Monthly Archives: November 2014

My One-of-a-Kind Feather Tree

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Christmas is my favorite holiday for a lot of reasons. One of those is that it is also my birthday. As a kid, then later as an adult, the thing I loved most about the season was quiet, peaceful nights lying on the couch, staring at the pretty lights.

My beau collects antique “feather trees”. They’re old-school decorations that remind me of scraggly Charlie Brown Christmas trees. I can appreciate them, but my biggest hangup is that they have tiny, clip-on candles instead of my precious, season-defining lights.

One of our antique "feather trees"

One of our antique “feather trees”

It’s cute (or whatever) but THE CHRISTMAS-BIRTHDAY-BOY NEEDS LIGHTS. Sure, I could just buy a tree and hook it up, but that seems too easy or normal. So I started brainstorming how to work my love of holiday lights into our home. A wreath or something? Random lights around doorways & such? Ahhh, but I wanted a lit tree of some sort… What kind of awesome, nontraditional tree could I come up with?

Micah has his feather trees… wait… feathers… feathers… FEATHERS! I can make my own version, a play on words, of a feather tree, using actual feathers. WITH LIGHTS.

So I chose my color story. Dramatic and beautiful. Black, teal, a little green, some silver. Did you know you can buy feathers in bulk, dyed almost any color imaginable? I went online and ordered 423 feathers:

100 black ostrich
100 black rooster tail
100 sea-blue rooster tail
50 peacock “swords”
25 sea-blue pheasant
25 silver-grey rooster tail
23 peacock eyes

The feathers arrived within a few days. Now, I was winging this whole thing. The entire idea and process were experimental. I’d never seen a tree like this & wasn’t exactly sure how to make it work, or if it even would. For the hell of it, I decided to live-post the process on Instagram, while kicking a few teaser links over to Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr.

I started with this southern-twang video: http://instagram.com/p/v4jJRbrMO2/?modal=true  and then posted pics along the way.

[Click on the first image for a gallery with captions.]

 

Honestly though! Look at the gorgeousness of these feathers. This is just a portion… A ton more black ostrich feathers + some silver rooster tails.
One of each of the feather types which will make up the tree. Yes, I’m having a ridiculous amount of fun with this project.
TIME TO WING IT! I’m building the infrastructure first. Basically a cone out of chicken wire, which I’ll cover with black burlap. Here are the tools I’m using for this step.
My feather tree is going to live in this nook, using the table as its trunk, so I’m planning the height based on that.
With the chicken wire, doubled the height I wanted (plus a foot extra). Folded it in half for more stability, then rolled it into a cone. Zip ties bind it to hold the shape. I can continue to bend & form it to get it just right before the burlap goes on.
Added some more zip ties & shaped the cone to the form I’m wanting. Now, fixin’ (that’s a twangy word!) to wrap the cone in a double layer of burlap. My theory is that the feathers will slip right in & also hold firm… Yeah, TOTALLY just a theory.
The burlap’s wrapped & rough-cut to size. Using a curved upholstery needle & thin twine, I’m going to sew it in place directly onto the wire form.
Okay! Made it all the way to a boring-looking burlap cone. 😄 Next stage is to paint it black, wrap it with white lights, then insert THE FABULOUS FEATHERS.
Spraypaint would be much faster, but, alas, it is too cold & dark. Thus, Reginald III looks on as I lay in coat 1 of 2 of watered-down acrylic.
After a 2nd coat of black paint, added 200 white lights.
The quills on some of the ostrich feathers are a larger diameter than the breaks in the burlap weave. I’m using a small jeweler’s screwdriver to punch pilot holes.
What once was chicken wire, then a black cone, is starting to look like a tree! Ostrich feathers in place. Still looking kinda scraggly & sparse at this stage.
With the black rooster tails in place, it looks even more like a tree.
I ~had~ to place 1 teal feather before retiring for the night. As a test.
Another round of feathers in! These are iridescent black & dark green. Now for the bright showstopper feathers that will be the “ornaments”.
Feather tree is complete! FABULOUS. Here it is in the daytime.
Detail of the finished tree.
Another detail shot.
And this is how the top turned out.
Nighttime pic of the finished feather tree. I love it.

