Arte de Timo

Compost is a great topic with all sorts of room for discussion and investigation, so I am going to take on the topic in parts.

It is also a BIG topic. Understanding compost requires a few layers of biology, a layer of agriculture, a layer of physics, and some thrown in construction, environmentalism, gardening, and spirituality. Well OK, its not that complicated of an idea, but it touches on a lot of important issues.

First and foremost, composting is the rotting of organic material (Not the little green label on food, but things made of molecules that contain carbon) into humus (Not the yummy tan colored food, that’s hummus. Humus is the part of the soil that is organic). Composting happens pretty much everywhere that organic materials occur; forests, oceans, gardens, the dump, behind your refrigerator. You might say that composting is the biological version of entropy; if there is something that can be broken down in nature, it will.

Once the maintaining properties of life leave an object, the doors are opened to a range of organisms that want to recapture any stored energy from that object. In nature, things just keep on rolling, so any creatures whose biological defenses fail become, quite literally, dirt; and that is a good thing. It can happen fast or slow, and through a whole range of processes. Sometimes there are feathered or furry creatures involved, but at a certain point, almost assuredly, some ants come into play. If there is enough chemical energy left in the object for it to become food, then some ants will find it, and eat it. This goes for a piece chocolate you drop, to a damaged flower seed. Eventually though, in all the dark quiet places of the world the more important processes take over .

Fungi and bacteria are the heart of the composting process. They are always in a battle to find food, so living things develop strategies to defend against their onslaught. We, humans shed our skin and hair, we have kamikaze immune white blood cells, acidic stomachs, oils, saliva, you name it, all in an attempt to keep fungi and bacteria away from our energy, i.e. cells and tissues. When those things fail, I think we know of some of the things that can happen; infections, stomach problems, and disease. It’s pretty ugly stuff.

Finally, once things settle down and a little moisture is mixed in, the real work begins; active microbial decomposition. All those brilliant fiber structures, cell membranes, complex molecules, and energetic chemical bonds that make up our beautiful living world are cracked open, broken down over and over again, and become raw materials and energy for a host of microbes.

In the garden, it is the compost’s job to take advantage of this process and turn all the left over organic material back into something that can be used in the garden. It can be as simple as piling up leaves in the Fall, to carefully layering “brown” material with “green” material to build a hot “heap.” Striking a balance can be tough sometimes, when things like, speed, space, smell, and output are considered.

When I first started composting, I was living in a townhouse with a small patio, and I didn’t get the balance right in many ways. Space was limited, I didn’t have access to enough “brown” material, and my inputs were too high. I’ll confess, the outcome was not pleasant for anyone within nose-shot. Not only that, I had good humus mixed in with fresh food material, making deployment of the compost impossible. Here’s some pics of the experiment:

The ideas were sound, but my execution was not so great. The most important thing was that I learned about how a biological composting system functions, and how that sort of composter might work. When building something from scratch, its always good to have some hands-on knowledge to go along with the ideas. I did go on building fortunately, and I now have a good functional 2 yer old system up.

In Compost – Part 2, I will post about the composter I have now, along with my techniques, and what I gain from the activity. Part 3 will be about the ramifications of composting on several levels, and why I do it. Oh, and I have a video to stick in somewhere, too!

Getting closer! This is just a teaser of something in the works. Not quite ready for the light yet, but wanted to share a preview.

My water company charges $2.99 for a unit of water, which is defined as 100 cubic feet, or 748.5 gallons. This breaks down to just under 4 tenths of one cent per gallon of water that comes through the pipes. So what do we get for that 0.4 cents? We get water from a local well, possibly mixed with some surface water from a nearby reservoir, some chlorine, some dissolved minerals, and a little bit of organic matter.

A rain barrel is typically about 50-60 gallons, so every time it fills up you are accumulating about 20-23 cents worth of water at the water utility rate. What do you get?

If a rain barrel costs about $80+ to make or buy you would have to fill it up and empty it 400 times to break even. And, if you get around 20-40 chances a year to fill it up, we are talking 10 to 20 years ROI for a rain barrel. Yikes! That is not a good investment!

So why do it? Why spend the money and time? Is it that feeling of freedom and independence of “going off the grid?” Maybe a bit of nostalgia for how our farming forefathers and foremothers used to do things? I would say it is a little of all of this, and a little more.

Setting up a rain barrel has a bit of that DIY feeling that gardening, canning, sewing, etc. have. There is no immediate need to do any of it, but there are enough little good reasons, and enough little pleasures in doing it, that it is worth it. A wine barrel just looks neat around the house, particularly one from France.

A big part of this sort of project for most people is a sense of connection. Like growing a tomato out in the yard, there is something wonderful about being a part of the whole cycle of providing sustenance for one’s family. I would say the majority of people never get a chance (nor are interested) in seeing how their water gets to them. Turn on the faucet and water comes out. Harvesting some rain water lets us see and feel where our water is coming from. It is a reattachment to the seasons, and to the nature of rain. We are so sheltered from the atmosphere and weather, this sort of project is a way to get us thinking about how the seasons affect us again. Rain harvesting is a lesson on what the rainy season used to mean. Is it a green season, or a white season? Will it have an impact on you this year? How should I plan for the coming months?

A rain barrel is a sort of slow motion alarm clock that is controlled by nature, and can’t be set by our hands. It will fill according to some other system that we have all too often forgotten and disconnected from. In that relationship, the ROI has already been met.

