SKETCH OF AN ART SALE

Sketch of an Art Sale

This particular piece of art has such depth and disaster that it bears a little more scrutiny as it gains even more character, which means that it packs in more tension and fascinating flaws as well as the marks of love and acceptance .  The moment  I laid eyes on him, I saw a big disaster and  a touching story of survival as he was in a field up in Chimayo and I had just bought him for $150 and took a trailer up there to bring him to Adventure Trails Ranch, the name I had snagged from Laina, my grandmother, on her deathbed; the name of a children’s magazine she published and mostly illustrated back in the late 30s and 40s, based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, a real cow town back then  and ‘ not fit for a widow with 5 young children’, the local realtors said as they refused to show her any property so she ‘marched’ out and found a place to buy by herself, a cabin by a tiny creek in a small valley,  later moving out of there and buying  some more contiguous land nearby,  up higher  with a view and an old homestead-type log cabin and another larger stream with little speckled trout in it, that tasted really good.  She taught me how to ‘clean’ them by taking a knife and stabbing through the end of their intestinal track and cutting their soft white bellies up the the gills, cutting the gills just right to grab the whole mess and drag out the guts and all and then cook them by coating them in oil, then dragging them around some corn meal and then frying them in butter.  You could catch them with a hook and a worm grabbed from the super black soil near the creek or even a safety pin and a crooked little root would do to get one.  I was with her many years later, in her sky blue International Scout, down in La Jara,  as she cried when she had to sell all what was left of her herd of horses to a Ute Indian guy with a thin pocketbook for a  few hundred dollars.  I had never seen her cry before, really, as she was pretty tough, but I had to convince her  that the era had  ended and it was time (actually way past time…..).  I loved looking at the horses and I liked riding them, but in my world it was mostly just work; breaking the ice on the water trough, feeding them, moving them, seeing their various tragedies unfold, so when I had a young family I got the usual pressure to ‘get a horse’ and so I finally said that I was not interested in a horse but might consider a donkey.  Here in Chimayo was Benjamin ( who came to be called BJ) and he was injured all over his body from kicks and bites from the  other horses in the field with him.  It almost killed us and him to get him loaded in the trailer but we finally got him home, where he stayed for the next 20 or so years, under my (sometime dubious) care and becoming a huge part of my life and consciousness. 

BJ was a mammoth burro, which means he was huge for a donkey.  I rode him and packed him and, eventually found him a few companions, like Pinta the paint pony who I found by advertising to board  ‘an old nag’ to keep him company, then Candy the miniature horse and then Isabella, a normal sized burro.  BJ was loaded with personality and every day was an adventure out here on the ranch and all of the neighbors knew him;  probably better than they really wanted to.  Despite his basically kind nature, he was real smart and always a hand full and loved to escape and rediscover the neighbor’s dog food, loved to chase dogs, loved to eat.  He looked pregnant much of the time, but was strong and fast and when the neighbors got together to take a group ride, he (we) always ran up to the front and stayed there, much to the chagrin of my fellow riders on their handsome steeds.  A donkey is the sort of creature that, if you are not familiar with their looks, you , like me, are startled by their features;  you are expecting to see a horse but run smack up against the large head, the  stiff whiskers and scruffy mane, the grey color, the big eyes and massive ears, the small hooves and the scraggly and blunt instrument of their tails.  Looking into their eyes is like looking into eternity and pondering the meaning of it all. 

 

I did ‘controlled grazing’ with him for many years, working the ½ mile of Galisteo Creek bed, up and down and alternating the various fields I had fenced off and tying him to a long chain and rope each day and moving that around all summer to be sure he got food and the land was tended.  It was an extraordinary learning experience for me as each day had some sort of tangle, drama, time stretching event.  I often was trying to get to work in a hurry and was frustrated because as soon as I got his lead rope on and out the gate, then he would lurch here and there with his utterly massive neck and start grazing on the grass and weeds and trees and whatever else he fancied in the moment.   I fought him for years and poked him with branches and sticks and prodded him with whatever I could till we finally got to where we were going and I tied him up.  One day, ‘decades’  into this routine I decided to try something different; I threw the utterly soft braided lead rope across his back and headed for where I was wanting to go.  This was an experiment that occurred to me.  He kept eating away like he was want to do, but then, as I rounded the corner out of sight he, all of a sudden, would run towards me and stop right where I was.  Then I would stop where I wanted and he ran up and held his head high and I attached the hasp and walked away.  This was stunning and wonderful!  All of those years might have led to this mutual decision and solution that probably troubled him too.  I decided to do a piece of art around him and this new ‘string theory’ and so I threw the (now magic) rope on his shoulders while he was eating out there and took a simple crude digital shot, then I carved the scene into a large sand mold to be a heavy bas relief piece in cast iron, the iron pour with the Iron Tribe down at Highlands at the foundry where I had been learning the skills to do this kind of work.  The iron pours are wild events (rodeos)  in some ways and lots of people making decisions and trying to pour lots of molds and avoid getting hurt.  It is colorful with the molten iron and the sparks and the heat  and the ladles being carried around by two people and a director to help coordinate the pour.  I had carefully leveled my piece and was satisfied with the setup, but, to my horror, at the end of the pour I saw some students lugging the large mold to a different place closer to the cupola furnace and setting it down roughly and unleveled and I saw it crack in a few places, and I tried to level it quickly by eye as the ladle was headed my way and I banked it some with sand and they started to pour and the cracks were channeling the molten metal away and onto the sand and then they ran out of iron (which is a big no no) and came back as soon as they could to pour the rest and I was mortified by then and traumatized and it poured to the top and maybe the cold joint would hold and then I was dragging it to the loading dock still hotter than hell and someone decided to spray it with the hose (another thing that I would consider an insult) and I was pissed and I got it home and cleaned it up and noticed it had these beautiful color changes from the water spray and the cracks made it all the more ancient and interesting and I sold it not long afterwards, but not before I made a rubber mold. 

