Trashformations, Part 1

Pat owns this fabulous store of reclaimed items in Bend, Oregon. Pat is concerned about the earth. Pat acts on his beliefs.

Once a year he hosts Trashformations. Local artists, anybody really, sign up for $25 and sign a release and, for 2 days, create art from the else of our culture. Some weld, some glue, some bolt, some frap. This year marks the tenth anniversary. I'm a five year veteran.

The time of year--April--can be challenging and chilly (see image of the hot tub) but it's designed to coincide with Earth Week, during which the final products are displayed. Better said, a show is mounted.

Buffalo Folsom is the coordinator of the event, and he and Pat make sure the welders have juice, the hot tub has fuel (see topmost image), and there's hot coffee and stuff to put on the barbecue for a hot sandwich anytime you want it. The creative energy in the air is palpable.

Again this year it was a delightful weekend. A future post will include more images. For now, we'll just set the scene: the center image is after turf has been established, tools unpacked and some material is accumulating. The lower image, embarrassingly out of sequence, is 7am Saturday morning.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Start your Art!

Dad's Basement Workshop and Sixth Grade Science

It was in the basement, and it was where things got fixed. Window screens were made there. Baby food jars whose lids had been nailed to the underside of a shelf contained tacks and brads and staples. And there were cigar boxes with labels like "rope, light wire" and "small bolts." That was over half a century ago.

The family workshop, kid accessible, is a rarity these days.

When Mrs. T at a local private school began to appreciate that she had students who had no opportunity to work with their hands in the world of mechanical things, she asked me if I could help. Together we concocted this little series of science classtimes centered around "attaching things." The ostensible goal was to create a sculpture out of found objects. In fact, the kids were getting their hands on screws and bolts, adhesives from epoxy to polyurethanes and--the coolest of all--pop rivets! If you're going to use those things, you'll need to know about some tools, too.

I heard myself sounding like Norm on New Yankee: "Before we get started, let's talk about safety..."

I supplied the boxes of stuff--note the closeup of the sculpture in progress--and trays of fasteners and gobs of glue.

There was 100% interest on the part of the kids. Like bringing water to the thirsty, I brought stuff and they figured out how to use it. Smiles and intense questions were reward enough.

Many people I know volunteer at schools more than I do. But if you're not one of those, consider teachers' jobs right now, and the distractions that conspire to keep them from doing the best they can to prepare these future citizens, craftspeople, innovators, parents, for a life far more complicated than we can imagine.

Take your craft, your art, your skill, your experience into the office at your closest school and find out where you can fit in. An hour a week!

To be fair, it may take more than one try to find the age group you're wired for. But once you do, you'll be stuck to this service like you'd fallen into a large vat of epoxy, lag bolts, wood clamps, lock washers, phillips head screws, and, yes, pop rivets.

Take Your Barker Bass Dancing Tonight!

Terpsichore. Not a word we get to use in casual conversation often enough. From the Muse by the same name, the one who inspires dance. You probably know where this is heading: Matt Dancing

Here is simplicity overlaid with logistical complexity beyond imagining by someone who has two weeks of vacation a year. But if you used to have two weeks and now have no job, these few minutes could be good medicine.

The Barker Bass, from the point of view of the creator, your writer, can tend to be seen in the shadow of a sacrosanctity that would not allow humor.

But there are days when humor is not only the best medicine but also the only bottle in the medicine chest.

Hence these optional endpin addenda (which are indeed for sale) and may be just the right touch for that certain gig.

Installation requires the removal of the rubber tip (it's glued on but can be forced off) and the temporary insertion of a pilot shaft which is a permanent part of the accessory.

Accessorize your bass! Adornment! It's subtler than a rubber chicken, more environmentally friendly than a string of flashing Yule lights, and more easily removed than Nascar stickers!

Above all, take a moment to dance with Matt. Good for your head, your heart and your soul and everything in between.

Overtones to Ringers and Clangers

Grandpas are honored at the neighborhood thrift store on Tuesdays--half price if you're over 55. So the pot lids you see in the image were south of $2.50. Punch a few holes just so, thread some weedwhacker line, install a horizontal beam to the windmill tower, and, voila! oops, silence!

Well, you've got to bore and smush some golf balls on a couple of dowels.

Voila! Still silent. Something missing.

Add one granddaughter, Maya by name, and the symphony begins! It was chilly and almost dark, so we just got the first movement (allegro) in when dinner was announced.

Maya continued next morning, in the fresh snow.

