It's official! I lost my young gene!

Going to the House Of Blues was a delightful experience; I enjoyed the live music, bragged that Marek is on stage doing a fabulous job playing Dave Matthews Band songs.

I think that I saw the concert from every single angle and floor possible, and I was loosing and finding friends all night long!

After the concert we decided to stick around and say hi to Marek...

Did I mention that I absolutely love the decor at the House of Blues?  I tried to figure out who the interior designers were, but couldn't find any information online about it... so sad..

I enjoyed a bit of acting like a goofball with a bunch of friends, after which we all decided to join a birthday party at what I'm assuming is a Russian Club in Deep Ellum; that's where we learned who still had the young gene and who lost it.
I lost it.

We met a few people we knew, also standing in line, and robbed one of them of the hand made meringue puffs, which were actually a hand made present for the birthday girl, and quite delicious!

After standing in a line, which never seemed to move, we finally entered, Truth & Alibi, otherwise known as T&A (yea, I'm not kidding.)

Holy smokes! This place was so packed that we literally had to squeeze our way through an ocean of bodies; sardines in a tin can pretty much sums it up nicely!  All I kept thinking was if there was a fire in here, 50% of people or more would go bye bye. There were two doors, the front was so skinny that only one body at a time would pass through (it said, not an exit), and the back exit door was so hard to find that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

A group of guys appeared, with eyebrows so sculpted that they must have been an envy of every woman in town... (here's where I will assume that at this point I am "old fashioned")  I was trying desperately not stare at what seemed ridiculously funny.  I mean, don't get me wrong, a drag queen or what ever needs to sculpt them, but  I'm talking Jersey Shore!  (I tried to find a photo which compared to the level of browscaping, but apparently even the Jersey Shore guys aren't as precise as this particular group from Dallas.)  On top of the eyebrow issue, they sounded like a male version of a valley girl: "Oh my god! I bet my x is in there!" ...as if it's the end of the world... a high school drama. All this coming out of what otherwise would have been an attractive, handsome, tall man.  At that point I decided that this was just a bit too much for me... The decision to grab some sushi instead was clear;)

Of course while a few of us were trying to squeeze our way to the exit, we kept running into happy and bouncy faces we knew well; you know, the ones whose young genes were obviously still in tact. At some point I felt cold liquid trickle down my leg and into my fabulous high heel... someone managed to spill their drink down my back, the stench of which reminded me why I don't drink this bubble gum junk in the first place.  After pushing our way though the endless sea of sardines, we finally made it to the exit door;)

Deep Ellum is currently a fabulous mess! Brightly lit entertainment places are stacked up next to each other, reminiscent of the sardine can issue inside the club, with parking which is pretty much impossible to find, or better yet, fishy as hell, as you could be handing over money to a random thug, who takes off after he made enough, while your car is being hooked up to a tow truck.  There isn't a place without road work, and generally speaking, it's a different kind of world. A very magical world! I absolutely love it. Buildings as sardines are okay in my book;)

Turns out that although we could still walk into the sushi bar, no one will serve food at 2 am... So we ended up in a pizza joint, sprinkling our cheap pizza slices with crushed hot peppers and watching Sharknado while the colorful life around Deep Ellum kept doing it's thing.

From 2D to 3D to Fabrication

Why exactly should you bother with 3D design before fabricating a custom project?

There are many answers to this question, and since I'm currently working on a custom processional cross for Jon Buell of Buell Custom Design, I can quickly point out a few things.

Usually I chat with a client, they tell me what they want and I put the design together, but Jon actually put together a beautiful cross design and sent it over to me. It looked fantastic! But as soon as I zoomed way in, the issues which needed to be addressed (and always do) popped up on my screen. Before I get into it, think of a great photo on your computer screen, but once you print it or try to enlarge it, all you see is a pixilated image.  Well... sort of like that.

Take a look at the crown in the middle of the drawing. (click here for a larger picture) The black lines are a bit wavy (you don't notice that this happens, and it always does, unless you are working in a specialized program.) The blue lines are what I corrected and made sure that the piece is equally mirrored to both sides as well. Since this cross pieces will be initially be cut out of a metal plate by a laser or water jet cutter, the entire thing has to be programmed into the cutting machine. There are lots of people around town who do this sort of thing, but I like to work with Mike Boliver of Aquacut or Jason Brimberry of Ephesian Art; depending on what I need done. Both Mike and Jason work with an array of different programs, really work with you, and have a pretty quick turnaround time. Plus, they're absolutely lovable!

