the hesitant warrior

Truly, doing the ceramic pieces will never cease to amaze me around the access that it gives to my around my emotional well being. I truly did not understand the depth of the sense of not knowing which way to move or how. This piece is truly a crying out for some guidance. The hesitant warrior.

it feels alive, very much so

Created a new piece today. Wish that I could take photos as I go along. So many different sculptures were in this piece in the the last couple of hours. Because I don’t use an armature for the clay, since I want to fire them, the wet clay cannot hold itself up in different points in the piece. It fell many times during the process. It started with one face and ended with one very different. The emotions went from searching to jubilant to sorrowful to so many places. Where it is now, well, I need to stand away from it to know. I like this piece, a lot. What I like most is the roughness of the clay, the under working of it. Not too much detail. The motion works as well as the emotion. I sit here writing, jumping up every few minutes to be sure that it has not fallen again. I have put her out in the wind to dry faster. It feels alive, very much so.

in the midst of madness

In the midst of madness this piece was born. I am amazed that these new pieces have come forth right now. But I am glad. In lieu of the written word, the clay speaks for me. Today it was a cry for help and an acknowledgement that I simply cannot take any more emotional insanity. I like this piece. I like the continued rawness of the new work. The quick strokes and the gestures of the piece. His large hands are telling. He is no longer able to give the way he did. Well, I guess I should speak in first person. I am no longer able to give the way that I have and I am asking for help to get myself centered again.

Chagall

May 29, 2007

Again a piece not expected. Not knowing how to move forward in my day emotionally, once again the clay screamed to me and I listened. This piece came extremely quickly, 20 to 30 minutes. I was intent on not overworking it. I was just given a Marc Chagall painting by someone that I love very dearly. Her name is Holly. (She is a teacher and a magnificent one. We should all hope that our children had her in her tutelage or regret that we didn't. But, please can someone convince her to pursue her writing? Honestly, she has volumes of stories to tell us, inform us, entertain us, and ultimately to change how we look at the world) Oh, did I digress? Back to the painting...it is a beautiful angel child descending from heaven. I of course was so moved by the magnitude of the gift itself, but so moved also by the familiarity of the piece. It reminds me so much of my work in its rawest moments…in the beginning when I have not tried to make everything anatomically correct…when it is the gesture of the torso or the feel of the eyes, though they may not be symmetrical. This Chagall has a hand that looks like a foot and two eyes that don’t match. In my readings of Chagall he was spontaneous and rapid in his creations. He painted often in pen and ink, a medium that is unforgiving in the permanence of a stroke. He gave over the need to make the piece representationally correct for the feel of it. And he simply kept making more pieces as many artists do, to let the work and his inner world come forward.

Clay is forgiving. One can change a stroke. But in changing a stroke one takes the chance of changing the whole emotion of the piece. I am struggling to attend to the emotion and feel of the piece and not try to make the piece realistically perfect.

It is such a beautiful challenge to attempt to stay present in the creation. What stroke of clay takes away from the piece and what oddly unrealistic turn makes it feel more real?

bottom of the ocean

Felt at the bottom of the ocean emotionally this week. I was walking through my studio not at all thinking that I would do a piece and it was as if the clay grabbed hold of me and asked me to engage with her. So, in the middle of some inane domestic chore, I opened the bag, pulled pieces of clay and very quickly started allowing the piece to become itself. Within 3 strokes of the clay I saw that she was a mermaid and saw that she was reaching up to the sky. In looking at the piece in its completion, I can see that it is of course me wanting some reprieve from the emotional deep water darkness of my world at the moment. Her hands are unrefined, almost as if they are fin like. She is not the most anatomically correct of pieces, but I didn’t want to overwork her so as not to lose some of the spontaneity. I see that one hand is receiving and the other giving. I am still unaware of what that means in the complexity of my life right now, but none the less she makes me happy.

timeless and dreamlike

Finished this piece in a day and half. Like the piece before it, the process was timeless and dreamlike, well that is until in came to the polishing.

One thing that I haven't mentioned about polishing is that the stone is absolutely unforgiving in its demand for your patience, focus and absolute anal retentiveness around this process. Because believe me, if all of these characteristic are not in place you might as well hang it up. Imagine your marble counter top or even a glass table, the moment one scratch is in either one, your eye inevitably travels to that spot, and it is irritating as hell. Well, with polishing the stone, you must, I repeat must have every scratch from the grit of paper or grinding tool used in the last round on this piece taken down in order to go up to the next grit. If you don't you must go back and do the last grit again. After years of this and the constant going back because i was so anxious to see the piece in its final polish, I have finally slowed down. I now approach it like a meditation, where my focus must be absolutely on the 2" at a time that I am working on, not the whole piece, the 2" in front of me. Then i move to the next 2" until the piece is finished and ready to move to the next grid level only to do it all over again. Did I ever say that this was a sane undertaking? I did have to laugh at one point, finding myself polishing a penis for 40 minutes...but we won't go there in this particular blog.

