Now the rusting process begins.

I have been known to literally sound my barbaric yawp in joy, echoes reverberating off the shop walls.

In order to complete the joints properly, I need to actually finish the surfaces which will be mated together.  For the proper “feel” that I want, there can’t be the mere illusion of a joint, there needs to be an honest-to-goodness joint.  In this case, that means cutting straight through the sculpture (as you can see) and physically removing a section or order to accomplish that.

Once finished with the interior surfaces, I reattach the missing section and tweak it until the two sides fit perfectly.  Large adjustable clamps help with this immensely, but I always seem to be working right at their limit of effectiveness.  Because none of the surfaces are ever parallel to each other, in many cases I’m relying on mere surface friction to keep the clamps from sliding off in dramatic fashion.  But after a time, and with great attention, the job is done.

I want to plant some more exotic trees/bushes but buying them bareroot is rather expensive and most are not even available from a local nursery.  If I was interested in a single specimen, that would be one thing – but given the scope of my landscaping project, I want a lot of them and that would get prohibitively expensive very quickly.

You can, however, buy seed fairly cheaply.  Unlike annual vegetables though, tree seeds have hard seed coats which need to be broken (called scarification) and a dormancy period which needs to be endured (called stratification).  There are rather complex methods for doing so in a very controlled environment, but I’m trying out a quick-and-dirty method of using recycled milk jugs to fashion mini “greenhouses” for the seeds.  Cut them in half, drill some drainage holes in the bottom and add moist soil.  Plant your seeds into the soil, tape the jug back up and set outside with the cap off.  That’s it.  In the springtime, when you notice small seedlings sprouting, you can open the jug on warm days and close them back up at nighttime until they’re large enough to be potted up or planted into the ground.  That’s the theory anyway, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

For me, rust is a practical solution that fits in perfectly with my ideas about a work’s integrity.

I like it because it is honest.  It is direct.

Paint seeks to hide the surface of a sculpture beneath a plastic coating to protect it from the elements.  But no paint is perfect, rust will find its way through the tiniest of cracks and eat the work away from below the shiny coating. Eventually, all painted work will require maintenance, someone else touching the piece.  As much as possible, I design and fabricate sculptures that do not require the hands of anyone beyond myself to maintain them.

By working with rust, in the form of Weathering Steel, I can create work that is direct, honest, and bare.  Utterly exposed to eyes and the elements, it actually endures. By humbly submitting to the inevitability of decay, it can hold entropy back and achieve a purity that would be otherwise impossible.