Check out the long list of fine artists opening their studios for the 21st annual Port Townsend Studio Tour!
Studio Tour Soon
Draw, sculpt, play!
I started with a drawing, thinking it would be a very minimal sketched outline for a bas relief paper clay figure. But … things change! I liked the head I started with, and somehow got my figure into a most awkward angle and position. Then the drapery appeared, and I found myself looking a worker in ancient China. So strange!
Then I started in with the paper clay, but created the Michelin Tire Man only in white… darn it! So while he is drying, I photographed a couple of arrangements.
Getting Ready 1
Cleaning up my studio in preparation for Studio Tour 2019 (August 17-18) means finishing up unfinished projects, finessing less satisfactory projects, shuffling & categorizing work, etc. Some pieces go outdoors, becoming slowly disintegrating Yard Art, others are completed, improved & better presented, and a few just filed away out of sight.
Many of my assemblage & collage works come together slowly, and I accumulate found objects that claim me; really, I don’t claim them! Many of these items do find a place in a finished work, but that may take years. Meanwhile I arrange & re-arrange the most interesting finds along with my most experimental creations. These get photographed and enjoyed, but also take up a lot of space and collect a lot of dust. Some of these just need to be abandoned, they will never “fit”.
The piece shown here evolved from working with wax a few years ago. The center part is made from mat board, dried grasses, thread and cheesecloth saturated with wax. It has been mounted into an old wooden desk in-box, painted black. For a long time it featured a folded paper sad dog, but that bit of paper finally lost its charm, and the mountainous rock and a cast resin figure took its place.
I cleaned it up today, making a few alterations, and mounting the polymer clay bones (on the top) and the sleeping resin figure permanently. This should probably get a glass or clear acrylic facing to keep out dust and protect it, but … it is, of course, an odd size. I am not going to order glass, or carefully cut and bevel acrylic unless someone wants to buy this piece. And that is not too likely to happen!
Trees Grow Wild
Findings Drawn
Colt as Angel
I certainly enjoy mythological beasts, and this includes horses: Pegasus may well be an influence here. And Bucephalus, Alexander the Great’s stallion, is legendary. I once christened a rather wonderful local horse Bucephalus, but only in my own mind: I never met this horse or its owner.
This little winged colt is really another angel in my Angels series, and I am sure my Angel Colt owes it’s existence to the horses in my friends’ lives: the horses that appear in their art.
More Relief for Angels
Babies They All Grow on Trees
Death amidst life
These are pages of a book that honors a life now closed.
The crystal ship with the recumbent figure is work that came together slowly. Like much of my work, the final piece is assembled from parts I created along the way. While I had a special desire to create a “crystal ship”, I did not plan the final work in advance.
This figure, which resembled a good friend, became a memorial to him when he died, and it fit into my crystal ship perfectly. The symbolism of the ship is relevant both to him, as an individual fascinated by ocean explorations, and more broadly to all of us. All of us who have sailed, or will soon sail away. It is a deeply personal piece.
I attached the figure and the few special objects to the crystal resin ship. The work sits on a lightweight wrapped wire stand that I made for it. I have photographed it in many settings.