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design ideas
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Included in my materials list
My choice as the best sealers available, included in my materials list.
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Art Made Concrete - Creativity
One necessary component of creativity is resistance. It is the impetus, the signal to make or not make art. Great resistance can shut a good idea down, too much resistance causes stress and eventual disintegration of your energy, and tolerable resistance creates strength to overcome obstacles. Creativity
becomes an option because there are obstacles.
The creative artist, as in a meditation, enters the unconscious state to lift what is there to awareness, an inspiration, a solution to a problem, the need to fill a vacuum. The practice is not without risk. Brought to mind, that surfaced idea causes an awakening shock you will meet with your own resistance. When the significance of that idea takes hold your enthusiasm drives you forward to create. Ah, hah! moments are usually accompanied with laughter. If you feel a chill consider this a sign as the right direction to take.
Creativity requires determined force to use your stress or tension to lure an idea into the real world. I know how stress impacts me when I'm finished. Was the pain worth it? I prefer tension for I feel a good kind of tired the next morning. I may ache a bit, but when I've seen what I've done I'm invigorated.
Look to your enthusiasm, respect the shock your work will have on others, and don't create anything less than something reflecting truth or beauty, or something unimaginably better. |
Nest – Redwood roots, balloon, eggshells as molds– 7 x 9 inches – ferrous sulfate stain, 22k gold leaf
This Year's Birdhouse - 14 x 14 x 10 inches - concrete veneer of flowering kale over pine branches adhered to plywood box
Table of Contents
Introduction
Full color, FREE fourteen page opening and introduction to:
The CONCRETE Gourmet's Cookbook - Solid Recipes, the first of four books by James Maxwell is a hands-on, how-to, twelve-chapter, full-color recipe book with projects using cement/concrete as a fine art material. Each chapter provides clear instructions on how to use the recipes in projects ranging from ancient-looking garden planters, faux stone paths, and sculpture mixes to stylish containers and innovative food-safe dinnerware. Photo-illustrated, the procedures are shown in progress and as the finished project's applied use indoors, in the garden, or art gallery.
Includes Maxwell's Recipe for a concrete with mud planter and step by step instructions how to make one using a cardboard carton as a form.
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 Mud planter with moss
AVAILABLE NOW
The Gourmet's Concrete Cookbook
INTRODUCTION
download FREE Document - 4.8 MB PDF |
Chapter 1
Recipes for Liquid Mixture – with photographs of work.
A good space to work | The tools you need | Storage containers | Hints to relate preparing food to mixing concrete | Using small batches | Measuring by volume | Water with bonding agents affect the quality of concrete, and slow the curing time | Photos of working with related tools and materials | Recipe #1 – The Liquid Mixture with Bonding Agent | Choosing aggregates in relation to the size and the purpose of various projects | The handiness of plastic food wrap.
Please allow for a three to five day processing time. You will receive a conformation of purchase along with Chapter 1 as an attachment. Save this PDF. The body of the e-mail will contain the passwords necessary to open view, and print out the content of this 2.7 MB PDF
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Newly Edited
Jar seven inches tall for cooking tools
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2.7 MB PDF - $2.50 USD
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Chapter 2
Recipe for Fossil-like Concrete Stepping Stones – with photographs of work.
A note about the language of earth | Planning a path | What you need to proceed with this project | Preparing the dry mixtures and storing them before beginning the process. | The wise move to embed steel wire and why | Recipe #2 – Concrete Stepping Stone Mixture | Setting up the work space to accommodate and prepare the mold to receive the wet concrete | The choice of leaves to make fossil records | Step by step procedure to do and finish the work | Listing of finishing sealers and their uses.
Please allow for a three to five day processing time. You will receive a conformation of purchase along with Chapter 2 as an attachment. Save this PDF. The body of the e-mail will contain the passwords necessary to open view, and print out the content of this 3.3 MB PDF
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NOW AVAILABLE
Eighteen inch stepping stone
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receive
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3.3 MB PDF - $2.50 USD
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Chapter 1 & Chapter 2
Now available for purchase together
Please allow for a three to five day processing time. You will receive a conformation of purchase along with Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 as attachments. Save these PDFs. The body of the e-mail will contain the passwords necessary to open view, and print out the content of both PDFs.
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ORDER BOTH
Chapter 1 & Chapter 2
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Chapter 3
Recipe for an Organic Interlocking Path – with photographs of work in process.
What you need to proceed creating this type of path | Using a premixed concrete and mixing it properly | Recipe #3 – Using a premixed concrete/aggregate mixture for The Interlocking Path | Your team of helpers | Filling plastic garbage bags and plastic shopping bags with wet concrete as retaining molds for this interlocking path | How to place the bags to interlock | Allowing spaces for ground cover to exist and not effect the stability of your path | Placing rocks and design elements.
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COMING SOON
Path to visit the dog's final resting place.
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Chapter 4
Recipes for Tiles, and Fine Print Making – with photographs of work.
What you need to proceed. | Recipe #4 – Recipe for tiles, prints, fine details | The type of sand needed for this recipe, mixing the consistency of toothpaste | Preparation to make tiles, table tops | Steel mesh, embedding | Fine Print Making on concrete in reverse | How to prepare your concrete surface to receive a bonding veneer, and how to apply it.
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COMING SOON
Peeling geranium leaves from concrete print
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Chapter 5
Recipes for Sculpture Mixtures – with photographs of work.
What you need in preparation for concrete sculptures. | Tools | Scheduling working time by the window of receptivity concrete has in curing | Recipe #5 – Sculpture mixes | Using peat moss, pearlier, mud, and vermiculite | Application over rebar, aviary wire armatures | Carving a day old block of concrete | Coloring sealers, and indoor and outdoor sealers | Making bases for your sculptures.
