVC that will be rebuilt here. Bill may be bidding farewell to a crummy snowmobile season or just being silly, I vote for silly!

The Spring cleanup that began last spring has gone right through this winter is coming to an end and now is the time to begin working on the automotive and motorcycle projects.

My friend and fellow retired Ceramic Shop owner; Trudy asked me to repair the sculpture pictured below of a boy weaving a cane basket (not shown) and it was quite a challenge. 5 minute epoxy allows a progressive repair with diminishing rigidity and talc filled polyester (bondo) makes a manageable repair.

Grampa has been getting a bit tired of chasing after the tools most often used, hence a toolbox was needed. Everything has it’s own slot so putting then away is as easy as setting them down. It is made entirely of bamboo purchased from the dollar store (about 30 bucks worth). It’s nailed together with bamboo nails, epoxyed with dollar store 5 min epoxy and doweled with dollar store bamboo chop sticks, even the ready rod used to tension the handles is made of organic materials (hemp rope from the dollar store).

Call me Crazy! but since I’m getting close to 70, there is a whole bunch of things I can do that could not be done at an earlier age. One of them is to be able to put signs all over the place and nobody can say anything because I’m retired and not a threat to anyone. So I decided to finally put the sign up on the garage that I always wanted to do saying "Northern Coachwork and Maintenance" and now it isn’t an actual business but rather a free teaching site on the web. These letters are made of foam and will be coated with latex exterior paint to make them weather proof.

This teapot was made in Alberta Plainsman clay using a method I called Kido Batai (meaning Battle Force in Japanese) and is the beating of rolled clay slabs with a natural grass whisk clutched low on the bristles. This produces many beaten thin slabs that is completely perforated at all edges and then assembled into a teapot.

If anyone recognizes the birds shown here, please tell me what they are because I would really like to know. They are in a group of about 20 and fly in a group though some act as individuals.

Part of the new molding process requires that all the remolded sculptures be separated into their mold parts and then oiled with linseed oil to make them water proof. Remolded thin raw clay castings cannot withstand the wet nature of plaster of paris, used in the mold making.

In winter the Bean Pot gets a good workout with chili, deep brown beans and also pea soup.

The benches below were made with pine and spruce construction grade 2" by 4"s cut into 1" by 2"s and 2" by 2"s and screwed together with a blind face cover to hide the fasteners.

Sculpturewise the main piece right now is the Piaggo figure holding up a young cat and the new molding process will begin shortly. Once the method is tested there will be a complete di scription, you can count on that!

Patterned after a dining room chair but with external dowling and no screws. The Black and Red mold discoloring is most prized and delightful to see with the danish oil and Helmsman applied. There are shown some screws in the construction but were only used temporarily and replaced with raw bamboo pins cut from the garden sticks you commonly see.

Grandpa has noticed a considerable improvement in his health since he replaced the first two meals, including morning coffee with juice from apples and carrots, a half inch of ginger root, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, pinch of cloves and a quarter of a lemon. This juice is a magnificent energy drink and keeps me going until supper. The zucchini from the garden lasted until January.

Leonard Kainulainen brought my load of wood, all ten cords of white birch and I highly recommend his service for anyone locally that wants a reliable supplier of cordwood. My axe needs a new winding on the handle which is made of steel oval tube welded on, for splitting wood and cutting through the lake ice without losing the head.

That’s a Corally 12th scale carpet racer that’s seen better days. It used to get crashed a bunch. The Kiln Shed is about done, but the damn roof still leaks and I need to fix the kilns and paint the walls and cupboards before it comes on line.

Had to make a scaffold for the front windows because the place needs paint in the worst way.

If you enlarge the picture called "Musical Notes" you will notice that the camera shake produced a panorama of what looks exactly like notes! Cool!

Monika wound up with my sweet little Red Nikon for a few days and obviously tried it out, and very successfully, I might add. The pix are steady and well framed, also bright and well lit. Kudos to Moni. There is the Dining room that we all have Christmas dinner in, and her upstairs computer station. She sure loves her plants and where the heck did that planter come from?