Well this new piece is finished and his name is Thelonius. He told me that today when I went to see him... Thelonius, I heard in my head, so this is he.

black stripe

Finished the piece today and started a new one. This is also a small piece, looks like a male torso. It is a beautiful stone, green soapstone with what looks like a black stripe going down the torso.

a tad more daylight

I should know better than not to have at least 2 stones going at once. A complicated one and pieces that are straight forward but so satisfying to make. As was this new stone today. After this laborious process with the one eyed bandit (not to mention Kentucky Girl before this last one) oh today was such a wonderful break. I had her almost to the final polish by dusk. If I had had just a bit more strength in my back and a tad more daylight, she'd be done. She just spoke to me so immediately and went from the first cut to polish in what seemed like a couple of hours, though it was actually 6 hrs...but that is when you know that you are in the groove, when time isn't.

It really was a good day. Not one time today, I am happy to report did I question my profession once...just felt totally fulfilled and happy to be alive and doing the work. It helped today that there were no manes involved.

I'm off with my flashlight and glass of wine to go see her.

choose a direction

Started working again. Long hiatus. Went another route with investing and felt myself dying a bit. Had to get back to the clay or stone. Decided to finish a piece that has been sitting on a turntable in front of my eyes day after day. Finally went after it. But what was happening is that I knew that I had to make a new piece. In my impetuous and seize the moment way, I grabbed the clay and started making a new piece. Not enough light inside. I pulled the sculpture stand out in the cool, sunny day and hungrily went after it. Simple, simple, I kept telling myself. Stop the details. What is here? What am I supposed to know? What is this piece. The clay and I worked together and I kept pulling myself back to the creation of it. Trying to keep my mind out of it and let the piece be what it was aching to be. It is simple. It is male. It is winged . And of course it is in some sense troubled, but thouroughly present and in ways unsure of what is next but fulling present in the moment. I stayed with it, trying to hear, trying to not make it pretty or perfect in a realistic sense. But more to stay with it as a encapsulated moment and also as a form that felt to me worked from all angles. Not just the working of it being anatomically correct, because it isn’t, but I believe when I stepped away that it worked as a whole. In the end I realized that from one angle it seems as though the head is facing one way and the legs are facing exactly the other. I thought about changing it, but to me it worked as a form and a feeling and then I realized that as always my work was my journal and today what it told me is exactly where I am. I have been looking one way, but I am now going another and in some way I am still moving in two different directions and I need to make a choice.

most artists complain of this, poor babies

I was asked a couple of months ago to be in a show downtown in San Francisco. the place is being remodeled, so the way things go in construction in this town, its anyone's guess when the show will be hung. But I am getting ready for it. I suppose the longer out the better for me. Considering how much time it takes to do one piece. There are going to be from 30 to 50 artists. Its a big space and should be an exciting show. I'll keep you up to date on the opening

I also need to redo my website.. I have the dearest friend in the world , Lise, who has done my present website and who is in the process of doing this redo. she is pretty amazing, she headed up two Olympic websites and now has a side business of doing video websites while also working for a high tech firm(her business is called 'Digital Narrative' and within the year it will not be her side business any longer. It will truly be an amazing full time love affair with her work). Besides her over the top techy skills she is the best friend in the world. anyway, all to say that I have to get my new photographs done for her to use. I'll tell you, I sometimes, most of the time , I so wish that I could just work...make new pieces one after the other and not have to deal with the photos or the marketing or any of that. But that ain't the way it works. Most artists complain of this...poor babies.

Off to my new piece. It looks to be a woman's torso. It is an Alabaster stone(harder than soap stone, softer than marble) It is a small piece, maybe 20lbs soaking wet, ah, but it is beautifully marbled with soft yellow, siennas, reds and touch of green...mmmm, can't wait.

doth I complain too much

Oh my, this was quite the undertaking. Getting a piece to work in 3 dimensions is always the challenge. Getting this piece to work in 3 dimensions and to have it feel and look like a horse without ears and with one eye...well, i think you get what I've been dealing with. Though all of that was manageable, it was my overreaching vision of Geronimo's horse with the flowing mane, with emphasis on the flowing mane, that really busted my ass. In my excitement to create this beauty, I conveniently forgot that every single cut needs a great deal of attention. I haven't counted them as of yet, but I'll guess this new piece has about 200 cuts just in the mane. I am trying to do the math... 200 cuts 15 stages in each cut. No, I think I won't do the math. Anyway, doth I complain too much?

