http://home.earthlink.net/~artpaintings/I am havings lots od fun with these "steel photos" and have decided to make a series on musical instruments. check them out. So far I have made my original abstract of my garden, and then: a piano, set of drums, a saxaphone and the guitar. more to come! I am making 15 (only) post cards of the nicer photos.  They are only $10 bucks, numbered and signed, and you will be supporting the arts. thanks, Jerry

I made a saxaphone today, actually a picture of one on stainless steel,   ground and torched.  I have enclosed 2 photos on the essay page, check them out!  They are the very same saxaphone taken from two different views! and look at the difference!  These are so fun to do I will make a series with different musical instruments! How fun!

I can't discover a way to really paint over stainless steel and then get it powder coated.  This "picture" is of my garden as an ant might see it.  It was a lot of fun creating it!  Maybe, I should make another!

Yesterday I took my "art line" series of granite table to Grays.  There are 3 there now and I will take one more, a bench, today with a truck load of curved trellis's and pedestals.  Check them out if you get the chance!

Over an inch tall, the lettuce and spinich in the greenhouse are doing well, very green and looking good.  This is so cool to have these plants off-season I wonder why more people don't have greenhouses.  You would think they would be as common as flat-screened T.V.'s but we have no concept of relaxing in the greenhouse, do we?

YES! It is raining!  Good, Oregon rain and bring with is warmth!  Well, relativly, I think it must be about 36 degrees outside, but the snow is melting and my bridge is snow-free and not slippery.  O'K, Now I am ready for Spring!

This is my greenhouse today!  Warm inside but cold and snowing outside.

Can you believe it, it is snowing outside, 4" so far and still falling. I will get a photo! still nice in the green  house but the garden is all white and very beautiful! I wrote a rather long e-mail to a friend today about "art" not the guy, the thing to do. maybe I can polish those thought into an essay and that would give me something to write about: why we do what we do! I don't really know the answer but it has something to do with picking up the pieces and putting them back differently.  I will keep thinking about that.  In the mean time my shop is now warm and I will go back to welding, at least a little.

It is 25 degrees outside and not much warmer in my shop.  I ran out of propane and had to get some more! in that much time I lost all the earlier heat in my shop.  Welding, even art, ceases to be fum whem it is so cold.  But the greenhouse is warm and sunny and my lettuce/spinich are very happy.  What is with this recession?  My phone is not ringing!  I will be out on the streets soon hunting for work.  I have a TRUCK load of pieces to take to Gray's Gardens but I have to wait til monday...so I will probably add some more.

4 days now of cold cold cold.  My little pool is frozen over and, of course, all the garden.  However!  The lettuce is up. The spinich is up. and other "mixed greens" are up and the greenhouse is doing just fine, warm and sunny!  The benches are warm, what a good idea to put the heated under the concrete benches! A small fan circulates the air just enough to prevent damp-off.  I love my greenhouse! During the sunny but cold days it gets so warm in there the automatic fan, set to turn on at 90 degrees, goes on and off often.  I often wish I had build the greenhouse attached to my house so I could use this heat instead of blowing it outside.  What a nice room that could have been with french doors leading into the 'conservatory'!

Cold today, and all this week and I have discovered I can heat my greenhouse with 600 watts, and it's warm!  I rebuilt it last summer and tore out the old and rotting benches, replacing them with poured in plaaace concrete benches.  I did this so they wouldn't rot again, lasting 30 years was not long enough!  What I have discovered is, as I place my little 600 watt heater under these concrete benches, they themselves get warm.  It is like getting the heat twice!  and my seedings, lettuce and spinich, seem to like the warmth from the benches.

Imported steel "art" for your garden comes into this country in those flimsy cardboard boxes and are "assembled" here.  They are made of such light-guage steel (you can't even buy such light-guage steel in this town), they barely stand up by themselves, let alone support a plant or stand the test of time.  We all know about lead-based paint on children's toys.  I often wonder if these 'pieces' which we innocently place in our garden also contain lead?  Wonderful steel and iron pieces should be heavy, strong and balanced.  There is a reason we all admire structures, individually made, that are perhaps, and certainly designed to be, hundreds of years old.  It is a statement, really, isn't it?  This is so important to me, I want it to last!