Charity's Memorial
Charitiy's mom taught school for 29 years and is noww retiring. Charity was able to get dozens of fellow teachers, students, herself her dad and such to provide statements describing their memories of her teaching. Charity asked me to incorporate these into a memorial project. We are all familiar with the brass tags stuck to a board, well, Charity and I had other ideas, so she allowed me to design and make the memorial project for her. So, revisiting the glorious Art Nouveau past, instead of copying what has been done previously, I attempted to create what an Emille Galle or a Louis Majorelle or a Eugene Gaillard would create if they were still alive and had available modern technology. So, I did what to my knowledge has never been done, a back lit with LEDs since it is intended to hang on the wall where light will not go through it, stained glass, Art Nouveau cherry wood sash instead of lead window, with excerpts from quotations reverse painted on the glass, her class room portrait applied to the glass roundel, and, 98% of the remaining quotations I incised onto the copper cowling that I wrapped all around the outside perimeter. So far as colors, the teacher likes purple, so do I, purple, however is a strong color, and for me, strong colors are to be used like spices, quite sparingly and judiciously. So, I put three small ticks of grape purple at the base, then the palest purple wherever I needed text to show through, then transitioning with yellow/gold into a streaky sunset orange marmalade sky, sunset orange implying the sunset years of life. Well, I think that I covered everything except how i feel about this project, this is the sort of thing that I love and already have an idea percolating in my head for the next one, and I love, love, love those LED lights.
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Working alone, I state working alone because nearly everything that I design and make are works of art made by me alone and signed by me for 20+ years, Ralph produces furnishings and signs rebelling against "mechanical mediocrity" refusing to work within the limitations imposed by machines and produce objets d'art which can only be accomplished with many hours/days/weeks/months of hand tooling.
To summarize, I am an artisan, not merely a furniture maker. Thank you for your interest in my fascination.
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