Summer Off

I have been employed at Harper College for 20 years; first as a CE (continuing education) instructor, then studio tech and the last 10 years as a welding instructor. Back in March I received a letter indicating that under new educational requirements, I was not certified to teach welding. I did not have an associates in welding. The college suggested I get an AA before May 27 if I wanted to continue to teach.

I said how about I just retire one year early? I'm keeping my CE gig, Artistic Welding, keeping my badge and keys. I'm hustling to create CE classes to teach, because the certified welding instructor pay was chicken salad, and now I'm getting chicken shit. But I still have access to all the campus, so yay.

But time to think about the next thing. So, time to take my knowledge on the road? I know I can teach beginning anything, art and craft wise. I could teach out of the fire arts playbook. I've done it all: metal casting, ceramics, glass, mold making, wax working, how to build a furnace, how to build a lot of stuff. 

One CE class is 3D modeling and mold making. Combining ancient and contemporary materials from 3D prints to plaster to create objects that go on to be ceramic or glass or metal.

I think I could take on the road as a mold making class using clay, plaster, wax, and silicon rubber. The Foru Sisters. A kiln would help, to take something home. I would demo with my one hit wonder, which I designed on a computer, 3D printed, made silicon rubber masters, cast plaster from those, slip cast clay into the plaster molds, and a voila. Or just a clay and plaster modl making class would also be fine.

Art Shows

I took a long time off from art shows. I have two pieces in two shows this summer.

One is at the Rockford Art Museum Midwestern Bienielle. Good old Rockford been very good to me. I was in a lot of shows last decade there. The piece is titled Free To A Good Home, which is baby monsters and their caretakers.

The other piece is Happy Family and that is going into the Not Normal show at Forum 301 art gallery

Happy Family I originally titled Mister Potato Chip and Friends.

I also submitted this throuple as Chasse.

I first took LSD around September 1974 and I don't think I've ever come down from it.

Existential Dread

I'm starting to feel existential angst about how long I have left. More directly how long active will I be? On the assumption I will become less active over time, it makes sense to get stuff done now while I can.

The question is what? Metal for sure. That's strenuous and tedious and eventually I will not be able to do the hard parts.

Here are the latest bronzes.

Bronze is getting expensive though. Everything is, and I guess that is because we have consumed the same amount of raw materials in the past 20 years than we did in the prior 100.

Sorry kids. Can't blame the Boomers for this one.

Anyway I want to try cast iron. And maybe cast glass again. 

While I still can.

Living in a Chinese curse

May You Live In Interesting Times. What can I say? The American crime empire ain't trying to hide it anymore. And we chumps? We Munchkins waiting for a Dorothy? We are just going to put up with it. How Russian of us, and I mean that in a good way, like "Russians can handle suffering". Your average candy ass American not so much, except through not so quiet desperation.Regardless, I have to continue to make things. The cool thing about me is I'm a process not a product kind of guy. If stuff I make gets recycled, thrown away, I don't care.

Art is not an escape from living but it helps. I'm retiring, which means I am going to make a shit ton of stuff. Metal stuff of course. Here we got the latest but I want to go big. I want to cast art in steel. That requires electricity, the miracle of the Modern Age, the Monkey Singularity. Anyway, latest wax works.

Same theme, Monsters Are People Too. But miniature versions of earlier works. The monster can be gravity cast with ceramic shell. The figurine needs to be centrifugally cast. Here's my rigging for a flask. 

The flask is too big for our spin caster, so I fabricated an arm for the bigger flask. I think I just need to build a big ass spin caster, which makes me think about a wheel caster with a central crucible, and that is a very dangerous spring. Here's a shot of my kitchen workshop with ongoing shit and unfinihsed business.

Monsters are people too

Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus, and came from the direction of the bright star Vega. Maybe the Vegans are invading Pegasus.

There are three known interstellar obects and who knows how many we haven't noticed.

The really sad thing is each time it happened, people were hoping it was aliens. Wow. Are we that bored and lonely?

When I was a kid and the planets were smudges through telescopes, we all knew it was common sense that there was not only life, but people living on those moons and planets. This wasn't a modern idea either. For thousands of year, we've assumed the universe was populated with all sorts of fanciful beings. Many looked like monsters. Eh.

Monsters are people too.

I wrote a short short story which I will just tell again. 

