Carved miniature wooden sculpture, "Wiki Honu."

Wiki Honu is a miniature wooden sculpture, carved by hand. The wood is teak, sanded smooth and finished with a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine, followed by wax buffed to a low lustre.

Wiki Honu is smooth, seems warm to the touch, and is perfectly sized for the hand or a pocket (alone, preferably, to avoid potential damage). He’s also heartily kid-approved, garnering such reviews as “Awww…” and “Super cute!” Due to his small size, Wiki Honu is probably not well-suited to display where he won’t be viewed in close-up.

The name is Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi); translated literally, it means “quick turtle.”

Wiki Honu is available for purchase at my Etsy shop.

Tags: art, honu, sculpture, wiki, woodcarving

I hope to have photos of several new works posted later this week. Stay tuned!

Anyone who’s seen the movie “Horsemen” will probably feel a twinge at the post title. That’s what you get for watching bad movies.

Anyway…I’m participating in the “Dog Days Art Bazaar” at the Susan Hensel Gallery, here in lovely Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s a one-day affair, at which I’ll be offering a chance to peruse and, perchance, purchase items from my vastly oversupplied collection of ingredients for art projects, art-related books, and a few artworks that aren’t “ready for primetime” but which I want to clear out to make room for newer, better art.

Edit: The date for the bazaar is Saturday, August 29th.  Ahem.

Those who might have a special interest in my goods include:

* Sculptors, especially found-art, mechanical, and electronic;
* Book junkies;
* Watercolorists;
* Collectors of oddities and interesting detritus;
* Supporters of my future artworks;
* Those who want to get a potentially valuable “back when I knew him…” piece of art for a very reasonable price;
* “Whiskers.”

There will be other creative types selling as well (wouldn’t be much of a “Bazaar” with only one tout), so it should be quite an interesting affair. The bazaar is scheduled to run from noon to 5pm, and you can find the gallery via MapQuest or Google Maps.

Speaking of barbequed spareribs (you did click on “Whiskers,” didn’t you?), after you’re done at the Dog Days Art Bazaar, you could stop by Ted Cook’s 19th Hole and pick up some of the best barbecue you’ll find in the Twin Cities. Skip the side dishes and load up on meats, if you want the best value for your money.

Mystery...

Just a bit of a teaser for you…

Having started a business to manage the sales and marketing of my art, I quickly ran into the hideous mess that is bookkeeping and taxes. Word to the wise: do not underestimate the administrative overhead involved in these things! It’s not at all pretty, and if you’re not careful, can eat very deeply into the time you’d actually like to be spending on the “meat” of your business.

Anyway, after a fairly intensive — and extensive — search through a field that is riddled with examples of so-called “user interface” that make me feel much better about my own software development efforts , I finally chose (to my own surprise) an online service, Outright.com.

You can read in more detail about my testing experiences and my final choice in my interview with Outright, on the Outright blog.

Tigersharktiger from the front

Welcome…the Tigersharktiger. I carved this figure using several different palm carving tools and a couple of knives (more about my tools in a future post). It’s available for purchase on Etsy.

Update: I’ve uploaded several images of tigersharktiger; you can access the gallery by clicking on the photo above.

Tags: art, sculpture, woodcarving

But I did try pretty hard. Got a new day job now, which leaves less time for art (and blogging, of course), but does pay bills for the moment. Overall, definitely a win .

I’ve got some art that will be going up here on the website and in my Etsy shop sometime within the next week. I also hope to make the time to post some of the interesting thoughts I’ve been entertaining about marketing, business, and life in general.

Please stay tuned!

The contest ended! A few days ago, in fact. Of the two commenters eligible to win, the lucky one is (drumroll, and a quick visit to random.org…) peraduanku! As for which domain name, I’m going with a variation on the two suggestions–you get to choose whether you want free choice from among the “standard” domain names only, or a random selection from among the full set of domain names (Premium + Standard).

Tags: contests, domains

As part of my new website launch (partial though it may be at this point), I’m giving away one of the (scads of) domain names I currently own. The “entry threshold” is, I hope, not overly high.

As part of my new website launch (partial though it may be at this point), I’m

Rules:

When: The contest ends in a week — specifically, midnight (12 AM) next Saturday, April 11th. (All times referenced will be using CDT, which is GMT-6.)

Who: Anyone other than employees of Ars Arboris is eligible to win.

What: The prize will be one of the domain names I have listed for sale (Domain Names for Sale). Note that the “prize pool” consists of all domain names available at the end of this contest, so if somebody purchases a name this week, it will no longer be eligible for the giveaway.

How: The pool of people eligible to win will be composed of everyone who leaves a reply to this post that fits the criteria listed below. Who the winner is will be determined randomly from among the pool of eligible replies. (Note that it’s OK to post multiple eligible replies, and this will increase your chances of winning. In the interest of keeping the contest sporting for non-ADD people, I’m going to set an upper limit of five eligible replies. You can reply more than five times, but only the first five eligible posts will count.)

Reply criteria:

Subject: The post subject must be “one or more methods to choose which domain name should be given to the winner” (there’s a small loophole below). This can be either a suggestion of a method that has not yet been mentioned among the replies, or a discussion of one or more suggestions that have already been made.

Content: The reply must offer something original to the conversation. A method for choosing that hasn’t been mentioned yet obviously qualifies. A comment on one or more suggested methods must provide new information and/or an original observation. If you have several original comments to make, you may want to divide them among multiple replies, unless you’ve already hit the limit of five.

I will be the arbiter of “acceptable level of originality.” Hint: “me too” and “Seconded!” aren’t going to make the grade. Blatantly ridiculous suggestions may also get tossed out (but see below).

Insults and abuse — as defined by me — may get you banned from the contest and/or replies in general, so keep it civil.

Subject exception: Replies that are trying to be funny, but don’t meet the criteria of Subject and Originality had better actually be funny. I will be the arbiter of what is and is not “funny” for this purpose .

E-mail: You must leave a valid e-mail address with your reply, so I can contact you in the event you win the contest. I have not yet posted the site’s “official” privacy policy yet, but I will not be keeping any e-mail addresses once I’ve successfully awarded the prize. Note: if my e-mail to the winner bounces, or I don’t receive a reply within 24 hours, I will re-choose a winner, with the offending reply removed from the pool.

I hope that this will be fun and interesting. If nothing else, at least I’ll be able to unload a domain name .

Have at it!

Tags: contests, domains