Faded Paint

I have to be at work by 9:30 but there's just enough time to sip a little coffee and turn a few pages of a book. Just picked up this new book by Ed Dobson . I like it so far. Mostly because it's interesting but also because its a little weird. I've come to appreciate weird. Normal is...well...normal. Ed sat with me for maybe half an hour on a park bench in front of where my sculpture is showing and he talked to me like we had been friends for a long time. He liked my sculpture which made me like him even more. With his ALS, long beard, and red white and blue track suit on, he looked like a homeless man. That made me like him more too. Anyway, the book came out yesterday, I'll let you know what I think. Or you can read it too and tell me.

What a beautiful morning. -Or at least it was. Where did all the fog come from? Hey, with all this talk of ArtPrize, my friend Pat Perry is in ArtPrize too and his entry is super sweet. Check out his blog for some images and updates. I don't know if you "subscribe" to blogs or not but not that long ago I figured out to use Google Reader (it isn't very hard) and I love it. Basically I "subscribe" to any blog OR webpage I want to stay up to date on and it auto-loads all of them on one page for you to keep track of. No having to remember to check someones blog, or a band's website for tour news or album releases. Just subscribe to the sites and your reader will post the update when it happens. Most of you probably already know all of this, but I threw it out there just in case you were like me a few months ago and had no idea at the technological convieniences available to me.

So here's number in the ArtPrize production videos. Hope you enjoy!

Here's the newest installment of our ArtPrize Production Video. I hope you enjoy it. More will be coming soon.

We had to put our 11 & 1/2 year old Bernese Mountain Dog, Annina, to sleep today. She was an amazing dog. We loved her. She had two beautiful litters of puppies. She was stubborn and strong-willed, but that made her the confindent girl she was. She was faithful and loving. Gentle and Kind. We miss you and love you Good Girl. All this has me thinking. One of the hardest truths I'm struggling with is not death right now. It is the changing of life. Death is tough, -maybe the toughest thing about life. But it is something we think about often, at least I do. I'm having a hard time with the changing eras of life. Something I don't spend too much time thinking about. Annina dying today kind of signified the end of an era for Molly and I. We were young and married. We were full of ambition and optimistic dreams. We lived in a little house down by a stream. And we had Pepper and Annina. We didn't have human kids, we had puppy kids. They were what we ...

Here is a little update on the ArtPrize project. We finally got all of the rocks brazed together in groups so they can be attached to the board later after they're colored. Today Thomas worked on the stand that will hold the piece and I stated coloring the rocks with various chemicals and treatments to get some vibrant colors out of them. The stand Thomas is building is amazing! I will post some pictures of it soon. He is building a stand that kind of hands the sculpture out in front without you really seeing the stand too much at all. He is crazy detailed about getting it perfect. The Lord definitely gave me the right person for the job. The rock coloring is going well. I am really excited by the way they turning out. Sorry I don't have any picture to put on here yet. One thing I want to take a moment to say is how thankful I am for all of the help I have received from others so far. My dad, Brad Savickas, Scott Ouzts, Josh Koziej all have helped with the productio...

Here's the latest video documenting the production of my sculpture for ArtPrize . I posted it here because unfortunately I used a copywrited Mute Math track for the background audio and they turned the audio off on Youtube. I think if you view it from my channe l on Youtube though and you can still hear the audio, it really is much better with it. The track is The Nerve from Mute Math's brand new album Armistice which is great. Last night, while working on the sculpture, I got a good burn from the acetylene torch. It turns out 800 degrees is pretty hot afterall. Tonight we will be continuing to attach the rocks together in groups of 20-40 so they can be attached to the backgroup in several large chunks. We are also going to be making the waterline on the three big rocks that need to appear that they are sticking out of the water. We're going to do this by actually putting them in a kiddie pool, filling up with water and making a line on the rocks where the water co...