This last summer I helped to facilitate a community art commission exploring how we try to find hope in the midst of failed dreams and deadened hope—specifically how people of faith respond respond to experiences where they feel betrayed by God. For my own entry, I branched out of my photographic comfort zone and made a painting with my digital tablet. I’ve been captivated by aesthetic of cinematic concept art for some time, so it is exciting to finally take a baby step in this direction. For more on how this intersects with my personal journey, see my artist statement below.

Artist Statement

Clearcut is not so much a destination in itself as a snapshot from an ongoing process. For me, this has been a process of reconciling a series of failures and disappointments with my hope in God and for the future. So many of the dreams God has given me seem to have crashed on the rocks, dried out in the sun, failed, or just died. To the open road of the future, my spirit goes limp.

In this space, the words of Israel’s prophets cut through the confusion into my soul. The hearts, bodies, and stories of these men are seared with living Truth. Their words are disturbing and provocative, but drenched in the vivid colors of eternity, and it is here that I have seen hope. I’ve started my day readings these words, fighting with them, trying to understand them, and then falling asleep listening to them again. They continue to haunt and confuse me, yet they don’t leave me hopeless. Even in God’s most severe judgement, there remain powerful seeds of hope. Seeds that promise a better future.

The fire and smoke of judgement are also the pillar and cloud of God’s delivering presence and shelter. The Cedars of Lebanon are destroyed, but the stumps of these blessings-turned-idols become the nurselog for the shoot of Jesse. The light that exposes this destruction and scorches the earth is also the light that brings life to the new shoot.

May our clearcut dreams leave space for seeds of the kingdom to grow—space to find the Light of Life.

Completed October 3, 2010
Media: Digital tablet, Photoshop
Output: 8×12″ Epson Print

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Feel free to download a copy for your personal use as a desktop wallpaper.
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View HD version of Journey Through a Log here.

As I’ve dabbled in sculpture, I’ve become particularly fascinated by interior spaces of wood. Any time a cut is made through wood, we get a snapshot of the inside, but we rarely get to see any continuity between these spaces.

This video is a journey through the interior of about 3′ of a log. For each of the 113 frames, a physical cross-section of wood was cut off (in a long, sawdusty, painful process). “Journey Through a Log” is the resulting stop motion.

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Last week I shot an MFA show for one of my sculpture teachers, Lisa Rickey. Her piece, “Reflection,” is currently on display at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. She made the group of giant metal pillows by inflating flat stainless sheet steel (sealed on the edges) with pressurized gas. In Lisa’s work, I particularly appreciate her interest in unique material behaviors. In “Reflection” she uses the specular properties of stainless steel to create a sort of visual conversation amongst the pillows and their environment. I find it fitting that her orignal title was going to be “Pillow Talk.”


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After posting on oxy-acetylene earlier, I thought it might be appropriate to share an example of what someone might normally do with these tools. “Untitled Tree” is my first serious attempt at using steel as a material (made Spring of 2009). It was in the process of creating this piece that I became intrigued by many of the residual artifacts left over from welding, plasma cutting, hammering, grinding, and ocy-acet torching. In many ways, the aesthetic of this tree has been purposefully built around these artifacts.

This tree is one in a series of several I have made exploring the animate qualities of trees as creatures as well as the mythical quality of trees as a habitation. The other trees are made from coiled clay, driftwood, and a lost-wax glass casting. The photos below are from the 3D4M Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, where my steel tree was selected for display (Winter 2010). If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the show, I also photographed my peers’ work and posted the images to a gallery.

The cavity toward the top of the tree was designed to hold a candle. When lit, the branches cast incredible shadows!

The holes outside this cavity can be seen as windows in a dwelling space.

The leaves were made by a mixture of hammering, oxy-acet heating/bending, and angle grinding.
The edge on the base is a deep, angled plasma cut.


My favorite leaf.

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As I’ve begun learning to make things with metal, I’ve been captivated by many of the unintentional visual artifacts left behind. Techniques like welding, plasma cutting, hammering, and oxy-acetylene torching are generally used to modify a 3D form, but I wanted to make a piece that specifically highlights the artifacts they leave behind.

This video below is a stop motion of 447 frames captured over about 15 minutes of torching a 24″x24″ piece of sheet steel. Even though I’ve put a lot of hours in using this technique, this is actually the first time I’ve been able to watch the process without darkening effect of protective eye wear and the pressure of operating the torch.

NOTE: For proper viewing, click the link to my Vimeo page and view full screen in 720p HD

Oxy-Acetylene Torch on Brushed Steel from Daniel Nelson on Vimeo.

I brushed the steel beforehand to remove the oily milling on the outside, so the temperature changes would be more visible.

The rainbow outlines the edges of the areas that have been heated, while the dot is literally glowing hot.

The fading intensity of the glow traces where the torch as been. Note the dark blistered circles in the areas that received the most heat.

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© 2011 Curious Imaginings Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha