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, June 14, 2012

WRETURN OF THE WRENS


VISIT FROM THE WRENS (AGAIN)
Well, the wrens blew in for another visit this year, this time, mercifully shorter than last!
Could it be that the ‘art’ and ‘science’ of child rearing has been refined? Had they been reading Dr. Spock? I’m guessing that it had more to do with this early and gentle Spring…

Once again, the parents have been yipping and pipping around the studio, leaving their droppings here and there. While the chatter can be a little bit grating, and the droppings are maybe not helping with my studio cleaning efforts,  it IS WELL worth enduring for a month or two, for the pleasure of seeing these cagey little beings hopping and flitting about. And perhaps indeed there is some ego involved, cause these little bastards LOVE my tire sculpture! And seeing them perched so adroitly on the curving bow of a ‘tire limb’ brings me a certain aesthetic satisfaction, that really would be hard to top!


            Furthermore, this year, they have become quite a bit more comfortable with me, and so, for better worse, I found them hopping around literally every surface in my studio, exploring, or foraging, I really wasn’t sure.
            The other day, I caught taking a dust bath in the soil in a house plant. They were really making them selves at home! Thankfully, its nice to know that even Wrens rest at night!

HATCH DAY
            Well, they also get up early. One morning I awoke to quite a racket of squaking, and peeping. No doubt, as it is for all parents on graduation day, it is a bitter sweet mix of pride and alarm, when your bushy browed pups sail off into the wide wild world. In this case, for a day, that wide wild world was my studio, and these parents were making quite a racket, coaching them, breathing over their shoulders, and telling me to get the fuck outta here!

            Somewhat sheepishly, but looking back, perhaps somewhat spitefully, I stumbled to the kitchen area, and began working on my own breakfast- frying a few eggs. Actually, I really was feeling pretty guilty about this, considering all of the trauma that everyone was going through around me. What a terrible way to welcome these creatures into the world, by cooking up bird embryos. Or maybe that was my graduation present to them- “Well, you made it through egghood with out ending up an omelette, congradulations kid.”
             Well, my guilt was soon laid to rest after breadkfeast when turned around I found the mom or  dad perched on my spatula, picking bits of fried eggs off to fly over to his little runts! I guess, as they say, protein is protein in the animal world!

            Interestingly, in the course of trying to photograph these darting birds, I learned something about their ‘habits’, that made the task of capturing them on film just a little bit easier. And that was that the parents, (similarly to airplanes!), working a quite regular routine pattern around my studio space. And thus, trying to get a certain shot of a wren perched apon a certain mound of tires, I merely had to wait for the wren to make its way around this circuit around the room, until eventually it would return to lite briefly before my tripod, before racing off again. Some how, this made a certain kind of sense, that in their seemingly chaotic, jittery movement, there was in fact a grander scheme, with an efficiency of clockwork..



            Of course, the babies were adorable. At one point, I found three of them hiding out in the bowl of a tire in my studio trash can!

            Well, fortunately, they all found their way out of my studio, and have left me some piece to work in (unlike last year, which had this all taking place up to the 11th hour of Eno preparations!) I guess they are out there somewhere, maybe exploring the abandoned building of Siler City, or the woods out behind the tracks, or maybe on a carribian cruise!
Hopefully they are chatting up some cute potential boyfriends and girlfriends, and perhaps they will be back next year, to follow in the footsteps of their parents).













(LINK TO LAST YEARS!)