A doggone problem solved!

It's become part of our daily routine at the Cales-Proskocil household to chase after our 2-year-old Lhasa apso, Hazel. One of Hazel's favorite things to do is take things she's not supposed to have and then brazenly trot into another room to chew and chew and chew. Hazel's favorite items include tissues, socks, undies, shoes and, above all else, Niz's slippers. The picture on the left shows her with a recent victim of her incessant chewing. The sort of boudoir shot on the lower right is just there to show you how cute she is.

Niz is more Westernized than I am, but one of her many Eastern attributes is her use of slippers in the house. She keeps them right next to the bed where they're easy 'pickens for Hazel to brazenly snatch up and run into the living room to devour.

As I mentioned, this happens pretty much every day, so in an attempt to combat this doggone problem, I designed a hanging paper holder for the slippers. I've used the same heavy watercolor paper employed in a couple recent woven chair seats. I attached the simple, curled slipper holders using some snap fasteners. The brass grommets applied to each corner can be used to nail or pin the entire piece to the wall.

This is version 1.0 of the slipper holder; the curled holder pieces aren't exactly the same size, and the snap fasteners and grommets were attached quickly with little regard to symmetry or evenness. It may not be perfect, but while it's in use, Hazel will have to settle for my dirty socks.

Fleeting Thoughts like Falling Leaves

One of the reasons I usually enjoy living in Omaha is that I'm basically a small-town guy at heart. And let's face it, Omaha is kind of a small town. I want to think I'm a big city kind of guy; that I'm drawn to the largeness of movement and noise and action, but it's really not true. I travel for work several times a year, usually to larger cities, and after a few days, I usually can't wait to get back HOmaha. Even so, growing up in the midwest - first in Kansas, and for the last 10 years in Nebraska - I think I've had a tendency to take for granted the richness of the midwestern landscape. Who isn't at least a little drawn in by a soft breeze flowing over wheat fields before the harvest? Or the simple pattern of rows of corn, soybeans, and whatever else farmers grow around here?

The leaves started turning and falling in my Benson neighborhood several weeks ago. Initially they fell fast and hard, pulled down by the weight of a premature snow. Soon a wet, yellow blanket was covering the ground.

Over the course of the last few weeks bursts of rusty reds and oranges have joined the yellow blooms in a dying explosion of color. I don't remember the colors being this vibrant before. Or being so drawn to the contrasting tones. I'm nearly overtaken every time I turn a corner on my drive home from my studio. It gives me chills to see the yellow leaves flutter from the tops of the trees after small gusts of wind pull the stems from their branches. I don't remember being this influenced by nature either - maybe marriage is making me soft.

As beautiful as the view is now, we all know the landscape will soon give way to a neutral wash of white and brown. But as with the rest of the natural landscape, the lines and contrasts of brown against the impending snow will display a subtler beauty that is harder to see.

These same past few weeks have been busy ones for me. I've been stealing as many hours in my shop as I can trying to turn these star fabrications into tables. They are also a simple gesture at both capturing and honoring the beauty of the Fall and coming Winter landscapes, respectively. The uniform shape of each piece - both in the star form and each contributing diamond shape - echoes the symmetry and simplicity of the fallen leaves. And like a leaf, the simplicity of their form sometimes masks a design that is more complicated the closer you look; it was not easy cutting and fabricating between 200 and 300 individual, uniform pieces of wood together. As I mentioned in my previous post, these pieces are my attempt to - dare I say - turn over a new leaf, in attempt to make work that is more environmentally sustainable than I've attempted in the past. I like to think that with each successive piece of furniture or art or whatever you'd like to call them, that I'm honoring the materials as much as I can.

These tables are also part of my contribution to the ORGANISM project in the Empty Room. If you'd like to see how they turn out, please stop by ORGANISM throughout November and help us grow the space. Don't forget to bring your hammer.

Clean Plate table sneak peak

I celebrated the majority of the July 4th holiday by not hanging out with friends and family; not relaxing in lawn chairs; and not blowing myself up with black cats and M-80s. I did, however, witness a pretty impressive fireworks display in the 2500 block of S. 49th St.

Most of my weekend was in fact spent on my back screwing... boards that is. I took advantage of an extra day off work to finish fabricating the first part of the Clean Plate table. I affixed the side rails to the 4 gorgeous solid walnut legs and created a sort of interior skeletal structure from poplar (a very straight-grained, durable wood).

I joined enough planks to create a full top that screws onto the structure from the underside of the table. In the picture at right, I'm using bar clamps to join the pieces laterally, and squeeze clamps to keep the board from buckling upward under the immense pressure of the clamping. This will also ensure that the piece will remain a flat surface after the glue dries.

Drilling up through the poplar structure into the underside of the planks will accommodate any expansion or contraction that may result from changes in temperature and humidity; this also makes the top look like it's resting on the legs and side rails, without any fasteners, which is a "cleaner" look.

The next phase will involve a pretty extensive amount of sanding on the top. This is the part of working with wood that I wish I didn't have to do. Not only is it hard, tiring work; it's also very dirty and not particularly good for one's health. I wear a professional respirator (those paper masks are worthless, btw), but still come home with nostrels full of brown dust and my eyes feeling slightly irrirated, like I'm wearing contact lenses that are past their expiration date. It's worth the work and risk to health - check out the contrast in the richness of the section of wood that has been sanded and coated with linseed oil and the section that has not - it's pretty dramatic and makes me excited to see how the top will look when finished. Hopefully that happens by the end of the week. Time is running short... Elle starts the move-in to Empty Room August 1.