who says lead is poisonous?

for everyone out there reading this who was concerned that by coming to j-tree i’d give up my scientific career, i can assure you, this is far from the case.

instead of haphazardly attempting to cure a disease that those who study it know will never be “cured”, i have instead chosen the much more direct, much more selfless, and effective route:  giving myself cancer.

sort-of kidding.

a few weeks ago, we were in the middle of something and steve asked me to go grab the JB weld for him (a high strength epoxy we use to bind a few things that aren’t possible, or are risky, to weld).  “it’s in the grey cabinet just inside the woodshop,” he said.  i run inside, and unlatch the old cabinet to find more cans of toxic chemicals and substances than i ever thought could exist in a square-mile radius.  and i thought the bleach/ammonia day was bad!  i timidly swam my arms through shelves and shelves full of DANGER labels and skull and crossbone symbols, until i found the two tubes of JB weld.  scampering back to the shop, i immediately told steve that as dr. welsh, i was officially naming that the “cancer cabinet,” and was refusing to ever go in there again.

we thought that was hilarious at the time.  now, i’d just as soon sleep in there.  we have spent the past week melting pounds and pounds of lead… setting a few things on fire in the process, and creating every other hazardous byproduct humanly possible.  i mean, we took some precaution.  we did turn on a $2.00 swap meet box fan to blow the fumes past us quicker.  and we had the fire department (two buckets of water on a rolling cart) on call.  on day 1, i was hovering behind steve, behind the fan, mouth buried in my flannel shirt, holding my breath in intervals as long as humanly possible.  i was afraid to even lick my lips.  on day 2, i was feeling a bit more acclimatized and relaxed, digging for raw material through old buckets of wheel weights and scraps and metal dust and cigarette butts from steve’s autoshop…. yes, totally relaxed… until i accidentally went and pulled off one of my gloves with my mouth (good one, alley), and was tasting lead (and god-knows-what) for the whole afternoon. 

steve was hysterically laughing.  i was wondering how my family would take the news that i could no longer have babies. 

by day 3, i was eagerly torching the lead myself (steve had to suggest i step back from admiring the molten metal so closely), and secretly starting to like the smell of burning lead that stuck in my clothing and hair and on my skin for the next few days.  really though, the process was one of the most exciting things we’ve done in the studio since i’ve gotten here. 

it was one of the final steps for a piece i’m calling “birdhouse 2”, which steve & i have been working on for three weeks now.  steve had designed it long before i got here, in fact had made tons of drawings and built various models based on an original concept, and had recently completed a first piece (birdhouse 1).  that version alone is one of his all-time most impressive pieces, in my opinion, and was receiving a ton of attention at the studio tours. 

but, as i quickly learned to admire, steve is never satisfied – whether that be with a piece, with a theme, or with a medium.  he is constantly evaluating his work, pushing the boundaries of his assumptions, and asking himself how to take things one step (or three steps) further.  it’s a mindset and approach common in many aspects of art and life in general, but i have never… never… met anyone who does that to such an inspiring and successful degree.  be it from one piece to the very next, or from a career in automobiles to product design to watercolors to metal sculpture, this mindset is, without a doubt, what has allowed (but i still can’t fathom how it was really possible) steve to be SUCH a prolific artist over the course of his life.

that, and of course living in the desert, working his butt off, and very minimally indulging in the variety of “distractions” (social, material, ego… you can fill in the blank) one might consider to exist in modern life. 

that, and of course, being badass.

anyway, when i arrived a month ago, steve and i talked about the birdhouse 2 concept, his visions for what next generation pieces might be, and the models he’d attempted to build.  he had finally solidified a new (and hopefully feasible) idea, and the detailed blueprints of the design were measured and drawn on large sheets of drafting paper.  some of the metal had been cut to size and already partially assembled (tack welded to hold it in place), but basically, most of the technical work remained to be done.

which means…. who wins?

me.

it started mostly with a boatload of welding.  and, of course, the grinding that comes along with it, which takes about twice as long as the actual welding.  steve loves to joke that the best TIG welding teacher i ever had was the grinder.  very true though.  the bigger, the uglier the weld, the loooooonger it takes to grind that joint down to an even, flat surface so you don’t see it anymore.  if you can manage a clean and rhythmic weld, just melting enough of the metal on either side of the joint to sew together the two pieces, it takes just a couple passes of the grinder to make it look like one smooth surface.  of course, this is only possible if you have a really nice fit between the two pieces of metal, otherwise, adding excess rod to fill in gaps is inevitable.  so by the transitive property, the best measuring, calculating, and precision-making teacher i ever had was also the grinder (and, of course, my science nerd skills).  but when you do get into that rhythm with the TIG welder, where you can just push this little bead of molten metal along a joint and zzzzzip it up…. man!  it is one of the most satisfying things ever.  like centering clay on a wheel, it involves fully giving yourself over to the material in a way that is at once full of focus but also of letting go.  