I got interested  in glass casting and so I decided to make a glass piece using that mold, so I made a plaster mold and I, at the end of the process before the kiln, used a little piece of refractory mortar to seal up a small imperfection in the  mold and dam off a potential glass flow.  How was I to know that that tiny piece of different material would, at the very end, slightly ‘catch’ the glass and set up the conditions for a crack, but it did.  Later I went up to Montana to an iron pour and made a complicated mold for a frame for this piece and had a series of similar disasters then, too, that creating interesting cracks and wabi sabi features to deal with as I created the whole piece.  The crack became larger and then a full split, and I decided, at last, to do something interesting with the piece and the crack and put a magnetic strip in the void and then carefully placed old wire brush bristles into that area and then I sprinkled iron from the creek bed on the magnet to create an affect that simulated that first glance at a burro and those whiskers and characterized the whole experience of being with this creature.

The experience of having to put my donkey down some years ago was extraordinary, also and bears repeating as it fits into this scenario and this codification of the clumsy, brutal and touching life event of raising a mammoth donkey.  He became incapacitated from years of fighting hoof problems that began with being overfed, probably and he had foundered many years earlier and it caught up with him and me, finally.  He could not get up for weeks and I took my front bucket and strapped it to him and raised him up and he could not hold himself up and I realized it was over.  Now I do not like talking about these things lightly, and it was, like with my grandmother, a rare event that I cry, but I did and said farewell and took my 22 rifle out to kill it (which is was all the yahoos I know had talked about doing in these cases….and I believed them…which I don’t anymore) and I shot him between the eyes and up) and he bolted upright and stood, dazed.  I thought my gun had jammed and I was desperately trying to  shoot him again to make him drop dead.  I managed to get another bullet or two in him and he was still standing and began to walk.  I ran into the shop and found my hunting rifle and by then he had walked around the bulldozer (there to bury him) and was leaning on it looking bluntly ( and with love I might add) at me.  I dropped him instantly with the big gun and buried him right there.  I have learned over the years that euthanizing and death has its own poetry and the stories are often profound and important, which is why I am writing this piece.

You would think that this story was over now; the high drama finished and the beauty of imperfectness well described, but there is more, in my mind.  I put this piece of glass art in a gallery on Canyon Road, the last gallery on the right, and is has been outside for a full winter and done quite well that way.  I put a good light behind it so that the greens and blues and clear glass show up nicely and it has the feeling of just what it should; a timeless description celebrating  imperfection and beauty and life and death and timelessness in a real genuine way.  A woman walked into the gallery and bought it the other day and she put a deposit on it to hold it so that  after her surgery in a few days she could have me come and hang it in her home.  I was, of course, elated.  A week passed and I heard that the surgery went well and she was doing well and had mentioned being excited about getting her piece to her house.  I was flattered and glad to know she was doing well and conscious of her acquisition.  A few more weeks passed and I got a message from the gallery that her brother had called and said that she would probably not last another month and that he wanted the deposit back.  I was sad, but , somehow, not surprised by all this as this is what I was talking about all along.  The artist, the subject, the art and the buyer were ensnarled in the same cosmic drama from beginning to end; no question about it.  I wish I could have talked to her to see what she saw and compare notes, as she may be what we artists are always hoping for; an informed observer.   I often think about the donkey out there on a brutally cold winter’s night in the ice, mud and snow and the open sky and stars above them, and wonder what they are thinking and how they can possibly survive with such thin ankles…….

 

       Thor Sigstedt,  November 30, 2012    Adventure Trails Ranch,  Spirit Valley

Love Tangles

Love tangles

 

Straight cut boards can be arranged into lots of shapes; including boxes and crates; tables and houses

They need to be joined somehow; mortise and tenon , half lap, nailed or screwed or biscuited.

Something else happens when you take a root or a twig or some such piece of a tree  or a weed;

You decided not to butcher it today; no slab, no amputations, thank you anyway;

No, today it will be by natural laws that they join; through the process that is almost mystical;

Perhaps the magic of a different dimension working here; like gravity or childhood  or dance;

Like meandering or making love ; like tree climbing or berry picking; like riding a horse or skiing.

Somehow, someway the pieces  fit  together into  what I have decided to call “love tangles”;

The law of natural forms that lend themselves to embrace and mingle their shapes in ways that are, at once effortless in some ways, uncanny in others, magical commingling of their pieces into what shape they can do the best; like spooning  or hugging, like wrestling or weaving, like a good conversation; where everyone gets to add to the conversation while listening; add a bit of spice to the talk.

I only know about this because I have been mussing around with sticks a lot over the years……

I have learned to trust the nature of the multiverse in these matters;  so when I walk up to a pile of sticks, I am excited about what will follow and not afraid of the result; I know it will look pretty good and will be pretty strong and will join the company of the winged  beaked home builders, the pond slappers and the damned cute little pack rats.

So, grab some twisted roots and wild branches, some winding oddballs of slow motion adapting to the community of branches as they all seek the sun, the roots as they all seek the water, the limbs as they defy gravity and flex their muscles all the live long day…….grab them up and put one on the other, put him on her and her around him and bring the whole family to the party; add a twig here and there and flex that willow to see what it can do in class.

Bring some nails and screws…….of course

They will surprise you once again as they join so easily and happily or effortlessly, more or less……….into Love Tangles.

 

    -Thor Sigstedt,   august 2012

When Things Go Sour

When things go sour

The result is pain

The other result is wondering how you got there

And who was right and who was wrong

And how did it get that sour that quickly

The answer is elusive, mysterious

Buried in the tangle of missed points

Buried in fears, defensiveness

Pride

Then we are crouched on all fours

Washed up on the beach

Barely breathing

Heart pounding

Face flushed with  regret

Wandering amidst the seaweed and the wreckage

Clinging to the hope that despite the momentary hurt

The work will be done

Responsibility taken where necessary

Apologies given

To them

And to

Yourself

Life goes on

And the multiverse does not really care

As we all drive down the road to a special place in the sun.