I absolutely love my feather tree. It’s unique, fabulous, and has those lights that make me happy & feel like “Christmas”. It could have been a spectacular fail—and with folks watching the disaster real time. Meh. I’m a risk taker, and beautiful things never come to pass unless we see our visions to the end. <<< That’s like a moral or something.

If you need me on a snowy winter evening between now and my birthday, I’ll probably be over here blissfully gazing at the lights of my own version of a fabulous feather tree. And if you run in to that Charlie Brown kid, maybe refer him to this post for some inspiration?

(And now, having posted these photos here, I can go delete most of them from my Instagram feed. It’s looking pretty messy, and that just will not do! If you’re on Instagram, I’d love to connect. User: TheLucasHargis)

Pain, Patience and OWWW CRAP OWWW

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Today was the (quasi)final tattoo session for my Phreak Show character sleeve.

Here’s how things looked going into the session:

11 characters in place
Still a lot of empty space
Here we go…

This project has taken precisely one year, 12 sessions, 36-ish hours in the chair, $#### (plus a trade of a mounted human skull fragment).

Out of the dozen sessions, this one, the background, was by far the worst. The needles pierced & chewed the entire length of my arm. The sheer amount of skin area made it rough. Pain. From wrist to shoulder. Front, back, sides. If my poor, fragile skin didn’t have ink yet, it got some.

Some owww-shit-owww sections got hit today. Hard.

You know that sliver of skin between your elbow bones? The one that twangs and hurts like mad when you bang it against a sadist object? The “funny bone” it’s called… Yeah. Not even close to funny. Like ridiculously not funny. When the artist was inking it, a nerve zinged all the way to my hand and made my pinkie & ring finger involuntarily twitch & jerk. This was weird. Painful & weird.

Another spot of excruciating pain: the underside of my arm, near my armpit. WOWZER. That amount of pain should be illegal. Prophetically, that’s where Niko the Prince of Torture is located. Haha, Nico. Ha. Ha.

Joe laying in the background rhythm with a Sharpie.
More Sharpie
And some purple going in.
Also, green.
Partway through. The background will mimic the “aether” that powers the Phreak Show.
“Just rest your arm up and over like this.”
NON-FUNNY BONE PAIN OF DEATH OWWW OWWW CRAP OWWW

At one point, after 2 hours of suckfest pain, my whole body was shaking. I tried to stop it, but it was doing that thing like when you’re shivering from the cold and can’t stop. I’m pretty sure my body was protesting, as loudly as it knew how, for me to stop traumatizing it in such an evil manner.

Joe, my tat artist, ripped the needles through my skin. “You sick of me yet?”

“Can’t.talk,” I squeezed through my chattering teeth. “Too.busy.screaming.inside.”

He laughed. I cried. (Almost). I tried to ascend to my happy place & soldiered on. Like a trooper and whatnot. I’d come too far to quit partway through the final tattoo. Even though it hurt like infiinte hell. <—possible exaggeration. Eventually, Joe stopped hammering my tender, Irish flesh. I shook off the grog & stood on quaking legs to check out his handiwork.

One final-final session is scheduled for May just to make sure everything looks crisp & ~finished~ after a few months. Perfection, ya know? That last-pass edit of compulsive tweaking. But it’s close enough to call this the final draft.

Phreak Show is officially  a “manuscript” and not a “book” at this point. Still, being the hopeful chap that I am, I may have already imagined myself at a signing, modeling the sleeve, readers hunting down their favorites on my arm, agreeing with the image or explaining how they pictured the characters differently.

Silly, right? Maybe narcissistic like, “Oh, hey, yeah, check out my rad tats!” Idk. Yeah. Whatevs.  I’m cool with that.

The concept, the characters, the finished story, a phenomenal agent for said story—even the sleeve itself—all started off as dreams. And those dreams, after much patience and owww-shit-owww pain, all came to pass.

