Up Against the Pecha Kucha Clock

Several people have asked if I could post my Pecha Kucha Dallas presentation on line. So here it is, 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Pull out your stop watch and see if you can beat the PKN clock...

Tonight I'm taking you on a rambling journey of Flashbacks, Visual Connections, and Unintentional Concoctions.

Welcome to my slightly dyslexic world of Art-O-Vision.

When these Hummels came into the conservation studio, I was trying to quite smoking for the fifth time. They were coated in 30 years worth of second hand tar and nicotine. 

Sometimes when you make a tough decision, the world backs you up.

This pre-Columbian artifact was broken in half. Inside are fingerprints so clear that the FBI could use them for identification. 

This isn't a cold ceremonial artifact, it's a direct link to a once living person.

This is my childhood home. 

They say you can never go home again. 

Well, a few years ago I moved back into this house. So I can tell you from personal experience that it's much more surreal the second time around.

Every time I dig in the yard, I dig up toy guns, G. I. Joes, army men, and the tools that I borrowed from my Dad. 

Yeah, I'm just now returning them to the tool shed. Sorry it took so long Dad.

When I dug up this small ceramic turtle, suddenly it was the summer of 1966. I was 4 years old, sitting in the gravel driveway with the turtle in my mouth, squashing ants with a stick.

This is one of my Dad's paintings. It was in "deep storage" for over 40 years. 

When I pulled it out, I could see it hanging in our living room. I was just a tot, and I remember thinking it looked like fried eggs in outer space.

This is some of my work. A small work on paper, a lacquer panel, and a page of doodles, the kind you make while your listening to someone talk.

These were all done before I rediscovered Fried Eggs in Outer Space.

These abstract drawings were done for a show at Gray Matters. At the time, I was a senior art conservator, spending my days restoring gilded frames, chair legs, and drawer pulls.

In this project I photographed lots of buds and seeds. The photos were used as building blocks to generate the abstract shapes on top. So, those shapes would not exist without the information contained with in the photos below...

A few months later, I came across this almost direct photographic translation of one of the abstract shapes.

I spent a week at the Untitled ArtSpace in Oklahoma City producing a series of block prints that were totally non-representational.

It was all about creating PURE abstract shapes...

Yeah, apparently while I was up there in Oklahoma, I was channeling the creative spirit of the ceiling fan down here in my bedroom.

So much for purity.

Art Basel Miami! Developing Art-O-Vision. 

5 days of nonstop art viewing. 

On the first day, Damn I saw a lot of art! By the end of the fifth day, you have gone beyond burnout. Everything looks like art. 

I highly recommend it.

Vermont Studio Center, where each month a new batch of 50 neurotic, self absorbed artists and writers are let loose on the small northern town of Johnson Vermont.

I drew, painted, sculpted, photographed, shot videos, blogged, and talked Art Art Art 24/7.

It was very unnatural...

...Unlike making art in my studio at home.

All the distractions are actually part of the creative process. They allow ideas time to gel and ferment. 

SculptCAD Rapid Artists. I was 1 of 14 artists that spent 3 months learning how to create sculptures on a computer... 

The top row are the actual sculptures I created using the program. They're plastic resin sprayed with black velvet, so they are soft to the touch.

But I really like how the photos below have squashed the sculptures back into a 2D space.

This being my newest work, I really don't know what the epiphanies are yet. But with my niece graduating high school and my nephew graduating college, I assume they are about liver spots.

Thank You

Well, there you go. To much info, to little time, but a lot of fun to do.

All of the Pecha Kucha Dallas events have been held at small venues, Sons of Hermann being the biggest so far. The 150 seats at the last PKN Dallas, held at the Dallas Center for Architecture was sold out in just under 2 days. The small size of the audience makes each event feel like you are sharing something special with a bunch of friends. Of corse the small sized also means that a bunch of your friends have and will miss out on the event.

Pecha Kucha Dallas After Glow

Pecha Kucha Dallas was last night, 11 people gave their 20/20 presentations, and all of them were wonderful. Well, at least the ones I can remember. I was the 7th presenter that night, so I don't really recall to much before my turn, and then afterwards I spent some quality time breathing.  

With the 6.40 minute formate, the audience gets a good taste of what each presenter is like. The time also causes the presenters to talk quickly and precisely. This energy is picked up by everyone in the room, so the intermissions and after mingling is always rewarding. 

When I got up on stage, seemed like the first slide was over before I said hello. After that I just rambled on through to the end. I got some good laughs, can't remember what from, or if I even said half the stuff I had practiced. But it was GREAT fun. I'd do it again for sure.

Here is the list and links of presenters:

Nancy Rebal

David Hopkins

Jonathan Brown

Scott Horn

Brad Goldberg

Sean Springer

Tish Brewer

Edward Ruiz

Joyce Martin

Brad Ford Smith

Chris Arnold

Here is the tag to all my PKN vol. 3 postings

Inside Pecha Kucha

And here's a little press on the event:

Art and Seek

D Magazine

Shooting From The Hip

Joyce Martin Studio

AIA Dallas YAF

Pecha Kucha, Game Shows, Butterflies and My Lucky Turtle

Pecha Kucha, Who would have thought the combination of 6.4 minutes and an unpronounceable word would result in the trashing of so much paper and so few hours of sleep.

