I just wanted to say “Happy 150th Birthday Alphonse Mucha!” His style and breathe of work has influenced my style as well as influencing an era. Seen by many as one of the fathers of modern commercial art, Mucha’s signature will forever penned on a decade.
Thanks Again
Hello folks. As some of you may have heard, I am moving my birdhouse images to a new home in the blog world. Their new nesting grounds will be known as “Artful Birdhouses”.
I will be placing a link in the blog roll over to the right side so that you can connect from there. As the projects build. I will update this site with links to the Artful Birdhouses blog.
I hope to see you there.
And as always, you may continue to post or email your comments to me at anytime.
Must fly, more houses on the drawing board.
P.S. working on a project in honor of Jules Verne. Don’t miss this one.
Recently I have put down the digital pencil and picked up woodworking tools once again. The reason is very simple, keep my mind off of too many problems and situations I have no control over. I began building some compartments and storage racks for miscellaneous parts and tools, when I got this strange idea to build a bird houses. To apply the age old practice of therapy through birdhouse construction. So my journey through the digital archives of the internet began. My search led me from site to site, from drawings to photos, but nothing said that this was RedEyeRaven style.
Then, while randomly jumping from link to link I found a black and white photo of a small cottage resting quietly along a hillside near a grove of leafless autumn trees. The cottage of simple construction, had seen better days and possible had fallen broke to neglect. The roof shown weather worn and the door barely remained attached against the strain of the decaying wood door frame. The cottage, once a home for a hillside family, now stood weak and abandon. Thoughts of scary stories of why the house was left with furniture on the front porch or the drapes, now shreds of tattered cloth, hung from the glassless window frames.
Then came the idea to not just make birdhouses, but abandon properties into birdhouse. I would create haunted buildings and structures as new homes for homeless birds. I wanted to create artwork that served two purposes, the first was for aesthetics as unusual artwork for the art lover and the second as practical application asa shelter from the elements for our winged friends. So back and forth from sketch pad to drafting table I worked until my first creation, crude and simple, was constructed.
Now, there is nothing exciting about a new birdhouse. The wood was fresh and straight and the angles were true. I like the design, but it still lack character deep in the bones of the material. So I decided to reclaim broken, trashed or unwanted wooden items to create the artful houses. I was lucking to find a shop that received its products in wooden crates which they left to the side for anyone to take. So I took the crates, disassembled and reclaim the wood for the houses. Reuse the unwanted and turn it into wanted artwork.
As I stated before, merely a birdhouse would not be the RedEyeRaven style, so I added a few touches and created haunted birdhouses. Take a look for yourselves. BIRDHOUSE
I hope to keep expanding with more original designs that I can display in a cityscape of abandon buildings. A few I am creating are commissioned works, but there is always time between projects to add another. I hope you enjoy them and you share this story with others.
Behold, the first of a collection of apparatuses designed for the period around circa 1800′s to 1910′s. This collection begins with this unique fortune telling machine called “Madame Zolfar’s Fortune Telling Machine”. With turning surface plate and pendulum pointer, rarely is your answer the same.
Constructed from reclaimed wood of old and damaged furniture, plasma like glass cylinders and some special effects, no other conversation piece will match up against this crowd pleaser. The machine’s fortune telling action is completely mechanical. The only power is used to light the side lights which contain the essence of our favorite deceased gypsy.
A beautiful wooden cabinet with brass and copper details, hand rubbed finish and carved background creates a wonderful hypnotic art piece that any owner will proudly display.
A detail look at the side panels which were crafted polished brass rods. Shaped in the pattern of a spider’s web in order to catch the thoughts of Madame Zolfar as she communes from the after-life. If you believe in that sort of thing.
Coming in the Autumn of 2010, the sister act, Mistress Zolfar’s Gypsy Cabinet.
Mental Duality
Some say we see different things when we look into ink spots. Some see evil symbols, animals or even danger. In this concept, adapted from a short series of tales of a young woman living two different lives. One safe and timid, the other cunning and calculating. I imagined the properties of a playing card serving as the instrument of duality with the imagery of a psychological Rorschach test.
What we see in the ink, they say, are the tell tale signs of what is playing out in our minds, or in this case, playing out in our character’s mind. What do you see?
