12/30/11
The Sanford Heart Mural is being colored. Check it out here. (Scroll down to the bottom of that page.)
12/23/11
Visit our Christmas website to see and hear a little bit about our family this year:
www.kulzerdesign.com/Christmas/
12/15/11
More progress was made last weekend on the Sanford Heart Hospital clay murals. Check out the latest at the link above.
I'm also working on another sculpture but I can't show the pictures for that one until after 12/25.
And since we're talking about 12/25... I did happen to post a list of fun stuff that our loyal readers might find helpful if they feel it necessary to give gifts to Kulzer Design Studios' principal artist. Click here to see a bunch of things I'd love to have someday.
12/5/11
Lots of progress has been made on the Sanford Heart Hospital clay mural. Another hard weekend of work is scheduled for the weekend of 12/10 so check back again for more!
11/29/11
I guess this blog gets updated about once a month, doesn't it? Two projects are consuming my time now: The Northwoods painting and the Sanford Heart Hospital clay mural. Check out the progress and come back again soon to see more. Even if this blog isn't updated, the pictures usually are.
10/31/11
Happy Halloween! Big deal. I took some time today to clear off one of my camera's memory cards and found some pics of the finished bronze patina Abe bust. They're posted here. The real treat tonight isn't all the candy, it's clicking the link to the larger images of Abe. (make sure you enlarge the downloaded image to full size so you can see the details.)
10/27/11
Started a small painting commission yesterday. I'll be working on this periodically over the course of the next couple weeks between finishing up some pottery commissions that I started a while ago. Keep checking here to see how it's progressing.
10/5/11
Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple died today at age 56. I was shocked and saddened when I read the news. Yes, he resigned from Apple a couple months ago for health reasons but one never really expects anything serious until something serious happens.
He did amazing things to make computers accessible to the "regular Joe". Apple Computers were the first to offer a mouse and the "point and click" paradigm that we have all become accustomed to. His company almost single handedly ushered in the era of desktop publishing, making it possible for anyone to produce and print high quality letters, brochures, newspapers and even magazines.
In fact, the computer I'm using right now and the computers I've used to create all of my publications from the old "Knews" letters in 1995 to the current websites have been Macs.
The world has lost one of it's great innovators today. Keep Steve and his family in your prayers.
9/23/11
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA!!!
My grandfather turns 94 today and is the picture of who I want to be like when I'm his age. (He's still taking care of himself, living in the house he built when my mom was a baby, and driving himself where ever he wants to go.) Heck, I hope I can be more like him even now. He's such a kind and generous man. I've always been impressed with his patience, positive attitude and happy demeanor. He's gone through alot. His father died when he was young (meaning he had to help provide for the family at a very young age), he lived through World War 2, he endured his sister and brothers and wife passing on before him.
Maybe the difficulties in life teach a person to appreciate the good things. Maybe someone who lives through hardship is better able to put things in perspective and relish the times when life is not so difficult. Or maybe my grandfather just has some sort of gene that makes him a genuinely happy, good, and saintly person. I'm afraid that gene hasn't been passed on to me, but maybe through a little conscientious work on my part I can become more like him before my 94th birhtday.
9/18/11
Since school started I've done more school work than anything. But an interesting opportunity came our way in the form of a bleacher backdrop. Mr. Banks and I worked to get a 44 foot long lettering commission done before Homecomming. Since Homecoming is 2 weeks away, I think we succeeded. Click the image to see the whole thing.
8/19/11
Put up some more pics of the Lincoln portrait . Check them out here:
http://www.kulzerdesign.com/art/sculpt/abe/index.html Can you believe it, he's still not finished! Been busy with other things as you can see by previous posts below.
8/18/11
Working on a pricing page here. Many people ask how much "such and such" is so I thought it'd be a good thing to have my prices readily available for interested parties. That and it'll help me remember how much I charge for this stuff. I'll post the address here when the page is further along.
8/9/11
Despite the frantic pace of producing paintings like those below, (Completed 8 of them yesterday alone!) we still took time for some fun. The kids and I have been busy building for the annual Lego Building Contest at the fair. I actually had some competition this year. There were 4 adult entries including mine so that was nice. Despite the competition, I still came home with first place. Click the image at the left to see all the kulzer family's entries.
8/3/11
Yet another example of our fired clay wall paintings. I've actually documented the painting process of this one in pictures. IF I get all these things done and feel like being an educator, I'll post them later. For now, enjoy my very favorite clay wall hanging yet. (I might have to keep this one for myself.)
8/2/11
Another example of our fired clay wall paintings. I like how this one turned out too. When you're doing so many, it's difficult to keep them all looking good so you, dear viewers, will be treated to only the better works of art.
8/1/11
We'll be at the MN Garlic Festival in Hutchinson August 13 with some clay wall hangings similar to the one shown here. Click the small image for a full version. (It will pop up in a new browser window.) I've been working on the backgrounds for the last few weeks and now am finally starting the subject matter. This is the first completed one. But after seeing it in pictures, there are a few little details I'll add before calling it completely finished.