I have spoken in public quite a few times, and I have lead classes before too, but there is something about having to squeeze your ideas into a 20 second, 20 slides formate that has given me a bad case of butterflies.

One of my friends said I should think of it like being on a game show. That was a good idea at first, then realized that when simply asked for somebody's name, I will blank on all the names of all my closest friends as well as most of my family members.

Remember the game show Family Feud, where two families would compete to win big prizes? There was always one member of the family, Uncle Eugene, who would be doing the deer/headlight thing all the way through the program, then suddenly jump up at the last minute and shout Rutabagas!!! Thus destroying his families dreams of side by side washer and dryer for their communal mobile home back in Arkansas. That's me, everything except the Arkansas thing.

In Alan Alda's book Things I overheard while talking to myself, he says he could whip out a new story for MASH in just a few hours, but if asked to give a 10 minute speech at a graduation ceremony, he would agonize over every word for weeks. So perhaps that is good to know... perhaps not.

I think I'll take my lucky ceramic turtle with me for support.

Submitting to the Urge to Pecha Kucha

I sent in my Power Point to be formated for the up coming Pecha Kucha Dallas event. So that means I am going to be 1 of 11 people asked to present a 6 minute and 40 second presentation (that's 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Check out the links to get the whole idea). Here is a link to show you how to pronounce Pecha Kucha.

This will be the 3rd PKN Dallas 6/24/10. Each event has been held at a small donated venue. This time it will be at the Dallas Center for Architecture. The 150 seats sold out in just a day or two, so I didn't get the chance to notify my friends about it.

Each presenter is free to speaking about any topic as long as it stays within the time limits. With 4 artists, 2 art conservators, an architect, a furniture designer, a comic book writer, and a muralist, I assume the focus will be on art and creativity. But who knows, at the first event, one presenter spoke lovingly about his collection of Puma Sneakers.

I'll be rambling on about small personal epiphanies; moments of insight, clarification, and confirmation.  Rambling being the most accurate description in that last sentence. It has been fun sorting through old photos and memories to put together my 6.40 minutes of fame. It has also been weird seeing these moments organized and prepped for public display.

Hopefully I won't be the last one to be called up on stage.

Adding a New Blog to the Blogville

Turn Turn Turn by Mekhala Bahl

Dear Ada,
If you are writing a letter to a special someone named Ada you might start that letter with "Dear Ada" and then writing about all the wonderful things you have seen, and how much you wish Ada was there to share them with.


Well, this is pretty much what Birdie is doing with the blog Dear Ada, except that there are very few words and lots of photos with links to artwork that Birdie thinks Ada would like. Who is Ada? The author says "Ada was a very important person I grew up with and shared a love for art, nature, design and culture. She was the most positive, curious, interested person I've ever known and this blog is a bit like a series of letters or notes to her."


Birdie has been posting these art notes to Ada on a regular basses since August 2005. The artists represented here tend to be emerging artists from a wide variety of locations across the world. The scope of  the artwork is from abstract to representational. Sculpture, craft, painting, printmaking, weaving... There is a lot of drawing and works on paper which is quite alright with me. The blog also has Book Love which is Birdie's list of recommended books.


I am adding Dear Ada to my Blogville list of blogs I follow. I hope you will visit the site and follow as well.

SculptCAD Rapid Artists exhibit at the RAPID 2010 Conference

Here are a few quick photos of the SCRA exhibit at the RAPID 2010 Conference. Nancy Hairston installed the show and then she and David VanNess gave a presentation about the SCRA project.

Admittedly these aren't the best photos, and the carpit does fight for your attention, but I think you can see that each work of art reflects a different approach to the project.

Bert Scherbarth

Brad Ford Smith

David VanNess

Erica Larkin

Ginger Fox

Heather Gorham

Heather Ezell

Jay Sullivan

Mark Grote

Nancy Hairston

Shane Pennington

Shawn Smith

Tom Luaerman

SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project, After the Flocking

These are two finished rapid prototyped sculptures nestled together. They were created using a 3D computer sculpting program. That file was then sent to a rapid prototype company where they were printed in a clear resin.

Back in the studio, I painted them with black lacquer and then flocked them with black flock (see previous postings). Each sculpture stands 10" X 11" X 9".

This is the view front the top.

And this view demonstrates how the black flocking absorbs the light, causing the sculpture to loose depth and become an abstract flat graphic. I really find this to be intriguing, and will probably explore this in more in other sculptures. You can see more photos on my Flicker site.

Spending Time with the Flocker

As stated in a previous posting, my sculpture for the SculptCAD Rapid Artist project had some issues with the surface clarity. So after considering various options I decided on black flocking. This of course changes the visual impact, but it still retains some of the depth distortion that a clear plastic would have. It also changes it from a feel of blown glass to soft and fleshy. 

