Just realized I hadn’t written a post about the one that started it all: the old push lawn mower and nails.

It was while I was listening to the Genesis song “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” that I thought of a carpet of nails like grass.

And when the lyrics “Keep them mowing blades sharp…” came on, I thought: Why not have a lawn mower cut a path through the nails?

Once I had the image in my head, I had to get it out.

So I went to Home Depot, bought boxes of nails and plywood, and hammered hundreds of nails.

The lawn mower piece is based on my experiences planting trees in Northern Ontario. Hammering nails is like planting trees. Pure repetition. It is also heavily influenced by the books I was reading at the time: ”Skinny Legs and All,” “In the Skin of a Lion,” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The photograph below with the yellow wall was taken in my bedroom at the time. I moved my bed out to make space, and set it up on several empty milk crates to get it off the ground.

The other photograph on the gray floor was taken by a professional art photographer at my studio at the Enriched Bread Artists space.

What’s also interesting about this piece is the rusted nails.

I used both galvanized and non-galvanized nails. The galvanized nails were longer and were meant to represent weeds and flowers, the taller things that grow in your lawn.

So, I was moving apartments in Ottawa, Canada and had the unfinished piece strapped to the top of my car. Well, it rained, and the non-galvanized nails rusted.

When the piece dried, I loved the look. Especially the orange, warm rust look contrasting with the clean, silver galvanized nails.

To cut the nails, I used boltcutters.

The sales person at the hardware store wanted to make sure I wasn’t using it to cut bicycle locks. I assured him that was not the plan, and told him the truth: that I was make a work of art and needed something to cut the nails. That did the trick and the boltcutters worked like a charm.

I also painted it once I was done hammering and cutting the nails. So what I did was use a turkey baster, and would squirt white paint in-between the nails. I also put the work on an angle to help the paint flow and cover more area. Took me a while, but it worked. It also made the paint go up the trunk of the nails a bit, which was a look I enjoyed.

The work debuted at the Enriched Bread Artists tour a number of years ago. It received positive attention and was well received at the show. I also made postcards of the image and handed them out for free. I like to think that the postcards still travel around the world and decorate many a fridge, held on by small magnets of cities.

This was a commission piece I did a couple years ago. A friend wanted to give her husband one of my artworks, knowing he was a fan. I suggested a small lawnmower piece, and she thought that was a wonderful idea. Only one problem: I had no small lawnmower. There was a store in the Ottawa Market that sold doll furniture and I had purchased a small lawnmower there. But the store had closed. An online search revealed a distributor in some small town in Ontario. After a  few emails, a couple phone calls (I don’t think he believed that’s what I wanted, and that’s all I wanted), and a signed cheque, a few weeks later I recevied the lawnmower in the mail.

What I like about this lawnmower is that it has a small bag at the front where the trimmings go, in this case cut nails. The piece is approx 4 x 6 inches.

I borrowed this piece to take some photographs as I’d forgotten to take some before I delivered it. After returning it after a couple days (weeks), my friends were very happy to have it back. They said the wall just felt really naked and lonely without it.

This was another piece I made for the show at the Manx Pub (way back in 2000). Similar to my nail pieces, the staples create a pattern. And the staple puller creates a story, a dialog between it and the staples. This is the only piece that doesn’t use nails, but used the same concept of sheer repetition of the same object. I still don’t think that my work would be very strong if it was just staples, or just nails. It really is about the combination of an object, culturally loaded, and the nails. And the simulated or imagined interaction between them. At times, my sculptures remind me of a photograph, a still moment in time.

This piece was inspired by my office administrator where I was working. So this piece is an homage to her hard work, and the repetitive nature of her job.

The piece sold at the show and is now in a private collection.

The image above is a side view, so that you can easily see the staple puller. And you can see a sense of the pattern of the staples.

The image above clearly shows the swirling effect of the staples, with the staple puller in the corner.

I participated in three Gallery 101 art auctions. For the second one, I used a toy bulldozer. I wound up using toys as they acted as miniatures for the real thing. I wanted something behind the bulldozer to represent the path cleared, and so I melted solder and dripped it in the wake of the bulldozer. I seem to remember this piece sold well.

Way back in 1997, I participated in the Gallery 101 Art Auction, a fundraiser for the Ottawa gallery and an opportunity to mix and mingle with artists and art lovers.

