Another Art Jamboree!

Art Jamboree!

It’s that time again, folks… Time for another Art Jamboree! Join us on January 25, 2013 from 7pm to 11pm at the Loyalty Building (Hilton Garden Inn) 611 N. Broadway, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The event is free and open to the public (and all ages are welcome) and there will also be a cash bar, prizes, art raffles, free hi-fives and some of your favorite Milwaukee Makerspace members showing off things they’ve made, many of which could be considered “art”!

We’ll also have some interactive pieces for you to experience, but we can’t give away all the details yet, because we’re all about secrecy and the element of surprise, so you’ll just have to show up and see what we do. (Safety glasses and ear plugs are highly recommended!)

Oh, and our friends at Art Milwaukee (who are putting on this event) have all the info on the Art Jamboree you’ll need. We hope to see you there!

We help in all departments!

Becky Tesch

We’re currently in the process of moving to our new space, but we had our last Tuesday night meeting of the year this week and we had a few guests stop by looking for help with some projects.

Becky’s a local artist who works in “duct tape & bike parts” making unique recycled jewelry and other things. (You can check out some of her work on Etsy.) She was interested in using the laser cutter for some of her pieces. While we didn’t get a chance to do any test cuts due to some laser downtime, we grabbed some inner-tube rubber and we’ll be giving it a test run for her.

The Artery

While talking to Becky, a guy named Jacob showed up and asked about cutting some stencils to sandblast things for rewards. Rewards? Yeah, he’s one of the guys involved in a recent Kickstarter campaign. Check out Matireal in this OnMilwaukee story. We gave Jacob some good advice and a member offered to cut the stencils he needs. Pretty cool! (And yeah, it did seem a little weird that we had one person who works with old inner-tubes and another who works with old car tires, but we love recycling too!)

So yeah, we like helping people who like making things, and even if the laser is down or we’re in the process of moving the entire Makerspace, we’re glad to help!

M1 and M2

M1

M2

If you saw Shane’s post Submission for the 100 Square Feet of Art Charity Event you probably wondered if anyone else managed to create a piece of art for the event, and if they too used the laser cutter. The answer to both questions is “Yes!” and here are the two pieces I created, M1 and M2.

There’s an in-depth (and potentially boring) post about these pieces over on my blog titled Two Square Feet of Art. Enjoy!

More Laser Cutter Artwork….

A laser cut piece, one stacked on top of the other for depth.  The top piece is a cut out featuring an angelic grave stone and the back piece is a picture of a graveyard with some well defined trees.

This is my newest piece, cut and etched on our 60 watt laser cutter.  Both images are from pictures that I took out at a couple of graveyards.  I inverted the image in the background so that the sky was nice and dark and the trees were bright.  Unfortunately, this washed out a lot of the tombstones in front, so I’m going to try re-etching this piece before I offer it up for sale.

The back piece took approximately 1 hour, 20 minutes to etch as a 11.5″ square.  Additionally, I found that the margins are a bit off on the cutter.  The left margin has shifted around 1/8″-1/4″  to the right, so the piece wasn’t perfectly centered.

Submission for the 100 Square Feet of Art Charity Event

The picture consists of a laser-cut vine motif with an orchid laser-etched in the center, raised a half inch above a laser-etched picture of a creek with large rocks.

Art for charity’s sake

 

When Raster mentioned the event, “Red, White, & Black: 100 Square Feet of Art“, I thought I’d take part.  The general idea is for artists to pick up a 12×12” piece of wood and “art” it somehow, transforming it into a mini-masterpiece for an auction to support pets in need.  The auction takes place on December 7th, so be sure to stop in.  They’re featuring live music and food along with a raffle and the auction.

Taking a cue from some Art Boxes I’d been working on, I decided to use a similar vine motif with an orchid etched in the center.  After studying it for a while, I thought it needed depth, so I laser etched a photograph that I took out at Boerner Botanical Gardens for the backdrop.

Still not content, I wanted the darker shadows of the vines to play along with the lighter picture behind, so I cut several half-inch blocks to raise the top piece above the back piece.

The back has been treated with teak oil while the front was stained with Bombay mahogany satin stain.  The blocks are put specifically in each corner in order to maximize the amount of light that hits the back piece.  I may add a few extra spacers for support in the coming days.