Here is a new, tiny artwork that is titled "Yeah!" It is only 4" x 6" x 1" deep and utilizes the recycled CD/DVD materials as well as the recycled Christmas decorations from the Target store. Simple composition, but less is more you know.

This small 6" x 8" mosaic is another wrapped edge/self-framed piece only 1/2" deep. It is titled "Jewelscape" and utilizes the recycled, torch-modified CD/DVD material.

This piece is called "Thank You!" It is a basic mosaic composition using both the recycled CD/DVD and store decoration materials mentioned in a prior post. It is hung in the Co Art Gallery in the Santa Fe Art District in Denver.

This is a relatively large piece that one of my neighbors commissioned me to do. It is 12" x 24" x 1" deep. It is a self-framed mosaic composition similar to a smaller piece I did some time back, but with different colors and slightly different configurations. It is all torch-modified CD/DVD material. I entitled it "Crystal Kachina", as the compostion of the image is intended to be an abstraction of the Hopi Kachina entities, with a FLL Wright twist.

This piece is called "Code II". It is an 8" x 8" x 1" deep, self-framed wall mosaic art piece using the torched CD/DVD material. It is self-framed in that the CD/DVD pieces wrap back over the wood sub-frame so that no mat or other visible frame is needed. This piece is available for $75 plus any shipping cost.

This piece is entitled "Wow, Man!" and utilizes both the jewel-like CD/DVD material and some new recycled material I haven't used before. The red and orange diffraction-type materials were cut from discarded

Christmas decorations that were hung in a Target store. While normally tossed in the dumpster when the holidays are over, I asked the lady in charge of decorations if she would save that portion for me. She did and I'm glad because I think this material has great color, is very eye-catching and great to work with. The orange is the result of lightly caressing the basic red material with a small torch flame.

I actually did this piece as a gift for her to thank her for going to the extra trouble of saving this great material for me.

This small artwork is entitled "Splitsville". It is tiny at 4" x 4" but is very eye-catching and sparkly. The materials are torch-modified CD and DVD pieces.

This new piece is titled "Fault" and is currently in the CoArt Gallery in Denver's Santa Fe Art District. It is composed entirely of recycled metals and the torch-modified CD/DVD material I invented. Please forgive the poor photography; it looks very nice in person.

Metals used include old bullet casings and various can metals, all flattened and buffed or torched and embossed or simply left the way they were.

This new piece is entitled "Cadence" and is composed entirely of pieces of the torch-modified CD and DVD material. Poor photography does not give the true portrayal of how this piece looks in real life. It is currently in the CoArt Gallery in Denver's Santa Fe Art District.

This new piece is titled "Off Kilter". It uses all recycled materials, such as brass from old bullet casings, can metals of multiple types, foils from various sources and, of course, my unique CD and DVD gems. One new material incorporated is portions of the typical old style CD jewel cases. I was given about a thousand of these and didn't want to throw them away. So I began cutting parts out of them such as the nice micro-ribbed black edges and the flat black textured plastic behind where the CDs lie. These were used in this piece.

Please forgive the poor photography. This was snapped in the gallery because I had to get it up quickly and the lighting was not right for proper exposure.

This small piece is done with the modified recycled CD/DVD material that I inovated and is somewhat inspired by the stained glass works of Frank Lloyd Wright. However, the primary compositional nature of the piece simply the ongoing generation of eye-pleasing juxtapositions using the 45 degree triangle and rectangular shapes to serendipitously create a jumble that looks good. I have used many different colors in this piece, which equates to many different brands or types of CD or DVD, each having its own inherent color based upon my modification process. This process produces gem-like qualities in the CD or DVD pieces, thus the title: Crystal Vortex. This piece measures 5" x 7.5" and is matted in a silver toned 11" x 14" frame. It is for sale and I am asking $180 USD for it.

Another tiny piece using recycled metals of many differing types combined with the jewels of modified CD material. This is entitled 'Rainbow Machine'.

