A Pyramid & Egyptian Deity

~Plus Flowers & Fairy Lighting, But No Gaslighting ♨(⋆‿⋆)♨

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At Last, Here I Am!

Hello Fine Readers of Neoteric Wood Art, today I am happy to be writing about our triumphant return after overcoming some “technical difficulties”, as the excuse de jure goes. On August 17 I wrote that this Substack would “go dark” for a while, meaning that there would be no new posts until after I laid to rest my crusty-trusty old laptop¹ and got the new machine up and running. All I had to do was transfer my files to the new computer once it was properly housebroken.

Simple, right? RIGHT?!

Yeah, riiiiiiiight. After I administered Last Rites to that tortured old slab of siliconized annoyance, it became painfully clear that I was not at all well organized in my file storage before ‘the migration’. During my attempt to get this post out, I found myself scrambling to find those old files . . .

PANIC! - Especially the pictures I took of all the projects in which we were so heavily involved - FREAKOUT!

. . . and because those images are scattered among the digital couch cushions on several external drives with the rest on the folded paper napkins of my mind, frantically looking for those pictures made me feel like a kitten chasing butterflies. So, instead of delaying this post any longer, I decided to just give up the search for now and let you all know we are still here.

\(ﾟoﾟ)/

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Useful Needs

This first project, though small, is something quite helpful if you have a dark part of your kitchen, laundry or anywhere you have upper cabinets. I made this filter to shield our eyes from those gawd-awful LED lamps that can cauterize ones retinas like an arc welder on the sun.

With some second-hand oak and a small piece of lovely textured blue glass donated by Kory of Marvelous Mosaic, I threw this together in half a day, in return, it throws back a tranquil night-friendly hue. LED’s are great for their low heat emission and high energy conservation over their long-life, but the wavelength can really harsh your buzz, so this helps keep everything cool.

If you would like plans to make one or would like to have me make one for you, just write! Any color or texture can be utilized, I just happen to be partial to blue, if feels, moonlit.

Due to my legendarily ineptitude with a camera, I failed to get good enough pictures that would show off the blue aura and the wood grain. Also, another casualty to the Great Computer Migration - it broke my Photoshop so I can’t edit the images!

٩(⊙˛̼⊙)۶

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Eye In The Sky & Pyramid

Rhetorical question; do you think I’m an Alan Parsons fan?

Rhetorical answer; yes, since 1976, but this post isn’t about music, that was last week. This next project is a pyramid I made by recycling an old defunct cutting board (butcher block) by slicing it cross-grain, shifting the pieces one segment over and then gluing them back together. It’s an easy way to make a checker board. I could make a chess board, but since I’m as thick as cold mashed potatoes, checkers it is.

Eye Of Horus by Kathie Wise/Pyramid by Me (Dave)

I asked Kathie if she could make that eye which graces the Alan Parsons ‘Eye In The Sky’ album cover where they use the symbol for Egyptian deity Horus. She said “Yes” and, by golly, there it was! The reason we did this is to surprise my cousin Rob in Iowa. We’ve talked about and listened to much the same music since the first album ‘Tales Of Mystery And Imagination’. If you haven’t heard it, what’s the matter with you?

Eye Of Horus by Kathie Wise/Pyramid by Me (Dave)

With the two albums combined on hand-made items, this is gonna blow his mind! I still need to do some finish work, but I’ll show that next post.

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This Is Deep

Jellyfish Undersea Garden melt glass by Kory Dollar with frame by Dave Wise

This third item. . . THIS Jellyfish Undersea Garden by Kory Dollar had to, I’m telling you, it just HAD TO HAVE a special frame. My usual super-awful phone picture aside, check out the ‘hands’ I made on the corners. This solid mahogany piece used to be on a stand but it proved to be rather hard to find a decent area to display it, so she asked that I make it ready for hanging - YIKES - on the wall, silly.

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And A One, And A Two, And A Three...

We’re baaaaaack with more flowers and glass block art for the fourth item plus some of the other celebrated crafty creators of this Elysium asylum coming up, so don’t close this tab! Of course I want to lead off with my very own flower, Kathie, and her flower mosaic on glass block.

Glass Block Flowers by Kathie {globe light}

In this case she wrapped the center and back so it will cast the same colors all over the room. We used Christmas lights for this one.

Glass Block Flowers by Kathie Wise (Christmas lights inside}

This is another flower garden by Kathie on a wood frame that some barbarian stained waaaaaay to dark. GRRRRRR!

Flower Garden by Kathie Wise

Sliders On The Purple Stage

This fifth item is a stand for Judy Popky. Judy made the glass ‘slider’ using frit and chunks of miscellaneous glass then melted it with my breath, I mean, in a kiln at The Manor.

[Click on any image to enlarge]

Purple Slider by Judy Popky

I use a three-inch thick piece of recycled walnut for the base which acts as ballast to keep such a tall piece of glass upright. I applied a light spray coat of satin polyurethane over the mahogany outside for a smooth finish. Inside the “pot” are iridized glass beads.

Angels & Dragons

Lastly, these were posted a short while back but they now reside in their forever home and I didn’t have a shot of them with fairy lights inside, so here they are one last time.

Dragon and Angel by Kathie Wise

Kathie made these as gifts for two lucky family members with the dragon going to cousin Marty and the angel to our Californian niece, Andrea. Glass blocks are so cool that in July I wrote about them on this Substack;

We put battery powered Fairy Lights in some of them and Christmas Lights for ones that will remain illuminated for longer periods, such as night-lights or window displays.

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Okay, Gather ‘Round, Meet The Gang!

Here are the main characters at The Manor:

From Top left; Kathie, Triesta, Kory, Kim - Bottom: Ludell, Julane and Christi

Mosaic artists every one of them, From left to right;

1. Kathie; my ever-beaming beauty

2. Triesta; perpetual fixture who is always helping to organize and is a helluva cook/baker/artist (YUM!)

3. Kory Dollar; ringleader, cheerleader, irreplaceable and inimitable master artist and teacher

4. Kim; contributes mightily, is an artist, brings food and is Kathie’s cousin

   Bottom left;

5. Ludell; smiling, cheerful and very gifted

6. Julane; purchased several of my frames and makes damn good use of them

7. Christi; is here as often as she can make it, a fine artist

8. (Photographer; Stacy)

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I will be back as soon as I have more art and can find those confounded pictures! Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber, or if that isn’t your cup of tea, could you buy me a coffee? Any amount works as a tip for this guy trying to get out the word of how we mak art from the reusable.

1. The old Dell, I thought, was destined for the wood-chipper. It has a broken CD ROM, a failed card reader, an utterly useless screen and will do a hard shut-down if you touch it in the wrong place (kind of like our crotchety old cat Tom Servo) and it was so slow that it would just freeze and kack out. But I needed something for my music, so after getting the files off I gave it a lobotomy. BOOM! Works pretty damn good now, so long as it isn’t on the web.