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Well I finally am getting caught up with my website updating and today have also created the webpage for "School's Out" the piece I completed before "Poultry in Motion". This was meant to a more serene piece with less emphasis on the mechanism and more on the characters. 
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Today I added a web page for my latest project "Poultry in Motion" on the website. Previously I had called it "The Coop" but I came across what I thought be a more interesting name.
You can access it from the Automata Gallery or the drop down menus. Got a little distracted this week and didn't get all the hens in the henhouse yet. Here are the first two in motion, Twister and Pecker. If you go full screen if you look closely on the cams in the second section you can see the temporary latex glue on them I use to test the mechanisms before final glue up. The henhouse is nearing completion. This photo shows four ghostly chickens, covered in sandable sealer, waiting for things to start happening. They are painted tonight and constructing the fairly simple drive mechanism is on for tomorrow. The chickens are named Twister, Pecker, Rocker and Bouncer. It seems that visitors into the henhouse draw different reactions from the brood. 
 Sally Mander's house on the South Bay Railway While we we of a the show this past weekend my two grandsons found a salamander lurking at the cottage. For two small boys this is a very exciting development. The result is that Sally (named by the boys) was relocated into luxury digs of bark, leaves and stones in the train garden.
Well the weekend has passed and the first woodcarving show of the season has passed. My wife dutifully assisted me in promoting the art form and managing wandering hands of some visitors. We had lots of fun talking to woodworkers and show guests about automata. Thank you to all those who kept us busy and came by to chat. The photo below shows our setup this year which included a few folk art pieces from the past. I didn't expect to sell any pieces since a lot of the attendees are excellent wood carvers and could likely make some beautiful automata creations of their own however we did sell a couple of plans to folks to build their own raving fans. Our next outing will be to the OWCA show in Pickering Ontario on October 18th and 19th. Maybe we will see you there! 
The "Show" with Rat. Co just visible on the right side.
Chicken number two hits the coop! She will the peckish one of the group! Similar to chicken number one, she leans forward a bit more. Two more to go! Spending time getting organized for a couple of upcoming shows has kept me fairly busy, and out of the shop. I decided I needed a little "shop therapy" and spent a little time with the tools working on my next piece. This little video clip is one of the characters in my current project to build an wall hung automata chicken coop. It was inspired after viewing a horse stable automata made by Lisa Slater, which can be seen on the CMT website. I decided to update the video loop I use when attending carving and woodworking shows. Boy, did I underestimate the time I would spend fussing and editing what was to be a simple video montage. On top of that I had to break in some new video production software in the process which included a few training sessions the Apple Store. With new digital cameras the file sizes of video projects are becoming daunting. It seems to me like I could carve a duck in the time it takes to create and render a nine minute video! After that you have to figure out how to load it on your tablet to take to the show. Anyway it is now done. You can see the montage I created on the homepage of Conquergood Creative. Happy viewing.
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Why Automata?Automata is a creative blend of my life interests , engineering, art and woodworking. Archives
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