A conversation with Daniel Ogassian

Daniel Ogassian showed up on my radar a couple of years ago when a photograph of a wall covered in his concrete tile landed on my desk.

Ogassian calls the pattern Japanese Weave and I'd never seen anything like it before. It's at once modern and retro, it's high and low tech, it's engaging and off putting. This was a wall that existed in creative conflict and the energy it gave off was palpable, even through a photograph.

I noticed he was on Twitter a few months ago and developing a repartee with him there has turned into yet one more amazing thing that's come into my life as a result of that service. Daniel Ogassian and I had a long ranging (and long winded) phone conversation the other night and it was great to thank him for his work and to get to know a bit about what makes him tick as an artist.

Daniel Ogassian is an artist and a craftsman and in his mind they are the same thing. There is a term used in fine art, sprezzatura, and it describes a master painter's technique to produce a painting that appears to be very simple on the surface but is in fact incredibly difficult to pull off. Sprezzatura is a perfect description for Ogassian's life and work as a master tile maker.

He came to tile in the early '90s originally and set it aside for more than ten years as he worked in a series of other media. Over the course of his evolution as an artist and as a craftsman, he's worked in high-end furniture, ceramics, glazes, tile, concrete and gypsum.  Each skill he mastered added depth to his work without exerting too heavy an influence. Again, it's sprezzatura at work. Japanese weave doesn't look like a furniture design but without furniture design in his background, Japanese Weave never could have come to be in the first place.

His tiles are available in concrete and ceramic and are a study in juxtapositions. Their warm and organic textures delicately balance with clean, not modern - futurist shapes. The high-chemistry glazes are rendered in earthy shades adding a depth and texture to wall surfaces and floors.

Ogassian's tile can be specified in any of his matte or gloss glazes, as well as custom glazes formulated and designed by Daniel.  Each glaze is meticulously formulated for the way it flows over horizontal, sloping and vertical facets of the tile.It’s his glazing expertise that supplies the warmth and touch to the finished product.

To Daniel, the light and shadow play is where he finds life, activity, movement.  “Imbuing a wall surface with surface tension reveals the interaction of static components. When walking past a tiled wall, light and shadow play along the raised patterns and create the illusion of movement."

This work is amazing, all of it, and it's a true pleasure to see someone work with this much passion as he pours a lifetime of experience into every project. Daniel Ogassian is the real deal, a sui generis. You can learn more about him and see more of his work on his website. You can also follow Daniel on Twitter where he's @Daniel_Ogassian. Thanks Daniel!

I got moxie

You bet I have moxie, Building Moxie that is. The great JB Bartkowiak's reborn blog featured one of my screeds this morning. It's a rehash of something that appeared here previously but it poses a question that can never be posed often enough.

Check out my post and the rest of JB's posts at Building Moxie.

Faux no!

This is a master bath in a condominium where I'm working.

The first order of business is to tear it out of course, but before any of that happens, I'd like to pause and reflect for a bit.

I think it's one of the more egregious examples of a perfectly good art form put to waste I've ever seen. It is possible to paint trompe l'oeil murals and faux finishes in a way that isn't offensive and cheap looking but this sure ain't it. The previous owner paid someone a lot of money for that work, more than he paid for the rest of the finishes in the entire bath I'm sure.

What gets into peoples' heads I wonder. I know, I know I'm forever harping about people being free to express themselves but come on. Show some restraint already.

How big's that spill again?

It's this big.

This is a map, updated today, of the federal waters closed to commercial and recreational fishing until further notice. For those of you keeping score at home, this makes 37% of the entire Gulf that's now off-limits. Mind you, this is not the size of the spill, this is the size of the potentially contaminated area.

Here's the size of the spill as of tomorrow as projected by NOAA.

BP's chief executive Tony Hayward said yesterday,

"The first thing to say is I’m sorry,” he told reporters, when asked what he would like to tell locals whose livelihoods have been affected. “We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."

Well Mr. Hayward, I would like my Gulf of Mexico back.

Somewhere there's a band warming up and the only song they perform is "Nearer my God to Thee."

What's in a Magic Eraser?

photo by Cherie Diez at the St. Pete Times

On 24 May I wrote a column about the inane suggestion that people clean their tubs with a half a grapefruit and some table salt. It sparked a conversation in the comments about Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I was aware of them, but I'd never used one. None of the commenters seemed to know what the active ingredient in them is, the best anybody could do was report that they are made from melamine foam.

Intrigued, I bought some over the weekend and I was amazed at how well they cleaned up my ancient enamel sinks and tub. Amazing.. I noticed that the labeling on the box made no mention of an active ingredient or anything added to the sponge that would make it clean so well. So I dug. Come with me on a journey of discovery.

Here's the Mr. Clean I remember.





And here he is today. The only men I know who look like that and who care about cleanliness are prone to breaking into a rollicking chorus of "Rose's Turn"  when the mood strikes but that's a topic for another time.

As I said earlier, there's no active ingredient listed, but these things clean like you cannot imagine. Well it turns out the active ingredient is elbow grease. Sort of.

Magic erasers are made from a form of melamine foam. Technically, it's a formaldehyde-melamine-sodium bisulfite copolymer foam made by the German company BASF. It was invented as an insulator and fire retardant. That it cleans like the dickens was a happy coincidence. Melamine is an extremely hard polymer and it's what gives things like Formica laminate its rigidity.

However, when it's pumped full of air something interesting happens.

Despite the fact that the material itself is very hard, the tiny strands that make up the foam's matrix feel soft to the touch. On a microscopic level, those rigid little strands are very abrasive, like super fine grit sandpaper.

There are no active ingredients listed on the package because there really aren't any. Magic Erasers clean by a physical process, not a chemical one. When you rub a dirty spot with a Magic Eraser, you're essentially sanding away the dirt. As you rub, the foam disintegrates. If you clean dishes or anything that will contact food with these things, rinse thoroughly when you're done. Eating melamine is not a very smart thing to do.

As a cautionary note, don't clean anything with a glossy surface with these Magic Erasers. Remember that you're using a microscopic abrasive so when in doubt, test a spot first.

So bravo BASF for being so clever and bravo Proctor and Gamble for breathing new life into an old brand. These things really work.

Many thanks to BASF for the information I used for this post.

Oh and one more thing. They are called Mastro Lindo in Italy. Why are mundane things so entertaining when they're in Italian?