Friday, March 30, 2012

Slippery Slopeasode

I've really done it this time. How long has it been? A few months? Clean and free of all things furniture and then Boom!
This:

A FRIGGIN' TABLE BASE
I tried to abstain. I chained myself to the heater and slid the keys across the floor when it got bad. But that pile of junglewood taunted me from beneath the tarp, beside my house, in and under the reign of the rain and the rain.

I cracked.

I made another cool piece of furniture long before the year was up. I said I wouldn't but I did and I did it like a jackvegan pounds bacon.

Well, I hardly really did anything. I didn't even mill the wood. Just hacked out a couple of notches here and couple of notches there and ruthlessly dumped resin all up in there to fill the massive gaps, that's all. 

The anticraftsmanship I now practice for backyard projects is an attempt to find the line where imperfection is no longer beautiful, where Wabi is no longer Sabi. It isn't passive aggressive artisanry as much as it is aggressive aggressive hackjob whackmanship. It isn't limited to where my hand touches the wood either. It is the decisions I made. I was sticking my tongue out at my square and my tape measure as I hacked away at the rain soaked wood. Then at the last minute I try to reel it back in just a little bit, to keep it cool.

Like how Bode Miller skis: He says that if he isn't just about to crash, he isn't skiing hard enough.



Whereas Bode seems to have a sort of magnetic assistance and a defiant focus that blows my mind, the big drips of epoxy running down the legs of my table base are no ballet. I might have taken it too far this time.

Those epoxy drips aren't funny. Them ain't beautiful. They are the manifestation of something deep within me that I don't intentionally agitate. This table base is the bitter fruit of my aesthetic exhaust pipe.

So I went to the mountain.



It was just what I needed.