In 2017, the first interstellar object detected in our solar system, dubbed 1I/2017 U1, later called Oumuamua. The object was unusual and prompted speculations that it was an alien artifact. It sailed on through in a hyperbolic course towards the constellation Pegasus.  

In March 2028, one hundred million Oumuamua objects arrive from the direction of the bright star Vega, and sail on through our solar system at a hyperbolic course towards the constellation Pegasus. The stars making the constellation are all ridiculously big stars hundreds of light year away. The target is undoubtedly closer, probably 51 Pegasi b, which is a known extrasolar planet.

We expected a fleet of Oumuamua objects to split off and check us out, but that didn't happen to the disappointment of some. I guess we were too small to notice.

Oh, also I sold some art. The awkward thing is I was paid a few hundred dollars and was thrilled, while I have a rich friend who just rented his art out for tens of thousands of dollars. One thing I liked about NFTs was royalties.

Free To A Good Home

I know what gooning is same as I know what felching is but I don't care to remind myself all that often about it. The Internet just keeps exposing the nightmare levels of our minds with, lately, the Goonverse.

Don't search for it. Just don't. I don't want to strengthen links to the site. It is a porn site involved in extreme attention fragmentation and extensive masturbation. There are brick and mortar places with giant screens blaring porn throughout a room like a sports bar of porn, and guys will circle jerk there. 

Add in AI and you have private tailored porn that you can take with you into the circle jerk, and I suppose this is where it is all going for humanity plugged in.

Item: 87% of executives use AI on the job compared 57% managers and 27% of employees.

Anecdotal Item: There have been increasing numbers of media interviews where the CEOs seem to be on drugs.

Observation: Maybe drugs, but I think AI psychosis. I've noticed the CEO of Palantir, Musk, and strange correspondence from many including Travis Kalanick who gave us the horrible idea of Uber, who all seem to be hypnotized by their AIs. It's so much better than being in a cult, because the mutual delusion can be tailored to you, your own private goonverse. Instant Clanker Cult Cup of Soup.

This is horrifying.

Other things. I got two more bronzes done for the semester. 

Free To A Good Home

A woman told me they were abandoned baby monsters with their caretakers. She thought them beautiful and sad.

Luxury Agriculture

I've always loved greenhouses. I like spending time in them rather than working in them, so maybe I really like botanical conservatories. Chicago has a gem in the Garfield Park Conservatory, especially now, when you can walk from arctic air into a lush tropical fern room.

I like the greenhouse look, panes of glass overhead, arrayed in minimalist or ornate splendor. I like the controlled chaos of greenery. I like the artisanal nature of horticulture, attempting quality rather than quantity. Sounds like I want a greenhouse.

It's starting to look like we will need greenhouses, as global warming takes a toll on our agriculture. More specifically luxury agriculture. Things like chocolate, coffee, vanilla, etc. Not only is it becoming a problem to grow them, but the industrial agriculture aproach destroys the environment.

Case in point: Brazil has destroyed 20% of the Amazon rain forest to grow vast monocultures of coffee, among other things. A similar thing happened in West Africa for cocoa. Sustainable agriculture of these crops work, but you have to have a forest to sustain them (coffee and cacao being under canopy plants). 

A few years ago I read a story about a greenhouse in Iceland growing bananas. I found a more current article and most greenhouses in Iceland are at the "greenhouse capitol" of Hveragerdi. They grow tropical things like bananas, coffee, cocoa, but they don't do so well. Probably being grown in isolation from their prefered habitat, with all their little forest pals and fungi and mushroom networks is not so good for them. Kind of like being raised on the Moon.

For all the land in Iceland they haven;t built many greenhouses. Maybe because of the elves. The huldrafolk, described as looking like us, only taller and thinner, want their volcanic wasteland just the way nature wanted it . And Icelanders agree. But it made we wonder who does have the most greenhouses? I'm gonna bet Canada even though I know it's China. Yeah, it's China, the Jupiter of the Solar Greenhouse system. Followed by Spain, Italy, Mexico. The Netherlands is interesting, at number 9, their Westland green house complexes make them the 2nd largest food producer in the world.

But I'm interested in the luxuries like coffee and chocolate/ And vanilla. I'd probably nned a Garfield Park sized conservatory for the rain forest I'd need for proper growth. And all the critters as well. Bees like coffee buds, but cacao is fertilized by a tiny biting fly no longer than a few millimeters. I don't know what fertilizes vanilla. Edmond Albius figured it out. Humans are now vanilla's pollinators.