Barak Obama and Mitt Romney: Ironies

Barak Obama and Mitt Romney are ensnarled in an election era that screams irony.  Obama projected  his presidency on reaching across the aisle then was met with a party that decided that the only way to prevent his re-election was to oppose every single thing Obama proposed, even if it was in their best interest or if the idea had originally come from them or if the country was in crisis.  Romney would, ‘on the first day’,  repeal  ‘Obamacare’, which should have been titled ‘Romneycare’, as it nearly duplicates Romney’s ‘signature achievement’  in Massachusetts; his one idea being the ‘individual mandate’ (the most hated part of the plan now). Romney appears to have a muse that kicks in when he can look like a knight in shining armor to create jobs, but his history  forcing bankruptcies, often, and his role being ‘financier’, whose only obligation is to his money- lending  company, the Bain of his existence,  and to making a profit for Bain; not to create jobs .   Both are ‘ivory tower’, mostly; Romney with his obscene amount of money generated by, you guessed it, fancy manipulations of the financial markets, which are, of course, a major cause of the Great Recession.  Obama, coming from some poverty and racial tension, has learned to deal with that in a very modern way; he learned to walk amongst the rich and white and became a major brain in the academic world.   Romney has never had to worry about a job or a meal in his life and Obama has learned to walk amongst the Romneys of the world, breathing that air a little too deeply.  Neither mention the poor.  Romney has decided, religiously, that to lie is to win and Obama decided to dance with the bankers.  Both are knights, one transmuting into a raging anima despite his stick figure persona;  the other,  ‘Great Uniter’, facing this country that, unbelievably, has turned into a tug of war nation with the people agreeing to put a paper bag on their heads as they tug.  Winner take nothing and wait, numbed, for the next day.  They both need to take a walk in the forest   with a chainsaw and a rifle and a tarp and go to ‘donkey college’.  In the meantime, voting with our instincts, judge  based on probabilities and compromises; go with the truth teller and the warrior with the Nobel Peace Prize and a plan for a visionary  future,  despite the ironies.  

Adventure Trails in Making Things by Thor Sigstedt

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/8/prweb9852558.htm  Press Release for Special Show

Where: Last Gallery On The Right, 836 Canyon Road
 When: Saturday, September 8, 2012      3:00 PM - 9:00 PM 

 

Wabi Sabi Creations that Remind You of Forever — Last Gallery On The Right Features The Works of Artist Thor Sigstedt In Show Titled “Adventure Trails in Making Things” Sept 8

Santa Fe, New Mexico Artists Gallery, Last Gallery on the Right, located at 836-A Canyon Road, is honored to showcase the works of artist Thor Sigstedt in a special presentation on September 8, 2012. Last Gallery on the Right is a featured business on Hutton Broadcasting radio stations. Hutton Broadcasting is the parent company of SantaFe.com

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Wabi Sabi Creations that Remind You of Forever — Last Gallery On The Right Features The Works of Artist Thor Sigstedt In Show Titled “Adventure Trails in Making Things” Sept 8

Thor describes the designs created as a “rustic coming together of the natural and human world.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico (PRWEB) August 30, 2012

Thor Sigstedt is an accomplished and versatile builder, sculptor, and artist. Some of Mr. Sigstedt’s most remarkable creations accent the Crescent House, neighbor to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pottery House, in Santa Fe NM. Thor’s functional and structural designs permeate the house, and all are extraordinary. Most elegant is the winding stone staircase with the graceful bronze banister made of tree people. The owners of the house feel that they are “the caretakers of a very special place on earth.” Thor describes the designs created as a “rustic coming together of the natural and human world.” The creations manifest the timeless textures, forms, and landscapes found in the natural world. They are meant to celebrate the harmony, and bridge the gap, between people and nature. Last Gallery on the Right is a featured business on Hutton Broadcasting radio stations. Hutton Broadcasting is the parent company of SantaFe.com
Thor’s mastery encompasses building architectural objects that are both rustic and refined. Mr. Sigstedt celebrates the act of making things of all sorts, both high art and functional ornaments. In Mr. Sigstedt’s massive studio, foundry, and shop this artist is capable of creating almost anything. Whether working with bronze, cast iron, and molten glass, Mr. Sigstedt’s expert skill always brings to life an object of beauty. To call Mr. Sigstedt “handy” is a huge understatement. It can be said that Thor’s work creates “some things that will last forever, some things that remind you of forever and others that embody the timeless principles of Wabi Sabi.” All of Thor’s art is a celebration of the spirit of nature. Thor recreates natural forms to “Express the deepest meanings of the multiverse in a world guided by self-organizing chaos.”
Last Gallery on the Right, 836A Canyon Road, Santa Fe NM, is honored to feature Thor’s work in a special show; “Adventure Trails in Making Things” on September 8, 2012.
Contact Information:

Last Gallery on the Right
836A Canyon Road
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Linda Storm
505 660 5663
SantaFeGallery.Biz
Email: stormartist at gmail dot com
About SantaFe.com
SantaFe.com provides locals and visitors to Santa Fe alike the most current interactive platform for events, music, arts, business, dining and lifestyle. SantaFe.com is a division of Hutton Broadcasting, located at 2502 C. Camino Entrada, Santa Fe, NM 87507

Contact Information:
Scott Hutton
SantaFe.com / Hutton Broadcasting
http://www.santafe.com
(505) 471-1067 (Media inquiries only, please)

Thor Sigstedt is an accomplished and versatile builder, sculptor, and artist. Some of Mr. Sigstedt’s most remarkable creations accent the Crescent House, neighbor to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pottery Hous

Thor’s mastery encompasses building architectural objects that are both rustic and refined. Mr. Sigstedt celebrates the act of making things of all sorts, both high art and functional ornaments

 

