I now have all the photos I need for my Ancestry Preserves project. I want to can my loved and lost. I will fire a print of each individual onto a sheet of glass and then seal that in a bottle along with peaches, jam, etc.

One of my favorite images, the little girl is Ina Lizzie, my great grandma through my maternal grandfather.

I will select out the busts of her parents for their jars.

Read my interview with my cousin, author, Sarah M. Eden

Click on the image below for some entertainment.

Self Portrait

My self portrait in the first stage of the mold.

I entered this portrait along with those of my father and grandfather, each cast in adobe with soil from each of our birthplaces mixed in. Tucson, Milwaukee and Bountiful UT.

The view from the kitchen window

These photographs were take on April 11th and April 15, the snow being in the later date.

These pictures started me taking hundreds of pictures from the same vantage point. I open our kitchen window and set the camera down on the sill, roughly frame the shot and take the picture. I'm over halfway through a year which is my projected completion date.

Below are shots of the sun rising and storms on Mount Timpanogos.

Hand written inscription from a book we found at DI. "Letters to My Son", Kent Nerburn

Maybe some of the advice
in this book will be a substitute
for the things your father may
have said. I've read it & it does
have some good ideas.

Merry Christmas
1994

Mom


I found this entry both intriguing and tragic. On first read I thought the mother must be attempting to make up for ill advice she imagines the father had given. I later considered that there was perhaps some kind of separation, divorce, abandonment or possibly an early death.

Dino Job

Here are a handsome pair of dinosaurios we just finished putting on steel stands. We sculpted some elements and used some cast resin parts to compliment the actual fossil.

We do a lot of the sculpture with 'Bondo', building it up and carving it down to the shape of the bone adding cracks to echo those found in the original.

Our work also includes painting the parts we make in order to match the color of the particular fossil. I believe these specimens consist of 40%-60% actual fossil. Sorry to dissolusion any who believed that all they saw at museums was real/original.

No, my grandfather is not actually a member of Blue Man Group

The blue rubber is the first stage of the molding process. Next I apply clear silicon caulking, smells like vinegar. A final plaster layer constitutes the mother mold that helps it all keep its shape.

Below on the left is the oil clay original, removed from its rubber mold and on the right a test cast in plaster.

My dad requested a portrait of his father. I started work on a self portrait during the school year, with my students who had the same assignment. I plan on completing a paternal line of portrait by adding portraits of my father and son to the group. I hope to obtain soil/earth from each individual's birth place to mix into a cast of stabilized adobe (clay, sand, cement).

Memorial Day; Obsessed with Death

So my wife and sister-in-law were teasing this weeked telling me I'm obsessed with death. I recently listened to a book on CD that was a personal memoir on coping with the loss of a husband as my wife and I drove up the canyon. I also told my sister-in-law about where I'd like to be buried; with my wife and some of her ancestors, in the small cemetery up on the hill in the desert outside of Pima, AZ.

Considering my work I would have to admit I focus on death, or at least on my dead ancestry. My Great Grandma Dora passed away this last week at the age of 101. Not trying to be macabre or opportunistic I soon considered how her passing would figure into a piece I am working on in which I plan to can images of each of my deceased ancestors in fruit bottles along with pears, peaches, etc. It would mean one less empty jar.

This is a photo of a related, unfinished, piece. It will be a 200 year family tree in a jar. The wire roots and mini tree will be sealed with a little fruit in the jar.

I once heard it said that in order to be happy we should contemplate death for 5 minutes per day.

Cardboard Chairs for 3/D Design

This tree trunk design is mine.

I thought a tree trunk would look cool and that cardboard rolls would look good. I was at least halfway done before I realized that the tree trunk combined with recycled corogated makes a nice environmental statement.

Here's some student work below. This first chair folds down into a reclyner.

This chair swivels and has built in speakers

The chair below is lightweight yet strong. The fact that it looks like it leans in the second photo is a camera operator error.

Convergence Thesis Exhibit

Branching

Elizabeth Jan Bryce: Portrait of the Artist's Wife

Imprint

Extend
Impression
Cooper Hugh Hall: Portrait of the Artist's Nephew

Cooper, Detail
Broaden

Broaden, Detail

Binding


Andrew Mecham Turley: Self Portrait in Seven Generations




Andrew, Detail

Ciao Gallery - Homepage

Ciao Gallery - Homepage
Here's the site for that gallery.

The Fiber of Our Being

My Pioneer Ancestry quilt is currently on display as part of the Ciao Gallery's Fiber of Our Being exhibit. This is in Wilson Wyoming near Jackson, south of Yellowstone.

Self Portrait in Seven Generations / Pioneer Ancestry

I realized, while planning this piece that all of my ancestors crossed the plains as Mormon Pioneers. If any historical event defines who I am today it would have to be that westward migration of those 69 individuals. I thought it was 71 for awhile before noticing that one the branches crossed another.
Over the years I have mentioned to several students that quilting would be a good way to reference pioneer craft in contemporary art. I finally realized that these comments were always directed toward females and that if I felt it would be a relevent concept that I should do some quilting of my own. I can still be a man grinding metal and pounding on rocks, even though I sew.