i could weld for hours and never get sick of it.

now…. grinding, on the other hand….. whew!  there were a couple days in the beginning where i could barely hold my coffee mug in the morning (even my toothbrush!) because my hands and opposable thumbs were so sore from hours of gripping grinders (not the hoagies and grinders kind). 

NDEOTW (near-death experience of the week)? i was smoothing out a big awkward joint on the piece using an extra tough angle grinder steve has.  the tool itself is heavy enough that, even using two hands on it at most times, my wrists and thumbs get so sore, and are vibrating so much, that i literally can’t feel them.  so, every few minutes as they’re about to give out, i have to turn it off and shake them out.  but… “with this grinder”, steve mentions as he leaves the studio, “occasionally the trigger clogs and it wont turn off!  so what i do is just transfer it to one hand, and ‘burp’ the tool as hard as i can with the other hand,” (he hits the thing much more aggressively than a small child), “to jolt the trigger free and slow down the wheel.”  and with that, he’s off.

well… you can guess what happened.  i’m grinding along, and in standard alley-fashion, refuse to stop until the bitter end when my hands are so close to giving out i can barely hold them off the table any more.  i release the trigger with a big sigh of relief…. only to notice the wheel does definitely not stop spinning.  oh lord.  i keep my calm.  i transfer the tool to one hand, shake the other out to get some feeling back, and then grip like hell while i beat the back of the grinder with my hand. 

nothing happens.

this goes on for about 10 minutes, seriously (which felt like an eternity), as i trade hands and try everything including hitting the tool on the workbench as hard as i can.  is steve really that much stronger than i am?  man, this is embarrassing, and hilarious.  meanwhile the heel of my hand is going numb from hitting the thing so hard.  alright, i decide, it’s time to call for steve… i give up.  then i remember he’s out in the machine shop, drills and lathes whirring all around him.  on top of it, i’m well aware that even through some fancy ear-aides, he has a tough time hearing me when i’m 5 feet away in the same room.   slight panic sets in.  i holler out his name over and over…. nothing.  finally, i decide that banging the tool on the workbench will make a loud and strange enough sound to attract his attention (and it might even turn it off in the process), and finally, it works.  he is chuckling to himself the entire time he slowly rounds the corner and weaves his way through the studio to get to me.  the look on my face must have been priceless.  to my credit, he couldn’t turn it off either (this doesn’t usually happen.  he usually makes me look like an idiot).  so we eventually unplugged the thing, and life went back to normal. 

anyway, while i welded all the pieces together, steve was in the machine shop making all the elaborate axles.  have i mentioned, he has a full machine shop?  it’s pretty unbelievable.  in addition to making just basic tools, he has the ability to basically machine anything he can dream up if he has the desire.  in this case, we needed 4 custom-made sets of axles to join all these heavy parts and house the bearings, which would allow it to glide and move.   steve disappeared into the shop with some long steel bars from the boneyard.  one would think an axle is a pretty straight-forward thing.  but each one, when steve was finished with it, consisted of 9 pieces, plus two bearings, each perfectly sized to the 1/1000 of an inch, and complete with sheaths, threads for screwing, and inset ridges so everything sat completely flush and didn’t move side-to-side.  they were designed to screw in and out of each other (using two different pairs of screwdrivers), so we could take them apart and together multiple times during construction and installation.  this proved insanely helpful.  insanely.  the foresight that must have been involved in their design blew my mind more and more every day, as we assembled and reassembled to no end.

one of the last major steps of the construction process was balancing the piece.  creating the magic.  this alone took us a week and a half, and was one of my favorite things i’ve gotten to be a part of, as it is probably the most complex engineering involved in any of steve’s kinetic pieces.  and here’s where the lead came in. 

essentially the piece is a small stainless steel birdhouse resting atop a long rectangular steel column.  the column actually consists of 4 different interlocking segments, each designed to rotate in alternating directions.  thus, while the piece appears linear and geometric at rest, it's wind-activated to bend and sway at 5 different joints, each alternating N-S or E-W.  the quirky part is the design of the segments, all of which appear very linear and angular, but move in slow and smooth arcs as their long and lanky limbs somewhat magically fold into each other.  it all has such a human-ness and personality to it, in the movement, in the forms, and gestures.  here's a sneak preview in the shop, when the steel was all skinned (post-grinding) and ready for patina...

