The needle fine point of my work is that I make art out of trash. Sometimes it’s my “trash,” sometimes I find it, other times people give it to me. More often than not, my art grows out of all three sources. In fact, many times I’ll start projects from my own stash of junk only to get stuck because I can’t find that Thing that will bring it all together. I’ll hold up a dozen different parts from my bench, and then shake my head and wonder what it is that’s missing. Every time I’ve worked myself into such a corner I push the project aside knowing that what will be perfect is out there somewhere. I built the head, stand, and base for this lamp and then stalled. I’d spent so much time working out all the details on the head that it felt naked no matter what I held around it. I stared at it and tripped over it for a while and then went out of town with my family for a few weeks to visit my in-laws. When we came home, I found a box on our porch from a friend who does maintenance on private jets. Let me just say I have some amazing friends. The last time I’d seen this friend he had mentioned that they frequently saved parts that had worn out-of-spec and that maybe he could gather some of them up and send them to me. In his generous gift box my friend had included a few sets of aircraft antennas, and when I pulled them out, the rough edges of this lamp fell away. I added additional angles to the base and hid the wiring up the stand in some curved stainless steel tubing. The head is built from an old Jeep’s pistons/timing gear/valves and trailer ball, and is carried aloft by the winglets that are bolted to that same Jeep’s brake pedal arm. At the rear of the base is a foot pedal that switches the lamp on and off. The heavy details below are cleanly separated from the fine details at eye level, leaving this lamp to occupy a visual space all its own.
9 Bar Welding 