Windmill Leathers

When the windmill started pumping less recently, it became more clear that the leathers were probably worn and needed to be replaced, so I called Dean Bennet supply up  in Denver and they said they were probably 1 7/8 cups as that is by far the most common size, so I ordered 6 of them (2 or 3 extra) and began the process of working on the windmill.  I had replaced  them about 13 or so years ago, so I had forgotten a lot of the details of how to do it.  At 60 this is not surprising, but a bit disappointing not to have access to so many details.  I was on the phone and happened to look down into a drawer near the phone in my shop and picked up a white painted metal thing and thought, “…..this looks like a tool I might have made back then….” , and then I noticed I had written, “windmill tool” on the side.  Ok, that is great; I have one of the tools I need to hold up the sucker rod sections while they are still suspended in the well and the top one is being unscrewed and detached.  Nate came down to help the first couple of days and together we sorted out most of the details of the replacement.  The windmill stuffing box is actually a hand pump at the ground level, so it was really difficult to get the three bolts holding the removable part of it unscrewed.  I barely managed to get some to start to turn out of the cast iron shell and one even started to shear off and was ready to break.  With great difficulty we backed them off quite a bit and were able to finally, with a little persuasion, force the piece off of the pump bottom.  I had set a large pulley way up by the top of the tower on a steel bar that sat on the horizontal bracing and then had set up a 12 volt winch that was hooked up to a battery charger and a battery and I had replaced the ¼ inch cable with smaller sized cable so that I could get more length earlier, so now we had a good system for pulling the sucker rod out.  I considered pulling the rod straight out and bending it down and away from the windmill in one long (200 ft) piece, but the first attempt made it clear that that would be a disaster, so we started lifting up two lengths at a time.  I realized it would be good to made some sort of tool that would grab the rod in the middle (the end was held by the windmill tool, which is basically a squared off u bolt with a plate to clamp onto the place right below the joint end and capable of holding  the hook from the winch cable; so I devised a strap from an old tow strap with the hook left on it and a knot and loop on the other end so that I could wrap the 2 feet or so of strap around the rod and kind of secure it with the hook and use it like a chain clamp.  As long as it was wet and fairly tight, it held pretty good, but we both made pretty sure that someone was also holding it while the operations were being done to unscrew the  sections. 

I realized that the rod was extending up by the motor of the windmill and then realized that if the wind shifted the motor would pinch and probably devastate and break the rod tops, so we angled them down out of the way some , thus lowering the rod, which appeared to be a solution.  We went to lunch in the house and then when we go back and after pulling all of the rod out, replacing the leathers using a large flat screwdriver blade to engage the slot at the bottom as an unscrewing tool, then we started to reinstall the rod back into the drop pipe.  Then, to my horror, I realized that somehow two of the rods had broken near their ends.  I assume now that one section was not lowered enough and, sure enough, the vane had spun around and grabbed a rod and caused the weakest part of the two piece section to snap off.  Oops…   So now the job was half done, with perhaps 150 feet of the rod put down and I needed to repair the rod.  I took the rod to the shop and finally just used the metal cutting blade on the bandsaw and cut along the steel end stirrup and cut off the copper rivets, drilled and removed the rivets from the steel piece, found some bronze rod that I happened to have and cut it into little lengths, ground the wood from the apatung rod to where the old stirrup would fit back in place, drilled it through with a hand drill and re-riveted the  pieces, peening them with a ball peen hammer.  Then I found another piece of 5/8 bronze rod that I happened to have and rethreaded it to make up the difference of the lost ends, found a plumbing connector in my plumbing junk and made up a new rod for the top that now had a cool bronze rod for the stuffing box rather than the steel one from before that was getting pitted (putting the steel piece below the plumbing fitting).  After realizing that there may be a weakness with that connection, I welded the steel end of the rod and black pipe and brazed the  bronze end so address my fears of that part unscrewing in the well. 

I started to finish lowering the rod again and got to a place a few inches from the bottom (maybe 10 or 12) and tried tapping, carefully turning, banging a little, raising and turning and lowering and everything I could think of with distressing the rod too much and then figured that the leathers had swollen too much to fit into the bottom cylinder.  It had been about 24 hours since we realized that the broken rod needed to be repaired and when I started dropping the sucker rod again and that must have been too long the leathers had expanded too much.  I forgot to put some Vaseline on the leathers to slow down the swelling process.  I decided to pull the sucker rod back up again so I could dry out the leathers and got up a few feet and the rod would not lift.  The whole winch system was straining and I was afraid the the 30 year old wood rod would break and leave me with all the rod stuck in the well and no way to get it out; that would have meant that I would have to pull all of the 2 inch drop pipe out and find some way to deal with all of that.  That was way bigger and heavier an operation and I would be into a real kettle of fish or can of worms.  I did not want this to happen. .   I finally called the folks at Dean Bennet and started talking to them about the problem.  They agreed that the leathers had “ swoled up” and  I finally got a hold of to an old hand up in the Denver Office and he said that the leathers had probably caught a seam in the drop pipe and that it could actually fold the leathers over, curling them backwards and maybe then I could get the rod out if that happened.  I was really worried about the rod as I knew the pressure I was applying was right on the edge of causing a lot of trouble.  He mentioned that he had read some years ago that  “someone had put egg whites down the well and that sorta greazed everything  got the rod out”!   Well, Belle and I ran to the store (I mean drove the 15 miles to the store) and I thought I would have to buy 10 dozen eggs and then break and separate each one like I learned to do for cooking and making fine cakes  and merangue and such so many years ago.  But she thought they might sell it in already separated whites and, by golly, we found them in the store; first the quart boxes of them for $6.99 and then she noticed that they had a house brand for $3.50 a box, so we grabbed 6 boxes of them and the next morning I poured 3 boxes down the well, around the drop pipe, down the 150 feet, assuming that the egg whites would sink, then waited a few hours for them to work their magic and then started working the winch again.  Well, by golly, it worked and with a little jerk and a bob the rod started up again.  At the end it started jerking and acting grabby, so I added another quart. 

I decided, of course, and partly because Nate was now back at his work and I was alone through all of this last episode, that I would just work with one 20 foot length at a time, which made it much easier.  I put the swollen leathers back in position, as they did actually peel back, etc., and left them on the cylinder and put some pipe clamps to hold them in place and put the assembly in the sun to dry and the next day I called Denver and talked to the good ol’ boy up there and we discussed the pros and cons of reusing the leathers.  He agreed that maybe I would not have to order new ones, although that would be a good, safe idea and that the neoprene leathers are actually a better way to go (which the other guy I bought from did not agree with) and that I should put the best (new  extra ) leathers on the top and bottom and then the best new/old ones of the bunch in the middle and slather it up real good with Vaseline and go for it again.  So I did all that and “felt” out the bottom fitting without twisting too much and had a few false settings and a few scares and then, viola, the assembly seated down there.  I had also welded the bolt end that was getting ready to shear off, cleaned up the threads real good, including taking a cutting blade on the grinder and cleaning up the rusted ends, put a good bunch of the same Teflon infused rector seal pipe dope on the threads and the casing and got them workin real good so that I might not have so much trouble next time as that thread compound prevents rusting, etc..

 So I got it all set up and I put on the custom “donkey weights” on.  Now they are a story in themselves cause I had gotten into a pickle the last time I replaced the leathers cause they were real tight in the bottom cylinder and as soon as I turned the windmill on the friction on the downstroke caused the wooden rod up above to break (for the umteenth  time in the history of working the windmill; they are the weak link and they break at the drop of a hat or for freezings, jambings and every other excuse they can come up with to break) and so I learned to put some counterweights on the wooden rod above, which, the first time, was a few starter motors and other heavy items that I had lying around.  It was very cumbersome and tricky, but that extra weight applied for a while, maybe a week or so; don’t remember; then I took them off.  Well a little while later I was watching Antiques Roadshow and they had a piece of folk art that was basically a big cast iron chicken in two pieces and they mentioned that it was a windmill tool (what, another windmill tool?......) and then I realized what it was; you used it right after you replace the leathers for a counterweight on the wooden rod, like I had done with the motors.  So I carved some donkeys in balsa wood and made two sand molds from that and then cast two donkey halves with a slot between them for grabbing the wood and a place marked by stars for where the two bolts go to clamp them on.  I made them and they sat on the porch for nearly nearly 10 years…..just waiting……like good donkeys do.   So I drilled them out for the bolts and dragged them up the ladder to the place where I could rest them on the platform boards there and bolt them together. 

So now everything was good and I let the brake go on the vane and water started pumping out of the spigot and it was fixed.  Yay!    Well, not too quick here now, cause the next day I noticed no water coming out of the pipe first think in the morning.  I was freaked!  I detached the wood rod  and , luckily, I had not put away the winch setup yet and I pulled the hand pump assemble off real quick (thanks to those easy to turn bolts) and yanked up a few feet or rod and then I thought I had better try one more time to hand pump the water, so I dropped the whole assemble down again and it took some time to reseat into the bottom cylinder and then I pumped like crazy on the  hand lever and…..nothing.   So I unscrewed the bolts again and yanked out again and was ready to pull everything out and was sure that the rod was broken somewhere in the well.  As I pulled more of the early length out, I noticed there was water on the pipe higher than what the natural water well level would be, so stared and scratched my head and decided to drop it all again, even though it seemed really broken and the hand pump acted all too easy to operate (which suggested that the rod was broken down there somewhere) and, anyway I dropped it again (maybe I did this whole thing even one more time; I was losing count) and I attached the hand pump again and worked it up and down and few times and…..water started coming out!  Well I don’t know what happened, but it might have been some egg white gumming up the bronze balls down there or maybe I put way too much petroleum jelly on and it was gumming something up; maybe the leathers had too much jelly on them and had not swollen well and the pump was weak because of that; maybe raising and dropping the pipe had loosened some of those issues; who knows…what I did know was that I didn’t have to yank out 200 feet of pipe again, unscrewing the 11 sections one at a time and then rescrewing them on; I had just saved a few days work.  Yay!!!!

As we speak, the water is still coming out every time the wind whispers  and if this damned drought continues   and the river don’t rise (and sweep away the whole thing); we will have water for a while, by gosh.

         -Thor Sigstedt,  August 2012   (written for Nate, as he missed the last part and needed to hear the story….and for all those folks out there with windmills who may have run acrost similar issues and couldn’t figure it out by googling or anything else….had no luck googling this stuff….. and wondered if someone else (even a neophyte like me) wouldn’t just put a shout out on the interweb.)

Love Tangles

Straight cut boards can be arranged into lots of shapes; including boxes and crates; tables and houses

They need to be joined somehow; mortise and tenon , half lap, nailed or screwed or biscuited.

Something else happens when you take a root or a twig or some such piece of a tree  or a weed;

You decided not to butcher it today; no slab, no amputations, thank you anyway;

No, today it will be by natural laws that they join; through the process that is almost mystical;

Perhaps the magic of a different dimension working here; like gravity or childhood  or dance;

Like meandering or making love ; like tree climbing or berry picking; like riding a horse or skiing.

Somehow, someway the pieces  fit  together into  what I have decided to call “love tangles”;

The law of natural forms that lend themselves to embrace and mingle their shapes in ways that are, at once effortless in some ways, uncanny in others, magical commingling of their pieces into what shape they can do the best; like spooning  or hugging, like wrestling or weaving, like a good conversation; where everyone gets to add to the conversation while listening; add a bit of spice to the talk.

I only know about this because I have been mussing around with sticks a lot over the years……

I have learned to trust the nature of the multiverse in these matters;  so when I walk up to a pile of sticks, I am excited about what will follow and not afraid of the result; I know it will look pretty good and will be pretty strong and will join the company of the winged  beaked home builders, the pond slappers and the damned cute little pack rats.

So, grab some twisted roots and wild branches, some winding oddballs of slow motion adapting to the community of branches as they all seek the sun, the roots as they all seek the water, the limbs as they defy gravity and flex their muscles all the live long day…….grab them up and put one on the other, put him on her and her around him and bring the whole family to the party; add a twig here and there and flex that willow to see what it can do in class.

Bring some nails and screws…….of course

They will surprise you once again as they join so easily and happily or effortlessly, more or less……….into Love Tangles.

My Art

My Art

Making things comes after seeing things

After learning things and after the muscles and mind

Line up together. 

It starts with wonder at what I am seeing;

The proverbial child in the arroyo, plays with sticks and rocks;

Stares at bumblebees on thistle stalks, well; on thistle flowers and dandelions, actually, buzzing around; yellow, black, purple; texture ruling the sun drenched day, sweat on the brow, everything kind of achingly beautiful.

Things to ponder like acorns and those wings on the pine nuts; did you know they have wings?  And how they taste? How hard they are, and how prickly are the spines on the cones, and which cone goes with which tree and what the tree is like to climb and what it smells like as the sun hits it and you are climbing it and what strength is in what branch.

What lives in what; what hole holds what surprise! What creature stimulated that growthy thing.

After working with milled wood for a long time, the beauty is a little like the beauty inside a broken heart; I mean a real one that has been sliced as a section.  Beautiful, no?;Well…..yes and no.  And that oil that not only penetrates into the wood to bring out the color, but also penetrates into my skin.  All for clean, crisp beauty.

After working that way for many years, there develops a different perspective about all this.  What is beautiful and what is not, what is violent and what is not.

My cousin saw my sculpture show on canyon road the other day and tried to help me with presentation, which I was grateful of….and he spoke of arrangement and appeal, first impressions, etc.

When he got around to talking about cobwebs on a piece of work, I was mildly embarrassed , of course, at first; how unkempt and neglected.

Then, as I was watching a really not so good movie last night I began to respond to that image in my mind of a cobweb on my bronze sculptures; stick sculptures with perfect grain, a meteorite and a viper, a timeless donkey eating grass and the raven with a birds nest in it’s rear cavity, with a bird’s egg perhaps still there; the time I made that fabulous bronze balustrade and the very next day a spider crawled out of a small cavity in the metal, a niche (and how I pointed it out to the new owner of the house and how she said she was arachnophobic…..ooopps), and what wabi sabi means and what a cobweb might mean in the context of my art.

I realized that perhaps the most beautiful and interesting thing that my cousin saw that hot day, despite his fastidious impression, was……the cobweb on my stick guy!  And, perhaps, the person who actually decided to purchase my art from the gallery will begin to see what I think.

-Thor Sigstedt, June 30, 2012, Spirit Valley

PLEASE GO TO THE LINKS ON THE RIGHT FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE PARTY ON JANUARY 9TH.  THE "E.A.T" LINK NEAR THE TOP EXPLAINS THE CONCEPT OF  "EAT" AND HELPING THE HUNGRY CHILDREN.

THE  LINK BELOW THAT  IN THE "IMPORTANT LINKS" SECTION ON THE RIGHT HAND COLUMN CALLED "EAT AND THOR'S AWESOME OUTING" SHOWS THE INVITATION, MAP AND DETAILS RELATING TO THE PARTY. 

WE ARE EXCITED TO HAVE YOU COME AND ENJOY THIS BEAUTIFUL AREA. 

THOR'S AWESOME OUTING invitation

EAT Everyone Ate Today

EAT    Everyone Ate Today

This is the logo and the idea and the statement and the acronym and the sole goal of this, hopefully, self-organizing concept in which people get together in any way they want to and celebrate, discuss, raise funds which go to their local PTA organization (this could be the first order of business and method; saving the volunteers from having to create a separate economic and structural vehicle) to be earmarked for use only for making sure that the hungry amongst us also eat, as it is unhealthy and distasteful and mutually damaging for people to be eating next to people who are not; in other words if you are eating “next to” someone else who is not, especially children (who do not have the means to be self sustaining-being children), then there is psychological (loosely interpreted here) damage to both parties ( the eater and the hungry will both be “hurting”), which can only be solved by making sure that ……Everyone Ate Today.

It is quite important that there is consideration and basic anonymity relating to helping this situation; the children should be protected from being made into a public spectacle or being singled out or being celebrated, even, or made into “poster” situations to either aggrandize the donors or belittle or embarrass the recipients.  The idea is to prevent hunger and protect that need by being discreet and prudent in the distribution; again, these people do not have the power to control their destinies yet and so need to be protected until they do gain the power needed for them to choose publicity or anonymity.

The wording for fund raising should simply be: we are supporting EAT, a self organizing way for us to help the hungry, especially children in our community. It should be made clear that donations should be done in trust and people should not give more than they are willing to do without needing to follow the exact path of their monies and to not be interested in press, fame, or filming of the process.  The political colors of the activities can and should be diverse.

The structure for organization will basically be set up by volunteers who are loosely organized into “captains” and “volunteers”; self organizing through email connections (never giving out email lists though) and contacting each other with ideas where the recipients of the ideas can reach out to others through their own resources and contacts and come together to form an activity of one sort or another that supports EAT and the goals of EAT.

So….think of something that you want to do, be a captain of, or volunteer for and watch the exciting, fun and exceptional activities happen and feel the benefits of making sure that Everyone Ate Today.  Yahoo!