7/17/11
Just updated the "sketchbook" section with a couple more cards I made a while ago. It's about time.
7/2/11
Here's something you don't see every day... A sculpture started in 1997 and finally finished this week. A sculpture 14 years in the making. It has been sitting in my attic for years and I finally decided to finish it off and sell it cheap. If anyone wants it, I'll let it go for $200 just to get it out of my house. Contact me if you're interested.
6/26/11
Been working on another little sculpt this past week. Long ago my dad said I should sculpt a president like Kennedy or Lincoln. I'm finally working on that suggestion. I'm going to leave this sculpture rough and impressionistic. I wanted to do that with the Anticipation sculpt from last week but fell into my usual "smoothing" process and ended up overworking her. She's still rough but not as impressionistic as I had wanted. Funny how I'm totally in control of what I do and yet, "out of control" as I get in the flow.
6/20/11
Just updated the site with my latest work, Anticipation. I entered this work along with Mike's portrait in the "Art on the Plains" exhibit from the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND. More info will come when I learn of the acceptance or rejection of the works.
6/2/11
Ya ever wonder why you do what you do? I just pulled a large piece from the kiln. This piece was to be a base for a large sculpture. Countless hours were put into it. It cracked. A very large and possibly irreparable crack. The image here is from before the firing. Stay tuned to see if I can repair the crack...
5/17/11
iPad...can it really be used for work? Maybe. As a test i'm editing this blog post on an ipad. my wife paid for half of this thing as a birthday gift and I've been amazed at how many things I can do on it. It is amazingly small and capable!
I can use it to edit my websites and draw. In fact you can click here to see an example.
4/26/11
I finally got around to finishing a big section to this site, the kids 18 month painted portraits. I've been meaning to get that updated since I redesigned this site in '09. I guess, with 5 kids, there are usually better things to do than work on the computer.
4/14/11
Yesterday I was informed that my Grandma, my Mom's mother, Louise Frank, passed away. (She's the wife of Grandpa Frank who I sculpted last year.) I will always remember when I was little, laying my head in her lap and she would trace my ear with her fingers saying, "There's a little mousey in your ear."
I'll miss those innocent days.
3/30/11
Finally an addition to the artwork section of my website.
It's Lent in the Catholic Church and as such, I thought it fitting that I do some church work: After 4 years of being bothered by the fact that I didn't include Mary in my rendition of the 13th station, I finally took some time to sculpt a small addition. You can see the results here:
www.kulzerdesign.com/art/sculpt/stations/progress/stations-Pages/Image65b.html
3/15/11
I HATE when we change the time. Daylight Savings Time is an antiquated convention that we no longer need. It always screws up our sleep patterns and makes life unnecessarily difficult. It's compounded in our house by having 5 kids whose bodies are still on the old time clock. They they don't want to go to bed and find it difficult getting up for school. Then when we change back in the fall, they wake up way too early.
What logical purpose does the time-change serve anymore? Why can't we just change it a half hour this fall and then leave it as is forever? Or if that's a problem for the rest of the world, let's just standardize our time schedule according to GMT and be done with it.
There you go, my rant for the month.
2/22/11
Death and Dying
Been thinking alot about death and dying. A guy who was close to Karen's age and rode their bus in high school just lost his wife and two boys, 7 and 9 years old, in a car accident this weekend. What a horrible thing to live through. I'd be so grievously sad. How fast a person's life can change. And would he have any regrets? I really need to tickle my kids more often and hug them and enjoy them while they're here and while they're little.
My grandpa and grandma are having some health problems and I heard from others that he said to those others that the end is near for his dear wife, my grandmother. So how difficult is it to know you don't have much time left? How many regrets does a person have? I'd probably have many. I think that no matter how well you live, you'd always have regrets. You'd always wish you could do more or would have done more. So why the heck am I wasting my time typing here? Because it's 10:05 pm and it's probably not advisable to wake my kids just to tell them I love them and then tickle them until they pee.
Live well. Enjoy those close to you. Do what you can while you can. And make sure you have no regrets.
2/14/11
Happy St. Valentine's Day!
Not much artwork going on here. Everything else has been taking priority. One such little thing is Theo's science fair project. It's one thing making up a website but it's quite another teaching a 4th grader to make a website. If any of you have a chance this week, take his little test. Click here.
His project is about what people remember best, audio items or visual items. It was a fun project so far and he's having fun making basic webpages now. (for the record, I did all the PHP coding for the response form. He just typed the code for the main pages.) Maybe I'll be able to post some artwork now. :)
1/11/11
A new year and I can now show the Christmas project that I had to keep secret before December 25. The addition to our Nativity Set this year is a little Drummer boy. Take a look at him here.
When I was little I saw the classic Drummer Boy clay-mation video on TV and I loved the story. I loved how the little drummer boy had no gifts to give but gave what he could; he played his drum for the little baby Jesus. I related to that so much it brought tears to my eyes back then. --And still does now. So as I was trying to think of which piece to add to our nativity set, it became clear that the drummer boy would be the best, most poignant choice.
Click the image here for a quick look. Or click the link above and scroll down on that page to see the finished bronzed patina.