I take too many photos on my walks, then I must decide what to keep and what to manipulate. A bit of a chore, with some pleasure, some frustration, and a good deal of tedium. But sometimes my art just takes the form of photography and arrangements!
Above are one photo of light and shadow, further abstracted and manipulated, and two photos of minor rearrangements made at the beach.
Above is a photo of Ocean Spray, and the manipulated “foiled” version of the same image.
Again at the beach: a wonderfully veined green rock! I love this photo, but still just had to play with it for various effects. I made my arrangement, photographed it, and took both the photo and rock home with me. Sometimes that is what happens with photography and arrangements!
Sometimes only the most minimal enhancements are required! Sometimes the foil is better, sometimes not! My window arrangement of art and artifacts changes, but for my own amusement rather than with photos in mind. But the light, or the plants outside, can get me running for the camera to captured my arrangement with photography!
You can find more of my photos, simple and enhanced, on my Facebook Page.
I recently refurbished this sometime portrait in a box, and posed it seated for these photos:
This is an any woman portrait. This sometime portrait in a box is a very personal work that speaks to me about death and the ages. The altered life cast face is at one with the worn stones I placed below it.
I made this from a life cast, that I altered significantly. Not just by adding the life channels that I carved and traced in graphite. The face shape and expression has been revised by careful carving.
I buffed and sealed the tinted plaster cast face, then mounted it firmly into the box. For the background I digitally manipulated a grayscale scan of an abstract pastel drawing, which is a piece titled “Dance Partners”. The transformed drawing relates to the found beach stones that I mounted in the box.
Here my portrait box is photographed on a chair that I spray painted using purchased stencil. I have my sometime portrait in a box comfortably seated!
I do suspect that there will be more Beetle People quite soon, but summer activities are so distracting! I am just back from a month long trip, and there is a potluck picnic today, family to meet with soon, family to host at the end of the month, and … well, there is the yard!! Where does the time go?
I plan to install a few beetle people on a canvas garden when I have some time! The canvas is a vivid and rather splotchy painting from 10 or 15 years ago, and I am so tired off it! The painting just does not stand alone, but it may make a satisfactory beetle habitat!
However these last weeks have been community project and family time here, so for now beetle installations are on hold. The two arrangements below may become permanent, but only after some long scheduled summer plans are over and done.
At left is the rather chaotic and colorful canvas, which now seems to be more anchored! I have layered on beetle tracks, gems, and three varieties of beetle. At right one of my largest beetle people, clearly a Golden Lady Beetle, settled onto a recently broken plate. She seems very much at home!
My lady beetle is durable of out of doors but unfortunately the plate glazing will not survive many seasons of winter weather unless I can find a way to seal and protect it! And beetle people on a canvas garden will not be very suitable for out of doors either! Can I make a canvas garden durable for all weather? That is the challenge for later this summer.
Tucked Inn is a tiny house for a Community Build project; volunteers build small “wooden bedrooms” as transitional housing. These will be located in small “villages” with a shared bathhouse and a minimal kitchen facility. I think the idea is to have define community rules with some self-government, but also additional on-site management. The goal is to provide a safe, comfortable, and secure home base for previously homeless residents, while they attempt to stabilize their lives and find long term arrangements.
I have been working nearly full time for nearly two weeks now! I do find it a bit difficult to manage a regular work schedule after years of retirement. Also construction is hard on a soft old body like mine. But I am one of a team of RoseWind volunteers building an 8’x12′ tiny house for transitional housing, and we have made good progress. Most of us are building, but we also get moral support and regular refreshments from other RoseWind supporters!
The tiny house, aka “tiny wooden bedroom”, that we build will be moved to a final location TBD. It will be one of several cabins in a small village. Residents will share a restroom & bath house, and a minimal kitchen. The new village will be the second one in our area, and it will provide transitional housing for homeless individuals. Residents will have help, but will need to participate in managing their new community. The hope is the stay will temporary, while while residents seek financial stability through jobs, social security, etc. and find longer term housing.
These tiny cabins are indeed tiny, but are dry, secure, insulated, with lights and heat. The door locks, there are operable windows, and there will be built in furnishings: a bed platform, shelves, wardrobe, and small desk.