May the Forest Be With You

As the horrific “fire season” begins again, I want to throw my vote in with Arthur Firstenberg (My View, Sunday April 8^{theSanta Fe New Mexican}  http://www.santafenewmexican.com/LocalColumnsViewpoints/My-View--Arthur-Firstenberg-Controlled-burns-a-prescription-for) who stated a strong case against “controlled” burning.  In addition to all of the things he said, the reality is right in front of us; are we going to be a part of nature and work in the forest or are we going to let the ways of the city rule us? (None of our presidents and most of our representatives have almost no background or cultural contact with the forests; they are city folk, plain and simple…no offense to them, of course).   There are millions of young people out of work or faced with hardships of all sorts (including obesity) and they are the natural inheritors of the forest and the natural choice for who can help fix them.  Sweden gets 40% of all of its energy from biomass (forest products) and we appear to be basing our economy on resisting being a part of the forest; we give  lots of jobs to firefighters, yes, but not to forest thinners, forest tenders or careful forest products gatherers, or research (our favorite thing) and training.  It is so beyond the scope of reason that we still charge people to go into the forests to help thin them (firewood gatherers).  Consider the sheer numbers of BTUs that go up in the fires like we are seeing all over the west and southwest (and even the east now).    It puts the science of global warming and the practice of ‘no burn days’ to absolute shame.  To consider that what we are seeing in front of us is nothing less than an  apocalyptic  sign of not a religious sorting out, but a sorting out of the basic underpinnings of our value systems; we are so afraid that we cannot control forest raping from large corporations and interests such as did the original damage, that we refuse to notice that we must learn to cure our own nature deficit disorders just as we begin to heal the wounds created in the past and also pave the way for a future whose economy is based on carefully, thoughtfully and stridently using the solar and renewable energy that the trees are just standing or lying there waiting for us to recognize.  Forests and clean water represent our wealth.  Period.   If biomass is not economical, then why do so many of us go out into the forest every year to gather firewood; and if that is so bad in terms of smoke,  then why do we stand here and allow the skies to fill with smoke every spring, summer and fall.  I personally ran up our hill three times last summer, shovel and cell phone in hand; ready to fight a fire that ‘must be just over the hill because of the ash and smoke in the air’, only to realize the it was, again, the huge fire on the Arizona/New Mexico border, close to 200 miles away.  The ‘environmentalists’, bless their hearts, sit  speechless with hat (and a lawyer, maybe a camera) in hand.   We have and can create the green and sustainable nature-based methods to do this.  Hey, kids, have you ever seen the cool equipment they use to do biomass work around the world; you can throw away your game boys  and thoughts of joining the army and join the war against foolish forestry.  You can design really cool access roads for smaller rigs; do induced meandering  work in the upper watersheds, invent and work superior energy producing systems that create heat, compost and methane; find beauty and peace up in the hills and mountains of the world; find ways to use those batteries, electric vehicles, steam engines, wood fired vehicles, on the spot wood charged electric chainsaws and electric dozers and pick-ups.   Spend the spring, summer and fall living with your  cool comrades of both sexes and do something important at the same time.   Build trails and learn about one-rock dams and study biology and economics and do accounting, study and do agriculture and controlled grazing experiments…in the field.   Let the controlled burn be in a woodstove or generator.  I also want to throw in with Aldo Leopold and the concept of developing a “Land Ethic” and a forest’s “Bill of Rights” as we do this.   May the forest be with you!

-Thor Sigstedt (60) now climbs the escarpment on his property every year and harvests firewood;  climbing up with a rope and  rolling the logs down.  He has done controlled grazing, forest products gathering and watershed restoration of all sorts for  a few dozens of years , as well as routinely creating rustic art and furniture.

VasaOrden

Finding my roots (written after listening to my friend Linda’s poems of Ireland)

My father sent mixed messages about the old country-Sweden

My Grandmother made up the genealogy on her side.

What I heard was, “your grandfather was the best woodcarver in Sweden”

“He carved the Royal Barge”

“You go back as far as Alfred the Great”

I became a woodcarver myself and a “Builder Boy” ; as Belle’s friend called her husband.  Having battled  the family disease,” the snake that is still in Ireland”, as Linda talked about it; alcoholism which had devastated my grandfather’s brother and business partner in their furniture business and now I had come out on the other end ;  ready to see the world.  So here I was;  travelling to Norway,  home of the “Good” Vikings;  Stockholm, old home of  grandfather Thorsten; Salisbury, home of Stonehenge and the Roman Road, I became educated about these items. I always pictured “the barge” to be a flat bottomed affair, like a super fancy skow of some sort, that Alfred the Great was French and, to be honest, I didn’t much think about the Roman Road at all.

Earlier, I had met a young and talented  Swedish woodcarver, Jogge Sundqvist,  in New Mexico and he showed me with great heart, poetry and formality - how a Swede presented his business card to another person; holding it with two hands and presenting it and making sure to look the recipient straight in the eyes and then formally shaking hands…..very impressive and civil, I thought.

So this is what I found  out:

The Norwegians thought very little of the Swedes, casually  reserving all sorts of derogatory remarks just for them and so, after spending a few weeks in Norway, my thinking was tainted.  My father had also said that Thorsten left Sweden to “get away from the Swedes”, so I was pre- prejudiced some, as I hung on his words.  He talked about how the Swedes tended to be vicious fighters and eventually scared themselves so much by the drenching themselves in blood  that they decided to shift away from warlike thinking.  Some Swedes were though, in fact, cold, from what I could see;  I met the head of the Vasa museum and he tossed me his business card from across the table (I could not help but mention jokingly my artist friend’s instructions) and he was not amused.  I started to feel like I stood out somehow.  In fact my visit was rare for other reasons;  I am the only person in my family to have ever seen the royal barge, the Vasa Orden (my father was turned away from seeing it when he was there in the military in the 50s; don’t forget this is the “Royal Barge” after all and exclusive, etc.), and then  I stood in front of tall steel doors of the “Boat House” on Scansen Island on the one day it would be opened to the public and heard the chains clank and rattle and stood in my suit coat with a bolo tie with a silver burst pattern with a piece of turquoise in the middle, first in line (though not much of a line) and gawked and took photos of it until  Belle finally dragged me out of there.  It was not flat but a huge, sleek blue row boat with 19 oars and a fancy seat for the oarmaster and a very fancy cabin with crystal windows and gilded rococo carvings all over.  It sat there with a bunch of other vintage boats and motors and other mariner-type museum objects.  I presented the nearby Vasa museum with some original writings by my grandfather; talking about what he thought and experienced while he was carving the decorations, “with one hand on a chisel and the other on a magnifying glass”; looking at old photo details of the original  which was carved in the seventeen hundreds then it  burned to the ground, so to speak, in the early 1900’s.  He was chosen to carve the duplicate replacement  and he was a Swedenborgian and he thought that the ornamentation was reflective of the Swedenborgian religious symbols of the Kingdom of Heaven and that the original design must have been influenced by  Immanuel Swedenborg because he lived in that era.  I suspect the Protestant establishment that I had presented the writings to were somewhat horrified to hear this news.  They were oddly discourteous  as they took my stuff and did not return copies as I had requested till I called the Swedish consulate over a year later.  It was ……. surprising.

