Studio Notes: September 21st, 2021
In this extra-long episode, I've had two hours of sleep, but I'm in my studio painting a white wall and making progress on the dimensional panel I'm constructing. I discuss a wide range of topics including:
The one step that is most frequently forgotten when painting a wall
Brutalism vs Classical Architecture
Why Phidias wins for best artist resume
How to fold a piece of sandpaper for detail work
The importance of craftsmanship
And I delve deeper into my idea of a "pretension-free guarantee" in art.
Transcript (areas in bold for emphasis):
I'm Brandon Woods, and this is Studio Notes for September 21st, 2021. Today I am back in my studio and I am painting a white wall white. Real fast: you might notice that the audio sounds a lot better. I finally got a new microphone. I'm trying out the Tascam DL-10R. I think I might be what it is. It's a, it's a lav mic and it's attached to me. It's recording on me. So if I wanted to get a shotgun mic or something to mount onto the camera, I would still have that option. It's one of the lav mics I'm trying out. I'm going to try out a Saramonic one, too, which I'll probably be trying that one out tomorrow. And we'll see. We'll see what works. But yeah, hopefully you can hear me a lot better.
And yeah, I'm going to talk about painting a white wall for a minute. So I am using this...these are my favorite rollers and these are Shur-line "Twist & Reach". They come in different sizes. But the really cool thing about this is that they expand like that. And I'm not I don't. Well, I don't have any endorsements. So so I'm not being endorsed by Shur-line for this. I just I like to respect good quality where I where I see it. I'll, I'll also use a Wooster brush to cut in. And these I, I use this Warner spackling knife for both cutting some of the larger kind of drippy areas. Or just bigger areas off and also for for filling in holes. And then one thing that I feel like a lot of people forget whenever it comes to painting a wall is sanding the wall. So after you patch all the holes, if you really want the wall to be nice and smooth and want to not have any visible, patched areas or anything like that, you need drywall sandpaper. And and then, you know, you just sand it down. I'm not going to give like a full demo of that right now because I don't want to kick up a lot of dust. I just cleaned, cleaned the area after having sanded it down. They sell these sandpaper holders. There's there's a million different kinds of these. I think that I got this one whenever K-mart was going out of business in Savannah and I got just sort of a boatload of tools there for for real cheap. But yeah, they they sold these little sandpaper holders. At all the big box stores and probably little box stores, too. So but this is something that you can really get at Home Depot as far as as far as I understand it. OK, you got to step back here. This active tracking is really struggling. So this Behr "Scuff Defense". This is a Home Depot sells Behr This is the best. At least for, for my purposes, I use the Ultra Pure White: That is a studio white. It's really neutral. Caitlin says that it has a little bit of a cool tone to it. She's a designer and she has crazy, good eyesight. So maybe, maybe it does. I don't really see that. But I see it as being more of more of a neutral. But either way, this isn't the best color for your home. There's a lot of different whites that you'd probably be better off with than this studio white or Ultra Pure White. But for my purposes, for, you know, arting, Ultra Pure White is, is really the bomb. And...yeah. So I have had a lot of thoughts since, since video that made yesterday about sort of that "pretention free guarantee". There's some more things that I'd like to dive into with that and some other ideas and just sort of thoughts that I've had over the course of the past day or two. But right now, what I'm thinking about is diving into painting this wall. So that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to end, or pause, I guess, the video over there. And we'll be back. ...It'd be fun if I could make a like crazy commercial. Oh, yeah. I don't think I'm going to do that. I'll be back.
OK, so now I've put the first coat of paint on the wall. I've gone through I've cut in everywhere that I need to and save for a few, a few areas that might need a second coat. I am done, and this wall is ready for me to hang work on it, photograph, work, kind of all of that. So that'll be really nice. It's really important, I think, to have a beautiful space in which to work. That's always been one thing that I've done with my art studio space, is almost almost like turn it into a gallery with pristine walls and things like that, because I'm not sure who, which philosopher said it, we'll say Aristotle, that living in a space that is beautiful will really have a major impact on a person's thinking. And I think science has shown that to be true. And that's really cool. And that's something that I think is really important.
So beauty to a certain extent is subjective; some people like classical architecture, some people like brutalist architecture. I like both. But I've noticed there's this weird trend lately of more of the, well, specifically Tucker Carlson, but more of the like right wing Donald Trump put out his sort of cohesive architecture plan before the election and I don't I don't really think that that these people have the, have a full understanding of the purpose and the beauty that is possible with, with brutalist architecture, with even though, you know, sounds like it's the architecture from like a death metal band. It's so brutal. But the just sort of modern architecture in general. If you look at the National Gallery of Art, which is my very favorite art museum, they have the classical building that hold holds the 19th and earlier work. 19th century and earlier. And then there's the the modern building that I.M. Pei designed. And it's it's modern. It's got, you know, sort of like sharp edges. And it doesn't have that same kind of classical thing happening. But it works and it works so well in concert with that classical architecture. There's room for both, is what I'm saying. I do appreciate the idea of maintaining a kind of a cohesive aesthetic whenever it comes to government buildings. You know, we know that the government building because it looks like that. We, we have this kind of cultural vision of, of...We, we see government buildings, and a lot of banks too, as being things that we can trust. Well, that's a little bit of a stretch in both those terms. But I think, I think that, generally speaking, we do kind of see that, as you know, I think that my money will be safe there in that bank. And, you know, I'll be safe there and that government building. But, I know this is this is like a real heck of a tangent, I was just talking about repainting a wall.