There are some fun aspects to building a tiny house for transitional house. We get to do a bit of decorating, and we have named our tiny wooden bedroom “Tucked Inn”. I made this little sign for Tucked Inn.
My newest two Tiny Beetles have found a home: one in each of my two gorgeous Beetle Specimen Drawers (aka Beetle Museum Drawers).
I make most of my Beetle People with the intent to reproduce them by making molds and casts, but my Tiny Beetles are different. The larger beetles range from about 2.5″ to 8″ long so far. I strive for detail and interesting facial expression on my originals, and color the reproductions to make them unique. Some of the casts get modified a bit more: I may do a bit of carving before coloring them. Some are colored with pigment in the cast material, or with surface pigment bonded in the mold. Others get rub on pigment and/or paint. Most are finished with a clear sealing coat.
My Tiny Beetles are much smaller; the largest is about 1 1/4″ long, and quite slender! They do not have the same level of detail, and are one-off, so far. I do not plan to reproduce any of these Tiny Beetles.
The first of my two “museum drawers” already had two tiny residents, along with nine larger beetles. The first two are the very tiniest of tiny beetles. Today a third, slightly larger, Tiny Beetle moved into an area where she can be quite well camouflaged by color and texture.
The largest of my four tiny beetles, my beautiful bronze fellow, moved into the second of my “beetle specimen drawers”. He crawls about in the company of nine much larger beetle people, but as the largest of my four Tiny Beetles, I think he will be quite comfortable.
I feel sure they will both fit right in; two new Tiny Beetles have found a home.
I do love my birds, but now is the time of the beetles: yes, that would be the Beetle People of course!
I have several ideas for incorporating my beetles into finished projects. I have my two gorgeous Beetle Specimen drawers completed, and several of my beetles have wandered off to new homes. Others have ventured out into my garden, to play amongst my Yard Art. There are so many opportunities for Beetle People in my garden! It is indeed the Time of the Beetles in my studio, and in my neighborhood.
I do love my birds, and have created two bird sculptures that I produce in (somewhat limited!) editions. I carved my original “Fat Baby Bird” from limestone, and made the original “Birds on Nest” from modeling clay. My silicone glove molds are both good for several more casts, by commission or on my own impulse. I can’t make many birds from these molds since the molds will fail well before I make 50 casts. I don’t have a set number in mind, hence the term “somewhat limited” edition!
Mother bird with chicks (aka “Birds on Nest”) was the perishable original, now gone. Molds from casts lose detail so I do not plan to make one! This piece is limited by the durability of my mold. But there is a bit more history to the bird family, because I have already made two molds! But from two different versions of the original. I destroyed the first mold after only four casts.
I let the oil based clay original sit in my studio for more than a year before I made a mold. It looked good after I sprayed it with gloss acrylic to protect it, and friends admired it. A neighbor encouraged me to produce a durable cast of my birds, although I was not sure that I loved them.
I made my mold from the soft clay, which is tricky. But I was not satisfied with the original artwork; I wanted to change it!. Luckily I was able to remove that mold without destroying the clay original completely. This let me rework the clay to create a better piece. Now I have a new mold from the reworked modeling clay. This clay original is really gone now. I call the casts made from the remaining molds “Birds on Nest II”.
Please contact me if you want me to make you a bird!
You can get a look at both of my bird sculptures easily if you are in Port Townsend. I placed both bird sculptures in a local pedestrian shortcut trail on the Spruce St. right-of-way near Ft. Worden State Park back gate. Adjacent neighbors landscape and maintain this section of trail near Ft. Worden so beautifully! They nestled my “Fat Baby Bird” toward the north end of this half a block. Birds on Nest II sits at the south end of this pleasant path.
I get some nice feedback from this installation. Recently a stranger who lives near this Spruce St. trail, called to commission her own “Birds on Nest II”. This was a delightful surprise! I made the cast a few days ago, and the piece is painted and ready for her now (she has it now, 4/7/21). You can see her penguin family above left.
I do love my birds: my bird sculptures and all the real birds. As a bird lover, I often have my binoculars close to hand.