I have just come from the tub and I am going to pour myself a glass of wine and have my friend Micheline come with me to look at the finished piece. Micheline is my dear friend and an amazing photographer. We all call her "the eye" because she has such an amazing talent of seeing art. When I am stuck I'll ask her to take a look at a piece and tell me what is not working. It is such a gift to have that extra set of eyes.

I haven't found a name for this one yet. Pirate comes to mind with the one eye and all...just kidding, shoot me if I ever call one of my pieces Pirate. You know naming a piece is always so difficult for me. You'd think I'd have a little more imagination than i do when it comes to this, but alas, no such luck.

Anyway this as of yet nameless piece was way more work than I bargained for. I searched my mind many times during her birthing as to what viable profession I could begin at this late date in my life. But maybe its like real live human birth....mothers always say you forget the pain of childbirth when you are holding that baby, (thank god for this blessed act of forgetfulness on the part of my own mother, being that I am the 5th of 6 children) All I know is that after cussing and screaming as any good mother does during a long, drawn out birth, I am now beholding the new stone and have a new one waiting for me out there to start tomorrow. It is decidedly without a mane though.

no need to tell you what my house looks like

I have been working for 2 days straight...no need to tell you what my house looks like. The stone is looking beautiful, though it feels as though it is going so much slower than my impatient artist is comfortable with. I am trying to get her symmetrical, that is always the challenge in a representational piece. Horses have very strong lines and a specific feel to them. My interpretations of horses are not anatomically exact, that is not what I am looking for. More , I am looking to get the piece to feel like a horse, though her nose may be too small or too big, does it feel like a horse's nose, does it fit with the jaw, are the eyes (or in this case, the eye, which is a whole other stretch of realism that I am trusting) in the right position.... Oh, I know that I could measure it all out and mark exactly on the stone where everything should be anatomically, but that would absolutely stop me in my tracks. I would have to put my intellect in the driver's seat and trust me, every time I have tried that control trick my intuition jumps off the wagon and darts off into the forest and with her gone I have absolutely no fun working alone with my own mind. When my intuition is not at the reins there is no connection for me to that inexplicable and completely consuming place where I am able to make passages make sense and stay focused on the piece working as a whole.

a mane good enough for the gods

Well, what have i taken on this time? Again I have a horse with one eye that once again seems to work. But, oh my do I have my work cut out for me. I am going to guess that this one will take 120 hrs if not more. Crazy me...when I am forming the stone I don't think about the work that I am setting up for myself, I just try to listen to what i hear and feel and see. This time though, I have decided that this magnificent being must have a mane good enough for the gods. And that is all fine in the first cuts... it will be in the next 14 stages of sanding and polishing that you might here my groans from many miles away. Today though, I am in love with her.

getting rid of the hole

Well, it took me the better part of a whole day to get that nose down. It was making me a bit sick to see how much I had to take off, but I have to believe that it will turn out okay. I think the colors of the stone are going to be beautiful. I am anxious to get into the meat of the piece...am tired of simply trying to get rid of the hole.

kind of kidding, but not really

Okay, I haven't written for a while. I had to attend to my life, house, bills, laundry, etc. I don't imagine Roudin or Picasso thought too much about that. One day I won't either.

I have also been working on the piece. It is at that place where the form itself is finished and now it is 10 to 14 stages of sanding and polishing. It has taken me many stones to come to an understanding of the best way to get to a high polish. God forbid that I should have taken some classes to teach me! There it is again, my impatience and my self willed thinking that I can figure it out quicker than signing up for a class. I don't know about any of that. I do know that I have tried just about everything to finally figure it out. Thank god my friends finally encouraged me to ask other sculptors what they do. (hence, my having to acknowledge that I don't live in a vacuum)

You know, I learned long ago , in my athletic career that I am terribly competitive. It came as a shock to me because I was a died in the wool hippie in my early/mid teens and competition doesn't exactly fit the 'love the one you are with' philosophy. therefore since I left the court and began in earnest to study my art, I have shied away from shows that are juried, and communities that are fertile with other working artists. I realize now that in the early stages of learning my craft and the insecurities of being a young artist, I just couldn't bear the criticism or the failure of not "winning" a show or even an acknowledgement that my work had value. Now, I have only recently come to understand how incredibly infantile this is and how it has retarded a certain amount of not only my artistic growth but the pure enjoyment of being around other working artists. Though, I must also acknowledge that I have sheltered my artistic self. I, without realizing it kept her away from what might have drowned her and for that in my now mature years as an artist, I am thankful. But I am ready now to come out into the world.

