I'm going to start with a point of order: my fascination with roosters goes deep into my childhood on an Ohio farm, and far predates any association with the University of South Carolina. I'm not a big fan of college sports, and over the last several years I've stopped paying any attention to any sports. So when I make a rooster it isn't out of any desire to cheer on the Gamecocks. And it isn't because I think cock-fighting is cool. It's because I find roosters to be intrinsically interesting.

I also like rooster art. And for a town where the gamecock is king, a lot of the rooster art falls somewhere on the spectrum between "bland" and "dumb." As Exhibits A and B, I present to you the sculpture that greets visitors at the Columbia airport and the $85,000 statue that graces the campus.

Eighty.

Five.

Thousand.

Dollars?

Moving on . . .

​"Pinwheel" started with trying to capture the lines and feel of a shape in motion. I used some arcs of round steel from an old outdoor table (curb find) to start outlining the crescent shape of a rooster back-pedaling into the air. The feel of the piece emerged over the course of the month as I triangulated what I envisioned with the materials I had and my technical abilities. It wanted a twirling, spinning, somewhat gritty, mechanistic-yet-on-the-edge-of-control feeling, like being on a beat-up carnival ride. I also wanted an out-of-balance display, part show and part genuine menace. "Pinwheel" is a summer evening's trip down the midway and through the gauntlet of posturing carnies trying to goad little boys into demonstrating their manhood. It's the perpetual motion machine of flashing lights, trampled grass, fried food, and the music of AC/DC blaring from the Matterhorn.

It's also for sale.

I think this piece turned out great -- it's perhaps the "best" thing I've created so far. I'm selling it because I don't really have the space to display it inside the house (it's an inside piece) and because I honestly think it is a piece that can be enjoyed and appreciated by a lot people. Of course it won't evoke the same basket of memories and feelings from everyone that sees it. That's okay. I did what I set out to do, so my job is done.

I think "Pinwheel" would look great over the bar in a high-end restaurant in Columbia or some other city. "Pinwheel" has a wingspan of 38," a height (from the base to the highest wingtip) of 41," and a length (from beak to tail) of 30." The base is a steel ring with a 16.25" diameter. The base could be changed but there would be engineering involved.

I'm asking $8000 for it and a display that includes my name. If you've got the cash, the space, and the desire to ditch your cartoon chicken and sit at the adult table, please send an email to my art account: ​[email protected].  I'm always ready to consider interesting trades or other offers, but please don't email me to ask if I'll take $200 for it.

I'm going to put two old radio tubes in the sockets of the light fixture after I apply a clear coat to the piece to lock in the patina.

Here are some more photos (and more here; video coming soon):

Update (6/22/2018): Yes, it's as dangerous as it looks.

Soundtrack.

I think my decision to "just say no" to art commitments for a while is already paying off. Changing the question of "what do I need to do" to "what do I want to do" felt like removing the handcuffs yesterday when I got out to my garage, and I busted out a quick piece that I'm really happy with: "Music Box."

Carolina wrens are among my favorite parts of living in Columbia. If you've never been around these birds, you probably don't truly appreciate how loud and bold a pocket-sized bird can be. They sing all day, starting before sunrise. Sometimes they sing all night. If you leave your lawn chair for five minutes you may find a nest in it by the time you get back. They often fly into my garage even while I'm working, completely unfazed by the noise, sparks, and smoke.

"Music Box" was scaled around the neck of a trashed mandolin that one of my local supporters, Susan James, gave me. The body is shaped around a piston from an automobile engine, and the head and shoulders are made from a doorknob. The wings are made from some of the mandolin body and a clock gear. I used the strings (in need of being changed years ago) from my own guitar.

I'm still thinking about what exactly this one "means," beyond the obvious connection between wrens and their songs. As I was working on this and thinking about it, I found myself listening to REM's "Everybody Hurts" over and over again. It's a song about hanging on, especially though long, lonely nights. I think what resonates for me is the unending, self-contained spirit of these tiny, fearless birds whose morning songs signal that the day is right around the corner.

​The second bird is "The Red," an owl made from an old red gas tank I bought from a junk store in eastern North Carolina during a trip this spring with my daughter. I bought the tank for $5 (I tried to get it for $2, but Windy could tell I wanted it) not knowing what it would be. "The Red" by Chevelle popped into my head on the way back from TAG and it the piece was there to be made.

I had a few art lessons as a little kid. One of the things that one of the teachers said that stuck with me was "nothing is ever one color." The water is blue, but it's not all the same blue. The shadows are dark, but they're not the same dark. Seeing the variation is one thing; capturing it in art is something else altogether.

One of the things I wanted to do with "The Red" is take that simple little "red" gas tank and let loose the different shades and textures. Emotions, like objects that we can see and touch, are complex, variable, and never all one color.

I perched this one on an old 1930's lamp stand, cut so the owl is about at eye level.

I'm kind of fascinated by this one because of its connection to internal combustion. It's made from a gas tank. It has the glass fuel petcock inside. It has spark plugs. It's a post-steam creature that produces power by burning within. I kept thinking of that line from "Red Dawn" where the guy says that the anger inside keeps him warm. 

I captured the making of "The Red" on video. Enjoy!​

It was busy spring for me and my family. Part of what made it busy was the convergence between the end of the academic year and art-related commitments I made to make things, ship things, and exhibit things. Although each of those obligations was worthwhile on its own, the cumulative effect was a feeling of being over-booked. It was a buzzkill. 

Art is a glorified hobby for me. Now that I've been successful selling some pieces, of course, there's also an economic utility. But I don't need to always have something for sale, always have a show on the horizon, always have a deadline looming. What I do need is get out in the garage and let my mind and body make what I want to make for a while. So that's what I'm going to do with the time I have this summer. I'm going to say "no thank you" to commitments through the fall. My gut tells me that what I make will be better as a result and it will make me happier to make it. And that would be the main point.

My wife and I went out to dinner last night before going to the EcoFAB show at Tapp's. We went to The Oak Table (for the first time) and learned that it was the last night the restaurant would be open. I had beef Wellington, which I have been wanting to try since I saw Gordon Ramsay getting pissy about it over and over again on Hell's Kitchen years ago. It was pricey, but it felt serendipitous that it was on the menu on what was the restaurant's last day and what felt like the first day of the real summer to me. Plus I just sold "Naked Flank," so it was a gift to myself to pull the trigger and order a $50 dish. And I didn't take a picture of it. Because that's dumb.

The show at Tapp's was a lot of fun, with some really interesting and creative work on display in both wearable and stationary form. A year out from my Afterburner show last May, Tapp's is one of the few places in town where I can go and feel like I know a few people who know who I am and like when I stop by. They don't know or care what I actually do for a living, I'm not defined by which kids are mine, and none of the interactions are torqued by the weird power hierarchies that permeate academic culture.

I'm happy to be involved in the art scene here in Columbia, and I'm determined to keep it that way. That means saying "no thank you" more often.

I spent this week along the Broad River with colleagues from the South Carolina Heritage Trust and some of my own students doing fieldwork associated with a research grant I received from USC. The grant, titled "Finding the Family in South Carolina Prehistory," was focused on exploring the potential for buried archaeology in alluvial landforms in the vicinity of 38FA608. Several seasons of hand excavations there have revealed about 3 m of stratified cultural deposits spanning at least 6000 years, all protected within a sandy "natural levee" deposit.

I believe I've mentioned the grant before, but only in passing. In brief, the strategy was to use a backhoe to excavate a series of short trenches spaced about 100 m apart along about a mile of deposits. The sediment sequences revealed in the walls of those trenches provide information about how the alluvial landscape along this section of the river formed and developed and which areas have (or have the potential to contain) well-preserved archaeological sites. We cleaned, drew profiles, described sediments, and photographed a wall of each trench. Carbon was scarce, but I obtained a few small samples from buried strata that I think will help me construct a preliminary depositional chronology. I'm most interested in locating sites with good potential for preserving evidence of family- and group-level behaviors in the Early and Middle Holocene (hence the name of the grant), but I want to be able to tell the rest of the story as well.

The weather was not our friend early in the week. We got soaked by heavy rain all day on Monday, and intermittently on Tuesday afternoon. The remainder of the week was better, perhaps even relatively pleasant by the standards of South Carolina in late May. 

It was a hectic week, but we got everything done and learned a tremendous amount in a short time. I owe a huge debt of thanks to Sean Taylor at the South Carolina Heritage Trust for kicking in resources (both human and machine) and expertise at his disposal. I'm also thankful for the continued generosity and hospitality of the landowner. The analysis of the materials and information will begin immediately, starting with cleaning/cataloging the artifacts we collected, digitizing the profiles, and selecting samples for radiocarbon dating, etc. I still have a day or so left in the field to map in some trench locations and take a few final notes. I'll write about it as I have time, and will produce one or two videos showing what we did. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy some photos from our week and some of my initial thoughts on what we saw: