Casey Herman

DIGITAL ART

I didn't discover my interest in art and sculpture until just before retirement, having spent most of my working life last century as a pilot. Life after flying - and before retirement - (see below) exposed me to computers.

My delight on discovering that Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter would allow the malicious yet nondestructive distortion of the (film) photos I'd shot years earlier was overwhelming.

Now I’m slowly learning how to take and edit photos digitally, as well as learning how to paint, draw and illustrate digitally and also experimenting with recording and editing my guitar playing and surfing videos, including surf drone footage. 

 

METAL SCULPTURE

I stumbled onto metal sculpture, after deciding that custom made metal porch enclosures were too expensive, so I made my own - as well as several more for family and friends. However, because they’re so heavy, I switched to creating sculptures, which are either lighter or modular.

Now I work with metal: mild steel, stainless steel and aluminium, using various methods and tools including arc and MIG welding, oxytorch cutting and heating and also pop riveting. It's great to work with ocean weathered basalt and exotic and ancient timbers, too.

Although I have no formal art or sculptural training, I'm a perpetually autodidactic rookie, happily misguided by neurons synapsing off left, right and centre. Is ambidexterity cool? Is it cool to feel autotelic?

I don't think it matters, because I love to experiment, even when I have absolutely no idea of how to do the things I want to do. I hope you do too! 

 

COMMERCIAL AVIATION

Well before discovering digital imagery and metal sculpture, I led a completely different life as a pilot, flying aeroplanes in the remote Outback of Australia and the mountains of Papua New Guinea. Before I gained my airline pilot licence (for planes), I got a commercial helicopter pilot licence, but couldn’t find a job flying choppers, so I mustered cattle in aeroplanes instead, hoping to convert to choppers one day. 

Mustering cattle with a plane sometimes involves diving the plane towards stubborn bulls that refuse to move and then climbing upwards in a very tight circle to come back to swoop near the bulls again, until they start moving. This was not only fun, it was legal!  

This experience led to me landing a job as an airline pilot (oh, a pun!) in Papua New Guinea, where we flew up mountain valleys that were exposed to tropical storms most days. There are very few roads, so villages are accessed either by walking for a few days or by flying for a few minutes.

In between various flying jobs, I also taught ultralight student pilots how to fly open cockpit aircraft such as the Gemini Thruster and the Austflight Drifter. Sitting in these aircraft, the view is similar to that of a motor bike, except the ground falls away!

All of these types of low level flying provided adrenaline in the sugar-cube sized lumps I craved! Enjoying a bird's eye view of the earth, sea and sky from varying heights above the earth's surface from the very front row of different aircraft types was a buzz, as much as was the actual flying. However, I soon tired of living out of suitcases and far too often NOT living at all, so I finally quit the aviation industry on my fifth attempt. 

Nowadays I'm trying to teach myself how to fly a drone and shoot footage from the air. Although I've never scratched a passenger or a plane as a professional pilot, I've got an idiot for a teacher (myself!)

But hey, I've only crashed one drone so far. Into my TV antenna while inspecting a chemical spill below it, just after I got the roof professionally cleaned. Turns out that it was a lot of pigeons with diarrhoea s(h)itting on the TV antenna, but luckily, DJI replaced the (insured) drone.  

 

SURFING N MUSIC

So, I'm just eternally grateful that the passion I felt for flying aircraft transferred across to a passion for creating digital art (where it's easier to correct mistaEKs) as well as creating twisted iron sculptures. I love playing guitar (badly, but slowly improving over the last 50+ years) and I also love surfboard riding (for an even longer period), but definitely am NOT improving with age! May you find something here to spark your interests!

 

As for the colours in here, they're mostly bright, in an attempt to emulate the colours I used to see around people when I was a child. Yes, the colours of peoples' auras! 

 

Also, please note, I am retired and thank you, but I'm not looking for commissions of any sort. 

All the best to you,

Casey Herman

 

Twisted Irony is an Australian registered trademark. All the images and text are copyright of Casey Herman, except for the following photos:  (one on this page, the others in the sculpture page) by Joseph Darmenia. Some of the images in the Body Torque Gallery are by Feminine Mystique. The celestial shots are by courtesy of NASA.