steel metal

coincidentally this was the name of the special duo my cousin kyle and i formed when we were younger.  we also had (have) a spy agency, but i’m not allowed to tell you the name of that.  steel metal was just our public cover, and sounded cool when we played cards and stayed up late eating beef jerky.  little did i know those two words would evoke a whole new world at this point in my life…

it’s officially been a week that i’ve been working with steve now!  i’ve learned upwards of 15 different machines and power tools, including the two major types of welding (TIG and MIG), sandblasting and plasma cutting, and already have plunged full-on into multiple different projects, including finishing one small hanging piece, getting halfway through another, and also helping to finish a large kinetic piece of steve’s that is one of my all-time favorites.  i’ll hold out to show you pictures of these until they’re really finalized…

it’s amazing to think about how much has happened, how much autonomy and freedom he’s already given me (whether i want it or not!), and how damn much i’ve learned, on so many levels, already.  

a typical week day looks something like this:

6:30am – first curve of sun seeps out above the east edge of pipes canyon and i’m instantaneously awake.  my house is like a giant fishbowl perched on the opposite edge, my north and east-facing walls are solid windows, and there’s no escaping the desert light, so i am my own alarm clock.  having forever been (and i don’t see this changing) a stayer-upper-until-5am-er, this new type of thing they call waking up at a decent hour is something i’m feeling especially proud of right now.  in fact between this and the pickles (see previous post), i could come back to the east coast already and call this a success. 

7:00am – im soaking in the porch morning and hear a grinning steve & ruth rounding the gravel side of my house for our morning walk.  they have a 2-ish mile loop they do every - and i mean every - weekday morning, and have been for the 30+ years they’ve been living here.  they go down across the canyon, along it, and back, finishing up the sandy wash that leads to the house.  they eagerly asked if i would join them every morning, and not only is it an incredible hour of light and chance to reflect on the day, but the act itself is a beautiful thing to be a part of.  the two of them inhabit their own world, which i am only beginning to grasp, but between them exists a rythym, in every sense of the word, like nothing i have ever witnessed.  i walk a half step behind them so that i can just try to contain my smile the majority of the time, while i listen to their patterns of stories and ideas and observations and questions, and watch their quick steps part around each creosote bush and immediately join back up again in sync.  so far i have learned everything from why the desert “stink bug” is constantly doing headstands (he’s collecting the miniscule bit of dew that has accumulated on his back overnight), to which film is one of malick’s best, to how to effectively kill a feral cat (this one’s a good story for later), to jeremy rifkin’s 5 pillars of energy policy.  while we walk, literally no bird or seedling goes unnoticed and undocumented.  i love every minute i get to spend with the two of them, but in the mornings i feel especially swept in their tide, and i excitedly oblige.

8:00am – back in the cabin, big bowl o granola and fruit with a mug o coffee on my porch and i’m raring to go…

9:00am – steve and i assemble in the studio and dig right in.  this usually begins with him revealing an idea he had in the middle of the night… it is almost always a brilliant solution to a problem or question we had left to mull the evening before.  he calls this the “2am work sessions”, and grins as he says, “i tell ruth, whaddya think?  i just lie there?!?!”   we eagerly crank it out til noon-ish, and it’s usually the best part of the day.  he says he always does his important work in the morning, when the brain is fresh and the energy is there.  the afternoon is for the “mindless” stuff, when he can throw on an audio book and cruise.  (since dealing with machines that send sparks flying clear across the studio, i am a little slower to categorize these things as “mindless”).  nonetheless, i agreed to let him pick me up another michael cunningham book (specimen days) at the library when he went to get his (the hours).  he taught me to MIG weld steel and then grind it on friday (this is the process where you lay down a bigger, rougher type of weld, and then grind the whole metal surface so it looks shiny and will evenly accept the patina that makes it looks nice n rusty again).  i welded together a 9ft tall base to one of his pieces, and then ground the entire thing in the afternoon, which took 4+ hours.  it is incredibly tedious, so i finally understood the serious appreciation he has for books on tape!  the two of us cruised along with giant muffler earphones and fanny packs from the 70’s that housed $5 (yes… $5.00) walkmans.  we traded grins and thumbs-ups across the studio every 20 minutes to confirm each other was alive and happy.  although imagine a chuck norris version of sandpaper for steel, mounted on a giant spinning power tool that sends a flood of sparks shooting out literally everywhere across the studio (and some back at my face).  thus, while i got through half my book, i will not be accepting questions regarding the plot.  hopefully by the time it’s my turn to listen to the hours, i can zone off in virginia woolf land and not are-my-fingers-still-there-land.

12:00pm – lunch.  me, my porch, handmade chairs, and as much water as i can guzzle.  oh, and elaborate (but short-lived) hand washing.

1:00pm – back at it.  generally steve has already had another of those brilliant ideas (i’ve come to accept that if 5 minutes has passed since something’s been unresolved, he’s bound to chime in any moment).  by 5pm my arms are getting noodly, my brain is slowing to a crawl, and i’m thinking about sneaking a little downward dog in the corner of the studio.  i look over at steve, who’s always beaming back at me or ready with some hilarious comment, and am amazed that at the age of 70, he is still slinging around the heavy machinery as if it were nothing.