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COMING SOON
The Olmax Head - sculpture mix #1
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Chapter 6
Recipe for Stucco structures, Making Your Garden’s Worm Bunker – with photographs of work.
What you need | Planning the structure to fit the garden space with your worm's need in mind | Using sheets of building insulation as the inner structure | Thinking ahead to create feet and lid before concrete is mixed |Using garden fencing to embed superstructure, aviary wire as additional support | Recipe #6 – Stucco ready to plaster.
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COMING SOON
The Worm Bunker - to compost food scraps
Recipe for stucco structures
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Chapter 7
Recipes for Preparing Surfaces to Attach Veneers – with photographs of work.
What you need | Tools | Recipe #7 – Bonding Agent as glue and the volume with liquid for making a veneer mixture | Working on an existing form | Applying aviary wire to bond form to veneer.
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COMING SOON
Bird House - fundraiser for Botanical Garden
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Chapter 8
Recipes for Birdbaths, Wet and Dry Fonts, and Garden Sinks – with photographs of work.
What you need | Recipe #8 – Concrete mixture that can retain and store water | Looking for the right size form to fill the function of a basin | Making forms from scratch | Preparing your forms for drain and plumbing | Using pre cast concrete for sink bases.
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COMING SOON
Geranium leaves in freestanding garden sink
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Chapter 9
Recipes for when a Vase is a Vase – with photographs of works.
What you need | Recipe #9 – Mixture for a thin, more plastic than brittle, strong concrete receptive to veneers | How to make use of carpet tubes | Commercial building tubes for foundation columns | Plastic rain gutters | Concrete building forms | How to seal the inside of a porous vase to hold water | Turning a planter into a vase and vase versa.
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COMING SOON
Fluted columns as vases or planters
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Chapter 10
Recipes for Mixtures that Support and Attract Life – with photographs of work.
What you need | Where is the best placement in the garden for opportunistic life to alight | Using living lichen, mosses and ferns | Recipe #10 – Mixtures that makes use of cement’s natural porosity | Using peat moss, sawdust and wood chips, and potting soil | Several suggested baths for sculptures to invite moss, ferns, and lichen.
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COMING SOON
Cement and sawdust ready for life
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Chapter 11
Recipes for Food-safe Serving Bowls, Platters and Plates – with photographs of work.
What you need | Japanese Lacquer-ware as the inspiration | How to use everyday existing molds around you | Using liquid latex to make a mold from large leaves for platters | Chapter shows how to make a bowl, platter, and plates | Photos of a selection of food safe ware.
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COMING SOON
Food-safe Fruit bowl
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Chapter 12
Recipes for Leftovers – with photographs of work.
What you need | Using the wet concrete you have at the end of a day’s work | Filling children’s balloons | Styrofoam food packaging as molds or armatures. | Food and milk containers as bases for structures | re-mixing wet concrete to take lichen, fill balloons, start an on-going project with leftovers until that project is complete.
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COMING SOON
Leftover mixture w/ lichen ready for life
FREE
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Art Made Concrete
The responsibility of making good choices has never been so critical, nor has making time for creative play been quite so important. I’ve been a practicing artist/teacher for over sixty years. I‘ve drawn, painted, sculpted and later taught, lectured and performed my art; my sole purpose has been to express my joy of life, participate with those who make up my culture, and learn how I fit into the scheme of things. I call art my career. It is a good life for I find meaning in my work.
I choose cement as my media even though it provokes negative press in the context of global warming. However, I’m not deterred – I’m confident even. In art’s spooky, sometimes taboo current political stance, beauty hangs in there as the greatest art-argument for cement/concrete use.
Cement in mixture, can be conversant with all the solid language forms of our planet. In concrete we make contemporary fossils, rocks, flood-plains, sophisticated canyons within the middle of cities, and sturdy playgrounds for children’s swings.
On the practical side, cement is much cheaper than ceramic. Cement is fired only once; ceramics are fired two times or more. The price of clay and glazing materials, plus the price for high-firing temperatures together cost more to buy and use than concrete. One person’s output of cement objects vs. another’s output of ceramic products shows that the carbon footprint for ceramic is greater. “Green” soy-based sealers are an environmentally friendly and waterproof. With lacquer, like Japanese lacquer ware, concrete surfaces becomes food-safe. Chemists are looking into new and less harmful ways to produce more efficient cements that can sequester carbon and ash. In the future, cement will have to become new and improved – benevolent in relationship to our environmental concerns.
Have you noticed the price of paints and other art supplies? Watercolor, oil, acrylic or pastels – the pigments in our paint boxes have been produced with considerable amounts of carbon impact on the environment. Let’s not forget that some of those pigments are made using heavy metals and are quite poisonous. Industrial cleaning solvents are deadly, as are aniline dyes, which have hazardous warnings on pigments for commercial paints and fabric dyes that are made from coal and petroleum by-products. “First, do no harm” are tough watchwords.
When I found out that world-wide cement production causes five to seven percent of all greenhouse emissions, I weighed the cause and effect of my actions and returned to my job of bringing light to darkness, getting my hands dirty, and makin’ mud pies that may make a difference.
- James Maxwell |
Birdbath – eucalyptus, white, gray concrete, cinder blocks, aluminum– 30 x 42 inches
Books in the Works
Cookbook II
Art Concrete – Landmarks in the Garden - usable Follies
Making Flexible Latex and Silicone Molds – Include the Concrete Mixtures with Coloring, Sealers, and Finishes
Concrete Projects to Enhance the Garden – Chairs, stools, tables, and follies - make structures from a solarium for the cat, to a manor for the dog - garden sinks, food smokers to solar ovens
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