This piece is a little old but I wanted to post it because, while it uses some of the jewel-like CD/DVD material, it is unique in that it also uses a new experimental material I devised, namely crushed and polished aluminum foil colored with alchohol inks (I like being a mad art scientist, always pushing the envelope with strange and unheard of materials). Click on the image to look at the close-up to see how richly detailed this material is. I plan to do some further work with this inventive use of a common material. The title of this piece is 'Shaman'.

This piece is called 'The Vein' and was meant to be an abstraction of a mineral vein of gold ore intruding through the strata of other rock. It is about 6" x 8" in size.

This little 3" x 3" piece is entitled 'Swirl' and is a mosic in the recycled and modified CD/DVD material. Very jewel-like and glittery.

This metal and CD/DVD piece is entitled 'Tresure' and has a wide variety of metal types: Old bullet casings in brass, copper and steel; aluminum can materials modified in various ways (torching, polishing, embossing); aluminum pie plate; gold foil from chocolate wrappers; foil from the tops of wine bottles, etc. Look close, the details in the metals and 'gems' is cool.

Another in the new series of tiny artworks. This one is entitled 'Twist' and has a slightly more interesting composition that the former piece.

A new series of artworks mixing various recycled metals and the gem-like CD and DVD materials is underway with this tiny piece entitled 'Metal Matrix'. It is only 2.5" x 3" and is very simple in composition. However, the materials are very rich in micro-detail and visually interesting.

This new art work is entitled "Candyapple Metalflake Electric Rainbow Kachina". The basic design borrows elements from the imagery of the Hopi and Navaho kachina figures as well as some of the characteristics of Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass designs.

It uses recycled CD/DVD materials and has over 200 individual elements/pieces in the mosaic. Unfortunately, the photo doesn't catch the spectral flashes and scintallant quality of materials. Though there are patches of rainbow colored bars in the composition, there are also many rainbow flashes from the diffraction of the materials themselves. No doubt, whatever mysterious beings or entities reside in realm of Kachinas, they will bless this new piece with success.

This piece is one panel from a triptich being created for a commission for a permanent display in the City of Thornton Civil Center building. It is entitled 'The Map' and will be mounted horizontally, taking up one whole wall panel above the main Lobby.

This matted mosaic piece is composed of many different colors and 3 different types of recycled disks. The silver pieces are just standard old CDs like you get from AOL or software or what have you. The various deep colors and black are Memorex CD-Rs. The light green ones are regular CD-Rs. The bright plum colored rectangles are DVD-Rs. All have been modified by torching them to just the proper degree, cut to shape and glued to the substrate.

The title of this piece is "Harlequin", referencing the multiple bright colors used in the piece, similar to the clown suit worn by the harlequin characters of Italian operas. It is 18" x 24" and is currently hanging in my dining room.

This eye-catching artwork is entitled Crystal Chaos for obvious reasons. I wanted to depict regularity collapsing into a chaotic jumble. However, it turned out that the chaos dominated to the point that the perimeter matrix of regularity is hard to discern. The chaos took over.

Still, the flashes of color and play of light in this piece are wonderful as you walk past it. Especially in a sunlit room.

This is a new piece that is already matted and framed. The art is 9" x 12" in an 18" x 22" silvery-gold wood frame. This piece is for sale, so if you are interested, please leave a comment with your contact info and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

First come, first served.

Here is a fun little assembly called Robo-Kachina.

Far in the future when only the Native Americans of the southwest have survived the impacts of the asteroid rain of 2012 and are adapting the technologies of the outside world to their traditional ways of life, their ceremonies are now populated by the dreaded Kachinas of old in a new and different guise - robotic monsters, clicking and whistling about the square, chasing the dancers and the children back into their pueblos.

Not very likely.....but it's the best b***s*** I could cook up on the spur of the moment.

CDs/DVDs/sparkle paper. Visions of strange days to come?

This mosaic piece, entitled Udjat Eye, is mainly torch-modified CD and DVD materials trimmed with gold foil from....yes, chocolate wrappers. Though it sounds silly, certain gold foils used for chocolates can be made to mimic gold leaf in a marvelously acurate way. Similarly, the CD/DVD material mimics jewels.

This piece takes its pattern from an actual ancient bracelet found in the tomb of Pharoah Sheshonk II and represents the Eye of the falcon God Horus. It had many magical meanings to the Egyptians, and I doubt if that ancient craftsman had any idea that his beautiful work would wind up being wrought in such a modern way over here in Colorado, a place he knew nothing about. But if there is a life after death and he can look down at this art, I hope he is pleased at my attempt to copy his art. The effort was due to my admiration of the original, probably in the Cairo Museum.

This piece, however, is in a collection in Thornton, Colorado.

This small piece uses CD and DVD pieces of many different colors, mimicing a patchwork quilt. It is in a collection in Thornton, CO.

This piece, 'Jewel Pavement', is the favorite of everyone who's seen it in person. I entered it and several other pieces in the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition for emerging artists and it was purchased by a gentleman from Florida. I was excited to have sold another piece, but I kind of hate to see this one go as I really liked it. I'll have to do more in the same genre'.

This CD/DVD-R piece is called 'Razz-Ma-Tazz' and is the companion piece for 'Jazz' shown in a previous post. Wish you could see this piece in person in direct sunlight - it bursts into jewel-like colors that would make a Pharaoh envious.

A new piece using the torch-modified colored CDs and a little more percentage of torched DVD-Rs. It uses red, purple and just a touch of the yellow CD material and juxtapozes these with the irridescesence of the torched DVD-Rs. The purple CD material picks up and highlights the lavendars of the DVD-R material. The best part of the piece though is the crystalline depth of color in the DVD-R's. It is very appealing in a setting where the light falling upon it is from a side angle, but is really spectacular when viewed in direct sunlight. This piece is entitled "Jazz" and is now in a collection in Toronto, Canada.

Here is a new work using colored CDs and DVD-Rs. It uses red, purple and yellow CDs (torched of course) and mixes those primary colors with the irridescesence of the torched DVD-Rs. It is striking in its presence in a way the photo does not capture.

This piece was done to enter in a gallery show whose theme was the color red. It is entitled "Brothels of Oz".

This is a mosaic of jewels plundered from various ancient tombs of kings and queens. After long years of gathering the emeralds, aquamarines, saphires and other stones as yet unnamed in the west, I have set them in a pattern for your viewing pleasure.

Sure.

No doubt you have guessed that I lied about these being precious stones. They are in reality just old CDs modified with the heat of a butane torch and cut into shapes. But they did come from ancient tombs.

OK, I lied again. I actually just gathered various types of discarded CDs to use for this artwork. The different brands and types exhibit different colors when you torch them, but most of them become beautiful.

If anyone reading this has any old CDs please let me know. I particularly want the CD-R type that have the colored optical plastic. Also, any of those DVD-Rs that didn't burn correctly -- don't throw them in the trash where they are just another landfill problem -- give them to me and I will ply them with flame, turning them into a thing of beauty, if not quite ancient jewels.

Opalescent fire and spectral color are well exhibited in this recycled CD artwork. This photo represents the appearance of the piece in one type of lighting. In another light or reflectance setting, this piece will look entirely different. Also, depending upon the viewing angle the colors and character changes constantly. In direct sunlight the spectral colors are the best, but it is a snowy, overcast day here in Colorado and I don't have any direct sunlight for a photograph.

This piece is part of a collection in Greeley, Colorado.

Today's Harv Art is a metal framed field of recycled materials that mimics precious stones and metals. The scan doesn't quite capture the wonderful play of light on the DVD/CD materials, it is still beautiful.