The other image is the current grandkid array: Lily, Maya, and Bjorn. (Missing is Juniper, three months, not interested much in looking out a window at grandma's camera.) The three spent that day at Cline Falls Ranch where they proved that grandma's delight in goats is indeed a genetic thing. And then there's the wallaroo...

Ringers, Clangers and Tailors

In the 1998 movie "Bad Manners" (David Strathairn, Bonnie Bedelia, Saul Rubinek and Caroleen Feeney), a musicology professor finds, from a computer-generated collection of random tones, a clear quotation of Martin Luther's hymn melody "Ein' Feste Burg." That's not the story, but a small platform from which we shall leap to bell ringing in England. Ignore the vertiginous transition!

Legend has it that Dorothy Sayers (author of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels) wrote 'The Nine Tailors" after coming across a brochure backgrounding change ringing in England's churches--the practice of making music by following prescribed patterns to ring various bells, each controlled by an individual at the rope.

This sounds easy until you consider the size of the bells and the anticipation required to get things moving in advance of the clapper actually contacting the bell.

The tradition is rich and deep, and continues to this day. It all seems to hark back to an initial printed work by a man name Troyte, whose name is far from forgotten among those who study and practice this arcane art.

The 8 bells in the tower at Fenchurch St. Paul are in fact salient to the Sayers story; the Nine Tailors refers to a sequential ring of one bell--Tailor Paul, the tenor bell, and the largest there--announcing the death of a parisioner. Tailor Paul, according to the novel, is a 41 cwt (over two tons I think that would mean) bell tuned to C. Paul's companion bells have intriguing names, some cast, as Paul, by John Tailor in 1887: Gaude, Sabaoth, Dimity, Jubilee, John, Jericho, and Batty Thomas.

Seen through a wide angle lens, music came to and has remained, in large part, not a random product. But does that automatically exclude random tones, never repeated, from the realm of music?

The photos above are from my back yard. Parts came from junk shops and thrift stores. The tubular, tranditional wind chimes were made to formulas found on the web. The longest tube is 40 inches.

The "cymbals" are former diamond saw blades, 18" in diameter. The welded rings which "play" them are some kind of fine steel; they ring beautifully when struck.

The large chrome chime, with three clappers, is an aluminum planter, 19 inches tall, 18 in diameter. It shall forever be known as Tailor Paul.

They ding gently in the smallest breeze. When gusts cataract through our east-west back yard, it's metallic anarchy. And strangely musical to my ears! Random patterns, never repeated, joyfully chaotic but so pleasant that invariably smiles result.

I have not yet heard a snippet of "A Mighty Fortress..." and I have not intentionally gone out and struck Tailor Paul nine times, following with one strike for every year of the deceased's life.

But it is music, found, and it makes a life richer.

Find some music of your own today. Let it lead you somewhere new.

Eight Minutes and Four Seconds of Fame

Oregon Public Broadcasting (Television): Oregon Art Beat. Each week the two hosts, KC Cowan and Jeff Douglas, profile three artists from our state. Last week was our turn. The clip lacks the hosts' introduction, but KC appears in the shop segment. And Wanda, our pound hound, does a little backside cameo.

Tell us what you learned, and didn't. Comments always appreciated.

Barker Bass on Oregon Art Beat

From Treachery to Triumph

Do you know the song "Perfidia"? Its whole tale is told in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidia

Note the last line, indicating it was used in the off-Broadway show "Forever Plaid." In rehearsing for that show (as bassist) I saw, for the first time, lyrics I had hummed to through many recordings (though I'd forgotten The Ventures) on the Wiki list. And I had never got it.

I somehow linked it with "Poinciana", (The Song of the Tree) which can be played with the same slow latin beat. Both tunes exist in instrumental and vocal versions, and both, to belabor a point, start with the letter P and aren't words of everyday use in my world.

The opening:
To you, my heart cries out "Perfidia," for I found you, the love of my life, in somebody else's arms.


Pretty good so far--the singer calls the object of his/her affection by name (I thought) and is obviously crowing about the theft from another.

But things are going a little sideways now:

Your eyes are echoing "Perfidia", forgetful of our promise of love, you're sharing another's charms...


Our singer gets reflective through the bridge:

With a sad lament my dreams have faded like a broken melody; while the gods of love
look down and laugh and what romantic fools we mortals be...


And turns resolute:

And now, I know my love was not for you, and so I'll take it back with a sigh,
Perfidious one, goodbye!


Perfidious one? Well, "perfidia" is Spanish for "treachery." You can take it from there. Perfidia is not a name at all!

Shallowly, I thought it was a song of love. Well it is, but it has a surprise ending.

Hear a snippet, bridge to close, here:
http://www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000152

And I have a new word to try to use 7 times today.