But there's also there's also some underlying like beauty that is in those in that classical architecture. If you look at the construction of the Parthenon, for instance, and just the really detailed and fascinating things that that Phidias and Iktinos and Kallikrates did there... Phidias, by the way, has probably the best like artist resume of all the artists, because he went from building the Parthenon to making the colossal statue of Zeus, which was one of the, the great wonders of the ancient world and whenever you have both those both of those on your resume, you've you've you've done well as an artist in your career. But, but they they considered the slope of the earth in the, in just the design of the stylobate and stereobate of the of the Parthenon such that the... which is like the base, and, you know, it's kind of has like a little step up. Such that they they made it so that if you look down and you looked straight across all the way down, it would still appear to be a straight line, whereas if they if they hadn't made adjustments for that, then it would you be able to see the curve of the building. And and they made the columns on the outside appear...or physically larger than the ones in the middle, because the ones in the middle were…well, because the ones on the outside had air around them and the air would make them look smaller. I've been thinking a lot about about Bernini lately, jumping from classical Greece to the Baroque. But I've been thinking about Bernini a lot lately. And he has, he he was very well aware of the way the air travels around things, too, and how one has to kind of adjust for that in in the construction of something. And I, I love the the just detail there and the amount of focus and attention and the well, like I was saying yesterday, that there's there's just always more to explore. There's always there's always more to discover in work of art and. I'm excited to to get to keep discovering more about about works of great artists, and about my own work, too. And I'm excited to be bringing all of you along with me.
Yeah. So now I am going to go figure out what I what I need to do next in my studio with the dimensional panel I'm constructing. And also with with a few other pieces that that need an isolation coat, at least before they before I varnish them. So I will probably check back in in a little while. But until then...well, this is just going to be one single video. So until then, you won't really notice that time has really passed in the video that much probably, you know, because it's not like this is just going to be on static for an hour. So, we'll be right back. I still have the I still have that like idea of like, you know, wacky commercials in my head and in between these. Yeah. All right.
OK, so, um, the this is more like a technical tip: the ends of these boards, Baltic birch plywood, or really a lot of different, a lot of different ones are really thirsty. They will just suck up all the glue that you put on them. So one thing that I do to combat, to make sure that there's enough glue in the joint for it to really hold those two boards together really well is I flood the ends with a mix of this Talenti "Mint Fudge Cookie". No, no. These gelato jars are just the best. Best for a reusing for a million different purposes, but I mix water and wood glue together to make a, to a consistency that's kind of...two percent, whole milk. Somewhere in there. And then I just paint that on. Onto the ends of that. And that will flood, flood the end so it's not so absorbent anymore. Yeah. And I also. Sometimes just this gimbal really starts to get carried away. I'm also going to make sure that the ends are nice and smooth. So there's a nice tight uh, joint, there, too. Typically whenever I'm doing cross braces, I just do the pocket holes and use pocket hole screws to attach the brace to the frame or the the cradle to the to the frame. And I...whenever I first cut through these they're a little rough so I go through and sand them down, sometimes there's little areas that I need to sand down a little bit more.
And I figured out this really cool trick a couple months ago where you can get a really, really strong point for getting into a really small space with a piece of sandpaper by basically making a paper airplane. So I've got my little piece of paper here, this is a piece of 400. That doesn't matter for this. But you can see it's about the size of my hand. And I can fold that up and then just keep folding it in on itself. There was a mathematician and I don't remember her name, but it was recently in the past, well maybe in this century like in the past 20 years, who was able to mathematically prove that a piece of paper can only be folded seven times? I think that's pretty interesting, but even just folding this sandpaper four times gets it to the point where it's pretty rock hard and you can really get into small spaces and get that fine detail sanding without having to buy a special sander just for that special detail sander or something like that. There's there's really no need for that. All you need to do is a little origami, make a, make a paper airplane.
