the love, life & work of Blake Johnson
Musings on work, life, and the world.
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Last year I hit a bit of a productive motherload… I built a whole lot of things in a short amount of time over the winter, all things I’d hoped to make some day and been putting off for months or years. Such a huge boost to shop productivity, organization, cleanliness and efficiency, I couldn’t […]
This past weekend I had the awesome opportunity of heading up to Freedom, NH, to help out in the cutting of a timberframe for a new contemplative study center at High Meadow Farms. Our hosts, Charlie and Holly, were so generous and warm, and the team that went up was a blast to work with. […]
I am so excited to have done this project recently. It’s something I’ve dreamed of for at least a whole year, if not longer, and it’s such a treat to have gotten to make it, and now to get to use it almost every day. And hopefully for years and years to come. Originally I […]
For the past few weeks I have really hunkered down to tackling each part of the studio, sifting through the remnants and debris of past projects and would-be-projects, and our earlier organizational methods, to streamline and consolidate and make cleaner the way we’ve set up and use our space. First up was the paint/finish area […]
Katherine Glover contacted me about making a crate for one of her pieces, and I humbly obliged. It was a new venture for me, and somewhat nerve-wracking to think that I’d be responsible for somebody else’s delicate work traveling across the country from studio to show to gallery and eventually to client’s house, but it […]
As stated in our article, an indexical object seems to be entirely a result of its environment. A willed object, on the other hand, is something obviously and clearly made, willed, not organically produced, by someone. Presenting an object which is both of these things invites the opportunity to present literally any object in existence. […]
Well, the steambox at school was too bulky for my taste, and too short actually for the lengths I want to bend, so I went out and got some PVC pipe, some plastic tubing, an end cap and some fittings, made a quick 2×3 spine with legs, and popped it all together to make my […]
Embarking on a creative endeavor means that you are sacrificing materials. Things must come in to go out. There is no escaping that. The debate in making them, then, stems from their worth, the question of whether or not they belong in the world, or deserve to exist. That question has supreme stopping power. It […]
I’ve got this idea for a stepstool, springing from an old idea I drew over the summer, and I’ve brought it back in the past week to figure it all out. The steps and any joinery are mostly just ideas at the moment, as I’ve never bent wood before, and the bends and laminations of […]
In the list on the right, there’s a video by Jennifer Hall called Multitasking Learner. Good to hear faculty talking about the one-class-a-week as not a normal developmental cycle of someone’s emotional and psychological process, and how an ‘art practice’ isn’t just that, it’s a part of the larger daily life that someone leads, and […]
Well this one’s been a long time coming. Not the greatest, but it’s done. That was all I really wanted out of it anyway. From the timberframe barn a few summers ago I snagged some scrap lumber, milled it down pretty primitively with chainsaw and circular saw into slabs and strips, and came out with […]
The Spring 2013 semester was a hard one for me. I was struggling with the drive to make things with my new-found abilities that didn’t feel like “art” to me. Furniture is furniture, and art critique deals with it as such. Most often, furniture falls into itself, it remains clearly a furnishing, not an object […]
Hey all, been a crazy year. Just now as things are ramping up to reviews and winding down from classes, I thought I’d shoot a bunch of things online that I hadn’t shown off yet. So along with two other posts about major projects, and more of those to come, here are some little things […]
Well, as some of you know, I’ve written poetry for some time now, including at an open mic last year, to a wonderful audience response. This year, the monthly events are starting up again, with the first about two weeks ago. Only this time, I entered in the poetry slam competition portion after the open […]
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’m rolling out some changes on this site. For a while now, I’ve wanted a bit of an update on the dark theme of my site. I really do like the older theme, it was very low-profile and showcasey, besides I’d made it myself from scratch, but it was starting […]