5:30pm – we give in & clean up the shop for the day, sneak up to see ruth (who runs all the business operations) and have a beer.  i usually sit through steve recounting one or two good stories of me from the day.  until thursday his favorite story (and he has now told it 5 or 6 times to different people) was the day he taught me to use the plasma cutter.  it, too, send sparks shooting out, hopefully downward, but sometimes back at you, and they definitely ping up your clothing (or your skin), so it takes some getting used to.  he showed me how it worked, handed the machine over to me, and disappeared across the studio.  i took a deep breath and went to town.  about 10 minutes in i hear him cracking up uncontrollably.  apparently i had THE most serious and dramatic facial expressions going on, and steve could not keep it together.  5 seconds later i burned a hole straight through a yellow and brown blanket covering another of his machines, ed.  try not to look at my photos too closely.

thursday, though, i managed to shock myself with the TIG welder.  this is very common (and steve had warned it would happen sooner or later) if you forget to place a cable somewhere to ground the machine, or (and this is what i learned) if you hold your hands far enough from the metal you’re welding that you become the ground anyway.  the noise (which is a loud, sustained ZAP like lightning striking an electrical wire) and the sight (a green glowing arc from the machine to the opposite hand) are generally more alarming than the actual pain (though my thumb was throbbing for the next 2 hours), so it scared the living sh**T out of me and i shrieked like a baby pig.  again, steve’s laughter rang out across the quonset hut, knowing exactly what i must have done.  

that episode was quickly dwarfed by the lesson on sandblasting.  my favorite moment so far.  steve uses a sandblaster to impart a subtle finish or texture to metal sometimes (and has used it frequently on watercolors as well as on glass).  it’s a big tub on a cart connected to an air-pressured hose, like the kind you see the evil pesticide sprayers using.  he buys silica sand to fill the tub, which is apparently pretty bad to inhale.  “so, first,” he says, “you need to wear this little respirator.”  by “this little respirator” he means a GIANT double-breasted (this isn’t standard terminology, but i’m goin with it) respirator like you see in the biohazard labs during the movie hot zone.  you’d think i’d feel right at home.  well, he popped the bugger on and tightened the hell out of it.  i could barely swallow and my upper lip was sweating uncontrollably within 4 seconds of desert heat.  “now,…” he says, “what happens is that the sand sprays back at me and gets all caught in my eyebrows.  then, when i’m bathing or sleeping, it dribbles down into my eyes…. and i just HATE that!” (now i’m laughing).  “oooooo-kay” i say.  “so what i do,” steve continues as he holds up a dirty looking, fluorescent green colored wad of fabric, “is wear this little pillowcase that ruth made me, and cut a tiny slit in for my eyes!”  and he proceeds to put the bright green pillowcase over my head, over the respirator, and pull the 2-inch slit right over my squinting eyes.  to make things better, the slit is cut directly over the side seam, so the pointy part of the pillowcase is sticking straight up like a cone on top of my head.  “THEN,” he says, “you put on the safety glasses over the pillowcase, and headphones over that!”  as soon as we get it on, complete with my heavy duty gloves, i try to turn to look at him (can’t really even move my neck because the respirator is so tight) and we both start cracking up so hard we can’t get a single word out for 2 minutes.  “okay!” he sarcastically cackles… “i’ll be in the studio…. have fun out there!”

man, do i love him. 

in addition to learning to use large machinery, i’m learning just as much (or probably more) about all aspects of the creative (and non-creative) process.  steve has one main goal for every piece he makes.  that is to balance three things: the CAT (concept, art, technique).  concept is of course the message he wants to convey and the themes, symbolism, meanings woven into each other.  the art refers to all the “standard stuff you learn at art school” (i.e.  warms advance, cools recede, the eye is drawn to sharp contrast…etc).  and the technique is a lot of the hubbub i just described above, the part that requires less active brain.  steve says his biggest goal is “to achieve a perfect balance between those three things... and i told ruth, when i do, i’ll retire!”  his fluency and lucidity with each of those 3 things is overwhelming in itself, so i am still just loving absorbing it all.  every day we sit and stare at one of our half-finished pieces, tinker with it, talk about it, and tinker more.  discussing these questions (what works, what isn’t working, why is it or isn’t it) literally feels like crack for my brain.  i absolutely love it.  the act of conveying feeling and affecting another being through an abstract medium is so pure and reaffirming.  and wrestling with how that conveyance happens gives you stunning windows into the human brain.  my favorite writer, bob hicok, says it simply in his self-written biography:

“I write poems and stories. I have little faith or interest in my thoughts on writing. Those who do a thing are often too close to be perceptive commentators, particularly where love is involved. I love writing, maybe most of all because it doesn’t matter, because poems don’t lift bridges or make refrigerators shinier. The nakedness of the endeavor—just one person, sitting at a desk, trying to express something they feel in a way that will allow others into their mind—may be among the most human things we do...”

i dreamed of doing an apprenticeship with steve because, of course, i admired him so much as an artist (wouldn’t anyone kill to learn from him?!).  but there was a more vague gut feeling i had, something harder to define than the art itself, but the entirety of the process, the whole of his existence and web of thought.  i was ready to bank all my cards on this – just to be around him.  i didn’t have much more of a tangible goal than that. 

somehow, that was enough for him, and somehow, without knowing what the hell an apprenticeship meant either, but believing our brains aligned enough that this would work out, he has so far filled every undescribed expectation i had, and more.  i’m just excited to keep holdin on and takin in….

will tell you more on life outside the studio soon… j-tree is thus far all i’ve hoped it’d be… among many highlights, have already met some incredible people out here, attended an open-air birthday party & potluck for a 98-year-old woman, gone to a giant orchid festival, seen gillian welch and dave rawlings put on a show to 700 people (you could hear a pin drop) under a starry desert sky with wodsmoke and BBQ and tequila in mason jars, awoken 4 times around 3am to coyotes so loud i can’t hear myself speak, hit the double feature (straw dogs & contagion) at the desert drive-in (BYOPAB – bring your own popcorn and booze), and befriended a lizard who lives with me and eats my spiders. 

now just itching to get my climbing hands on some of those j-tree rocks!!  looks like it’ll be very soon…