This bird is my first stone carving, chiselled from a 6″ x 6″ x 9″ block of nice soft uniform limestone;  started & completed in the NWSSA beginners tent at Pilgrim Firs Stone Camp this week.

The stone camp was so much fun: the NWSSA stone camp beginners’ tent provided an amazing opportunity to try carving with great access to tools and knowledgeable sculptors!  I highly recommend the experience.  Also everyone was friendly, tried to make this introvert feel welcome, and the food & facilities were good.

My work is crude, but I am pleased with it: it relates back to an early monoprint success from 2008 shown here at left (lots of brayer work!). This fat “Bird with Fire” was accepted, and exhibited in the Collective Visions Gallery annual juried show in Bremerton.

My first concept of a two piece set of baby and parent bird (also a concept previously rendered in 2-D) was too ambitious for starting out, so has been deferred to acquisition of, and practice with, some power tools.

Unfortunately my hammer wrist took too much force toward the end: it is still  swollen & sore 🙁   I could not stop chiselling for four & a half days straight. Clearly I need to work on my hammering technique in order to protect my aging body!

I started a second carving, which is more abstract, based on the concept of a rectangular block (where would that idea come from? :-)) wrapped or draped with twisty rope or cord.  It may also evoke fossilized work casings in stone (limestone of course).  This piece is still very much a work in progress.  And you see here my fat baby bird in an earlier stage.