‘Becca and I appear on this N.E.R.D.cast hosted by my good friend, Hollywood monster-maker Jordu Schell. Nerdy things are discussed. Check it out, hopefully it’s as much fun to listen to as it was to record.
While you’re at Jordu’s site, be sure to check out his gallery of monsters. He’s an imaginative designer and a very impressive sculptor. Of monsters.
Last entry, I mentioned that I once contemplated building a Linka model of M. C. Escher’s Relativity. I never actually did that, but I did put together a neat study model of the scene, out of folded graph paper (and a bit of cardboard for support). I’ve posted a picture of it on my sculptures page:
If you’re modeling this scene yourself, this picture could be a useful reference. It’s pretty accurate, though perhaps not exact. (There’s room for disagreement on some staircase widths, for instance.)
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this faithful reproduction in LEGO of my favorite Escher print.
I’m glad those guys made that: now I don’t have to. (I started planning a model of Relativity years ago, but never started building it. It’s a tempting subject because it’s recognizably Escher but isn’t actually physically impossible to build; furthermore Escher pretty obviously designed it using a sort of 3-D grid, so it translates well to LEGO or similar systems. I was going to use Linka, which I still think would suit the subject perfectly.)
I’m interested in “hobbycraft” – building scale models of things, for example. It’s fun, and some people get very good at it. Right now I want to call your attention to a little-known master of the art.
Ernest “Mooney” Warther, a steel-mill worker with a second-grade education, spent over four decades carving the history of steam locomotives – over five dozen trains – in exquisite detail. Moving parts are lubricated with nothing but slippery wood; color is conveyed by different woods, not paint; he even made his own carving knives. The results are genuinely beautiful – not mere models, but works of art that gained him international attention in his lifetime. He did other carvings too, including a very impressive math sculpture, half a thousand working pairs of pliers sprouting from each other in a tree formation, all carved from a single piece of wood. Yet today, though his work still shows him to have been a major American sculptor, he seems to have been largely forgotten.
Thankfully, Warther’s impressive works are still on display in the family-run museum his home has become. I’ve been on the guided tour several times and always find it inspiring. The sculptures are displayed and lit very well, and there are some other things to see on the grounds. If you find yourself anywhere near Dover, Ohio, and have any interest in modelmaking, sculpture, trains, arrowheads, buttons, gardening, knife-making, or the power of a can-do attitude, be sure to check out this little gem of a museum.
Meanwhile, celebrate the power of the Web as you check out some samples at the museum’s Web page: http://www.warthers.com/carving.htm
Greetings and welcome! I’m Dan Efran, and this is my blog.
I resisted for a long time, but let’s face it: I want to make my opinions available to the world, along with hyperlinks to cool stuff I see online.
That spells BLOG, and since this narcissistic practice is actually fashionable, I might as well get started!
I’ll be writing about anything I feel like writing about, but you can expect to see a lot about “hobbycraft”, or people building cool stuff for fun.
I’ll start off, predictably, with a link to my own gallery of cool stuff: toyware (software toys) and games, LEGO sculptures, digital art, and more.
www.dan-efran.com
Enjoy!