When I was in my mid teens I wanted to be the next David Smith, and I learned how to cut and weld steel with an oxy-acetylene torch in a rented garage/studio. Eventually my 3D work became assemblage boxes that can be seen in the early 1970's on my SCULPTURE page (scroll down). Gradually I began to make painting my primary medium, partly because the burden of storage and transport of sculpture could be replaced by the relatively lightweight portability of painting. But during the years I rebuilt and lived on an old oil tanker in NY harbor I continued to accumulate a lot of heavy duty tools, equipment and skills that were only added to by my later years as a manufacturer of marine deck structures for tugs and ships.
I've always been interested in lattice structures, particularly crane booms and transmission line towers, assembled from small steel angle but capable of carrying heavy loads. Recently I found a nearby trove of industrial debris, including most of the elements that inspired me to assemble this totem to my life on the water and in the woods. The process of singlehandedly fabricating parts and doing the rigging and hoisting with my 1956 vintage crawler crane and slightly newer mini-excavator (sometimes in tandem) was an enjoyable challenge.
Here are some photos of the process:
Another recent 3D sidebar to my painting was last years's readymade sculpture of inverting my 3/4 yard clamshell bucket and pinning it to a buried steel frame:
But new paintings are still the main program, and here are two new ones: