Timberline

They've torn down the little shack behind the studio and are building a two story house  close to the lot line. It will look down into a special part of my garden.  There goes my privacy.

So I'm researching the growth rate of Incense Cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) for a solid dark green wall (70 feet tall) that won't grow too wide (8 to 12 feet wide). Turns out that Incense Cedars provide the wood for most pencils. 

In looking online I found this curious blog Timberlines : Musings from the Forest: Thoughts and discussion on the pencil industry, forest management, California Cedar Products Company and the artistic and written creativity enabled by the wood-cased pencil.

I thought that writing about sculpture and the garden was a small audience.  A blog for pencils lovers? I must admit that I use ink for my drawings as it doesn't smear. But everyone that has ever held a pencil can learn and enjoy something new about the most humble writing tool.  Go Here

Vegas Yesterday. The Original Corinthian Capitals in Situ.

My friend Janice Lawrence sent me this photo after reading about the Corinthian Capital I sculpted for Las Vegas. 

Here are the original Corinthian Capitals in context in 

The  Forum.  As in Rome, Italy. 

The only problem is that the recreations are translucent plastic not marble. The image looks like a bad Photoshop job.  Which makes me wonder how unreal the actual site looks. It's hard to trust reality or it's stand in these days.

Maybe they could install lights inside the replacement columns to glow with changing colors at night. Disco Forum anyone?.

Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno. Science and Sculpture

Isabella Rossellini has a new short video series called Green Porno.  (photo: Getty Images)

She has a good sense of humor and is the first to admit Green Porno is a little sick. Each video is the very definition of droll. They're very playful science lessons.

Watch for the great cardboard and paper sculptures that look like anyone could make them. Anyone given enough time, construction paper and glue and a staff of talented artists. The puppets give new meaning to my tag "The pleasures of cardboard"

 Go Here to watch the series

The Golden Dragon at Wynn Casino in Macau..

永利巨龍 Wynn casino dragon (macau) from raychan on Vimeo.

When you work on a movie or big project like this one for Additive Workshop and Michael Curry Designs, you do your part and move on. Rarely do you get to see the completed results. We did pretty good for an army of Anglos sculpting a Chinese Dragon for a Chinese audience.

This Golden Dragon wasn't nearly as pretty in the making. It was a lot of fast and furious hard work. The sculpture is enormous. 27 feet tall. 27 feet long. The head is bigger than my Toyota van. 

I was part of an army of hands slathering and tooling molten oil clay over acres of foam. The creature was done in 8 and 10 foot sections with special care taken so that in the end all the sections would match up. It was never seen complete until after it was molded.

Another division of Curry's team constructed the giant lotus blossom. That shop creates wonders.

Earth Day 2009

                                     "Whatever it is you are meant to do, do it now.

                                         The conditions are always impossible." 

                                                                                  -Doris Lessing

Have Karumi - Make Art!

Karumi is the Japanese word for "lightness". The famous Japanese poet Basho used it to mean "the beauty of ordinary things spoken of in a simple way". He compared karumi to a shallow sandy river.

The spirit of Karumi can be understood as a disposition of lightheartedness that overcomes the burdens of the past and consciously ignores the shortcomings of the present while doing the unconventional.

All that in one fabulous word. Sounds like a good mindset to make your art. Yes?

From The Japanese House - A traditional for Contemporary Architecture by Heinrich Engel. The book is an out of print classic. I couldn't find any link or bio for the author.

Critical Thinking -Adam Gopnik on Dr. Johnson

Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, writes vividly about Dr. Johnson, the first modern personality. (Dec 8, 2008 issue. A good article is never dated.)

"The critic's job was to distinguish between what belonged to the history of taste and what belonged to the canon of art, and try to explain what made the permanently pleasing permanently please. For Johnson's great question is not how to write, or what to write, but why write. His criticism provides a simple answer: To help us enjoy life more, or endure it better.

Johnson has no illusions about criticism's ability to fix or cure. Critics are to writers not as doctors are to patients but as bearded ladies are to trapeze artists- another, sadder act in the same big show. 

"Every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the work of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic," he wrote.

I now have a new way of thinking about art critics..... another sadder act in the same big show. Beards and all.