And I saw, in Stockholm,  the magnificent and unforgettably dynamic and beautiful woodcarving of St Michael slaying the dragon from his horse, on Thorsten’s written recommendation, it being, “the best woodcarving in Europe” according my grandfather.  It was carved in memory and celebration of the Swedes fighting off  the Danes ……and I bought one of Jogge’s spoons.

Then we went to England and stayed in a 400 year old thatched- roof cottage with a real live conservatory  in the “quaint” little town of Pitton which sported a magnificent Beech tree off a trail between some farmlands.  And Stonehenge was a feast for my sensibilities and I fell head over heels for that testament to positive and negative space and massings in-the-round.

And our Norwegian friends and hosts had earlier suggested we don’t bother looking up some relatives of our Santa Fe friends, being probably a waste of time in view of all the fantastic sights we could see.  But we opted to give them a jingle and then took a bus to meet them, being met by a tall older man in slightly grimy white jeans and on foot.  He picked up bits of garbage as we strolled back to his farm, which turned out to be a quintessential British country estate complete with stables and gardens and marble all over and , yes, another conservatory.  And “Uncle” Michael decided to give us a jeep tour of the 700 acre property where he showed us the 30,000 trees he had planted over the last few  years and the nearby town of Avesbury and their big boulder “circle” and rich history.  As he drove along he mentioned that right here was the old Roman Road, barely visible to the naked eye and discernible by squinting your eyes and trying to find a straight line leading to a cluster of trees on top of the hill and right here, he said casually glancing aside, “is the ditch where Alfred the Great fought off the Danes”!  “Stop the car” I blurted as I went into a flurry of thoughts and emotions and wonder, of course.  So he stopped and I took a picture of the barely discernible ditch (like an ancient abandoned grassed- over acequia somehow) and I thought about the Danes being fought off by my ancestors in so many countries ; about how I found out the Alfred was not French and the Roman Road was right next to the ditch, the road that, perhaps,  Jesus of Nazareth traveled on during his mysterious years as he plied his trade of “tinsmith” (not carpenter)  as some think (with a few miracles to prove it and a claim that the tinsmiths around there chant, as they hammer and tinker with  their seams and bends, “Jesus was a tinsmith”), perhaps going right here past Stonehenge and soaking his bones in Bath.  It was all too much and it turns out he (Alfred,  not Jesus) was a pretty good king, as kings go, and had his own story about “Alfred the Great and the Cakes”; it seems he went incognito and stayed in a peasant’s cottage during the Danish warring time (near that aforementioned ditch) and the woman of the house asked him to mind the cakes that were cooking in the fireplace while she left the house on an errand and Alfred agreed but then was so engrossed in his thoughts of battle and strategy and the like that he forgot the cakes and they burned.  When the woman returned, he, like George Washington and the Cherry Tree story, admitted his mistake and apologized for the misdeed.  Well, this does serve as a teaching tool for our family, I think, and we can be proud of our shabby and humble  little king and his popularity and success in fighting off the Danes, right there in “My Ditch”!  I couldn’t be more proud of my heritage as it unfolded in front of me, giving depth and breadth to our mythology as it rubs up next to the heart wrenching beauty of our planet.

Finally, I remember standing in the cool darkness on a lonely railroad platform outside of Stockholm right after we landed on the plane and talking to a local Swede, quizzing him in my semi- tongue- in- cheek way about whether this was my “Motherland” or “Fatherland” obliquely begging the question of how the Swedes behaved during the Great War.  He said it was both and added the non sequitur, “but you will be ‘surprised’”!  And, again, he added that I spoke with a Dutch accent.  Later I realized that he was dissing me because the Dutch, it seems, are famous for being curt and brash and harsh.  So I guess I am glad that we left and perhaps, correctly, to get away from the Swedes, somehow and also glad to see the fantastic barge, the beautiful (though surprisingly bleach blonde) people and  really surprised when I rushed outside one evening to do some hurried photography as the sun was setting, as I often do here at home; having often only seconds to catch that rare and special golden light before the sun dips away and leaves the camera and me in darkness and disappointed that I missed the shot; only to notice that something was different, radically different, in fact; the sun was not setting.  I was not in Kansas any more; to sleep at this time of year, one must draw heavy curtains tight over the windows and then, only then, one might dream of lions and dragons under some sacred beech tree along the fork of the river Avon, just down from Bath and a hop, skip and a jump from Stonehenge, where they seemed to understand the sun in a way that I had not before. I heard that the coastline along the Fjords is in fact infinite due to the deep and profound fingers of the Fjords, so that to comprehend them on first glance is naïve and it is best to begin to see that the surface is just that; deceivingly superficial.  The strongest image, in some ways, was when we went down south in Norway to the ancient family farm and painstakingly started up the one-lunger boat in the little boat house on the fjord.  This boat belonged in the museum in Stockholm in the adjacent room to the Vasa Orden.  This boat was how people got around in the old days; going to church, to market, to visit with the family.  Rick put the Norwegian flag in the socket and we headed for a town down the fjord, having jumped in the water earlier to gather blue shell-mussells- and now wanted to have some hot chocolate in the little town.  As we approached the warf,   there were more boats; mostly younger and faster boats scurrying around.  I noticed that just as some youngsters were about to make some wisecrack about this ancient skiff and its pfutt pfutt pfutt sound, they stopped dead in their tracks and realized they were watching the proud history of a supremely rugged people float by and……held their tongues and gave homage in silent acknowledgement  as we drifted by.  We, the inheritors of profound and proud history that is unfolding right in front of us like the interplay of rocks and air mixed with the birds flying  around the  Stone Henge as I gazed in wonder walking the circular trail……..