Welcome

Ahoy Matey, and Welcome to REPTIRE, an intermittent ‘ship’s blog’, chronicling the slow rise in the South Easterly skies of Reptire Designs; a studio that designs and crafts always artful, and sometimes useful THINGAMABOBS from old Indian Cucachou, aka ReTired Rubber.

Down Below, Ye shall find a permanent 'flagship post' marking the Maiden Voyage of Reptire Designs.

And below that, in the ‘hull’, can be found more recent posts chronicling the daring new adventures of Reptire Designs, dashed with small bits of whimsy, spotted pickerel, local color, and lizard lore..

In fact, on the right, in pale purple, ye shall find the Captain's Log’s Table of Previous Posts, which ye can peruse by year, month, and title to ye hearts content.

If ye haven't gotchyer sea legs yet, My Pretty, Ye can take a gander at our website at www.reptiredesigns.com, to get a proper Landlubber's Introduction.

Thanks for stopping in, I do hope you enjoy your visit aboard this ship! HARHARHARHAR.......

Sincerely, Travius Von Cohnifus

Captain, Founder, Indentured Servant, Rubber Alligator Wrestlor Extraordinaire a' this here ship.

enter the treadknot

Welcome
On September 26th, 2006, I launched my tire art/design business, Reptire Designs, with a solo exhibition of my artwork in The Green Gallery at The Scrap Exchange Center for Creative Reuse, in Durham, NC. For many reasons, it was a night that I will always remember, and I am grateful to Laxmi (my girlfriend at the time) and Edie (my mother, still) for dutifully documenting while I shmoozed, so that I may now shmare a taste of the evening with anyone who was not able to attend...



On a cool but lively autumn night-before-Center Fest, a stream of friends and curious strangers trickled (like pebbles through a rain stick) through the forest of odds and ends (that roost at night in The Scrap Exchange), out into the warm light of the back savanna, a scene utterly glopped with bizarre rubbery hybrids. Tentative and curious, the visitors craned their necks, nibbled, pecked, stood back, moved in closer. From the walls, glassy mirror eyes gazed back through black unblinking eyelids, while beneath the visitor's feet, in a steamy drainage cistern, a mortal drama unfolded. Primordial forms, with no eyes at all, sat puckered on stoops. A cascade of glittering steal droplets formed a curtain, to which clung a colony of tiny tire knotlettes.

Vito D., a long-time collabator down from the Asheville area, caressed the warming air with his Strange Little Folk music. I bobbed and I flit, and at an increasing clip-someone must have opened the faucet a bit....for soon I was swooning, I just about lost it! As the evening progressed, to my delight and amazement, 'family' from Durham, Chapel Hill, Pittsboro, Hillsboro, Siler City, Asheville, and Fresno all made it! From the Cohn Clan to the Steudel Clan to the CFS Clan; from the WWC Clan to the Duke Ac Pub Clan to the SAF Clan; from the Bike Shop Clan to the Ninth St. Clan to the Scrap Clan... and every one in between, guys, they were all appearing before my stunned, blinking eyes. While I spun and I splayed, Vito now played-CHURNED- up a torrent of gritty ditties; while a staff volunteer (Brandon's a photographer, I swear) whipped up pitchers of Mango Lassies. And The 'Scrap Exchange girls' worked the door, the counter, and the floor, going "cha-CHING!", cha-CHING!","cha-CHING!".!.



By the end of the night, hundreds of friends, acquaintances and had-been-strangers had poured in, poured over the work, and partaken in, what was for me and my art, a monumental communal feast. And on top of it all, I got to place many of my preemies in hands that I love and trust, and in several instances, hands that fit them like gloves. What a privilage to be able to connect with people this way. Heading into the turbid seas of small business, I can confidently say that if I drown tomorrow, I am at least blessed today with the memory of (as Vito later put it) one authentically good Durham night.



Thanks to all of you who were there; in body and/or spirit.





Reclaimed-wood Builder and Reptire Collector Howard Staab enjoying magwi knot at the Scrap Exchange

Reclaimed-wood Builder and Reptire Collector Howard Staab enjoying magwi knot at the Scrap Exchange
I can't think of anything more rewarding for an artist than to see someone interacting with their artwork. Photo by Laxmi Haynes

Sammy and Dannette contemplate

Sammy and Dannette contemplate
Photograph by Laxmi Haynes

Cascade Colony of Knotlets

Cascade Colony of Knotlets
They would go with your jacket, would they not Claire?

Laxmi Resplendent

Laxmi Resplendent

Mavis In The Mist

Mavis In The Mist
Photograph by Laxmi Haynes

Tire Amazement

Tire Amazement
Photograph by Edie Cohn

Thursday, October 20, 2011

RECLAMATION: 2 Woodcarver's Spheres

The Installation of Three Knots, Two Spheres, and a Mirror
RECLAMATION @ Hermitage Museum & Gardens
Location: The Hermitage Museum Hallway, downstairs



Spheres.

Two pieces that I was determined to make for Reclamation were two Tirespheres, on each for the two woodcarvers, who devoted copious amounts of time, sweat and passion to enlivening every facet of the Sloanes’ house with their artistry.


SPHERE FOR WOODSEND
The first tiresphere I wanted to make for Charles Woodsend, a master woodcarver living in the area who the Sloanes had connected with, and contracted to not just ‘wittle’ the house, Woodsend actually BUILT the house! And remodeled it several times, including turning the whole thing around! THEN, of course, he proceeded to incorporate his many fine features into the architecture of the place, finally inscribing on the wall above a window (at Mrs. Sloanes direction, to be sure) something like “Art is simply about doing things the right way”

(GET ACTUAL QUOTE)

The second tiresphere was to be for Rydingspar, a Scandenavian woodcarver who came to work with on the house with Charles Woodsend. Rydinspar had a style which was more fluid and gothic than Woodsends, who, perhaps as a builder, made more rectaliniar pieces to harmonize with the house that he had built. Rydingspar added some interesting hounds and  gargoyle like figures.

 (GET RHYDINGSPAR’s FULL NAME)

To honort these two artists, I wanted to create a sphere for each of them, reflecting their own personal style.

For Woodsend, I wanted to make a sphere that reflected the man, his style and his work.
I knew that I wanted it to be somewhat rectilinear, relying on the right of angles at the joints of a tireshpere’s perbindicularly intersecting tires to help express this. I had brought with me a basic tire sphere, which I had considered using, particularly if I got caught on time. However, as the weeks wore on, I just didn’t feel good about it. It seemed somehow in sufficient. Fortunately, I was able to leave myself enough time at the end to really concentrate some attention on this piece, and when that time came, it became clear to me, that I would need to start from scratch. Otherwise, I might have the ghost of Charles Woodsend, rattling his chains at me forever more (which he had been practicing to good effect for the past 4 weeks). So I had myself another beer, and got down to it.

First, I though it should be more robust. Charles Woodsend was a big burley bear of a man from the looks of him in a painting. Kind of a John Bonham. So I selected a few ‘3-sets’ of  mountain bike tires that I had brought from NC to choose from, finally settling on a hybrid tire with a nice warm brown sidewall, with the fabrics weave showing, and a nice smooth finnish on the tread, reflecting well the smoothness and finish of Woodsend’s woodwork inside the house. This was a great start. In a way, it represented Woodsend the builder. But I knew that it needed more. After all Woodsend was not just a builder, but an artist as well. In the words of an Irish sailer I met at a bar in Norfolk, he was both ‘form and function’. So I decided that I would attempt something that I never had before, and that was to add another ‘tier’ to the sphere. An intierior sphere, in the tiresphere. For this, I selected another ‘3-set’, this time a thinner road bike tire, a nice ‘armadillo’, with a dark rich red sidewall. A set of these can make a really nice and salable sphere, and I must admit I was alittle bit weary of risking these for this experiment, as I was not at all sure that it would work… RATTLE RATTLE, Woodsend wailed away on those chains, and so further on, into the night, and into new territory in my tire craft I plodded.


And when day broke, I finally had a Tiresphere worthy of hanging in the house that this man had built with his hands.



RHYDINGSPHERE
My next task, of course was to build a sphere for Rhydinspar, the Scandenavian woodcarver, who came on work along side Woodsend at his work on the house. 
This one I thought would be fun, as, again, Rydingspar had a much more fluid, gothic approach. I had created an ‘Irisphere’ several years ago, which Melanie, the Director of the Museum, had really adored, and wanted me to include. The very organic shapes created by tying these tires together in the way that they are is very evocative of plant life to me, and I thought that it at least began to approach Rydingspar’s style, quite well actually.
        
         The only problem with including this piece, was that I had originally created it as an experiment, and it was still in somewhat of an experimental state. For instance, all of the tires were bound together with zip ties. Of course, this wasn’t acceptable for presenting in a museum. But to replace them with another fastener would have been an exacting process, as I had not been carefull  and methodical in marking the places for the connections, and then it was destined to be a bit wonky.

         So finally, I realized that the only thing left to do, was to rebuild it, from the ground up, using a new group of tires.
I searched through the pile that I had brought and amassed, and fortunately, was barely able to find 6 black tires of the same size!
 And so I was off!
It had probably been 4 years since I had made that thing, but once I dug in, I began to remember how it all worked, and what a marvelous being this sphere is.

The beautiful thing about the Irisphere is that it is actually two sets of three tires, one inside of the other, each holding the other in place. The openings between the tire are created by pulling these two sets against themselves, towards eachother, somewhat against their own will God, there has got to be some fascinating allegory of relationships in there, but I don’t know what it is yet. (Maybe an arranged marriage?) But the point is that the form is under a dynamic tension, and I decided that I wanted to bring that out and show it a little.

And so I used some left over scraps of ball chain to bind these parts together, in their unfortunate marriage. You can these two sphere, yearning to return to themselves, by the tension put on this chain, which stretches straight and alert. I found the effect to be quite a bit more telling (and visually pleasing) than those ugly zip ties. But I didn’t stop there. What, I wondered, if the inner sphere showed itself, as its own sphere, suspended in this marriage to the larger sphere? The plot thickens!

Well the end result is not meant to be any kind of comment of Rydingsphar’s family life (of which I know nothing), but it did come out to be a damned interesting form!
And while it is actually a little TOO curvy for Rydingsphar’s style, which combined these curves with points, these points can be found, interestingly, not in the actuall form, but in its appearance, when the viewer looks through the form. All in all, I would call this piece mostly successful.



These two spheres we hung in the main hallway of the museum downstairs, infront of two large windows. These windows had a nice grid of steel which I thought complimented the ‘moving’ black bands of the tires. The light shining through also added to the gothic aspect of these forms, particularly Rydingsphar’s, which sort of took on the look of stained glass, and the ornate bas reliefs that he had carved above the window.



Woodsend also built the water tower that you see on your left hen you enter the museum gate. It was here that he had his studio. One day, Colin Firth, the Interpreter of the Museum, agreed to show me the space. Unfortunately, it turned out that his tools had been removed. But Colin did show me the inside of the tower, which was structure to behold.