I did a small project using flock a few weeks ago, but this is the first time I have done anything this big.  I first tried using the adhesive that Fowl Flocker sent me, which turned out to be a low quality acrylic paint that dried so quickly it was not usable on anything larger than a duck head. So I switched to Don Jer Suede-Tex adhesive. This worked much better.  Thankfully I have 3 sculptures to work with. By the time I got to the last one I was getting pretty good results. I was also covered in flocking.

Curing the Surfaces

I now have three rapid prototype prints of my sculpture for the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project. Even though they are printed, they are far from finished.

To start with, there are a few issues with the material they are printed with. The surfaces are sticky, and the sculptures which should be hollow, are filled with uncured liquid printing resin. I think the drain holes were not large enough, so the liquid could not run out before it started to congeal. The original design was counter balanced to allow for the extended neck, but since they are now more or less solid I have had to cut into the heads and remove the congealed printing resin and then patch them.

After clearing the surfaces with denatured alcohol, the sculptures spent 24 hours under UV lamps to speed up the curing of the resin inside and out (see photo). Unfortunately this process cause the resin to change color. When combined with the bubbles and patches, I don't think I have any option other than to paint them. I am thinking black flock.

Posted on Brad Ford Smith Blogspot

5X7 Art Splurge 2010 at Arthouse

May 13th makers the 11th annual 5X7 Arthouse fundraiser. This year they have 900 artists who have created at least one work of art that fits into the 5X7" formate. Here is the link to the participating artists, The page also includes links to the artist's websites.

Over the last few years formate themed shows ie: 8X12, 12X12, 20 X20... have become very common, but the Arthouse was one if not the first venue to use this theme, and if you have ever been to one of their 5X7 fundraisers you know that they have it down to a science.

White lacquer, black flocking, Persian blue acrylic

This will be my 9th year to be participate. Sadly I can't attend the Austin event on May 13th, so I'll have to wait until it rolls into Dallas.

Posted on Brad Ford Smith Blogspot 

Fresh From The Printers

SculptCAD held an impromptu open house to display the first round of artwork to come back from the printers. On the wall are 3D computer images by (L-R) Bert Scherarth - Buildings, and Column, Shane Pennington - Tree Top, Brad Ford Smith - Chicken Neck Johnson, 2 more by Bert - Column, Wreath, and Heather Gorham - Rabbit.


The sculptures for the most part were just unpacked, so the artists have not had the opportunity to physically work on them yet. What you are seeing is the equivalent of a cake that has just been pulled out of the oven. They still need to be frosted. (L-R B-F): Erica Larkin - Figurative Busts, Brad Ford Smith - Chicken Neck Johnson, David VanNess - Bull Elk, Katherine Batiste - Robotic Boy, Nancy Hairston - Organic Form, Heather Groham - the 2 Rabbits, Shawn Smith - French Horn Bees, Bert Scherbarth - buildings. 

Posted on Brad Ford Smith Blogspot

David Kirkpatrick finds One Massive 3D Printer

On David Kirkpatrick's wonderful Word Press blog he has been posting a lot about the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project and about rapid prototyping in general. In his resent post he links to a large scale 3D printer that is used to print buildings.

The Ink is Still Wet

One of the two parts of my 3D computer sculpture has been printed. It is still a bit sticky because the resin hasn't cured yet. It stands 10" X 10" X 6". The two parts will intertwine. 

Over all I am surprised how much it looks like the 3D computer model. It is in no way a finished  sculpture yet. There are some issues to work on, for one, it is suppose to be hollow but I made the drain holes on the bottom to small so the liquid resin stared to set up before it could all drain out.

As you can see in this detailed photo there are air bubbles in the front legs. To solve this we are going to reprint them as solid clear resin. This will remove the blown glass quality of the sculpture, but the dead line for the SculptCAD Rapid Artists project is to close to reengineer it. 

SculptCAd Rapid Artists hit the Media

Ginger Fox Bird on a Branch

Last week Jerome Weeks from KERA Art & Seek stopped by SculptCAD to see what the SculptCAD Rapid Artists program was all about. He talked with the director Nancy Hairston and 5 of the artists; Heather Gorham, Shane Pennington, David VanNess, Ginger Fox, and myself. A few days later he meet up with Nancy and Ginger Fox at the Rapid Prototyping Lab at SMU to see what it looks to print something using the 3D rapid prototyping process.

All of Jerome's work has resulted in a report broad cast on KERA's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Plus a posting on the KERA Art & Seek website, plus a Youtube video of the Rapid Prototype Lab.

Sending My Sculpture to the Printers

With a little help from the staff at SculptCAD, I shelled (hollowed out) my sculpture, sized it (10" X 12" X 8") and sent it of to be printed at a rapid prototype lab. The clear plastic sculpture should be printed and back at SculptCAD by Tuesday of next week. A pretty quick turn around on a sculpture that has taken me months to learn how to build.

I am expecting it will look a little bit different in the real world from the 3 D computer model. That is always the case when you convert one material into another: Wax to bronze, clay to ceramic, digital imaging into clear plastic.

After the Wednesday delivery, I think there will only be 3 other artist's sculptures left to print, making a total of 15. I can't wait to see them all together.

Posted on Brad Ford Smith Blogspot.