The purple/red fields are torched DVD-R; the deep reds are cut from a colored CD; the silver-black strips are cut from regular CD while the goldy-silver strips are the back side of CD-Rs; all have been torch-modified. The border is cut from a torched aluminum can and carefully folded into a channel shape so as to finish off the edges. All are super-glued to a backer board for rigidity. The size is very small - about 2" x 3".

I find it to be tedious but enjoyable work. It is satifying to some part of my twisted and contorted soul to create beauty from discarded and plain materials.

This is DVD & CD material torched and cut and applied to a board in random mosaic pattern, enhanced with pastel rubs and framed in an aluminum can metal frame with bullet casing brass corner trim.

I've taken many photos of this piece but have yet to catch the absolutely incredible irridescence that results from the sunlight playing off of this material. This scan that I did with a Canon scanner however is better than I can do with my camera. I will try to find someone with a better digital camera and see if they can capture the reality of this material's beauty when is direct sunlight.

For now, lose yourself in the jewel-like beauty of this common material altered just a bit to become something entirely different and pretty.

Done some time ago, this little artwork features a little of everything. The primary material is flat stone enhanced with file cuts, drilled-in pin heads, colored pencil and ink. It is cut into and flush with the surface of foamcore that has been covered with a pastel paper with pastel rubs. Then pounded-out brass from old bullet casings and some copper sheet has been added for some glitter.

The original intent was to try to create an 'artifact' from an unknown primitive civilization whose religion and creative efforts were based upon the worship of the inert robots from a past civilization that they find scattered throughout their world. Because some of the robots still have some small atomic power units intact and partially react to those who approach, the people think they are living gods and create offerings of primitive objects, said art supposedly being an example.

Don't ask me how any of this makes sense; it surely doesn't. It just forms an obscure inspiration to create something different. The concept could be expanded and refined but I moved on to other ideas. Maybe some day I will come back to it and do a whole series with this idea.

This cute little fish was done as an experiment with repousse and chasing. Repousse is a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal (in this case Coke can aluminum) is ornamented or shaped by hammering from the reverse side. Chasing, on the other hand, is the opposite - hammering the metal down from the front side. When they are used in combination the result is a relief image that is somewhat sculptural. The ancient civilizations of South America used these techniques a lot with gold and silver foils and made some very striking artwork ornaments. The more malleable the metal, the easier it is to get good results. The Coke can aluminum is not as malleable as copper or gold but is available and free.

I have done this image very roughly so as to give it an abstract feel and then enhanced it with color from felt tipped markers. This is fun and reasonably fast. I want to experiment with it some more as I think some fossil images could be done with interesting effect with this technique.

This art experiment uses repousse' technique on can metal, replicating Mayan glyphs in a wholly new context. It is somewhat time consuming to do as the technique involves impressing the individual fields into the soft aluminum metal to a gradually increasing depth.

After doing this and some other pieces involving Mayan glyphs, all I can say it that those folks must have been doing some heavy duty drugs to come up with a system of writing that involves such convoluted images!

The pastel image for today typifies one of my favorite techniques for quick art that satifies the eye. The technique uses masques and powdered pastel chalks rubbed against the masques to form the hard edges while the pastels are feathered out like airbrush.

This particular image was created some years ago and the first original was sold to a dentist in Arizona. I liked the image so much that I replicated it again. Strangely enough, the wife of a dentist now wants to buy this replication. I guess there is something about this image that is attractive to those in the dental field. I suppose that this is because the inspiration for this image is derived from the oral cavity and dentition of the striped wombat.

Actually I just made that last part up. The pattern is one that I cooked up on the spot just because it appealed to my sense of composition.

Right now I am churning out more of these to take to all the dental offices around town cause apparently dental folks just can't resist this image.

Just kidding.

Similar to another piece shown on this blog previously, this is a cute little synthesis of pastels and raw metals. The metals are recycled from different sources, pounded unmercifully with a hammer on my section of railroad rail anvil and then polished up with steel wool.

