Category Archives: My Art
Selfie
This selfie in plaster was so grim and ghastly that I took my carving tools to it before sharing it. It is so heavily altered about the mouth and more that is barely recognizable (a good thing!). Believe me, you will have a stressed and ugly expression making a plaster gauze face mask for the first time, even if you are not as old, wrinkled, fat & lumpy as I am! After reshaping & smoothing, I added the lines or threads: the matrix of my life 🙂
Poem Response
When requested to come up with some visual imagery, my response today was verbal:
My Thread is a Rope
The thread I hold is a rope.
My thread is not a delicate silken floss,
Bright with color.
The thread that I hold onto is a rope:
Strong, dull, dun colored,
Dirty, encrusted with the juices of sixty-two years.
Years of living, struggling, crying
Laughing, making, and holding hands.
Tarred by many more years of history,
Family stories, memories not my own.
Some strands of this rope are loose,
Unraveled, untidy, adhering to people and things
Left along the way.
But the rope is strong: I can
Pull, and lean, and even hang limp
From this rope.
— Sandra
The original request came with a poem by William Stafford:
AN OPEN EXPERIMENT for anyone interested:
“The Thread
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
~ William Stafford ~”
…………………………
- What color do you envision your thread?
- What does the matrix to which it is attached look like? How big? What is inside of it? Does it have color?
- Can you draw what you see in your mind’s eye of this matrix?
- How is the thread connected to you…… in your hand? or imbued thoroughly in your whole body and spirit. What color is the you holding the thread?
- Would you mind doing some drawings of these images and bringing them next Wednesday? I am going to try it myself and ask others to try embodying in art form these images, too.
Another
This is the result of yet another procrastination prior to tackling my studio cleanup (see the previous few posts). I added some ink to bring out the contrast and detail on this older print, and then started foiling the digital scan:
And these are foils of two prints from a foil covered collograph plate :-):
Creative Avoidance
My current avoidance: my studio is a mess and I really need to clear space on my work surfaces. It may even be time to get rid of some of the wonderful “stuff” that never quite seems to work out in my art projects. Not to mention that fimo clay and pasta maker that I really do not plan to ever use again!
But … when I start to tidy/organize/clean my studio, I quickly run across such tempting incomplete projects that call for my immediate attention!
Here I added a delicate touch of color to a three plate black ink print “Three Flowers” that is from 2015.
Another distraction yesterday & today was to make molds and cast a clay “doodle” made by my partner, Michael.
I like this small sculptural doodle very much, and a friend who visited admired it also. It is a fairly simple shape to mold & cast (vs. the complex and so far intractable problem of casting my oil based clay baby). No idea yet how I will manage that! So for practice and to get quick satisfaction (I hope), I made a construction silicone inner mold with a 2-part plaster mother mold, sealed it with shellac, and just poured lightly tinted plaster just now. Call it casual casting 🙂
This was much more fun than clearing the studio, and it will be even more fun to open up the mold tomorrow morning, if I can wait that long…
And now it is 6pm on Friday: half past a beer, and I think we have chips & dip handy, so … that will certainly take care of cleaning for today!
