At Milan’s circa 1999

Photos: Paul McClelland

One thing I’ve always liked doing is shooting B&W photos. I’ve owned a 23 C Beseler enlarger for over 20 years. It’s moved from one place to another.

I’ve also always enjoyed  hanging out or working in a machine shop. When I got discharged from the Army, my first job was apprenticing at Cato Machine Works in Miami on North River Drive. I was in heaven. Trains across the street, cranes in junk yards down the road, airplanes from MIA flying overhead and ships crawling up the river. We worked on everything in that dirty, greasy place.

I didn’t get to many pictures there. These I got 15 years later. 

I only wish that I’d combined those interests on more occasions.

I’ll post these pics and more in the Objects section. Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers,

Paul 

Photographer Markus Haugg is working on getting some professional shots of my things. This is what Markus sees:

Today (Sat, the 16th), I went with Markus Haugg to photograph an istallation by Ara Peterson. Very cool stuff:

Carl Auböck, an Austrian designer,

lived before my time. I just met him today. My wife sent me a link to a guy that she thought had designed stuff that was kinda like my style. She was right, or I’m designing stuff kinda like his style?

This is a project I’m working on:

Now my Mahogany root section has no legs but if you’re familiar with my stuff, you know I like tripods.

Carl Auböck’s table:

Sigh! History comes to bite me in the ass. 

Homage to Mr. Auböck: This is a cocktail table 17″h x about 58″ x 40″

The color pattern is natural to this wood; Swietenia Mahogany.

This is the underside detail showing the original crosscut chainsaw marks made by the sawyer that sliced this from the original root section.  

Foot detail: 

My wife’s reaction to this piece was “It looks like a bird house!” All I heard was “B I  R   D    H      O      U        S            E        ” slowing down like a record that has been stopped mid     s o  n   g.    All I could think was WWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! She tried to fix it by saying “I mean in an organic way.” That didn’t help. So, without further ado; here is the B I  R  D   H     O     U      S       E lamp. Yes it’s a lamp. Deep sighhhhhhhhhhh!

I have finally turned a piece of wood in the new “Metal” lathe.  It’s one of those things that most people wouldn’t think of doing. “You turn wood in a wood lathe.”

 I took a quick picture so I could get this out of the way.

 Thanks for stopping by and enough of the lathe pictures already! 

I really didn’t have anything to post. My mind was  a blank. I’m getting to the end of my time for getting things finished by the 18th. I just started the last part of the last piece that I’m going to do for the show. That makes three pieces that are in progress that will need to be done in less then 3 weeks. 

One of the things that I dread when working with wood is the waste. As I was plunging this bit into this thick piece of mahogany, it bothered me that the wood I was removing was just going to go in the waste can. I was thinking how beautiful the color is when the wood is freshly cut. I was thinking how that this 2 inch slug of wood, that had been attached to the tree and had been curing for the last 40, 50, sixty years, was finally coming to it’s end by being removed to be thrown into the waste. So I decided to document it’s end for posterity.

I just wish I was a little more creative and could figure out what to do with those little curls of this incredible material.