As it happened (from my Journal archives)

July 20, 2007

Friday 8:45 am - I have renamed the next puzzle from "Counting the Seconds" to "Watching Time". Watching Time has two meanings. The first meaning is the conventional one: to observe (and participate in) the passage of time; the second meaning is something I made up: "to watch": the act of portraying time in a watch.

Here is a portion of my absolutely brilliant work showing how the digits change from 6 to 7 to 8. The green dots are segment changers and the blue arrows segment movers. The puzzle will feature the whole numeric sequence 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and back to 0. As you look at my work, you see the digits change and you participate in the passage of time.

I created the work in March of 1998, from ideas I had going back much further. I "cleaned up" the work a couple weeks ago, making sure everything was aligned throughout the work, increasing the size of the green dots, repositioning the location of the blue arrows and changing the background from a somewhat annoying checkerboard pattern.

Watching Time is going to be cut as a child's puzzle - the puzzle will be fairly large about 14" x 15" and will contain around 100 Swirl Curl pieces.

July 23, 2007

Monday 8:42 pm - Friday evening I went to a private gallery opening, featuring Kim of Mixed Media and two other artists, downtown. Nice show, Kim sold one of her works - one of the two I had previous announced I was going to be featuring as puzzles in the coming months. Sunday afternoon we had a barbecue at Mixed Media with over 20 people present - overall an excellent relaxing weekend, finally.

Today I spent several hours this morning doing further "tweaking" of my Watching Time work - increasing the resolution and getting rid of the "jaggies" in the digital image. Early in the afternoon I printed and mounted the work. Tomorrow I plan to cut the puzzle. I've upped the projected piece count from about 100 to about 200. There will be no figurals.

Later this afternoon and early evening, I spent more than three hours dripping with sweat in the heat to do a dance friend a favor - cut some 1/4" Plexiglas into sections which will be used to block a sliding door opening for a portable air conditioner. This was definitely a "do once" job as I had lots of problems with the Plexiglas melting while I was cutting it, and squirmy blades, even though I used a lot of oil to lubricate the work. I ended up with something which I think is usable, will find out in the next few days.

July 24, 2007

Tuesday 10:25 pm - I increased the piece count of this month's puzzle again, will be around 400 pieces, obviously not going to be a child's puzzle now; in fact it is going to be quite difficult! I cut almost half of it today and will get some cutting in tomorrow. I expect to complete it on Thursday and start the auction on Friday.

This evening I saw a Preview showing of "Sunshine" a science fiction thriller. Impressive special effects but overall I felt the plot was a little shallow - not as strong as 2001 or Alien.

Bird still in nest.

July 25, 2007

Wednesday 11:16 pm - I got some cutting in this morning, cutting perhaps 80 pieces or so of puzzle #745, Watching Time, now about 70% completed. The rest of the day was mostly dance related, focused on the performance routine, a regular class and a studio party. Tomorrow I expect to complete the puzzle and as mentioned yesterday, the auction will start on Friday as the 68th puzzle of the 100 Puzzles Project.

When I first checked today, the Mourning Dove nest was without bird, so I checked the nest: two eggs. When I left, a Mourning Dove was back, sitting on the eggs.

July 26, 2007

Thursday 3:18 pm - Puzzle #745 is done. Looks good. I will have a write-up, including the final piece count and launch the auction tomorrow.

July 27, 2007

Friday 6:28 pm - Auction #68 launched. Final piece count: 408.

From the auction description:

This puzzle, Watching Time, features a digital design I created in March of 1998, from ideas I had going back much further. In 2007, I "cleaned up" the work, making sure everything was aligned throughout the work, increasing the size of the green dots, repositioning the location of the blue arrows and changing the background.

I think the image is brilliant, capturing an essential element: time. The image features the numeric sequence 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and back to 0. As you look at my work, you see the digits change and you participate in the passage of time. The red digits are representative of the way numeric digits are portrayed in some digital numeric displays. In this work, the digits represents the "seconds" column of a digital watch, progressing from left to right, top to bottom. The green dots are, in my imagination, "state changers". They appear when the "state" of a particular segment making up the digit is either going to go from being off to on or from on to off. In my imagination I came with another idea, one of "movers". These appear when one of the segments is going to "move" to another location. The combination of "state changers" and "movers" change the digits from one number to the next as time passes.

This work is one of 10 planned works. I've completed four others but have not yet made them into puzzles. The other five will be designed and completed in the coming years. I plan to have a gallery exhibit the 10 works when they are completed.

The puzzle includes my signature piece (signed, numbered and dated on the back) and one "Egg" piece. I also marked a second piece on the back indicating the puzzle belongs to the 100 Puzzles Project. A third piece is marked indicating that the art work is my own.

This nice sized puzzle is cut in my Swirl Curl cutting style with regular sized pieces. There is no color line cutting although a few of the green "state changer" dots were "captured" by some pieces. As the puzzle is mostly a light peach colored background with red digits, this puzzle could be rather difficult to assemble. Quite difficult in fact. Note that puzzle does not have a black border as suggested in the photo.