Life Drawing

Since I have no work space for sculpting for the time being, I figured I’d work on my sketching for a while.  I tried a life drawing session at  Artspace in downtown Raleigh. It costs eight dollars. You just show up anytime between 7 and 10pm, leave whenever you like. I was delighted to see the woman who modeled for “The Pawn” again.

The (art) show must go on

…and it is, until next June. Town of Cary staff, CVA volunteers and Paris Alexander (center in the green fishing hat) labor in the hot sun on the Cary Town Hall Campus to place a marble base on a concrete pad in preparation for the installation of Paris Alexander’s limestone sculpture called “Jacob’s Ladder” in the Cary Sculpture Show.  Paris is my stone carving teacher.

On the right is “Jacob’s Ladder” among the clouds.

Vandalized in Vain

Here is a video of the aftermath of an act of vandalism on a sculpture during the mold-making process. I’m sad, embarassed and disappointed that this horrible thing happened to the sculpture Ahmed Fadaam was working on.

“Welcome to the US, where we have this very precious, special thing called “Freedom” we’d like to share with you poor people of Iraq who have been beat down in your own country. Maybe you can learn from us!!”

What do you say to a man who has tried so hard to do the right thing -the best he can figure out what that is -from what I can tell? I watch him talk to people who ask him pretty tough questions about Muslims, about Baghdad, the war, Iraq, the treatment of women and he responds graciously.

Ahmed named this work “Civilization”, which he explained to me is a feminine word in his language and is considered a feminine quality, hence the title of the video is “Civilization Destroyed”.

The sculpture has now been repaired by Ahmed. Resilience.

Broken with my own hands

  Usually I feel some kind of pain if my work is destroyed, but this one I broke myself and felt nothing. I held it in my hands and broke it into pieces. Then I fired the pieces in my kiln. Why would I do this? Why would I fire the broken pieces and save them?  It was a nice looking piece with potential. It received compliments from artists I respect during the sculpting process. I didn’t want it.

The sculpture itself wasn’t the problem. The problem is for the first time in my sculpture group I requested a pose for an important work that I must do. MUST do. Many times I have found a way to make the best of poses chosen by other people. This one time I needed something and I told them how important it was to me. No one else needed any pose in particular, yet they didn’t want to do mine. I felt intuitively like I was being undermined. …But instead of finding a nice, healthy assertive way to firmly request the needed pose or to back out of the session, I felt overwhelmed so I smiled and pretended everything was alright and I told jokes and sculpted. Then, after paying my money for the model and spending my time on this work, I took it home and when I was alone, I broke it. The pieces have been sitting in my garage for many months.  It took me this long to figure out why I did that.

I don’t want to live like that anymore.

Litmus

We had a fabulous time at Litmus on the night of the reception for the annual nude show.

Here is me with my  friend and fellow sculptor, Charles, right before he headed off to another party.

The show seems to be growing and the quality of the entries is getting better every year. There were also more art collectors in attendance this year.

Litmus is a relaxed, casual place. Our sculpture group comes here to learn from each other.  We share models. We laugh a lot together and we sculpt.

Should you, Could you, Would you Paint the Wood?

My guardian poodle should be out there biting the ankles of my enemies however, he prefers to dabble in fine art instead.  Here’s an installation work of Pood’s called “someone rang the doorbell right after the front door was painted” .

I’m so fortunate to have such a talented companion here for inspiration. Pood is also an unbelievable  percussionist. You should hear him rattle his stainless steel bowls whenever they’re empty.

His humanitarian efforts include providing a well groomed, warm place to live for about half a dozen otherwise homeless fleas right now, (despite my best efforts).

p.s. Bill, you can see what I’ve been working on lately. My humble contribution is called “Maple Hardwood Floors”.