But... I'm derailing...

Another issue, and again, this happens frequently, is when two lines do not touch... like in the closeup of the blue lines. The laser or water jet cutter will run into all sorts of issues when this happens.

The third, and very important issue is that time is money! Each one of these lines has tiny little points on them. The laser is programmed to follow each line to each point. If you can get away with having one clean line, the laser will run smoothly over the entire area, and it takes less time... when the laser has to "think" about 40 points on the same line, you'll use up a whole lot of time. It's always better to clean up the images or simply start fresh and do this correctly in the first place. As you may have noticed, I did not re-design Jon's cross or the parts and pieces in it, I simply cleaned things up a bit and made them work for the machine. I also added the little step detail... if I'm going to cut two plates, I might as well use this extra detail in adding some texture to the piece. Take a look at the letters... I can tell that Jon used Illustrator to put the design together... but the problem with using this program is that once you make letters run across a circle, they will have spaces between them in some parts and, unfortunately, actually run together in other parts of the circle. I had to manually fix this problem and create spaces between each letter, or they would look a bit funny when cut out of a piece of plate.

Okay, so now that we had a little chat about line design and lasers, lets talk a bit about 3D design.

3 people can look at the cross in the upper left hand side of the drawing and imagine 3 very different ways of what the final piece will look like. This is precisely why I love designing the pieces in a 3D program, before they go into production. This way, all 3 of us will be looking at exactly what the final piece will look like, to the exact scale, with the exact dimensions, and the exact material sizes. After discussing the top drawing, we decided to handle this design in a different way. As you can see, the same design, an absolutely different cross! A little bit of work ahead of time saves a whole lot of time later on!

I can even give this cross a pretty good approximation of what the finishes will look like... that the wooden part will be oak, and the stain it will have, etc... but in this case, Jon and I already know what the finishes will look like, so the final 3D design has a more crude look to it.

At this point, I can ask Jon, "Do you like the front part of the cross being 1/8"? or would you prefer that to be a bit thinner?" It's so easy to make those decisions now, so that there are no regrets later on in the process. Changing little things in the world of custom while the piece is fabricated might not be a big deal some of the time, but other times it will hurt your pocket... preventing this is a good idea in my book!

After the two pieces return from the cutter, my guys will go to work on this cross and put the entire thing together. By doing all this ahead of time, I'm saving their time as well, and all of this translates to the piece being done correctly, as expected, and quicker than it would otherwise have. And this, of course, translates to saving time and money!

I don't need to go through these steps for every project, of course, but this one absolutely lends itself to it.

I'll be sure to thrown in a photo of the cross when it's done... you'll love it once it has all the hand worked nuances like the patina and so on worked in.

The worlds of art, design, and architecture are colliding! 3D Art Night: Digitizing Reality

3D printed figurine of an actual human, by Captured Creations.

Last night I went to Captured Dimensions, a 3D scanning and 3D printing studio in Plano, TX, where a whole lot of 3D artists, computer game designers, as well as traditional sculptors got together to participate in a talk given by artist Bridgette Mongeon.  So what do all these people have in common?

Let me start at the beginning...

Michele Azzaro, who works for the company, has been telling me about this 3D technology her company has been working on for a while now, and it all sounded great, but you know how pictures speak louder than a thousand words? Well, they do!  I got an invitation from Michele, via Facebook, and the invitation had a link to a video attached to it.  I clicked on the link  and was absolutely blown away!  You have to see this... the possibilities are endless... but to start with, think of little wedding cake figurines which happen to be exact replicas of the actual couple who are having the wedding.  Imagine this: Captured Dimensions snaps a single photo of you at the same time, 81 times, from every single angle you can imagine, transports it into their 3D environment, and prints you, exactly as you are in that place in time!  Fabulous!  I just couldn't wait to see more!

On the night of the event, I was pretty much knew what to expect, but was further blown away by the capabilities.  They can actually take a hand-held scanner and visit your home to scan a sculpture you have in your backyard and print little replicas of it, or a full scale replica, or even a larger one!  They materials they can print in are also many, not only plastics, but ceramics, etc... 

Now imagine manipulating your own images in 3D, basically sculpting in a virtual reality, and printing your sculpture into the real world.  Technology and art are starting to merge together for sure... and now your'e starting to get the picture of why Bridgette, an artist who sculpts people and animals, was there...

