Image heavy!
Hey now! My name is Patrick. I write to you from Eagle River Wi. First let me ask, Is there anyone else up here in this bleak-yet-beautiful preternatural teabag wasteland? I need to make some new friends, get out of the house now & then for a beer etc.
My usual online moniker is leathersmith owing to the dozen years or so I have been making a living in my leathershop aka basement or living room depending on the house at the time. I have been incorporated in Wisconsin, then Florida, then Georgia, and then back to Wisconsin. Artists can be (s)Corporations too you know, thats how we write off everything! In the long run, I have been relatively successful making a living off of my "art" including but not limited to painting, ceramics, music, and lapidary. So I would like to introduce my newest artform, the suspended revolving refraction generator. After a bit of back-story.
I always think of John Boehner's belly button lint so now that you have that picture in your mind, see you below for a story of an artist.
Painter, potter, musician sling maker,
My first foray into the digital realm was building my own website for my at-home pottery studio where I made stoneware dumbeks. That was back in the day when NetworkSolutions made you pay $70 odd bucks for two years worth of a dot com name. I called myself 2fires, because pottery fires twice you know. I built my sites in Notepad. I did this in a run-down mobile home in Madison WI
Patrick trimming a stoneware dumbek
I used a kickwheel to make drums like this
I learned to throw clay while serving a five year federal prison sentence for a minor LSD bust. My case did
get to SCOTUS on the LSD carrier medium issue but they screwed us 7-2. The Dissent is rather scathing. But we had a great art studio to wile away the years in, not to mention a theatre, music rooms, and a six lane bowling alley. I did some acrylic on canvas while in prison. This one took 6 months.
And I threw a LOT of clay, with friends like these two (I am the felon on the right)
Funny story: one day we saw some dumps trucks enter the camp from the windows in the art center. The trucks were carrying some local red clay to refinish the bocce ball courts for the old italian guys. A bunch of us into pottery grabbed every bucket we could find and stole all the clay we could carry off (in broad daylight) to process and use for ourselves. The drum furthest to the left is made with the clay we stole from the mafiosos.
To my regret, in my five years for 1000 hits (first offense) I never had time to try out the bowling alley. Maybe I didn't want to catch something from the shoes. It was a "work camp, so I had a day job ($1.15/hr) running multi-million dollar federal contracts for acres of office cubicles which were made in various federal prison camps across the country. Evenings were spent jamming in the band room, doing something in the art rooms or watching a movie in the full-size theatre, dime bag of hot buttered popcorn in hand. We had a nice salad bar. Cornish Game Hen on Christmas. For federal holidays the inmate bands would put on a concert in the theater. I played bass in a band called The Deadheads, cuz we were.
The guards would grumble that we, the inmates, had it made because in the dead of winter, we the inmates did not have to go out and try to start our cars in the sub-zero Alberta Clipper that screams out of the north. Lucky inmates! Life in a Level 1 Camp can be a little surreal. One time my locker was searched (shake down) and I was called into the Captain's office. My books were stacked on the desk: Israel Regardie's Golden Dawn tome, a pack of chaplain-approved tarot cards, and my D&D character sheets:
I was warned that casting spells on the other inmates or staff would result in an administrative "shot". Loss of Commissary for a week or two. Or worse, administrative segregation.
Good times. Seems like lifetimes ago now. I'm going to skip ahead several years, and spare you my internet porn star years. However my most current income source derives directly from that phase of my career, specifically my Sling Empire.
I have made thousands of slings, and don't tell anyone this, but they are all connected like an electric gossamer web reaching around the globe, from Nome to Melbourne, Newfoundland to Guam, Sweden to Spain, Seattle to Miami, New York to Los Angeles and all points in between including one in Tel Aviv of all places. Oy! Its not a "one sling to rule them all" thing so much as it is a massive battery wired in series AND parallel! The nodes sense and empower each other! M theory, you know.
So. We come to the Present. The craptacular economy has squeezed my online sling business to despair, so I cast about for something new to do. Reinvent myself at 52. I find an ad on Craigslist for a commercial sewing machine operator, only 250 miles from where I lived in Madison. In the broader scheme, I've moved for promise of less.
This is going to be a bit condensed: A boat cushion/cover shop in Northern WI needs a sewing machine operator and advertises locally for a year before broadening the Craigslist ad to all of Wisconsin when I see it last October. After some 250 mile road trips, I am offered the job and accept. Last January I move from Madison to Eagle River. I have 2 cats and no rentals at the time allow cats, so I look at small houses for sale. I am 52, and its time to stop renting, I think. I find a small house, nice enough, and get a USDA Rural Financing loan. I am scheduled to start my new job the first Monday of March. At the end of that week, the new "manager" (who lives in Tampa btw) phones me to ream me out for not making enough boat cushions. I was hired to make boat covers, not boat cushions. The way my abrupt dismissal went down, and because my position is still unfilled, I had to assume the assholes found out I'm gay. Or worse, found some old online info revealing I'm also HIV+. I will stipulate that information is out there, if you are a good detective. Anyway, after one short week on my new job which I moved 250 miles for, spent $1500 in rental vans and storage, and assumed a 30 year mortgage because I have cats,
after only one short week of work the "manager" in Tampa (of all places) bans me from returning to the premises, saying my tools and paycheck will be in the mail. Accused me of lying about being able to sew on a commercial machine. I have owned my own since 2002.
What the hell!? I was the only person in the entire state to answer the job ad, the guy in Tampa sends me a letter of intent to hire to show the bank and they shit-can me the first week. The job remains unfilled. I tried Wisconsin Equal Opportunity division but crapped out on my discrimination claim.
And I am stuck with a 30 year mortgage.
Its a nice little house. Glad I have a snow blower.
This part of Wisconsin is quite beautiful. My mortgage is less than any rent would be. But I need to ramp up a new income source, once again falling back on my basic artistic abilities.
I am trying to take over as much local market share from my ex-employer as I can, and am starting to get my name out but the boat stuff has dried up for the season. I do pretty nice work, which is a reason I hope to hook up with local Kossacks; I don't know anyone around here and need to network, find some kind locals.
Here are a set of AlumaCraft seats I re-did recently
And a new boat cover for a 31' wooden Shepherd boat that is bigger than my house! There are some ridiculously rich people around here.
The boat is named Branch Office. Its probably worth more than my house.
That boat cover paid for one month's mortgage. These pics are also on
my new Facebook page (I kind of shudder a little when admitting I am using Facebook, but if it pays the bills, what the hell)
So after much prevarication, here it is! The mobile in this video is number 10 (or so) of an on-going series. And while I did my best to capture the thing in action, you really need to be right there in the room to get the full effect.
The perfect gift for the person who a) has everything and b) has south-facing windows
I hope to sell 5 or 6 of these in the next week or so. Like so many others, I am treading a razor's edge financially. Anti-depressants go a long way towards not stressing over money. Also the sagacious wisdom of Free Wheelin Franklin sustains me. To excess.
But meanwhile, I am offering these Crystal Ball Rainbow Mobiles for $200.00 which includes shipping with the Lower 48. I think these are very original, and I hope the market niche is broader than my slings & butt plug harness market.
I have a Paypal account, and a 100% customer happiness rating. I've been selling my stuff online since 1994 and have never had an unsatisfied customer. No charge-backs or whatever they call it. For these sales, I ask you forward an email address and I will send a PayPal invoice to you.
Thanks for reading this, see you in the comments!
Patrick