And, optimistic, tatted writer-boy that I am, I know the day will come when I roll up my shirt sleeve with a smile to reveal the sleeve underneath.

“Oh yeah! I’d love to a pose for a pic with you, dear reader. But first, let’s put this temporary tat of Twiggy on you. Where do you want her?”

Whittling Down To The Beautiful

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C2 - Alchemy lab - After

My partner and I run a business together: buying & selling antiques, doing shows, Ebay, repairing old pieces, creating new designs from vintage/antique components. Part of this process is the old “Buy Low, Sell High” tactic. So we hit auctions, thrift stores, Craigslist, junk shops, and antique stores. We scoop up anything with potential, flip the ready-to-go pieces as quickly as possible, and slowly work on the pieces that need TLC or creative reworking.

The needy pieces are less expensive, of course, and we always have more plans than time. (Sound familiar?) So, the easy pieces sell quickly, and the time-suck ones tend to pile up.

About 2 months ago, we decided it was time for a purge. We wanted to move to another location, get a fresh start. Opportunities arose, and as daunting as the overwhelming task seemed, we lunged at them.

Now, this meant a few things:
– Downsizing from an 8,000 sq ft building with our loft, storefront, storage & workshop to an adorable 1000 sq ft house
– Decision-making on what to let go vs. what to keep
– Re-imagining our lives with these changes in mind

Our action plan, at its root, challenged us to decide what things were most valuable and to let the rest go. Sounds simple, right? But this wasn’t just about ~things~. It also included our hopes, dreams, emotions, attachments. The decision rippled through every aspect of our lives: relationships, family, friends, finances, location, business, etc, etc…

Some choices hurt. We mourned the potential of soon-to-be-lost things. But we knew to get to our end goal, we had to be merciless.

[Roll over each pic for a caption.]

Pre-auction – Front Storage
Pre-auction – Back Storage & Workshop
Pre-auction – Back Storage & Workshop
Pre-Auction – Starting to organize the goods
Pre-Auction – Starting to organize the goods
Pre-Auction – Starting to organize the goods
Pre-Auction – Starting to organize the goods
Auction Day – Almost starting time
Auction Day
Auction Day – Folks looking for goodies (like we’ve done 100x before)
Auction Day (And our friend, Moose, stealing a donut)
Auction Day – Let the games begin
Auction Day – Auctioneer 1 of 3 gets things started outside
Auction Day – Auctioneer 2 of 3 running his ring
Auction Day – Bidders crammed around the “bag lots” in the 3-ring circus
Post-Auction – Purge complete & the space cleared out
Post-Auction – So empty…
Post-Auction – Shit. We had floors all along?
New Space! My “Writing Alchemy Lab” ready for designing.
Writing Alchemy Lab – Need a background for the beautiful things
Writing Alchemy Lab – All the painting
Writing Alchemy Lab – Backdrop complete
Writing Alchemy Lab – Time to organize the lovely things
Writing Alchemy Lab – Surrounded by inspiring things that I love
Writing Alchemy Lab – Victorian taxidermied owl, an old radio i gutted & turned into hidden storage
Writing Alchemy Lab – More cool, inspiring things, which survived THE GREAT PURGE
Writing Alchemy Lab – This place…I can create in here…
Writing Alchemy Lab – One of my favorite things in all the world: Horse-hair Raku
Focal wall in our living room. Gorgeous things that make us happy.

So here we are, on the other side. Feels.so.damn.good.

Yes, this is a story specific to me, but not solely. ALL you readers are insanely intelligent. You’re boss at drawing analogies, reading words someone else wrote & drawing personal significance from them. I encourage you to do that.

Maybe for you, this post is about a change or move or purge you need to make in your own life. Maybe it applies to the fear of the draft looming in front of you or the scary-ass revisions staring you in the face. Maybe it’s a bit of inspiration for redesigning your life (or just your creative space) by sifting ALL THE THINGS down to the beautiful.

It’s tough. It hurts. It’s hard work.

It’s worth it.