I now have 50 gallons of murky water in this thing to use, and return to nature. It sits there to be used before the next rain. It sits there outside waiting for use. It is also waiting in my mind as a reminder that the Green season is approaching, and that the grasses are growing; that the natural cycle still affects us even if we often choose not to see it.

 

I think the MFA program did something to my head, because somewhere in the processes of dreaming this up I concluded it was a good idea to actually do it…

Globalization. For many it has been a contentious issue the last decade or two. For others, it has been a boon to business, and merely the next step in our economic evolution. In any case, it is hard to deny that we now feel the extreme consequences of globalization, good or bad. The truth is that globalization has been a fact of western life, and therefore its colonies and conquests for hundreds of years. It has only been the recent (maybe 30-40 years) industrially scaled globalization and hyper application of outsourcing  that globalization has had the extreme effects we feel. This system of  commodities, markets, raw materials and labor (i.e. Capital systems)  have a wide range of outcomes when applied, but like everything else, how it is carried out and to what ends determines the results.

When I got my old English (?) bike it had parts from literally around the world. Handle bars from Japan, end caps  and kick stand from the USA, hubs from Austria/germany, brakes from England, cargo rack from Switzerland and pulley, cables from who know where. And now, I continued that history  by “importing” a few more vintage parts from England to complete it. So in the case of my old 1954 English bike, maybe globalization has been a birthing ground for a solid piece of transport. Globalization produced a bike that has been used and appreciated  for over 60 years (though, seemingly not cared for in the last 10-20 years.).. Maybe this is a little romantic, because it is just a bike that could have been made anywhere at any time and done the same job; but you get my point.

I am the first in line to claim that globalization with its underlying capital systems is out of control. It is a Frankenstein that is slow killing us, but as William McDonough (One of the originators of Cradle-to-Cradle design) talked about in a little video I recently watched, the detrimental effects of business are design problems, where regulations are symptom. In his view, governmental regulation is necessary to stop these effects, but it will take a proper re-design to fix the error. He talks about how pollution is not in a companies best interest. Hurting customers, facing law suits, lower productivity from works, are all costs, that can be lowered or erased by removing the pollutant in most cases. IN the Cradle-to-Cradle design process, that is what they do, and the result is that the companies cut costs, increase productivity, and therefore make more money. Clean environments and healthy workers and customers makes for good business? Who would have thunk?

So is an international old bike really all that meaningful? Maybe a little, but probably just a object of vanity. Philosophically, though, some important the lessons are built into what I am doing with that old bike. A 60 year old bike that promises to once again be a utility (and maybe a beauty) for (wo)man kind, shows us what good deign and forethought can accomplish. If all our objects can become as much, I think our global society would be in a bit of a better place.

In preparation for Halloween; The Timo’Lantern!

They’re out of a box of toys from when I was a kid. Amazing how strong the memories and emotions attached to those little things are even after a couple decades of other life to get in the way. Anyone who says nostalgia isn’t a powerful emotion probably isn’t human, or has some sort of mental block.

Now these originals are moving on to another generation. Fun for now.

I’ve been doing a little digging online and cleaning on the bike in search of clues as to what the old orange bike used to be. I’ll add pics later.

Bicycle Parts Info:

The bike is from 1954 an was probably a Raleigh Sports or maybe a Club. Or, maybe it was a Speedwell from Australia or CCM from Canada (due to the fact that it has a Williams chainset.) It’s lost all of it accessories, so I may never know.

Brakes. Made in England, Phillips style pre 1970’s side pull caliper brakes.

Chainset: Williams steel 5-pin inch-pitch chainset - B100

Wheels: Dunlop 26 x 1 3/8 Made in England – Endrick style – one original tyre.

Hubs: Sturmey-Archer AW  July 1954 3 speed hub, with 3 speed deraileur for 9 total speeds.

I picked this up a few weeks ago off The classified site. Not really sure what it is, but has some high end parts and oddities. Not super rare and not in great shape, but the gearing, even with all that goop and dust all over it is smooth. The frame has lost it’s original paint, so that will be repainted, but everything else looks like it just needs to be cleaned up and lubed. The Saddle is an old leather Brooks, and might not be salvageable, but considering the value of those saddles, I am going to give it a try. Should be fun getting this looking and riding well again.

Art of Timo; the title of my site, has evolved to mean a great many things in the years. I am now in the home stretch of earning my MFA from SJSU, so this thing “art” has finally become an official qualification in my work. I am an artist and I make art. And I finally feel empowered by that discretion; it’s ambiguity and lack of concrete description means something important to me now after these years of study.

The MFA itself isn’t what makes me feel like I can employ the word now. It is the discourse I became involved with in order to earn my MFA that gives “art” weight. There are meaningful ways in which to indulge in the creative process, and that is what I  lingering on in art. Objects are gone. Process is gone. Studios are gone. What we can have is an endeavor to create meaningful indulgence.

We seem to need art as creatures, and that is intriguing.  We inevitably treat it as a commodity to gobble up, or a resource to manipulate and control, but there is something under all that, which plugs in to how we understand ourselves. Art can become the cleanest and best description of those inaccessible parts of who we are.

As I finish this degree, I have a new basis from which to work. In my personal life, too, I have found a very deep strength that challenges me to perceive life in new ways. I am in a new place now, and this website will soon reflect that. Over the course of the summer I will be putting something together to replace all of this, so take a note to check back in September. It will be good.