Reflections

The mom and baby are at the foundry, along with the portrait bust. I should hear back any day now and am looking forward to seeing them. The sculpture of David is complete, but I do need to cast him in something. Onward or shall I say back to Dick Hathaway. This is a sculpture that I have been working on for a while. The TW Wood Gallery in Vermont has been trying to raise funds for the casting of the piece. It is of my former professor Richard Hathaway.

Bryan has been working on the clay satchel of books that sits at the feet of Dick. And yesterday we moved Dick to the center of the room again.

What is it about a hand that is so intriguing to me? Being a kinesthetic person touch has always been important, as a sculptor they are the tool that I use the most the venue from which the passion, empathy and love comes through my subject into my heart and is to be shared with others.

I have done studies of hands, sculpted them, and created some odd pieces surrounding the hand. Actually they are my most contemporary sculptures. Hand L was one. I found an old window, took a study of a hand that I created and secured it to the window. My daughter, then about 4 years old, had magnetic letters. I glued the purple L in the hand. Get it Hand L! Through the glass in the window I Xeroxed my face peeking through gingham. It was a strange piece, and I am not sure who bought it, but I know when they did they loved it! I thought about creating an entire series of sculptures with hands, similar to Hand L.

Last week I had to fly to the North East because my mother was ill and my family needed me. I had purchased hand casting materials and had it on hand, no pun intended, incase this type of trip should happen. I packed the alginate, and knew I would have to have some plaster, as alginate molds will disintegrate quickly and you must cast within 24 hours or sooner. I thought it might be a good idea to also pack some hydrastone though I was not sure if the airline would allow large baggies of white powder to go through in my suitcase. Low and behold my suitcase was 5 pounds over. I beamed the attendant, “ I know what ways 5 pounds.” You should have seen her face when I took out the baggie of white powder. I told her what it was and talked to four other security people about taking it on the plane, everyone said, “take it out of your carry on, put it onto of your shoes, they will know what plaster is.” Yeah right. They confiscated my hydrastone. The head guy said, “I don’t know if it is plaster.” My sister suggested that I should have gotten a cup of water and taken a few minutes and mixed some up for him- hindsight! I was a little nervous they might detain me and then my poor mother would be waiting in the hospital, so I did not push the matter.

Besides taking care of mother, I was a casting fool. I have a great cast of my father’s hand, and one of my mothers hand. I also cast my nieces’ hand along with her fiancé’s. My mom and her significant other also let me cast their hands together. Everyone was a trooper.

I had the hands sent UPS. They have yet to come. But I can’t wait to get these. They will be one of my prized possessions.

I was not sure how I could spend an entire day out of the studio at an all day seminar on software. How could I justify it with deadlines overhead? Still the software is something I have worked on for about 20 years. Wow it sounds strange to say that. I even saw people that I knew from over 20 years ago when I worked in the advertising business. You could tell us from the rest in the bunch because we were the ones with the grey hair sitting in the front of the room because of our poor eye sight!

Some areas of this software I have never worked in because frankly I don’t know how. My fear of the unknown part of software and the frustration of learning- we all know it. So I opted for this free symposium on Quark Xpress. I picked out the clay from under my fingernails and cleaned up headed off to a day of lectures.

Hey the food was great, and it was free and I did learn. i was especially interested in the web tools and quarks interactive designer. I quickly suppressed the urge to learn more about interactive designer when I found out it cost an additional 199. How I will find the opportunity to do something with the rest of the knowledge that I obtained is yet to be seen. That would mean more time away from clay and writing. It was a long day yesterday but I’m back today and it feels good to be back to the studio.

We had Chas for about 9 years. He was 10 years old. We acquired him because of an ad in the Greensheet that said. “retriever needs home.” The people looking for a home for him said we were the only family that told them, “Come and take a look at our home and see if this is a place that Chas would like to live.” They did. Chas came to visit and never left. He also came with some treats and a yellow plastic flower pot, that up until moving to our home was apparently his playmate. He never paid any attention to that flowerpot after moving here. His previous family taught him a trick of shooting him with a gun, and Chas would pretend to fall over dead. It was funny. He really had no other tricks,oh. yes, he did like to turn circles when the food came out. Emmy, our other dog and he got a long famously. I’m sure she will miss him.