These types of little artworks take very little time to produce. As I am growing less and less patient with every facet of existance this suits me fine. I can see the outcome in a short time (as opposed to some other art that takes ages to complete and that I get bored with before it is done).

Metal, all polished up with steel wool, set into the surface, arranged in pleasing composition; copper, aluminum; so shiny, so pretty.

Pastel chalk, rubbed on illustration board; pretty rose and lavendar colors; like a sunset fog on a planet with a purple star for a sun.

Art, random and meaningless, fun to think pointless thoughts about; useful for fantasy and mindless gazing for no reason; spurring some strange reaction in the human brain.

Metal shapes in a colored fog of pastel - that's what this Harv-art is.

Neo-Psycho-delic! That's what we have here. This piece seems to be some type of throw-back to the days of hipsters, kaleidoscope sunglasses and unlawful mushrooms.

I did this as a 'thank you' for one of my workmates because she had given me a bunch of very long, plastic drafting curves that her dad had used in his work. He had given them to her because he didn't need them any more. Since she does all her drafting on the computer she had no use for them either and, when I mentioned that I needed something along those lines for my artwork, she gave them to me.

Therefore I used one of them to develop the shapes of the metal portions of this artwork. Once again, it is recycled can metal modified by torch.

However, I found it much too tedious to cut the curves into the metal with perfectly matching, interlocking curves, so I gave up on it and let it lie dormant for a while. In the meantime I invented the torched CD/DVD material and so I decided to finish the piece with that. The DVDs torch to a delightful purple tinged with golds and in the right light and at the right angle they show incredible, firey spectrum colors as well. The photo does not do this justice at all - it should only be viewed in direct sunlight for full effect.

I signed the piece in a somewhat unique way - cutting out an H and a W from a bit of wording on a CD and gluing them within the bottom border as initials.

Needless to say, it is now in a private collection in Denver.

This image of the famous Lakota chief Red Cloud is something I did some years ago when I had more time on my hands (and I must have been crazy at the time as well, since this piece is done entirely with dots of ink from a Rapidograph pen). I utilized an unfused copier image of a photograph for 'Red' which was then erased once the ink had been applied. I added the custom border to give it a frame and balance and then checked myself into the asylum....because I knew I must be mad to do all those dots (estimated to be in the range of 16 million by the Bureau of Standards)!

I only did one of these and will never do another.

This fun little piece uses an intriguing juxtaposition of materials to achieve a pleasing visual effect. The rusty stuff is composed of sectionalized fragments of an 'ancient' tin can that I picked up in the mountains around an old mine site. The jewel-like stuff is torched DVD cut to fit in the slots created by the can fragments. It is all just glued onto a wheat colored board. Add an appropriate frame and you have a serendipitous contrast between the old and the very new.

Just something nice to hang on the wall to surprise and amaze your friends, neighbors and the local mental health officials.

I know what you must be thinking - Harvey's gone mad!

Though you may be at least partially correct, today's art is an experiment in doing mosaic with the torched CD material. It turned out well and is very pretty - especially in certain lighting. In sunlight it is very spectacular, throwing flashes of every color in the spectrum, while in fluorescent lighting it throws predominantly blue-green flashes. Overall, it looks like jewels of various kinds. I used three different varieties of CD on this piece, as well as two small accent triangles of brass bullet casing material.

It is all glued onto a dark blue background board. It took me a long time to do this as the pieces are pretty small and the overall piece is only about 4" x 6". Be sure to click on the photo to bring up the larger version (and to get an even better closeup, wait for the little expander box to come up in the lower right corner as you leave the cursor on the photo).

Next time I've got to work with larger pieces.

This little piece, only about 3" square, combines the foil from a chocolate bar, flame-modified and adhered to the backing paper, with various torch-modified CD fragments. The blue CD material is very beautiful and looks like sapphire in reality. The photo does not capture its jewel-like appearance. very well. Another is the sapphire and gold material from another type of CD. It also has not photographed well. The surface of this material looks like granulated gold due to the torch bubbling the plastic and the foil.

