John Dodd – PopWars

August 26, 2020

Raising The Canopy

Front view of our wood pile, August 2020

We have an insane amount of wood. The covered row of split wood in the photo above is the first of twelve. That first row is sporting a “Wood Hood,” a cover designed and produced by my brother, John. There’s three rows of unspilt oak in front of those. Some came from our friend Kathy, some from Wisner Road and the rest from Jeddy’s tree down the street. And a few hours ago we were offered more wood from our neighbor, Phil. He hired Jeddy’s tree surgeon, Woodchuck, to raise his canopy. We’ll wait for cold weather before splitting the pile.

It seemed everybody burned wood when we first moved here. I wish I could say they all wanted to switch to cleaner energy but the fact is they all got too old. They switched their wood burning fireplaces to gas and in one case took the wood stove out. And Leo, whose Heathkit hydraulic splitter we inherited, died.

We learned all we know from Leo. How to roll the big logs up a plank and into our car. How to split the awkward ones. How to stack. We like the whole ritual and we’re looking forward to sitting by the fire this winter. Which reminds me. I’ve got to get up and clean the chimney before the season starts.

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February 18, 2013August 16, 2019

Fragment of a Head

The Memorial Art Gallery has a really interesting show to celebrate their Centennial. The staff picked local artists and invited them to reinterpret works from their collection. The new work in “Art Reflected” is for sale and it is scattered throughout the gallery, positioned next to or in front of the work of inspiration. This arrangement encourages you to wander into rooms you normally whizz by. Like an Easter egg hunt the show is full of surprises. It reinvigorates the collection.

My brother, John, has a really nice piece here but as a celebration the show is a bit stuffy. One hundred artists for the one hundred years would have added to the merriment. If they had asked I would have given my reflection of this beautiful Mayan, stucco “Fragment of a Head” from the eighth century.

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September 22, 2012August 17, 2019

Everyday Fringe

John Dodd and Fran Dodd installing John Dodd's benches in front of City Newspaper in the Neighborhood of the Arts in Rochester, New York — John Dodd and Fran Dodd installing John Dodd’s benches in front of City Newspaper in the Neighborhood of the Arts in Rochester, New York

With so many things happening around town during the Fringe Festival, both sanctioned and bootlegged, piled-oners, it is easy to let go and take everything around us in as an art related event. The boundaries are loosened and that in itself is a reward. San Francisco’s Bandaloop though, dancing its way down the side of the HSCB building with thousands of people in the street is not something you see everyday. We may have go back for their daylight reprise this afternoon.

We set the alarm for this event on Friday morning, the installation of two John Dodd benches in front of the City News building. John won a City Of Rochester Art Walk Extension Bench Competition and hired our brother, Fran, to help install the two benches he designed. From John’s site; “The two benches were designed to flank an entry walkway. The design point of departure for the set was the idea of a right brain /left brain set. I titled the set “Deflected Reflection”

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January 4, 2011August 21, 2019

Woodhood

Nobody stacks wood like Pete and Shelley but we try. Firewood needs to sit and we’ll have enough for a couple of years but we’re about due for something to drop out of the sky. As long as it doesn’t drop on our house. We covered this new stack with the original “Wood Hood.”

España

Hill in the country south of Rochester, NY

I would take a ride in the country any day over slugging it out with html, php and css. Although I did enjoy getting thoroughly obsessed with making this page work in the PC version of Explorer. I must have worked on it until one in the morning. I didn’t really intend to get into this whole project of redesigning our web site. You know how it is with a plumber getting around to fixing his own leaky faucet. But we ran out of business cards a few months ago, printed some online, passed a few out and then realized the site should sort of look like the card. So we did a simple rework with most of the old content. The whole site is now only five or so pages because we put all of the content in iFrames so you can scroll through it. I did the Web Design page and the Logos page with an iFrame and everything was cool. When I got the Print page I wanted to pop the small graphics up to show enlargements and I managed to find a version of the Lightbox script that would pop photos up out of the iframe and into the parent but when I tested it in IE8 on the PC the photos tried to open inside the iframe. Grrrr.

So I called Bill Jones and he talked me through setting up a scrollable div that served the same purpose and took on the extra challenge of doing the the page without tables. It was fun but not as nice as hopping in the car driving down to my brother‘s place in South Bristol. We did that the other day and came across this hillside that reminded us of Spain. Now, that would really be fun.

Margaret Explosion plays tonight at an opening at Genesee Center for the Arts. I’m thinking of just bringing my djembe instead of the whole kit.

Slow Kids

My brother John stopped by yesterday with his laptop. He was looking for a few Photoshop tips. He makes beautiful furniture and sends out printed sheets with new pieces to his gallery reps and clients. We sat in the living room by the new coffee table that he made for us over the summer. It is thirteen inches high and has two levels for art books. He made it out of the redwood that was used on our old deck.
He told me he was really slow. He had just been to a design trade show in Miami that is is attended by the rich and famous. He did really well there last year but didn’t sell a thing this year. The other vendors were all slow as well. I was able to spend so much time with him because 4D is slow. This is something you don’t usually admit when you are in business. The perception is not good. But this is what blogs are for.

I had a fire going in our new insert and I told him about the plans we had to brick in the rest of old fireplace in. Actually we weren’t going to do it. My brother Fran, the mason, was going to do it. He does brick fireplaces, great room walls and interior work as well as brick fronts and commercial work. He has two crews and has been extremely busy during the housing boom but that has come to a standstill. He is slow and worried about keeping his guys working. It dawned on me that three of the seven Dodd siblings work for themselves and we are all slow.

John suggested building a brick inset for firewood next to our insert and he left us with a nice sketch. If you know anyone who needs some furniture, a fireplace or a website you can comment below.

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