Art-o-Mat

Herbert Hoover — Artist — is single-handedly trying to revive the economy (and make up for his famous namesake’s inability to do the same in a previous downturn) by means of his contribution to the Art-o-Mat project.

Lisa and I recently attended an opening event for Portland’s first Art-o-Mat now residing in the Alberta district. Knowing that Herbert was present in spirit, if not in person, we biked over to check out the fancy new member of the Art-o-Mat community.

Our new Art-o-Mat is a bright red hot-rod of a machine with obvious care put into every detail from the nice paint details to the very act of transporting it safely to it’s new home at the Radio Room.

There were a few other people there to check out the new art dispenser and one fine patron at the bar even offered to purchase my token from the bar tender. So off I went — token in hand — to find the object in question.

Sure enough, right there in the first slot, was Herbert’s pewter pretzel. After feeding the token into the magnificent machine, the little white standardized box with Herbert’s custom labeling emerged (from the slot no doubt used in the past for something with a picture of a camel) into the delivery tray below.

The pewter pretzel

Knowing that Herbert’s previous saltine offering find’s life in poses and places throughout the world through his Cracker Tracker website, I figured that this pretzel had something special to offer. So sure enough, as I was off to my shop in “the hole” (home of the P.90 camera) I encountered a common impediment — a freight train heading east along Sullivan’s Gulch. Rather than simply wait for the train to pass as is my usual habit, it occurred to me that the pretzel sitting on the seat next to me might offer a solution. So I put on the parking brake and got out to test my hunch. As you can clearly see from the video below, the pretzel came through in splendid form. Watch and listen closely and you too will find that the pretzel posses the amazing ability to increase the speed of the passing train.

Reminded that Herbert’s artistic skills also include pinhole photography and pleased with the time-saving benefits of this pewter object, I put the pretzel away and made my way up to the shop to work on the latest production of P.90 cameras.

Rejected Apple, Fall, Aomori Prefecture

I originally met Jane after she purchased a Pinoramic 120 camera for a project she did on WW1 cemeteries in France called Tears of Stone: WW1 Remembered.

Jane shows a natural talent with the panoramic format and was inspired by the large number of WW1 memorials she saw on a trip to France to return and document them. The gallery of images that resulted from that trip can be seen at Jane’s website.

Memento, Vermandovillers German Cemetery, France

Jane used an original model Pinoramic 120 model for the Tears of Stone project.

Jane Alden Stevens with Pinoramic 120

He sent me an artwork.

I think there is a check inside

for the repair …

but I don’t know

because I haven’t opened it.

Art in Transit — from Steven Holloway

Pond view taken with a P.90 lensless camera

Since the Bungaloft renovation took over my waking hours at the cessation
of the watch winder project last year I haven’t had a lot of time to do much
else. Isn’t there an expression “house finished — life over”?

On the Hill

But just recently I decided to restart production of the P.90 cameras.
After having celebrated the beginnings of the financial meltdown by ceasing
production in late 2007, I have received ongoing interest in the cameras.

Pots and pans

So the last set of cameras from the late 2007 production is being assembled and
should be available for sale this summer. Subsequent to that a new set of P.90
cameras will begin production.

View across vineyard and lake

I’m hoping to lure some current users of the P.90 into sending along some of
their more interesting work.
In the meantime, I am posting a set of my P.90 photos.
If you would like to receive the latest news on the P.90 cameras you can sign
up for the P.90 newsletter using the form available on the right side panel of
the blog.

You’ll also find the original P.90 release newsletter posted on the P.90 page.

Corner detail — 5 by 7 inch field camera — 1992

Making things is one of the fundamental aspirations. Some people aspire to travel, read or play music — some dedicate their lives to making money — still others find their calling in dedicated service to a particular cause. One of the great joys of my life is living through a time when seemingly more and more people have found that making objects with their hands is a way to fulfill at least some of the need to find meaning in daily life. The range of skills and talents I encounter  is more and more amazing all the time. Being in Portland has only enhanced the experience. And working in a building full of creative makers had proven to be a real treat.

I made this photo with a P.90 pinhole camera. In contrast to the digital camera experience, this kind of subject (with a lot of motion) is a situation in which the result is always a pleasant surprise once the film is processed.

Oaks Park along the waterfront is a small amusement park adjacent to a city park and a wildlife refuge. It is over 100 years old. On a cool, misty, Portland day in early May there were a lot of families out keeping the children entertained and hoping for the return of summer weather.

I was originally attracted to this place when I heard about the floating floor of the roller rink. At Oaks Park there is an indoor rink with a beautiful 100 ft by 200 ft wooden floor. Because the area next to the river is historically prone to flooding, the floor structure is made so that it can be detached from the building when flooding is eminent. Because the floor rests on floats it is then able to float above the possible flood waters until they recede. The last time this happened was 1996.

In addition, the Oaks Park rink has the largest remaining skating-rink pipe organ in the world. Impressive even for a non-skater like me.

I’ll start with this:

These cameras entailed more trickery than I had originally anticipated. (If you are a maker of things, you probably just thought to yourself “Imagine that!”) Part of that trickery evolved from my fateful decision to use a lot of curves for this design and to make them from cross-laminated, wood veneer parts.

