Shadows on Wood / Context and Content

Here's the finished carving "the innkeeper". I love how the sunlight gives full play to the range of textures and also extends the sculpture beyond its physical boundaries into the realm of shadows. These carvings are meditations on emotional states of being as well as a working meditation on the nature of wood.

What does the wood want to do/be? Douglas fir is a coarse wood. I raise the grain further by torching it and brushing with a brass brush. The veneer relief tree and horse silhouettes are cedar, with a finer grain. Knot holes, checking in the wood are all OK. In fact this work was inspired by the big knot that forms the halo behind her head. It's hard to see, but at its center is a split that forms a perfect cross. A cross, a circle, a Madonna, I had to make this piece! The wood told me what it wanted to be.

The shrine's little roof is a good example of the way I'm working the wood. It is just big enough to give the idea of shelter. Split from a single block of fir, one side has a rise, the other has a depression. The two halves make a whole that your mind doesn't initially perceive but your hands and body sense and know as true.

Raining today, perfect for staying inside and working on a new carving.

Haute Couture Organic Kinetic Sculptures #2

Tait came to see the garden and wound up wearing the next version of the HCOKS. (see title.) The materials were chosen for maximum kinetic potential and color.

I read somewhere, wish I could find it, about a woman famous for her clothes and hats saying that she didn't consider a hat a success unless it had made someone laugh.... now that's style.

2 years 22 issues and what I learned.

I’ve been with Pacific NorthWest Sculptors since the first meeting at the Queen of Sheba restarant. It has grown beyond any of our original expectations. Initally a way to meet other sculptors, PNWS is now an organization that offers much more: opportunities for professional development, different venues for showing our work, chances to learn new techniques and materials.

It’s still a great way to meet other sculptors.

I took on the newsletter thinking I could help without having to attend meetings. Little did I know that it would force me to meet so many people and learn skills other than sculpture. When I began, I asked a writer for help. Her words of advice were, “It’s good to have a strong opinion. It’s called a voice.” “Edit ruthlessly. Cut out anything extraneous, you just cannot change the meaning of what a person is saying.” “ Don’t clutter things up with too many different ideas. For the reader, simple is easier to understand and remember.” I’ve found that advice works as well for sculpting as it does for writing.

Under the end of the month deadline and last minute additions, something I wrote and liked would be deleted to make more space. Lessons: Don’t get too attached to your work. Leave space for last minute revisions. My working motto for getting the newsletter out each month became: Done is better than perfect. I’d send out one month’s issue and begin immediately on the next month so that working was more flow than dead lifting an entire month in one day...

Being editor gave me permission to ask questions,
to be curious about other folks art, how they make it and more importantly why they make it.
Seeing is important to learning about art.
So is listening.
Sculptors are storytellers, even when our work is abstract. Hearing Rick Gregg talk about coaxing steel into a sweet bend, listening to what the material is telling him or Sarah Swink speak about her dreamlike quirky ceramic figures gives a visceral appreciation for their work.

The newsletter is a good place to practice telling the story of your art, sharing the excitement of beginning or finishing a piece. The writing and photos doesn’t have to be perfect. Fear of it not being perfect not only stops us from creating art, it also stops us from promoting and selling our work. Lesson: Put it out there! (I had a captive audience, of 650 Garden Writers of America looking at my botanical sculpture for 90 minutes at their 2008 Awards Banquet because I wasn’t afraid to ask if there was any venue for garden inspired sculpture at the conference.)

Finding Voltaire’s quote: “ I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” allowed me to have my own aesthetic opinions and wholeheartedly celebrate our collective creativity. PNWS is not about any one kind of aesthetic or medium. We all are here trying our best in an art form that takes a lifetime to learn.

Thank you to each artist who shared their work and process in Artist Profiles. Thank you to everyone who helped make the editor’s job easier by including all the pertinent information with their art images. It’s well worth the time to think your goal through and supply all the information you want other’s to know about your sculpture or show. That makes it much more likely you’ll be published than if you leave it to someone else to dig up the information.

I’ve enjoyed these last two years and everything I’ve learned. It’s time to put that time and energy back into my own sculpture, which now includes writing about it here on Shadows on Stone.

Careful Chaos of Tim Fort

There is a wonderful childlike pleasure of carefully building something in order to destroy it. Tim Fort's art and video allow us the pleasure without the hours of tedious set up. I love the tension when the momentum appears to stop. Enjoy.

Haute Couture Organic Kinetic Sculptures #1

Working for two weeks on an enormous Dragon (28 feet long x 28 feet tall),  the goal was to cover as much ground as fast as possible.  I wanted to take the time and make something small and well crafted. 

I gathered grasses and flowers from my fall garden to create these little hair/hat sculptures. The chinese lanterns and hydrangea provide color, the grasses transmit the slightest movement of the body. They're both lovely and funny. The first batch went to the great folks who run Koji's Osakaya on NE Weidler.

The Baroque Music of Fall

Another glorious gift of a day. Sunny, warm. There'll be plenty of time for November's tears and melancholia. Right now, it's October's Baroque Music. Parades of color,horns and drums, stately marches for the beginning of an orderly descent of leaves. Sudden flurries as groups of fallen leaves decide, en mass, that they're not yet willing to be inert sodden piles.

They make mad dashes across busy streets

in riots of color.

the Light in the Studio

After years in a large but dark studio, the light in my new studio continues to delight me. With large windows to the south and west, skylights, and no forest between me and the setting sun the light pours in. It often catches me unaware and shows me a highlighted version of my work.

 

I made a cardboard pedestal for the finished carving called "the innkeeper" and put it out of the way.  The afternoon light gave me an edited - haiku version, just the building's edge and the small pregnant figure.