I have been fortunate over the past few years to have met many artists who have since become friends and collaborators. With this post, I’d like to highlight the unique skills of two fellow artists, and the fun projects on which we’ve worked together.

Jun Yang Art

Jun is an amazing painter in San Francisco who I was fortunate enough to meet last summer; Jun paints animals with lots of color and personality, and has also done more abstract pieces as well. Based in San Francisco, he studied Visual Design at Ho Seo University in South Korea, and Fine Art at City College here in town.

Though he typically paints on traditional white canvas, when we were discussing opportunities to work together, the possibility of painting on an animal-shaped cutout emerged. This has led to a number of projects, each one more complex, challenging, and enjoyable than the prior.

I have since carved a number of “simple” animals of his creation - a rabbit, a buck, a squid - of ½” baltic birch plywood, which he then paints in his unique style; though they are flat “canvases”, he somehow manages to provide them amazing depth. I have designed - though not yet carved - an even larger buck for our future collaboration.

And the most involved one yet is a three-dimensional lion, where the different elements of the face are not only at different heights, but also sloped differently to give it real depth. Additionally, it is backlight with an architectural grade RGB remote (and of course, iOS / Android app) controlled LED strip. This has been a lot of fun on my part to provide a museum-quality foundation for Jun’s creativity, adding elements such as a French cleat, the ability for hidden power source, as well as making it easy for painting the separate pieces while also allowing for easy and delicate final assembly. While the painting is still a work in process, I look forward to seeing - and sharing with you! - the final creation.

You can see more of Jun’s work on his instagram page at @junartshop.

K98 Designs

Lucas Elayzek - the man behind K98 Designs - does very unique and intricate jewelry made predominantly of coins, such as earrings of pennies where its just Abraham Lincoln cutout that’s dangling from the stud; a miniscule treasure box made of stacked and hollowed out dimes; and a cute Koala necklace pendant from an Australian coin are just a few of his pieces.

Lucas and I share studio space, and we’ve used each others tools for different projects - the large metal shears I purchased to help form the brass control panel of an early Nixie Clock is often being used to slice through coins; the soldering blowtorch that he uses to fabricate many of his pieces has doubled to make campfire-like s’mores in my kitchen!

Beyond the sharing of tools, where we find opportunity to collaborate artistically and technically is with his skills and experience in working with resin, to fill either a “created” pattern or cavity on a few wood cutting boards, or the naturally-occurring cavities on a larger log.

A recent project - transforming a log cut-off from the tree under which a local couple were married - to an heirloom anniversary gift, is a perfect example. In this progression of photos, you can see the dry but very uneven piece that we started with - ranging from 1” thick at one end to 2-½” thick at the other. I first used progressively finer tooling and techniques to flatten it: bandsaw; CNC; sandpaper from 100 down to 240 grit. And then I used the CNC to do the engraving.

Lucas then took over to provide the resin finish, but as the wood just absorbed all the liquid with all the openings and cavities, it took seven pours to get to a smooth and glossy finish. Perhaps the most challenging part was keeping the environment dust free during the pour & cure - since we share a studio where there’s a lot of wood dust! Fortunately, his work coincided with some personal travel so I wasn’t kicking up any more of a mess.

What’s Your Collaboration?

Have you done an interesting collaboration with a fellow artist who has very different skills? Or do you have some ideas for collaboration with a woodworker? Either way, I’d love to hear from you!