Brigette Mongeon is an artist, sculptor, writer, educator, public speaker, a wife, a mom, and a grandmother!  Due to an injury she sustained to her hand, she was no longer able to sculpt, and since sculpture is her life, her husband suggested virtual reality.  Her injuries healed eventually, but by then she was hooked!  She is currently using the 3D world to explore her ideas, to show her clients what their commissions will look like before they are brought into the physical world, and she also uses the 3D printing and CNC/ROBOTIC technology to print the base of the sculptures she created so that she can sculpt on top of that and make the sculptures her own.  Imagine the time being saved by not having to weld rebar and apply tons of stuff on top of it to come up with the skeleton of the piece.  (by the way, I can't wait for her new book to come out next year... lots and lots of great 3D and sculpture tips and secrets in that one!... I got a preview and the preview was fantastic, you should really check it out)

All of this is very exciting for the world of art, and I will most definitely keep this in mind for my next large scale sculpture project... I know that I most definitely could have used this technology for this tortoise I sculpted, which was cast in bronze, but it's also exciting for the world of home building and interior design as well.  Check out this video of circular staircase stringers being milled out out wood!  Unlike having to build this on-site, which takes a whole lot of men power, not to mention the oopsies, this bad boy produces extremely precise life size replicas of the design created in the wold of 3D.

Since I am an ornamental ironwork and lighting designer, I absolutely love to use 3D technology to show my clients what their final projects will look like.  I've been doing this for just about 10 years; I know exactly how hard it is for clients to picture certain designs from a drawing on a piece of paper.  With 3D technology, nothing is off the table, depending on how far you're wiling to take it, you can pretty much accomplish anything.  Take, for instance, the photo below.  It's a quatrefoil gate design I put together on one of my 3D programs; wouldn't you say that it looks pretty real? ...all the way down to the finish.  I created it in real-world dimensions, so everything is exactly as it will be in our real world.  At this point I can superimpose this gate into a photograph of the stone columns it will actually fit in-between, and the client will see exactly what they will be seeing when the actual gate would be installed.  I put this particular design together for the purpose of hand forging, but since I have the file, I can now print little replicas, or actually CNC this design out of a single piece of metal.  I mean, how amazing is this?

Anyway, I could keep going and going, but this post would become extremely long... I hope that this has sparked your imagination and you'll look a bit further into the technology.  I know that I have a whole lot of ideas floating around in my head, like 3D printed chandeliers like this one, which I also designed recently for the purpose of forging in wrought iron:

If you have any questions or great ideas, please comment below.  I'm posting a few pics from last night below... Chat with you soon!  Izabela

So, what am I holding in my hand? A tiny 3D family portrait, of course!

If you don't know Breanna Cooke, you should!  It's such a small world!  I was just admiring the costume she she made for herself a few months ago, I walk into Captured Dimensions and what do I see?  A little replica of Breanna in her costume!

Brigette and I, Norman Rockwell style!

Inside the Photo Booth!

Imagine! All these cameras and you're 3D!
...and a whole lot of comic con characters just love to go digital!

Okay, one more fun thing before I go... if you have a $100 burning in your pocket and you want a really awesome business card, get a hold of Michele or Jordan at Captured Dimesions... I saw theirs yesterday and was absolutely in love!

In the first photo, I'm holding their card against the background of one of my paintings, and I took a picture of that.  In the second and third photos, I scanned the card with the app on my phone, and a 3D image appeared on top of the card, which I could actually view from all sides, based on how I moved the card.  I took screenshots of what was there... isn't it fantastic?

to do this, you'll have to download this free app called Augment to your phone or iPad... just go to your apple store or what not and type in Augment.

scan this image with your phone or ipad (you can print the image or scan it from your computer screen) and there you have it... move the phone back and forth and the image will magically rotate... it literally sits on your business card.

Have fun!

Oh Goodie! The Rockitecture photo is here!

Greg Brown, the program director at the Dallas Center for Architecture, sent me a photo from Rockitecture! I did not attend this year, but I did donate one of my paintings for the auction... it's the one on the right:)
Thanks Greg!

The LinkedIn blue bubble incident

You know that blue circle which keeps popping up on your page... the one demanding that you "finish your profile"... well, I finally got sick and tired of it, and I thought, Okay... let me get rid of it.  I took a look as to what its demands are, and, of course,  the demand ends up being "ask for recommendations."  I don't particularly like doing this, and it's why I still have not done it, but I thought, if it will help me not see that darn blue bubble, I will do it.

