Designing a new SUP this past January

I spent three weeks in Durango, CO this past January, working with Rich from Upstream Boards.  While there, he and I decided to design a board that would work well on flat water as well as class II whitewater (certainly some of the more adventurous athletes DGO will take it on more difficult water).  It was a total redesign of a model from last year called the 32nd Street.  It is named after a stretch of water on the Animas River which sees both serious athletes and casual cruisers.  And, it is often one of the only pieces of open water during the winter.

The time lapse video embedded below shows the entire process from design to first run on moving water.  The camera equipment that I had during this trip was pretty cheap, but the video still gives a good overview of the process.


https://youtu.be/-ZY2BPCMk3Q

Blanca

Workshop window

Barcode, Marketing, Internet, Camera, Television, Computer

Hanging in Marble Canyon Lodge

I am always curious where and how my work will be hung by a collector.   While visiting friends at the put in point to the Grand Canyon earlier this month, I was able see some of my work hung on the wall in the main dining area of the Marble Canyon Lodge.

Working on Upstream Boards

I am teaching one online course this winter break, but also took this opportunity to travel to southwest Colorado to help a friend continue developing his stand up paddleboard company.  Over the year, we have weekly phone conversations about design ideas.  But, being side by side in the studio allows the ideas to move along at a much faster pace.

Over the past three days, we've worked on designs for fins, paddles, and created a template for a new board.  I'll post more about those as we make the molds and shape the first blank for the new board.

Below are a couple of time lapse videos of fiber reinforced plastic being applied to current models.

More than marginal

Drawing at night while not looking at a subject.  These are not memory drawings, but impressions of things remembered allowed to turn into their own things.

Keith Richard Griffiths

http://www.krgstudio.com

A former student of mine continues to grow as an artist.  This post was prompted by his participation in a two-person show at Fairleigh Dickinson Univeristy, in which his recent sculptural work signifies his clear transition from art student to artist.

Stand Up Paddleboards, T-shirts, E-Commerce web design, CAD, welding, and teaching

Someone asked me what I've been doing this Fall, I responded with the list in the title above.  They followed up with another question that asked what "art" I was doing this Fall.  I responded by asking why that person did not see the art in all of the things listed above.  

Any object can be isolated, hung on a gallery wall, and called art.  It's a valid work of art because someone decided to change the context, bring attention to the artifact, and cause discussion within the framework of the Art World.  I am not going to judge if the discussion is worth having or not.  That conversation can be left for another day.  

A point to which I would like to draw attention, is that art exists outside the gallery/museum space.  Unfortunately, most people have to be hit over the head with the obvious signifier of the white cube, and fail to recognize the art the exists around us every day.  I am not talking of the mundane, banal, ironic boring hipster privileged stuff.  I am talking about those things which cause wonder; which cause artists to express themselves in visual, spacial, tonal, rhythmic, aesthetic languages.  

http://upstreamboards.com/collections/winter-sale

https://www.facebook.com/Unique-Twist-70875574183/

https://youtu.be/d117TDyoHnE

Over the past few months, I was invited to participate in many different projects, by many different people.  I had the great privilege to collaborate with several artisans.  Some had formal training, others had none.  In retrospect, the most flattering part of the past few months is that so many people trusted me to bring my creative skills to their project, balanced by my ability to complement and augment the project.  From a selfish perspective, while I may have sacrificed some of my own voice over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to learn some CAD, expand my skill set within the Adobe suite (beyond my ACE Photoshop and cursory knowledge of Illustrator), start to understand the organization (and some jargon) with e-commerce web design, and do some good old labor while listening to music streamed via bluetooth to the headphones attached to the hard hat.  

I feel blessed to have worked on so many unique projects over the past several months.  I hope that the learning and creativity continues.

  

Hydrodynamic Dangers and Fun

https://youtu.be/XsYgODmmiAM