Flotsam of the Day

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Two views of an unidentified bone, presumably from a large fish or a sea mammal

While running on the beach early this morning I was surprised to find a large, C-shaped bone in the sand, measuring about 8″ x 4″. My first thought was that it resembled part of a skate, a familiar inhabitant of the surf off Doran Beach. I don’t know much about bones, but its symmetrical shape suggests either part of a jaw or pelvis, and the tapered ends imply connection to some flexible part or hinge. I’d love to hear if anyone knows what it is.

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Doran Beach is often loaded with colorful sand dollars at low tide this time of year

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Fluke Waxes

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Wax sections of our Fluke sculpture hang by a window at Artworks Foundry in Berkeley

Something about seeing the Fluke waxes for the first time, hanging backlit by the foundry windows like curing hams, signaled the arrival of autumn. Maybe it was the lower angle of the sun, or the sweet smell of wax melting, or the brown and red in the light, or the feeling that goes with making careful preparations for what lies ahead, but I felt the season shift as I applied finishing touches to the wax positives before they were cast in bronze, knowing I was in competition with the late summer heat and its potential to distort hollow wax forms of this scale.


Kelp and Iodine

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Freshly harvested kelp drying on the garden fence

For a while after the recent tsunami in Japan, Californians were aflutter about iodine, the primary antidote to radiation exposure. In researching sources of the element I discovered that the Japanese consume about five times more than most of the rest of the world, largely because seaweed and fresh fish figure so prominently in their daily diet. ???? ???? ??????? ??? ????? Interestingly, there is a strong correlation between the Japanese consumption of iodine with both their decreased rates of cancer and increased lifespan. ???? ????? ??????? I also learned that the production of the chemical element, iodine, was a cottage industry in Ireland and other coastal regions in the nineteenth century, where kelp was prevalent and abundant throughout the year.

Because our local beaches yield heaps of kelp, I’ve experimented over the past few years with using it as a material for making things, with varying degrees of success. I’m now more interested in kelp as a food source, and have been foraging the flat strands and drying them in the sun for cooking. Eventually, I’d like to make a batch of pure iodine as an experiment, perhaps as a way of staining/preserving wood. ???? ????? Historically, iodine has be extracted from kelp by reducing it to ash, boiling and filtering the ashes, and extracting the pure element by mixing it with hydrogen peroxide.

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Installing Abundance

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Looking towards Ocean Beach from the new Ortega Branch of the SF Public Library

Ene and I spent the early part of this week installing our Abundance project at the new Ortega Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, just up the hill from Ocean Beach. We had been living with these sculptures while making them over the past two years, so it was very exciting to finally see them in situ. zimecterin for humans While the grounds have yet to be landscaped, the new building is nearing completion and we were thrilled to see the color, proportions, and general siting of our sculptures work so harmoniously with the library, a Green Building LEED Silver project. We hired Atthowe Fine Art Services to transport and install the two fish sculptures, and were impressed by their professionalism and efficiency.

Ene and I were pleased at the public reaction to the sculptures; everyone stopped and commented how beautiful they thought they were, and many made the connection between the importance of libraries and that of forage fish to the marine ecosystem. ivermectin side effects for dogs who eat horse manure The larger sculpture is our heroic depiction of a hybrid anchovy/sardine/herring/grunion, honoring its role in sustaining the food chain; the smaller fish is based on the Vermillion Rockfish common off the coast of San Francisco and once a significant food source for native peoples and early immigrants. Forage fish have been in the local news recently, as a bill has been proposed to require the sustainable management of forage fish along the entire California coastline. You can read more about the development of our Abundance project by clicking here.

Please join us for the official ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 AM, Saturday, September 10. ivermectina capsulas dosis

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Atthowe Fine Arts loads the sculptures on to a flatbed truck at the wowhaus studio

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anchovy installed

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Spark

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Ali Blateis, our Project Assistant, tacks down hand-cut glass on one of Spark’s panels

If you’ve been to the wowhaus studio in the past six months, you’d have noticed the neatly piled stacks of hand-cut, iridescent and mirrored glass everywhere that we’ve been transforming into a series of mosaic murals, called Spark, now nearing completion. The murals were commissioned by Chabot College in Oakland to be installed in their Planetarium this fall, as part of an innovative public art initiative spearheaded by Diane Zuliani, Instructor of Art History and Museum Studies at the college.