I clicked on the link and ALL of my LinkedIn connections popped up on the screen! Overwhelming much? YES!  I thought... well, that is a lot of work... Okay, I will simply say "please recommend me, and if we have not worked on a project together, here's a link to my work"

Sounded like a great idea at the time, but... let me give you a heads up, don't ever do this!
Apparently people whom I know thought it was spam because I said "if I don't know you", and the people with whom I have not done a project thought it was spam because I said "please recommend me." LOL

The Moral Of The Story:

Leave the blue bubble alone,
even if it's driving you crazy!





Ps.
I have 1 recommendation from Sandra Prater (thank you for taking the time Sandra:)
a bunch of "Izabela, is this spam?" letters
and One Blue Bubble, which just won't go away:)

My trip to Rohde's Green Sense

This year I decided to start an organic garden... and to go with an above ground one!
Laimis purchased a whole lot of organic dirt from the store across the street from the Dallas Arboretum.

They said that the soil had 3 different kinds of things inside it, for organic gardening, but when the truck arrived home I looked at it and had to squint... it looked more like mulch than something I'd picture vegetables growing in... but, I thought... what do I know... I just remember gardening from Poland and the dirt might be different.

Well... I guess I knew something after all, because after spending a whole lot of money on seeds and plugging in a few tomato plants, nothing grew past the 1 or 2 original inches of growth.

I finally talked to a neighbor who told me to take a trip to Rohde's!  ...and so I did!

Turns out, all those pieces of wood inside the so called "garden soil" ate out all the oxygen and so the poor plants were basically suffocating! I picked up some organic fertilizer, which would put a whole lot of nitrogen inside the dirt and hopefully by next year I'd have a garden:)

I didn't remove any of the original plants because I wanted to see what would happen, and in no time what so ever, my tiny cucumber plant started turning into a large cucumber vine!  The other ones were not so lucky!

But,! and this is the reason I was most impressed by Rohde's, I did see sorrel plants at the store and was just blown away!  The last time I saw sorrel growing anywhere was in Europe!  I picked up one (I didn't want to throw money out the window if the fertilizer was't going to help) and planted it in the newly doctored soil.  It's growing!!

So, back to the sorrel!  I know that in Europe it's the most common spring green laying around the kitchen, but why is it that no one seems to eat it here?  I've never seen it at the grocery store.  It has a lovely citrusy bite and it's excellent in a sorrel soup, or paired with fish or chicken.

You should always cook it in aluminum, otherwise you'll end up with an ugly color because of the oxalic acid in the plant.  If you don't care about the color, cook it however you'd like... it's still going to have a great taste!

These are not my recipes, but here are a few:

Salmon in Sorrel Sauce

Butter-Braised Radishes with Sorrel

Cauliflower and Sorrel Soup

Have Fun!

Second Time Around: The Hubcap as Art

Several years ago I got an invitation from Ken Marquis, the founder of Landfillart Project to participate in an international effort encompassing one-thousand-forty-one (1,041) artists to claim a piece of rusted metal garbage and create fine art. The pieces of trash were made up of old automobile hub caps from the 1930's through the 1970's and mine arrived in a large box just a few days after our initial conversation. It was an old chrome Chevrolet piece, rusted in places and most definitely mistreated by the time it had spent in the landfills; using it as a canvas was not an option for me; this piece was begging to reveal the beauty hidden beneath the patina of time. I decided to strip the piece to its core, finding the gold underneath the silver; jackpot! The freshly unearthed metal looked as if the piece had been molded just that day... I decided to distress the piece and apply a dark patina to the surface, lightly taking off the high areas, and slowly, but surely, creating art. I loved it so much that I really didn't want to send it back. After a few days of enjoying the piece at my home, it was finally time to pack it up and ship it back to Landfillart.org, where it could do some good for our precious earth.

Today I have been informed that a bunch of the pieces were chosen to be displayed at the MSV in Virginia!  Here are a few other pieces which will be on display:

ABOUT THE MSV EXHIBITION

The exhibition of environmentally inspired contemporary art, Second Time Around: The Hubcap as Art will present the works of 287 artists from every US state and 35 other countries from Sunday, September 7, 2014 and run through March 1, 2015.

In support of the opening of Second Time Around, the MSV will concurrently present WASTE NOT, a version of the exhibition Green Revolution which is made available by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service based on an exhibition originally created by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and its Black Creativity Council.

To top the cake with a cherry, my piece is being displayed on the front page of Landfillart.org; how fun is that!