Every artist received a free frame, on the small side, and was asked to make a work of art that would fit the frame. The gallery would recieve free frames from Bank Street Framing and other framing stores. The auction was silent, meaning people who were interested in purchasing the art would write their name and the price they were willing to pay on a piece of paper under the artwork. If you wanted to outbid the previous person, you would write your name and a higher price. After a couple minutes and lots of encouragement from the Master of Ceremonies, the silent auction was closed and the people were able to purchase their piece. I seem to remember some people, as the time was running out, would physically block out other bidders so that they couldn’t write their name and a higher price.

At this time, I still was only working on large pieces, and so had to rack my brains for an idea. Didn’t take long, as the theme of cutting nails nicely translated into shaving a beard. And so I found a shaving razor, hammered a few small nails into the wood, and stuck the shaving razor on.

This is also the only artwork I’ve ever given a proper title to: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Shaver.” The title was a riff of the Dylan Thomas book, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog,” which is of course a riff on the James Joyce novel, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

Out of the many artworks submitted to the auction, I believe my “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Shaver” was in the top five highest grossing sold works. I still wasn’t even sure if people liked my work, so it was a nice confirmation.

I wish I’d taken more photographs. This one is a aerial view, but it’s difficult to get a sense of the razor going through the nails. You do see the path it has made. I have to date made several shaving razor and nails pieces on commission. People love giving them to friends and family.

The Fan and Nails piece was another early piece. It’s unfortunate the photographs I took of it didn’t work out so well, but I find the combination of two photographs describes the piece well enough.

The idea for this piece came from riding the VIA train back and forth from London to Guelph. I would look out the train window and watch the farmers’ fields wave and shift in the wind. I also always think of The Tragically Hip song “Wheat Kings” when I look at this piece.

Like the Rolling Pin and Nails artwork, I first hammered the nails into the wood, and then hammered the nails backwards as if being blown by the wind from the fan. The piece of wood is an old picnic bench seat. This is also the only piece to date where I painted the nails.

Included this piece in my studio show at the Enriched Bread Artists (EBA).

In the above photograph, you’re looking at it from the perspective of the fan, so you can see the nails closest to the fan being pushed over the most.

In the above photo, you can easily see the fan. I guess as the fan is yellow and quite light, the exposure wasn’t quite right for the dark green nails, which here appear black. The fan still works as you can see by the blurred fan blades.

The Stump and Nails was the second completed artwork I made using nails as the primary medium. The image popped into my head, similar to the lawn mower cutting nails, of nails growing around a stump. And then that very day, I was driving around Guelph and there was a stump beside the road! So I called up a friend with a truck. I knocked on the person’s door, but no answer. So we loaded the stump into my friend’s truck. It was really heavy as it was still quite fresh and wet. And my friend had an injured back so he could barely help. So we dropped it off on my parents’ side lawn, and I hammered nails into the top. I started and completed it summer of 1994.

The impression is of nails growing out of the stump like mushrooms portraying an organic-inorganic image. Over the years of being outside, the stump did sprout mushrooms. Sadly though, time took its toll and this work of art succumbed to the elements. I did reuse the nails in another piece.

The funny story about this artwork is that where it sat on my parents’ lawn, a sizeable number of University of Guelph students would walk by it (students kind of cut through my parents’ property as a short cut).  Years later, I was talking with a work colleague and he mentioned he went of U of G, and I mentioned I was from Guelph. He asked where I lived, and I told him and I told him about the stump with nails. And he remembered it!

The picture above was taken by a professional photographer whose name I can’t remember. The piece was shown at the Enriched Bread Artist (EBA) Studio tour in 1997.

You can see the build up of  pine needles in the image above as the stump by this time had been outside for a number of years.

The image above was taken soon after it was finished in 1994. As you can see, no pine needles. I turned this image into a postcard, had about 100 printed, and handed them out for free at the EBA tour. I wonder if some people still have this postcard, or if they actually used them as a postcard and put it in the Mail.

My wife and I had a show at the Manx Pub in Ottawa in 2000. She came up with the title of the show: “Superfly Nail Emporium” which I still love. The title combined the two themes of the show: her fly boxes (which sold well) and my nail artworks.

So I made a number of small nail pieces, and the rolling pin and nails was included in the show.  I remember having fun, although it was tricking, hammering the nails over as if the rolling pin had smoothed them out.  Visually, I was happy with how this one turned out.

This piece sold and now belongs to a private collector.