Arte De Timo

Author: admin

  • Finds from the yard

    I posted a couple of things I found in the attic of our tiny little house. Here are a few things that we have run into in the yard.

    The white disk is a piece of glass. My original guess was that it is from a bike or motorcycle light.  But, under perfect light and with a magnifying glass, I made out some lettering around the edge. The letters are spaced off center and unevenly, with several almost rubbed off, making me think it is pretty old and not made from a machine molding process. It says, “GENUINE BOYD CAP  FOR MASON JARS.” I didn’t know they made jar lids out of glass. Kinda interesting. Amazing that it is still in tact after being in the dirt and hit by a shovel.

    The two coins are a little less of a mystery, and pretty easy to date. I found them over the summer, with my brother-in-law’s metal detector. They visited in July and he brought it with him. He had to turn the sensitivity way down because it was beeping ever foot or so. He dug up a few of the beeps at first and found all sorts of nails and bits of rusted out who-knows-what. ON the higher settings it detected coin metals a little better. After he found a few pennies and dimes, I finally got these two together, known as a spill. One of the other holes we dug revealed a rusted through huge iron pipe with bits of glass and ceramics in it. Maybe it was the catch in an old drain, or maybe just some junk someone buried. It was interesting experience seeing how much junk is buried in our yard. The place is really old as I have posted, so who knows what some of that buried stuff is.  I have found lots of terracotta bits and a jade doughnut (which I have now misplaced,) so maybe there is a treasure waiting to be found.

  • A Global Bike (a longer post)

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    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.

  • Timo Lantern

    In preparation for Halloween; The Timo’Lantern!

  • Remember these?

    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.

  • A couple things from the attic

    I finally made space on my kitchen desk for my scanner, so now for some fun scans of odds and ends I have found. Here are a couple things I found up in the attic when I was rewiring up there last year. There was lots of gross stuff up there (more about that later) but these are the ones I kept. When I get back up there for the other half the house I am sure I will find more stuff.

  • Clearing away some bike grime

    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.

  • An odd old road bike.

    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.

  • My Tiny Really Old House


    Since we moved in to our house a little over two years ago, I have been on a quest to figure out how to live well in our tiny old house. The house is from the 1880’s or 1890’s as best I can tell, and was added on to in the 1920’s or 30’s. It is around 890 sqft but 170 of that is in an out building. Just imagine, the original house didn’t have either that out building or our kitchen room, nor basement. It must have been 500 sqft and I am sure a family lived here. If they lived OK in this house over 100 years ago, we surely must be able to right?

    Since we moved in, Ive dug around into just about every nook and cranny, trying to figure it out, so I can update what we need to, stabilize what is unsure, and otherwise just understand our abode. The original part of the house is made of old growth redwood, and it was constructed way before it seems they had building standards. Joists and studs have no common center, nor is it anywhere near what we consider a safely built structure, but here it is 120+ years later and still sound (for the most part.)

    The first bunch of work was up in the attic rewiring and insulating. That is why I know as much as I do about the place. I found old sales tags for the nob and tube system, hand cut nails, exterior painted walls inside, along with a whole bunch of other stuff I will post about later. Below the house a lot of the wood has been replaced with modern 3rd growth over harvested wood (more on that later too.) Strangely the original parts underneath are much more coherent. It’s the same old growth redwood, but the structure looks to have been made by a professional. I found some neat stuff down there, too. the most interesting being a foot long femur bone. Hopefully it was from a large animal and not great uncle Frank, but in any case, I left it there in peace.

    To say that our house has been a DIY project for 120 years is probably accurate from what I have found. There are parts that make sense and look like time was put into doing things well, but there are other parts that have just left me scratching my head. I intend to post about these various discoveries in the future as I slowly replace, upgrade, repair and marvel at the character of our house.

    Beyond the structure of our little house, though, what has been the biggest challenge has been the limited space. Moving here we halved our living space and lost a lot of storage. It has been a challenge to say the least, but we are slowly coming to terms with it, making important decisions; green, and sustainable decision in many cases. We have learned a lot in the last two years, about ourselves, our habits, and our lifestyle. We have learned what a footprint really means in a direct sense, and also in the global symbolic sense.

    Now that I have finished my MFA I have slowly wound down into the next phase of my life; family man, father, artist, entrepreneur,  and mini house adventurer. I hope you will visit this site and share my efforts to move forward, editing my life and becoming better for it. I intend to make this a media blog too, so look forward to videos audio and pictures of my house projects, garden, creative work and more.

  • 2011, a yearly post.

    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.

  • Post-Economic

    It’s occurred to me that one of the big problems we face is that we as a country and increasingly the world can only make decisions based on an economic model. Economic models are horribly flawed, and economists would tell us that basing everything on them would be a mistake. So why then do we judge everything in terms of an investment or monetary value? The government should be in debt, that’s all it can do is spend money, and in a time when there is not much to go around the government will have to spend more. Education? It’s not an investment, so much as a goal into itself. Educated people make better citizens, partners, lovers, and brothers.

    So I wonder what a post-economic model would be. This is not the same as a philanthropic endeavor, because that is still termed in economic ways. Why does giving always revolve around those without the money, and therefore considered to be in need. I know plenty of people that need a lot of emotional and psychological help who have plenty of money. If there were to be a non-profit to help those people, it would get laughed out of town.

    Anyway, just a thought. Maybe I’ll expand on this as time goes.