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.

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, 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.

I bought a sample bag of a slow drying cement based product called PalTiya, and I need more beetles. So I sculpted these two rather humble beetles as a PalTiya experiment! I found that this product is likely designed for, and best used for, larger sculptures. The fibers are problematic for tiny details, the finished surface is a bit grainy, and the slow drying & curing time is frustrating for smaller sculptures.

PalTiya is not cheap, and the weight means you pay a relatively high shipping cost. While I found this to be an interesting experiment, I don’t love the results. If I use more if this, it will be on a larger work. And I have used ordinary cement with acrylic & fiber additives with some success, so I am not completely sold on this particular product.

I found quite a few of the tiny fiberglass strands in the mix were still clumped together. The recommendation is to burn off fibers if the end result on the finish coat is too fuzzy, but when clumps of fiber are burned, this leaves small voids that are not easy to fill with the fiber rich PalTiya. I filled them with a 2-part sculptural epoxy, and textured the small patches by pressing a scrap of rough sandpaper gently onto the surface of the putty.

My paint job may not hold up, although the beetles should. This product is advertised to be very strong if cured properly (slowly and kept wet). I used about three coats of thinned artists’ acrylic paint. I will spray them with a topcoat: probably two coats of clear acrylic finish before installing them anywhere.

My original plan was to make molds of these, and cast a few more beetles for outdoor use. But now I am not really sure I need to duplicate either of these beetle people! I made these humble beetles as a PalTiya experiment, and I am not exactly thrilled with the results. So it goes!

I need places for my beetle people, and this work is an experimental armature for a beetle home! This experiment is currently a tin foil covered dead snag of a tree, but it will become a much more viable and durable (dead snag) home for beetles if my experiment succeeds!

BTW, the tin foil angel is not part of this piece, but is just taking advantage of the photo op!

I started with a heavy cardboard tube, which I mounted to a base. Then I slashed the tube here and there (in an artistic manner of course). I inserted slats of wood into the gashes and fixed them in with hot glue. From there, I attached additional cardboard and some natural twigs to create brutalized broken branches.

Then came the foil, and a lot more hot glue! It took a good part of a large roll of foil to get this thing well covered. I needed it to be crinkly and textured, not smooth. I quite like the look of a tin foil dead tree, but this is just an armature. It remains to be seen whether the end result will be pleasing or durable.