"Flurry" turned out to be the actual cat’s name and not "Flikka" so for all of those who will be sending me emails and phoning me about the oversight, I have made the correction. lol!

I’m so glad to see a picture of the Mad Hatter Teapots that we made last year. These were done in a three hour session, all hand built in slab talc body.

A storm had blown a neighbor’s Red Ensign onto the ground by the house so this isn’t disrespectful. Perhaps it represents the storm "Sandy" that came a few weeks later or perhaps the foreboding issue after the US election referred to as the "Fiscal Cliff" that would affect Canada should things go badly.

I had a ton of fun with these tiny Monkshood leaves that have artistic shapes. Pan has either a lute or a pipe in different pix. (Hold cursor over thumb to view title). The female form has several faces morphed in digitally and it looks so like a woman in flowing cloths with a flower. These were not modified in any way in the original pix but became a faceoff for the Nikon, Sony and Fuji, scoring 6,1 and 5 respectively.

The pipe below is made of Rhubarb Wood and I bet you’ve never heard of such a thing but if you let your Rhubarb go wild and don’t cut the seed stalks they become a wonderful curvy wood and I’m trying to figure out what can be made with it. Continuing on with the weirdest habits in Artsville, I always save the skim off the Varnish Can and in these pix you can see why. I left this one out in the dew overnight to get this beautiful finish.

You may have noticed, at this point, that the weekly update has deteriorated to a bi-monthly affair with some weeks completely missing. Well that is just how it’s developed and will probably be the case in the Summer and Fall when there are less Art projects.

The kilns are back in their remodeled shed but they both need parts to replace burnt out switches and elements, all normal for kilns.

If you enlarge the picture of the Green Bug or the other one, you will see that the Nikon gives great detail in Macro. That rusty Typewriter I call "Ghost Writer" is quite a sight but neither the Sony nor the Nikon did it justice. Those Zukes are from the garden and the best year yet for them in Ontario.

After the Summer break we are getting back into the artwork and especially the ceramics. This being our first year with Grampa’s Weekly and our 15th year with   "The Human Form"   that began in 1996 just shortly after the web went into major use. The link shows the website just as it was then but we keep it in the history dept. for safe keeping and still on the web after all these years.

Monika is so into animal print that when I saw this burnt board I just had to put a few Maple leave bits on it to spell her name. I would suggest that you use a fixer for the burnt color because the white disappears fast and you could glue the leaves down too but it’s fun to just make these things and photograph them.

That’s my old Pentax from the days before digital and it reminds of the press cameras I used as a news reporter many moon ago. David’s Hog looks and sounds cool.

These are some of the pictures of this Summer that were taken with the Nikon and Sony and they are marked "n" or "s" after the date and just before the title. Jess contributed many of the pix here in these last few weeks (marked with an "a") because there isn’t much artwork being done right now since the kiln shed is being rebuilt and refurbished for a new round of casting. So many thanks to her and the whole family for taking part.

Emma is a charmer, Mel and Brad look quizzical at the weenie roast, The succulent blossoms are very interesting, This is the best year we’ve had for Zucchini and Tomatoes, they were even red right on the vine, imagine that!

Grampa writes under the pseudonym of Namron Soar but it’s all boring Scientific stuff that no one ever reads. You can listen to him droning on about the same old thing again and again but don’t try to argue the point because it’s all Non-Theoretical, meaning there is little to actually discuss. Re-presented in this book is the comparison between Figmentalism/Idealism/Enlightenment, Plus, The Laws of Reality, Entitic Science, Nonreal Entitic Science and the new kid on the block; The Practical Laws of the Sphere.

To Read Brainworks    Click Here    for the Book Index and you can scroll down to find something that might interest you, like the topics mentioned above. Chapters Six and Eleven are even slightly funny. (No Chapters in ’Voice’ yet)

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