The back of the camera includes a removable curved back and a top and bottom strip of material that becomes part of the camera’s body. The trick was to make these three parts in a way that would allow them to fit together in the same “plane” while also managing the difficulty of holding the pieces during fabrication. The next three photos show the solution I came up with.

This image shows a vacuum fixture for holding the raw part on the left, the gang saw that does the cutting and an example of a raw panel ready to be cut. A rotating fitting for the vacuum line is visible at the top of the vacuum fixture.

This view show the saw gang arbor just past the end of cut. The handle visible just to the right of the saw arbor would have been used to rotate the vacuum fixture with the part in place past the gang saw while the vac fitting on top of the fixture allows the vac tube to remain stationary. You can see the three parts along with the leftover waste strips at the top and bottom.

Once the basic fixture design was checked out, the base of the fixture was reconfigured to allow for the attachment of a dust collection/safety shroud. A standard shop vac hose connects to the port on the right side of the shroud. Just enough of the gang blade set protrudes to cut the stock without undue risk to the operator. As the parts come off of the fixture, they were taped together to keep them in grain matched sets. With this fixture setup, a whole stack of raw panels can be cut into parts (that require only light edge sanding) in a very short time.

There naturally would be many ways of doing this but my particular procedure reflects my own experience and the tools and machines available to me. I am fortunate to have an Aciera milling machine in the shop (that should be a post!) so this procedure was largely driven by the milling machine mode of working.

The original design for this camera included a built in LCD/pushbutton interface and a control knob to change exposure slits. The current project entails converting the camera to use a remote, hand held controller operating through a bluetooth radio interface. User commands are entered via a touch screen LCD interface.

This view of the interface shows the screen layout. The areas labeled Exposure, 360 Degrees, and 1/60 second plus the two arrows at the bottom of the screen are sensitive to a touch to the screen. The red dots indicate that the user has chosen to change the camera’s angle of rotation. By pressing either of the arrows, the displayed angle can be changed. A press to the shutter speed button offers similar control over the range of shutter speeds.
Once the settings have been made, the user can touch the Exposure button and commence exposure. Once the exposure is under way, the bar graph above the arrows will indicate the progress of the current exposure.
Stay tuned for more details as the project moves toward completion.

The P.90 beta cameras are completing the testing phase and the results are looking promising. Some good feedback from beta testers has led to improvements and some good ideas. Production has begun on the new cameras.
The photo above is of one the beta cameras currently undergoing testing. This material, curly mahogany, will not be used in the production camera. The first run of P.90 cameras is being produced in domestic black Cherry.
Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to receive release announcements for the new camera.

A stroll around downtown Portland led me to the old customs building. It is a beautiful structure facing a downtown park. About a 15 minute exposure with the P.90 prototype during a conversation with a curious passerby led to this image.

The following information on this building was provided by Bart King from his book:

An Architectural Guidebook to Portland

9. U.S. Custom House 1901; addition 1938
220 NW Eighth Avenue
Architect: James Knox Taylor/Supervisor: Edgar M. Lazarus

This massive and somewhat unusually designed building sits regally within a full city block and on top of a huge in-fill. The Custom House was substantially built up on its site to avoid the flooding problems that plagued this part of town during the early 1900s, and its pilings go down 80–100 feet.

Variously described by as French Renaissance or Italian Renaissance Revival, the ornamentations of this classical, granite-faced building is fascinating. Columns, scrolls, quoins, arches. dentils, and keystones abound. Find the terra cotta lintel stones over the window arches showing interesting governmental symbols like the staff of Aesculapius, and the dreaded glove on a stick.

Among the profusion, one finds images of scales adorning the building. These reflect both the weighing of goods inspected for customs and the traditional scales of justice. Courthouses were originally intended for the top two floors of the Custom House, and revenue from customs duties was an important function of Portland’s waterfront. The forbidding ironwork on the windows of the first floor is original to the building, and was designed to protect confiscated contraband and bureaucratic treasures like seals and paperwork.

Inside, with over 100,000 square feet, there is a lot of building to explore. A 1977 restoration helps the marble and classical plaster moldings welcome the eye, and a grand cast-iron stairway rises to the fourth floor. (The top floors of the east and west wings were added in 1938.) The two towers visible from the front (west side) of the building are for ventilation, and do not contain bells. In 1906, a small metal tower was built near the north chimney that dropped a large “time” ball at noon each day. Sailors would sight it and set their ship clocks accordingly. Construction to the east of the Custom House eventually obstructed the tower, and it was removed in 1925.

In 2005, the General Service Administration (which manages all federal buildings) announced possible plans for a developer to transform the Custom House into a mixed-use building. The idea is to house a hotel here and perhaps also have space for the University of Oregon architecture school. Creating public accessibility to this beautiful building is an exciting prospect; expect the huge open courtyard enclosed by the elegant loggia on the west side to attract coffee drinkers.

James Knox Taylor (1857–1929) was the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury when he designed this building. An advocate of classical design, Taylor worked with Cass Gilbert (architect of the U.S. Supreme Court Building) before establishing his own practice. Building supervisor Edgar Lazarus is well known for his distinctive Vista House design in the Columbia Gorge.