Like Clockwork

By now, if my statements on the matter weren't enough, you'd realize on your own that I tend to procrastinate at blogging and describing what I do. But I sure can obsess on the doing. Sometimes I do up a storm. There are nights when I don't see bed until 2am because I just can't bear to stop writing or designing.

But even more than this is the constant barrage of notions that hit my head that I'd take on if I didn't have sane people around me telling me to focus. I get something like 2% of my ideas to the design level. And only 20% of those to the production level. It's often frustrating—even to the point of anxiety. But since I see that same mad glint in the eyes of the crafters and writers all around me, I take a bit of heart. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.

Maybe.


It could be that, in a world of machines that make a single thing efficiently, consistently, and to perfection, there are other machines whose design incorporates a bellows mechanism for ideas to blow through, a grist stone that breaks a simple thing that could be focussed on into a billion things that will be obsessed on, a set of large gears that take forever to turn over the whole process and about a dozen armatures to tinker and tweak any and all product that the machine generates—a bunch of Rube Goldberg machines churning out interesting, if not efficient, new things.

I bring up machines for a reason. I've got a thing about gears. That means I dig old clocks, Steampunk, old cars and historical inventions (among a list of other geary goodies). Sometimes I make art around the concept. Sometimes I just form piles out of gears and enjoy them for themselves.

I want to build clocks. I have all these ideas for how to tell time in different ways and someday (someday) I'll make outlandish clocks and be so happy (sure I will).

Meanwhile

A while back, while working on a photography project at art school, I disassembled a clock and took a ton of very precise photographs of each gear. The multilayered final result of that effort really deserves a post of its own.

A photo of my completed set of photos. That description makes much more sense in person.

And there was a second piece that was borne of the first, which I made and sold a couple of years back. It was a paper cut piece that was not a clock, but more an expression of clockness. It was partially inspired by this lovely pair of frames I came across that reminded me of the beautiful wooden housings of mantle and grandfather clocks.

I can best describe it as mixed-media since it incorporates canvas, some of my photographs cut and layered and jewels (that you really can't see, but I know are there). I fancied it from the start, but it was made for sale at a booth I used to have in a year-round market.


I didn't sell the first, because it's really more a model for what I want to do down the road and not a sellable kind of thing. I've got it at home and it makes me smile. That's its current value.



But, under the category of "a single thing broken down into a million things" I'm still tinkering with gears in one of my side projects coming together right now.

Using that ton of reference material, I've been drawing gears for cutting. I layer them to give the paper mass, and I'm going to foil them (I think). I have a design that I think will work well as an interesting battery-operated clock. The gears don't move. I'm not willing to deal with the size of motor I'd need to run it, or the effects of wear on the watercolour paper I'm using right now. But it will be interesting, regardless.


I'm wondering if I should put the numbers for the clock at different levels—maybe make them different thicknesses so they start at different levels but come to nearly the same, or maybe have them  just sitting there like they'd get lost in the works if the thing actually moved.

I'm also wondering if I should make a wind key. I have the holes. I could put the key in the hole (but then it would stick out, and that's not good) or I could hang it on a paper chain to one side. That might be cool. I think I know how I'd make that chain—ooh, need to set that aside for a moment.

Everything's white right now, because it's just paper, but it looks so great! I need to stay committed and not leave the final product in only white. I have a plan!

Some of the gears will be foiled so they look brass(ish) some painted black. The numbers will be coloured (black or red or blue) and the "face" (which is really just a ring setting on spacers in front of the gears) will be silver(ish).

Maybe my next clock will turn.