The middle of a man

 
Here’s an absolutely gorgeous torso in clay by my friend, Jim Fatata, who runs Litmus Gallery and Studios and the Raleigh Sculpture Group, where he teaches. This one’s in the drying stage and stands about 27 inches tall.

Life Size

Last time I visited my friend,  Ahmed Fadaam, he was working on this foam sculpture he will call “Media” at the UNC art lab. He took foam sheets like those pictured above, glued them together and placed them on a metal armature, and carved a beautiful life-sized running woman to represent run-away headlines in [...]

Fo Shizzel My Chizzel

 
 
Second day carving this stone and I am having a blast. My teacher, Paris Alexander,taught me to use a point chisel to clear out more stone and to do some shaping with a tooth chisel. I was supposed to round out the tip of the nose (/me points to the square flat thing which is [...]

The cure for stonliness is a friend with a chisel

 
The post Turned to stone contains an image of the preliminary sketch for this carving. We used a hammer and chisel to roughly outline the major parts of our design in limestone. I jumped the gun by chiseling around the mouth, nose and eyes a bit, but hopefully I didn’t do any serious harm.  The [...]

Turned to stone

Here is my preliminary pencil sketch for my first attempt at relief carving in limestone.
This sketch was my second choice of the two designs I came up with. My instructor gently advised me that my first choice is too difficult for my skill level at this time.
The method of image transfer we used involved [...]

Seeds

When I dreamt this one, I wasn’t sure how to make it. It took me a while to figure it out. “Seeds” came from a dream, but I think also it may have been inspired by a Japanese sculpture we’ve had in our family since I lived in Okinawa as a child. I’ve made a [...]

Murals make a million smiles

We had a lot of fun at Kingswood Elementary in Cary, NC working on these murals with artist, Kelly Sari. I was lucky to be able to volunteer for this project. There are eight panels in all with each representing native species of fish and sea life in various areas of North Carolina. I [...]

Little red boat on a vast green sea

  No doubt this boat is heading to Where the Wild Things Are. I was thinking about a day in preschool art class when we watched an episode of “The Dinosaurs” . The baby dinosaur knocked a bowl of oatmeal on the floor. He exclaimed, “Look what I made!!” then he looked into the camera [...]

Essential wisdom of children

A father was late to pick up his 4-year-old daughter from a pre-school art class I teach yesterday and before he arrived, she let him have it. She and I were cleaning up the classroom after everyone else went home. She told me her Daddy always forgets to turn out the light when he leaves [...]

Confessions of a Dumpster Diver

3-16-06 -I picked the kids up at school today. We were talking about our daily adventures. It took me about 15 minutes to convince the kids I had actually been dumpster diving. After we pulled into the driveway I had to show them what I found in the dumpster as proof I wasn’t pulling their [...]