we balanced from the top down, meaning we work to get the top piece meticulously balanced on the second piece (this can take a half day), and once this is complete, we move on to get the top two pieces balanced on the third (potentially can take twice as long).  next the top three get balanced on the fourth… and so on.  by the end of it, the number of variables involved in each balancing procedure seem never-ending, as a single degree off 90°, or the tiniest dot of weld can throw off the entire 200lb piece. 

in order to get the parts to balance, we filled their insides with a very specific amount of lead.  this involved creating a mold (which would theoretically fit easily but snugly inside each steel part), melting and filtering pounds and pounds of lead, pouring them into the mold, cooling, then sliding the lead blocks into the steel parts, and holding them there using homemade steel nails that we welded off.  we’d purposely fill too much lead, then we’d hang the half-assembled piece from an open-air axle and torch the bottom, to melt and leak lead out from either side until the piece slowly swung up and hung perfectly perpendicular. 

piece of cake, eh?  i would guess at least 60 hours went into that process…. which involved all sorts of creative strategizing (temporarily welding half-assembled pieces to the bench-top, rigging elaborate pulley systems) to move these pieces around, on and off of each other, as they gained more and more lead weight.  the precision alone was incredible.  for example, if we’d drill a hole into the lead (for a nail), we’d save the miniscule corkscrew scrap that spun out, weigh it on a gram scale, and make sure to add that exact amount back in afterwards.

it was THE most exciting thing to be a part of.

so exciting, in fact, that the actual finish of the piece has been wildly anti-climactic.

we put the patina on the steel parts over the weekend, and by monday afternoon everything was cleaned up, final touches put on, and all the parts were laid out on the bench top ready to be assembled and installed outside the next day.  tuesday morning steve and i were moving like choreographed actors, hauling the parts outside to the chosen location, and assembling it as if we’d done it a million times (because we actually had).  as we lifted the birdhouse on top and made the final balancing adjustments to the axles, ruth crept outside, and we all gathered across the courtyard to take a look.

none of us said anything.

it wasn’t wow-ing. 

we all quickly decided the location and the light were not actually great where it was, and even though it’d take another 2 hours, we should try moving it across the property to a better spot.  so we did.  no change.  it wasn’t bad, but it clearly wasn’t as powerful as any of us had expected, and it seemed to stand in the shadow of birdhouse 1.  we were all somewhat puzzled, intrigued, wrestling with how our impression of the piece could have transformed so much from the benchtop to the natural environment.  we talked for a bit about what it was that didn’t seem to be working as well as we’d imagined.  inevitably, it was discouraging.  steve and i spent the afternoon starting work on a new piece we’d already planned (the benefit of having so many projects going at once), but all evening that night the birdhouse was on my mind. 

yesterday morning when we convened in the studio, steve looked at me and grinned.  we laughed, decided we will probably alter it a bit more before it’s finished, and that was that.  within 5 minutes we were absorbed in our new piece, which has already captured my fascination.  steve and i were trading stories as we filled a concrete mixer full of bits of steel and sandy sludge, and then walked over to the boneyard to get some scraps.   we were both commenting on the epic morning, and the almost-full moon still in the sky.  i felt like a million dollars.

it was an amazing reminder that the beauty of the experience here has had almost nothing to do with the end result.  the daily processes, the possibilities that line each mundane minute, are what keeps me so giddy at the start of every day.  that’s something i’ve never been this familiar with before in my life.  what metal scraps show up on the bench top to play around with, what type of grin steve has on his face when we come up with a wild idea, how dirty my fingernails will still be after the fifth washing, what nugget of insight on the world will come out of our 7am canyon walk, what color the rocks might turn at that split second of dawn... even what half-eaten lizard an ugly roadrunner may leave on my porch... all of these things have filled me up a thousand times more than any benchmark of success i could think of.  i can't possibly describe that feeling...

but speaking of incredible things, to everyone who has written or emailed, while i feel a bit like i’m living on my own planet here (stealing wireless in a joshua tree parking lot to post this), you are keeping me inspired every damn day.  deciding to write this has been such a self-indulgent endeavor… and i’m definitely having a hard time proceeding through with that.  but sharing something with others is so much more powerful than sharing with one’s self…. and knowing you all are following along has made this whole experience just incredibly surreal.  i can’t thank you enough….