metal is clay

On his facebook page , industrial artist Cory Barkman has been sharing the journey to design and create unique hand-made furniture and fittings for a contemporary Chinese tea-room. I am going to describe more about bringing the Chinese Plum Tree screen installation into bloom, as I have the slightly scary task of making the 500 chased and repousséd bronze flowers. Chased and repousséd bronze flowers - overlaid to create the feel of the finished Chinese Plum tree branch, loaded with spring blossom. Christine Pedersen. 2017. With so much work necessary to create all the pieces, Cory has faced a serious problem - how to find enough hours in his working life to make it all: "Sometimes jobs are bigger than ourselves, and the sheer volume of work needed is more than one person can feasibly or efficiently achieve on a good timeframe”.  Cory and I have worked on a previous major project - the “Return” tree sculpture for Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation , wi...

Calgary Maker Faire Oct 28 and 29, 2017. Update: Caleb Kraft of Make Magazine shot this video from the LEXM booth * on October 29, starring Kat McLean and me doing all the talking. *Video: If you don't use Facebook, use this link to see lots of videos from Calgary, at makezine.com . To find LEXM, scroll down to video #13 - you will see Cam Farn's huge red-headed sculpture appear behind the presenter. Calgary Maker Faire was a lot of fun - hundreds of makers offering show and tell, and loads of hands on opportunities. Might sound crazy, but I think already know what work I want to show in the LEXM booth in 2018 :) Images: top row, L to R - Reinhold Pinter, Christine Pedersen, Cam Farn. Bottom row, L to R - Jeff de Boer, Cory Barkman. October 28/29, 2017: I will be demonstrating chasing and repoussé as part of the LEXM team of master makers and emerging artists. We will have an exhibition of one of a kind works, commission pieces (with thanks to our won...

This begins about 110 million years ago with the death of an 18-foot long armour-plated ‘lizard’, some time after it had enjoyed a large salad. Six years ago the fossilized animal re-surfaced at Alberta’s Suncor Millennium Mine, as an excavator dug down to recover the bituminous remains of prehistoric plants and animals in the tar-sands layer. The Royal Tyrrell Museum and National Geographic hail the dinosaur fossil as the finest specimen of its kind in the world—it is the best preserved, with armoured plates and even some skin tone visible. It is also the oldest dinosaur ever found in Alberta. As yet un-named nodosaur fossil. Photo: Kristi Van Kalleveen. #GroundsForDiscovery See the nodosaur fossil up close in this beautifully photographed essay from National Geographic , published in the June 2017 edition. All of the Grounds For Discovery exhibit fossils were accidentally discovered during mining and excavation work in Alberta. As the Tyrrell specimen fact sheet ...

Return tree sculpture is on show at the Core , TD Square, in downtown Calgary, from Jan 8 - 29, 2017 as part of their waste reduction month. Close-up on the hand holding the root-ball - the Return tree sculpture is approximately 12 feet tall overall. Return was commissioned by Alberta Depot in 2016. Designed and built by Cory Barkman , Christine Pedersen , and Jeff de Boer .

Return tree sculpture on show at Centre Court in Market Mall, Calgary, Alberta. October 17 - 23, 2016. Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation's (ABCRC) new sculpture celebrating the beauty of recycling has just been unveiled... Sheri and Angela from ABCRC with a tired but happy Cory and Jeff, and Return - a tree sculpture decorated with materials from pop cans and bottles, milk cartons, juice tins, and every kind of recyclable beverage container that can be returned to depots in Alberta. Recycled containers grow into Alberta flora Jeff de Boer , Cory Barkman , and I were invited to create an artwork that could help reinforce the beauty and value that comes from recycling beverage containers. Our challenge was to re-use containers from the bottle depot as key components of the piece, transforming the materials into something new. Project lead and maker extraordinaire Cory Barkman proposed a tree to capture the vision: " So many Albertan's recy...

It already feels like ages ago but Rainbow Trout has only been up since June 1, and the “Making Of…” video is now ready to share - hope you enjoy it. I think it is fair to state that all makers will understand the challenges of the average day in the studio: we design/make/fix/modify tools all the time—and we learn to accept that is really the entry level of committing to a life of making original work—it’s all about problem solving. And the bigger the work, the bigger and more costly the problems! But that’s where a talented team really shines - I was second camera on this project and it was a privilege to watch the many highly skilled professionals who contributed to building Rainbow Trout. As Jeff notes in the video, we won’t always be able to say what we mean clearly to someone else, and there will inevitably be different solutions to the same problem… It’s how we remedy our problems, in this case with humour and grace, that really sets the tone for success. Thank you to e...

Jeff de Boer’s latest public art sculpture, “Rainbow Trout”, was officially launched to the media June 1, 2016. However, if you’re 21 feet tall, made of glowing stainless steel, and have brightly coloured body segments that light up at night you’re more than likely to get noticed as soon as you join the neighbourhood! Jeff de Boer introduces "Rainbow Trout" at the media launch, June 1, 2016. Enmax Park, Calgary. Rainbow Trout is pr om inently sited above the banks of the lovely Elbow River at Calgary Foundation Crossing. This is the entrance to the new Enmax public park in Ramsay, Calgary, where, to quote Calgary Foundation Board Member Patti Pon, “the beauty of art, nature, and the spirit of our people intersect”. The sculpture greets park and path users, and they can wander through the bright steel pipes bursting from the sidewalk. Nathan and Lora Armstrong inspect the finished sculpture - Nathan was part of the design team. Jeff stressed that “I can’t build...