Monday, November 27, 2006



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.

Saturday, November 18, 2006




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.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

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!

Sunday, November 05, 2006



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.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006



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.

Sunday, October 08, 2006



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.

Sunday, September 24, 2006



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'.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006



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.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006



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.

Monday, September 18, 2006




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.

Sunday, September 17, 2006



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.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006



This is an older piece of mixed media artwork that incorporates a flat limestone slab. The slab is articulated with drilled holes (thus the name: Holey Man) and some lines sawn into the surface. I've glued some pin heads into some of the holes as brads/buttons or some such. They provide a shiny counterpoint to the roughness of the stone. The slab has been recessed into the surface of foamcore and copper wires have been extended from some of the holes out onto the pastel paper surface. Also, a beaten copper 'head' shape was added as a focal point on top. The surface of the pastel paper has been patterned by mask-edged pastel rubs in various colors to complete the piece.

I like this stone that I got from around Pueblo Resevoir as it is soft enough to drill and cut with a saw but hard enough to retain its edges and corners. I picked up a bunch of it from there but have never had time to use much of it. I hope to eventually make a lot more of these kinds of pieces to sell on Ebay, the street, door-to-door, on the side of the street at stop lights, etc. I could hold up a sign reading: "For God's sake people - Buy this art!!!"

Well, maybe not.

Sunday, September 10, 2006


This piece uses entirely recycled materials like most of my artwork, but it is a little better at transforming common materials into something valuable looking and pretty.

The background material is the gold foil off of a chocolate bar, altered with a torch (the silver circular areas are what the gold foil does when subjected to heat). It is then adhered to a backing of foam core board (rescued from the trash also) and given a subtle arc pattern by smoothing with the edge of a triangle. Then it is further articulated with embossing grooves into the foil in an abstract pattern. This, in turn, is then augmented by jewel-like shapes of torch-altered CD (that particular type of CD transforms to look like gem quality aquamarine!) set recessed into the surface of the foam board. Finally, some brass straight pin heads are placed in a pattern within the composition to add more interest.

It’s shiny and golden and looks like it is set with jewels – it resembles something from an ancient tomb but it is made with stuff that people throw away every day. For some reason I get a big charge out of making this happen.

Saturday, September 09, 2006



And now for something completely different. This is a small experimental piece utilizing a wide variety of different materials. The pretty opalescent material is of my own invention – a unique form of a very common material.

I discovered that if a compact disc is subjected to a torch or other flame on the label side the iridescent foil deforms in ways that make the CD look like an opal. Depending on what kind of CD is used, the look and color is different. CD-Rs are very nice when treated in this manner. DVD-Rs are absolutely spectacular when torched – they look like the best fire opals.

In this little experiment I combined some torched CD panels with some flame-modified, iridescent aluminum fragments, some hammer-flattened copper pot cleaner (the net-like stuff), some brass mesh (similarly flattened and burnished) with a little pastel articulation here and there. All this is glued onto a backing of cream-colored illustration board.

Friday, September 08, 2006




This is the third piece in the metallic Art/Mathematics triptych. It is another composition of Phi-based 'golden triangles', but in this case, the triangles are arranged in a spiral pattern with somewhat diagonal symetry and ascending sizes. If you look closely you can see how the triangles interlock and create the spiral. This is counterpointed with some intersecting golden triangles at mid-height. All are articulated by alternating the colors and types of metals.

The photo of this piece shows a little more of the torch-induced spectral colors in the aluminum can metal than the photos of the other pieces. In reality, there is much more of color but the photo just doesn't capture it well.

Thursday, September 07, 2006



This piece is a companion to the one shown in yesterday's post. It is composed of the same materials but a different geometry. Both pieces (as well as tomorrow's piece) were created to reflect a synthesis of art with mathematics. The basic feature in this work is the 'golden triangle', another polygon based upon the Phi ratio. This time, the height of the triangle compared to the length of its base is the Phi value of .618033. Multiple sizes of the same shape superimposed strategically within one another establishes horizontal lines that are then articulated by alternating the different colors of metal. Flame generated spectral color is present in the bronzy aluminum pieces but unfortunately cannot be discerned very well in the photo.

Like an unreasoning bird attracted to shiny objects, or a fish that goes after a gleaming lure, I just love to work in lustrous metals and other glittery/glistening materials. It connects somehow with the core of my primitive brain, initiating certain electro-chemical impulses that my upper level cognitive faculties find pleasurable.

Translation: the Harv entity really likes pretty, shiny things!

Wednesday, September 06, 2006


Here's one of the pieces that were in a recent show at Space Gallery in Denver. It's an image based upon how the fabled 'golden rectangle' is constructed, with multiple golden rectangles superimposed to add visual interest.

The golden rectangle is special because its sides are in the proportion of 'Phi' to each other. This proportion, symbolized by the Greek letter Phi (φ) is an irrational number similar to the more well known Pi. The Phi ratio (approximated by 1.6180339 to 1) is special because it is not only a mathematical and geometric ideal possessing some unique and remarkable properties within the realm of numbers but it recurs throughout the physical structures in nature and is found in virtually all living creatures on earth. The human body has many components (including aspects of the DNA molecule) that exhibit the Phi proportion. The ratio of the lengths of the bones in the palm of your hand to the lengths of the first joints of your fingers is the Phi ratio. This is true of each succeeding joint of the fingers to the next adjacent ones as well. It's all very cool and almost spooky.

This piece is all composed of recycled metals glued to a backing - soft drink can aluminum, brass from old bullet casings, lead foil from the necks of wine bottles and even foil from the lids they give you at Chipotle for your 'burrito bowl to go' (this is nice aluminum to work with because it is of wonderful softness, cuts easily and takes on a nice luster when polished). I brought out spectral colors in the can aluminum with careful application of a propane torch and also used muriatic acid on some of it to bring out a different color/texture - all to add variety and visual interest. The pieces are much better when viewed in person because the digital image doesn't convey the spectral colors very well.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006


This is your first taste of Harv-art. It's a piece that I did with homage to the famous Archaeopteryx fossil in the Berlin Museum. The skeleton is done with recycled aluminum from wire and other sources, pounded flat on an anvil to give a texture and then polished with steel wool to give it a sheen. I cut all the little shapes of the bones and glued them to the backing with superglue. The 'bones' are laid out on pastel imprints of the feathers and other body outlines from the fossil image. Further articulation of pastels mimics the surrounding stone matrix. The base for all of this is a pastel paper afixed to a foamboard backing. Michaelangelo could not have done a more excellent synthesis of sculpture and pastel painting, don't you agree?

Well, maybe that is overstating things a tad, but I am proud of this piece and have never seen anything quite like it. I plan to do a larger version someday using copper instead of aluminum. This piece is currently in a private collection in Chicago.

OK,..... so I gave it to my son Aaron who lives in Chicago now. It's still 'in a private collection in Chicago'!

Hello cyberworld! Harv now has electrons up your virtual wazoo. Hope you're happy now. I know I am. Once I verify that all this is working, I am going to start spewing my particular variety of vitriol, philosophy and general insanity at irregular intervals.

Good luck with that - it may not be entirely pleasant (but it should be entertaining).