So this, this brace, this cross-brace, the pocket holes in this are going in at such an extreme angle that I'm really having a lot of trouble getting them to actually... they're self, self-driving screws, getting them to actually drive themselves into the wood here. I tried drilling pilot too and that, even that didn't really help, the uh, the screw just seems like it just wants to to travel. And so I just drilled some new holes on the opposite side that I can screw this in but I'm going to glue this one in there, because this is this panel-- I'm going to squat back down here --since this panel is going to have to separate the boards that are going in opposite directions on it. I'm going to want to glue those boards to this central joist. And I think that will just help to make sure everything stays in place. And I always like cut these, these dados in my boards. See here, too, and then I'll put a piece of cardboard in there that'll just give it some more structural integrity. And. Let's see. I think that's that's all that I can think to say right now from. Watching this gimbal to see if it's going to be able to handle me moving around here or if it's really, just a little bit too much for it. So I'm going to keep going. But if it is just a carnival ride, then I'll probably cut this part out but we can watch what I'm doing all while I'm gluing.
This thing here, I'm going to use these Collins clamps. These are really cool. They're made in Ohio looks like and you can you can squeeze them in part by hand if you've got really strong fingers. If you're a climber, you'd probably be able to do it, but it's better to just use this this tool. These are what I use to clamp my panels together. You can see this. Let's just go here and then they pull that, they pull that miter together so it's nice and tight. The better that a miter fits together, the tighter that joint, the stronger it will be. And so if you have the perfect miter. Regardless of the, of the degree of the miter...even though it seems like an acute miter would actually be stronger because you have more surface area there. That miter is going to be as strong as the wood glue that is holding it together, and the wood glue that I use, which is Tightbond III. It's. I'm going to say 20,000psi? It's stronger than the wood itself. The wood will fail before the before the joint fails. If if the joint is properly put together and I think that is the kind of construction that I want all of my panels that, that super human, super super panel strength, I guess. It's not going to fail, it's not going to fall apart at some point. It's not going to have just a little bit of moisture, then just turn into a puddle like I've seen, I've seen some artists who have made similar similar pieces to mine, sort of like in the dimensional, spatium idea, but, well…Well, kind of specifically not spatium, I guess, it doesn't, those pieces don't really reach the same point that I'm that I'm pursuing with my work. And they'll be made out of cardboard. And oh, boy, that just kills me. It kills me to see that, because that is that is just the least, least attention to to craft. It's almost antithetical or almsot stands in opposition to it and whenever I was talking yesterday about this "pretension-free guarantee", I think it's important to. To express that, that doesn't apply to to the craft side of things. Pretension-free guarantee doesn't mean that any shoddy artwork is equally good or something like that. It's about the viewer and the importance of the viewer feeling free to draw their own interpretation of the work. I'm not, I'm not trying to start a...start a like participation trophy type thing either. I think that artists should absolutely take pride in their work. Viewers and collectors should expect quality in the work that they are spending time just looking at let alone that they're spending their money on.
Whenever, whenever a work of art...I'm only just recently kind of pushing into that five-figure range. I have two pieces, one piece, Cordyline is $10,000 and Ascension is $12,000. And those are the most expensive pieces that I have that I've created so far. And whenever, whenever the work of art costs that much or really. I mean, there's there's a lot of work out there that costs six figures or more. They become, in a way, almost kind of they're luxury objects. And if you are buying a. If you buy a really nice purse or if you buy a like a Gucci jacket, the, the construction of that jacket, it should be equal to or really honestly greater than the cost of it. So the the construction of it, the craftsmanship of it, everything that goes into making it, it should be part of something that you're paying for. Man, I cannot think of a single, single other... Globe Traveler? The really nice suitcase company. They're a great example or really like Rolls-Royce. There is a great example. Whenever you buy a Rolls-Royce, I mean, the the seats are hand sewn, the car pretty much is entirely is hand built. And with with a really careful eye for detail. And the same should be able to be said of the work that you're putting on your walls. Now, if you can't afford to spend $10,000, or $50,000 or $500,000 or more on a work of art, but you still find that it moves you. That's where that's where it's valuable to, to look through the the artist's catalog, see if maybe they have another piece like a smaller piece that you could afford that would be, you know, that also really grips you, or with some of my work and kind of I'll be releasing more, I'm also offering prints of different pieces. So I think I think that's a really good thing for in terms of just sort of the accessibility of things that if you can't afford the the real thing or if the real thing just isn't available, then I'm just having that having like a print to remind you of of that piece is is also really important. Really valuable. So, yeah, let me stop there for just a second.
All right, I'm back. So this is had plenty of time to dry now. It's been flooded and I have no idea what I was talking about earlier whenever, whenever we ended this....craftsmanship being being incredibly important, Rolls Royce. Oh, Burberry was the, was one of the luxury brands that I was reaching for. You buy one of those Burberry trench coats, those are really nice and really well-made. So, buy a work of art, those are really nice and really well made too. Oh, and you know, I was also talking about prints and. Well, so prints, not Prince, the, um, the musician. Right. Let's see here. One more. One more break.
OK, so it seems like all of my batteries are almost totally dead. So I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up here and I'll, as I'm reviewing all of what I filmed today, I guess I'll probably have to take notes because I feel like there were a lot of things that I started talking about. And we have, I guess, a lot of ground to cover. And until next time, I'd like to encourage you to do what you love; make good work. I'll talk to you soon.