Wotartist - Portfolio
I have just established a paid portfolio website on Wotartist. It's located at:
http://www.robertgilmour.wotartist.com/
Wotartist's aim is to attract art viewers (aka buyers etc) on the basis that it's contents are vetted by the site owners. This means that Wotartist isn't just another link farm like most of the art listing websites on the net.
Comments (0) September 11, 2009
Natural Edge Serving Dish in Queensland Kauri by Bob Gilmour
This is a small serving bowl in very old and highly figured Queensland Kauri with some natural edge and a wonderful organic free-form shape.
HERE in the northern tropics of Australia, summer storms ensure that tree-falls are plentiful ... so, there is an abundance of available rainforest timbers from both private property and forestry land. Much of the fallen timber is processed as 'slabs' by mobile sawmillers and sold to a variety of end-users.
Because the wood is so abundant, many users are quite wasteful in what they throw away ... and often, the bits thrown away are the most spectacular.
Such was the case with the piece of Queensland Kauri I used to make this dish. It was part of a lot of discarded timber I obtained from a local 'slab' furniture maker. It was cracked and damaged ... but, what colour and character this piece of wood exuded. The tree had been quite old, so the wood is a rich deep yellow colour. Also, the log must have been on the ground a while because there is a reasonable amount of freshwater spalting and some insect damage ... all adding to the prize.
I created a shape quite quickly that I was very happy with and decided to leave some natural edge ... to highlight the stressed condition of the wood.
I didn't really have a lot of time available and was eager to finish this piece, so I opted to create it as a functional item rather than a display piece.
This is one item which I would probably like to keep for myself ... but it sold quickly.
Go HERE to view more images and information for this piece.
Comments (0) September 10, 2009
GILMOUR ARTFORMS Page on Facebook - Become a Fan
Become a fan of my Gilmour Artforms page on Facebook where I am going to cross-post a summary of some of the posts from this news feed.
Comments (0) September 10, 2009
Serving Dishes in Figured Mango Wood by Bob Gilmour
I have just completed a couple of small leaf-shaped serving dishes in mango wood from Far North Queensland, Australia. These were made from salvaged wood which is quarter-sawn and highly figured.
These pieces were created from stock of mango wood I salvaged from a building renovation site near to where I'm living. Some more details about that wood can be read in this blog posting.
I had slabbed as much quarter-sawn stock out as I could, given that most of the wood consisted of only branches and small trunk pieces. The tree wasn't very old (probably less than 40 years), so much of the wood was quite pale in colour ... almost white. This purity together with a strong figuring makes it quite attractive.
I have enough wood for probably 10 of these dishes in total. The theme which will feature throughout is an organic leaf shape which works well with the grain pattern evident in the wood.
Go HERE to view more images and information for this piece.
Comments (0) September 09, 2009
New Artforms Website
I've been working on this major update for ARTFORMS for months now (part-time, obviously) and have finally flipped it live. It's not quite finished, but it's close enough to let visitors in.
I still have to add some information sections and some sort of purchase facility (which I'd included as an add-on in the old site layout).
The main differences with this new layout is that the whole underlying delivery engine is new. It's much simpler ... maybe a little faster in some areas ... and, most importantly, very scalable. So, hopefully, this layout engine will serve the site well into the future. It also integrates this blog/news page more closely into the site, but still allows it to function as an inclusion into my other sites when I get that far.
If any problems are encountered, please contact me via the contact link exposed via the info icon in the top menu.
Comments (0) August 18, 2009
Fine Bowl in Red Cedar.
I hate to see material getting wasted, especially high value woods like Australian Red Cedar. So, I quite often make really small bowl forms. This one is only about 10 inches in length but it has a really easy flowing form ... and great colour.
Go HERE to view more images and information for this piece.
Comments (0) August 10, 2009
wotartist listing for Artforms
I just got this website listed on wotartist under Australian artists. The category is sculpture.
Wotartist is a listing of international artist websites. Inclusion is by vetted submission. In other words, the operators of the site pick who they want shown on the website. Amongst their selection criteria is that included artist sites should not be purely commercially focused.
So, wotartist is a pretty good listing of artists chosen for quality of work rather than just another all-in link farm.
Comments (0) July 30, 2009
Fine Bowl in Spalted Blackbean - Work in Progress
Actually, 'spalted' is a bit of a gross understatement! I salvaged a back-yard blackbean tree a few years ago from a friend's house. Due to 'circumstances', unfortunately, I was never able to store the wood properly and after a couple years the outer sapwood was riddled by lyctus borers ... very prominent here in the tropics. Once the borers had made numerous passageways into the outer part of the wood, freshwater ingress resulted in a pretty decent case of spalting.
Upon realising the extent of the damage, I was pretty heartbroken ... and dutifully left the whole mess for another couple years! Finally, I needed the storage space and set to work with the chainsaw reducing the pile of wood to burnable sized chunks, and salvaging whatever heartwood I could. After I'd destroyed about half the pile, I thought "hey, what if I can actually do something with this stuff" ... thinking outside the box here ... because the combination of severe borer attack and advanced spalting really created a striking result. So, I shaped up this piece.
This piece is currently a 'work in progress'. These images show it at the rough sanded stage with a temporary sealer applied.
I still have to clean out most of the borer tracks. Once that's done, the bowl will show a lot more perforation than it currently does. This is going to result in some really striking light play through the piece in the right display situation. I think I'll keep the final finish fairly matte so as to not take the emphasis away from the insect and fungal damage effects.
More images can be seen HERE on the website.
You can also visit my facebook page.
Finally, have a look at the range of fine utensils and homewares that I create at FOREST TREASURES.
Comments (0) June 03, 2009