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One of four, nine by twelve foot, glass mosaic murals comprising Spark

Ene designed the four, nine by twelve foot glass mosaic murals to literally evoke the spark of innovation/insight/creativity so essential to higher education, and it’s been exciting to see the project take shape under her capable leadership. We are very lucky to have had the ongoing help of Ali Blateis, who we hired to assist in the fabrication and composition of the murals, whose skill, focus and good judgment have been invaluable to the success of the project. can humans take ivermectin horse wormer Working long days and spending stretches of time on the wowhaus compound, Ali has become like one of the family, and we look forward to working together on more projects in the future.

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Spark, detail

The murals are made in sections; each hand-cut piece of glass is tacked to a mesh substrate that will be adhered to a masonry board prior to installation. The masonry panels will then be permanently bolted to the exterior walls of the Planetarium after a final grout is applied in painterly gradients. ivermectin 1 for dogs Over the months, Ene and Ali have mastered using these unconventional materials, and the results are beginning to speak for themselves! what happens if you give a dog too much ivermectin

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Spark, detail

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Vaka Moana

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One of eight vaka sails into the harbor of San Francisco’s Treasure Island

Last week I attended the welcoming ceremony for a fleet of vaka moana that had just crossed the Pacific from New Zealand, where the eight craft were built. Using traditional sailing rigs supplemented by solar-powered electric motors, the craft and crew made the voyage in about three months using celestial navigation. The project is called Pacific Voyagers and is intended to raise awareness of the health of our oceans while honoring and preserving the culture of Oceana where the vaka originate.

The vaka are essentially giant, sea-going canoes, or catamarans, consisting of two canoe-like hulls joined together by a partially enclosed deck, steered by a huge counter-weighted oar that can also propel the boat at harbor when necessary, like a gondola.  These modern boats are clearly an adaptation of the original catamaran that, like the culture of the Pacific Islands, is thought to have originated in Taiwan.  I had been aware of the innovative catamaran designs emerging from Southern California’s surf culture in the 1940’s, but this was my first encounter with the real deal, and I was blown away by their speed, agility, and the simplicity of their rigging and power stream, not to mention the  ease of movement among the crew on deck.

I got to thinking about the girth and length of the logs that must have been harvested to make the original canoes thousands of years ago, and how both mono-hulls and catamarans share common ancestors in the dugout canoe. As a woodworker, I’m always aware of how things are made using either an additive or subtractive strategy, one involving the assembly of individual parts and the other the removal of material, and how most wooden structures involve a hybrid of the two. A dugout canoe is a prime example of a subtractive technique, and most likely represents the original boat type common to all cultures.

I see the vaka as the Eastern equivalent to the Viking longboat in both its influence on boat design and on the dissemination of cultural values, and am fascinated by how each hull type evolved the dugout concept in different ways, probably at least partially in response to different oceanic conditions  and materials available for construction. The Viking innovation was to transition the dugout hull into something more like a shaped keel, adding ribs and planking sides to make a vessel capable of navigating open ocean. The Pacific Islanders’ innovation was to optimize the scale of the dugout and lash two together for maximal seaworthiness.

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Dory Revival

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The mouth of Tomales Bay

As a lifelong student and enthusiast of small boat design, my tastes lean towards working craft, which I define as any boat whose primary goal is to reach a destination, either as transportation or in the seasonal pursuit of a fishery. Working craft adapt and evolve over generations of trial and error, in direct response to changes in the marine ecology, material flow and related market conditions that sustain their relevance.

I’ve always been particularly drawn to tidal estuaries and the associated types of boats- shallow draft, narrow beam, easy to beach and responsive to power by oar or sail, able to carry a load. Flat bottomed sharpies still catch my eye, especially double-enders, but dories are in a class by themselves. What they lack in speed and simplicity of construction compared to the sharpie, they make up for in sea-worthiness.

I like to associate a certain type of hull with a particular waterway, and find myself conjuring a hull type when I encounter an unfamiliar waterway, as a means to better understand it. I live near the mouth of Tomales Bay, where it opens out to the Pacific through a shallow channel characterized by shifting sands and breaking waves. It’s a popular destination for surfing, sea kayaking and sport fishing, but I have yet to see any contemporary craft that truly suits its character, able to negotiate the passage. When the Bay supported a herring fishery, the preferred boats were a type of dory, but the hull shape vanished along with the fishery over a generation ago.

I was delighted recently to stumble upon a first edition copy of John Gardner’s scholarly classic, “The Dory Book”, and have been studying its many lines drawings and construction plans. My goal is to design a hull that hybridizes the best characteristics of various types of dory, in response to the exigencies of Tomales Bay. I’d love to build a small boat for fishing, camp cruising on beaches, and making an occasional, fair weather excursion off-shore when the conditions are just right.

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Original cover of ‘The Dory Book’ by John Gardner