george koller on sat 1 jun 02
hi all,
many of you belong to the "keep it simple" school
of art. by now, i probably appreciate the beauty of
that better than most.
but i'm a technical guy, so it has seemed natural and
right to use my 20 some years in software (some 6
commercial programs, i think that is pretty rare) to
try to push into to some new ground. to develop
something that can assist clayartists to push into
brand new, untrampled territories.
simple is a strange thing. the engineering to build
the cars most of us drive is anything but simple!
but you get in, turn the key, and your off to see aunt betty.
the point is that complex things can be made to appear
simple, and this beast i've been taming is now under
some pretty decent control. it's ready to get tested,
and hopefully to get pushed abit.
right now an artist could be sitting at the computer that
i'm posting this from, use a paint package to wack
something together, (or translate a photograph of a
painting or whatever) and when he/she lets me know
its done, some 20mintues to an hour or so later and can
have l'il Charley III scratching glazes and adding colorants
to the tiles that will build that image. one of them, or forty
nine, or six hundred - from there it is only compressed air,
electricity, tiles, glaze, and colorants (those metal sulfates).
this thing is falls between industry with the square
foot per hour mentalities and the pottery shop that
wouldn't be able to afford one. nothing i haven't
been aware of. but i'm solid on the side of doing
some art with it first, and i happen to own the software
that can do it, and one machine (the bigger-faster
charley II, in northport, mi).
over the next 4 weeks, i'm going to be here at Alfred
pushing li'l charley iii to do some replications of kurt
wilds original works. that's what he is equiped to do.
and only flat stuff for now. 3dims later, maybe.
no kidding, its for real, and its open house time here
at alfred for serious clayarters... i really do want to show
this thing off.
best,
george koller
door county, wi
alfred, ny
ps charley ii has been training on english china factory tiles
so far and doing real good. we have an art student, marc debernardis,
of florida, working with us (part-time) now and he has made
some nice 11" square stoneware tiles about ready for us, we
have all kurt's glaze ingredients, of course alfred has most every
kind of kiln known to man, and we are about set to start making
some kurt wild tile replications. bring some popcorn, he's rather
fun to watch!
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