IN THE GARAGE
Like many of us during the early days of shelter-in-place I started thinking about bicycles. That is, when not thinking about dying from the flu or making the perfect poached egg. As the hours, days and weeks went by sanding off 60 years of paint on the ol’ Schwinn Corvette, I ran across Pheo Guitars. If you can imagine one of Picasso’s cubist guitar collages infused with a little punk rock you can begin to picture some of Phil Sylvester’s creations. No website, but here is his Reverb shop.
Like many of us during the early days of shelter-in-place I started thinking about bicycles. That is, when not thinking about dying from the flu or making the perfect poached egg. As the hours, days and weeks went by sanding off 60 years of paint on the ol’ Schwinn Corvette, I ran across Pheo Guitars. If you can imagine one of Picasso’s cubist guitar collages infused with a little punk rock you can begin to picture some of Phil Sylvester’s creations. No website, but here is his Reverb shop.
Another guitar maker I’ve kept up with for years is Peter Malinoski who does some fantastic things with collage. You can see his guitars and art guitars on his website. …so I’m sanding away on a nearly 60-year-old bike, refinishing it for the fourth time or so since I got it at 14-years-old and thinking: I collage and I build guitars—why not collage a guitar?
SHOP MOTTO: UFFDA
And this is something I’m considering after-the-fact, the nature of collage is to be comprised of smaller pieces of the whole. The pieces may be found or manufactured, but these smaller pieces tend to be the same material of finished piece. Meaning a paper collage is mainly comprised of smaller pieces of paper. Sure, there are typically other materials in the mix—pen, paint, glue, etc., but the critical mass is paper.
In three dimensions, collage is called assemblage. Following this definition, a “collaged guitar” would be an assemblage of pieces of guitars—smaller pieces making the whole. In the case of Phil Sylvester this definition holds true (for the most part). In the case of Malinoski’s luthiery, he will sometimes employ a collaged finish on a traditionally built guitar (traditional in the building not the design). On the other hand, Malinoski’s art guitars fall inline with the art world’s definition of assemblage (although I will say, some look pretty darn functional).
I had a number of “UFFDA moments” in this build and I usually do. The bummer of it all is that I’ve learned these UFFDAs already. As the clichéd saying goes: repeating the same acts and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Perhaps then, this bass guitar build is the quintessential build for this rather insane moment in our human history. UFFDA.
Comments