TILLY AND CHAS
When Tilly- the turtle came to the yard there was a love affair between the two for quite some time. They have tried to work out their differences in their two year relationship.

FOSTER UNCLE
Chas helped us with many different foster dogs. He always made them feel welcome and tolerated hair pulling and nips from all of the puppies. Some even sat right in his bowl. Being foster parents to puppies for the Homeless Pet Placement League was easier for us humans because Chas took such good care of them.
He loved the dog park and would always wander off with a “yodee od doe” type of mentality. Sometimes I would find him looking at all of the people wondering where “we” had wandered off. When finding the pond in the middle of the park he would not swim, but instead would put his old body into the water and sit for a spell.

On Monday April 30th Chas went to dog heaven. I am certain that he is with our other dogs, Casey, Bess, and Conan. We did not know that Chas had cancer and quickly went down hill. The last few days I would find him sitting in the creek, his head resting on a water fall, the water trickling round his body. If I were sick, that is where I would like to be.

He will be missed. We love you Chas.

Our foster puppy was adopted Saturday. She went to a good home and was adopted with another puppy, so Boots has her own puppy!

An upside down Christmas party must have an upside down tree, but there is more to our upside down tree then just hanging it from the ceiling. We ask each of our guests to decorate our tree. They do this with something that is on their person, in their car or found objects. Anything goes. Below you will see just some of the things that are on our tree. On the top of the tree, which is the bottom is a shark that squeaks. Why? Because we can. The shark has been with the celebration for a long time. One of my sculptures look very intrigued with the idea of a shark ornament.

The tree seems to have a strange affect on the guests.

Some of our tree ornaments. It is a crazy tree.
* Plate with found objects

* Actors guild card

* real ornament
* cut out of Illustrator Bob Pharr
* Cassette Case
* name tag
* circle thing
* vip valet park service ticket
* blue bat
* pills wrapped in celephane
* greeting card
* tissue bows

* Socket
* red plastic wine bottle wrap
* plastic ring “10” off drugs”
* playing card
* Pickle?

* name tag
* Lip stick case

* Fork and Spoon twined with beads
* Skeleton
* Faom cup
* throat lozenger
* business card ( from manny santos, producer of my artist documetnary created by PBS)
* Jazzersize coupon
* folded CVS receipt

*towlet
* cut out wooden Jesus
* birthday candles stuck in candy holder

My daughter was so sweet. She baked me a birthday cake from scratch! Carrot cake, one of my favorite. My birthday was Wednesday, but she was not in town and as you may have read I spent the day on my knees cleaning the floor of the studio. I loved the cake. So did everyone else! Florencias boys, trailed in as soon as the cake was cut. They were perfect gentleman while at the party and when bored with the grownups found sitting in the living room watching tv, quite entertaining.

Besides my own artwork there was photography from my daughter as well as her graphics which she played on her computer. I also had my lecture from the TW Woods about my book “Bringing to Life The Spirit of the Deceased- A Sculptor’s Journey” that played in another area of the studio. My husband’s two books were on display and artwork from my apprentice Florencia.

I had invited all of the award winning students from the Culture Shapers contest that I judged a few weeks back. Daphne Dodd came with her parents.

One sculpture actually got into the Christmas spirit. Maybe he was praying for his toys.

The God’s Word sculptures look good in their new display case. http://www.godsword.net

After viewing the artwork people gathered around on the studio porch and different sitting areas in the yard. The white lights, the teeke torches and the sound of the stream always feels magical. The weather was unseasonably warm, making it quite comfortable.

Many thanks to Jennifer my former apprentice and my daughter, Christina for playing photographer during the party