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 as a pilot. Life after flying - and before retirement - (see below) exposed me to computers. My delight on discovering that Photoshop 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 my 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.

 

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 other people. However, because they’re so heavy, I switched to creating sculptures, which are either lighter or modular. I also work with weathered rock and timber.

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 fashionable yet? I hope not.

 

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. 

 

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) and I also love surfboard riding, but definitely am NOT improving with age! May you find something here to spark your interests!

 

By the way, I'm retired, so I won't be accepting any more commissions - this is just a vanity site now. ;) Thanks for your understanding. 

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.