Putting it all together in an impromptu composition, it turned out to be a nice combination.

This is a pastel image is of my wife when she was a little girl. Ain't she just as cute as a bug's ear?

This piece is wrought with some colored pencil over a photostatic transfer from an old photo and enhanced with colored pastels. Pardon the perspective but it was necessary to avoid the glare on the glass of the framed piece.

Pastel 'rubs' form some background for the image, which is on pastel paper. The rub technique is simply some powdered pastel chalk rubbed into the paper with a tissue or a cotton pad. The use of straight-edge masks helps add interest to the cloud-like gradients of the 'rubs'.

Beware! Today's Harv-art may drive your eyes back into your skull a considerable distance, rebounding off your brain and popping them out of their sockets before dangling onto your cheeks in helpless awe!

OK, maybe not.

But you can't help but like this mosaic of pretty, glittering, irridescent shapes.

This little rectangle is composed of a random pattern of modified CD material. A random pattern of mosaic like this was called Opus Palladianum by the ancient Romans. It is basically just various shaped polygons fitted together to form a whole composition.

The CD's have been 'mistreated' with a torch to create the interesting visual effects. As they are turned at various angles in the light they refract the colors in ways that mimic opals or gems. Like many of the pieces shown in this blog, this piece is much better in person than in the photo shown here.

So, this piece weaves together the ancient techniques with ultra modern materials to create an 'eye-shattering' image of beauty.

More in the aluminum can metal vein. This piece is just shapes of various textures of mistreated can metal cut precisely together to form a random pattern that resembles the patterns seen when meteorite iron is etched with acid. That iron is mixed with nickel and exhibits a very unique pattern when etched. This piece mimics that.

The spectral color pattern in some of the aluminum pieces is more readily discernable in this photo than in most, but it still does not adequately show the amount of irridescence that exists in this work.

This is in a private collection in Denver. OK, so I gave it to my daughter Shelly for her birthday.

Todays excursion into the dark and twisted realm of Harv-art is kind of an experiment in lots of different textures achievable with old recycled can metal. Using a standard module, I simply did horrible things to these poor little metal objects. Some were torched, others were pounded with hammer on the anvil, some were pounded and then torched, some were scarred with muriatic acid, some were scoured with steel wool, some were pounded onto a wood rasp. Grouping them in a grid pattern, I gleefully display their suffering, pocked surfaces.

Seriously, because the aluminum is so nice and soft and at the same time pretty thin, it is fairly easy to coax visually interesting textures from them. Though not visible in this photo for some unknown reason, I have also used pastel to provide rays of rubbed texture radiating out of the gaps between the panels.

Do not mourn for these aluminum bits, though they have endured all manner of rough treatment, they are still accorded a place of honor upon my mantel shelf.

This piece of art is an amalgum of metals and stone. The flat limestone panel in the center is articulated with pastels and filed areas of flat fields. It also has a small fossil exposed in the top center. I've surrounded it with metals of various types - copper treated with torch, brass from old bullet casings, sheet brass from shim stock (nice soft alloy that is easy to work), can aluminum, etc.

This is another tiny artwork that was an experiment that turned out nice enough to frame.

I like to experiment with new techniques and materials - and most of the time I don't even follow up on successful experiments by creating full scale artworks based upon the invention of the moment.

This one melds pastel rubs with both pounded and polished as well as unmodified aluminum can metal strips. The metal strips are woven together (with a beaten copper one thrown in for good measure) and then pinned on the edges for more visual interest. Bright colors are introduced in the windows of the weave and the impression is one of casual looseness that gives an overall visual thrill.

You were thrilled to the core when you looked at it weren't you?

OK, maybe not - but it is a nice little visual accent to a nook above the cactuses in our living room.