Back to the polish. I haven't explained yet what the process is, so let me try to do that as quickly as I can. After the piece has taken on its form, and that is usually with a diamond saw blade and about a 35 grit rotating sandpaper on a grinder. At this point it is a matter of going over every millimeter of that stone with subsequent grids of sand paper...they are....38, 60, 85, 120, 220, 320, 400, 500, 800, 1,000, 200, 1,500, 2,000. Now , depending on the type of stone, softest,(soapstone) hardest (granite) will depend on at what point this process will be hand polished or machine polished. Is this at all interesting or understandable?

All to say, I have plenty of hours ahead of me polishing this stone and to dream of having an assistant who I can trust to take over at this point. (Kind of kidding, but not really)

A man (woman) needs a maid

I haven't posted the last few days. Exhaustion at the end of the day and having to catch up with life outside of sculpture in the mornings. I get so completely immersed in the stone when I am at this point that my life absolutely goes to hell outside of the work. Laundry piled high, mail and bills stacked, carpet unvacuumed, bathrooms in desperate need of cleaning...Neil Young's song, 'A man needs a maid' rolls through my mind continuously throughout the day.

Anyway, the piece is in its final polish. I have had an incredible painter friend of mine, Jerry (check out his website jerryfrost.com) help me to bring it upstairs so that I can look at it for a week or so to see what needs tweaking. I can't see her anymore though, I must step away or take her away from my work station to see her clearly again. I think she is beautiful but I'll tell you how i feel in a few weeks.

I am already chomping at the bit to get to the next piece. I, unfortunately already drilled a hole in her nose, thinking originally that she was going to be the torso of a woman...but i see now that she is another horse. I will have to take off at least 5 inches from what would have been the tip of her muzzle. I must believe though that this is how it was suppose to be. We'll see tomorrow

the one eyed girl

I am kind of getting used to the one eyed girl. It is so interesting with art. What really dosen't make sense logically, like a one eyed horse, truly does in art...or at least it does to me. You can decide for yourselves.

I love this stone. I had thought that it was going to be darker, but I am seeing that she has such a beautiful array of colors in her. The white that is showing up in her muzzle is going to be exquisite.

I had a scare today. I had to take her off of the pole that she is on and redo the hole. There was too much stone where the pole was placed. when I re drilled the hole it was at the wrong angle... scared the shit out of me. I get so upset with myself sometimes, because in my haste to get to the finish of the piece I don't think things like this through. So I took a breath and took some time and remeasured it and I think I brought her back.

The snow sculptor

Too tired to post tonight anything of significance. Long day, trying day. There must be another profession out there that doesn't leave me at the end of the day looking indistinguishable from the stone I am working on. Have I told you that at the end of a work day all of the bushes and ground around the piece look like a midwinter snowfall? and that I if I stand still I too look like the neighborhood snow sculptor? To give you an idea, today i took off about 70 lbs of stone. I was like a madwoman, sawing ,carving, grinding. I am at the point that i am so anxious, I see her , I feel her, I want her...the problem is, this is stone I am working with and every cut takes time and no matter what I believe or want, she will not be rushed.

She is still somewhat out of whack in her symmetry. But I'll bring her home, I'm sure of it

all I could possibly fathom was a bath

Have been working on her for a few days now. she is now at a place where I always come to in almost every piece that I create...I wonder what the hell I think I'm doing and why.

Let me explain... you see every cut is irreversible and the way i work is very quickly. I don't spend a great deal of time deliberating about what is my next move. I try to move quickly so that the conversation that i am having with the piece doesn't get drowned out by my fears of removing too much stone from the wrong place in the stone. There is a definite dialogue that goes on between us. The stone guides me and that is the intuitive part. It is a voice as loud as any in a quiet room where 2 people are speaking clearly to one another. I have had many years of learning and paying attention to composition both on a flat surface (as a painting) and in the 3dimensions of sculpture. It is those years of training that I count on to lead me though the process of listening to the stone and taking action to make her what she is asking for.

So, what do I mean by this moment in the piece that I wonder why I am doing this? Well, today I found out that my Kentucky girl has only one eye, its a pretty eye, but don't horses normally have 2? and there is too much weight at the bottom of her neck and the 2 sides of her face are not symmetrical and where are her ears and my back hurts and the days are too short to finish what I want to finish.

By the end of the 7 hr day all I could possibly fathom was a bath...forget this piece, get me in the tub... I am in lounging clothes now, getting ready to pour a cocktail and go out with my flashlight to see what the day has wrought. I am in the center of it now and no matter how daunting it might feel at the moment, all I want to do is go to go see her one last time tonight, go to bed and get up early and start again. Though early is only 11:00. I work in a home with a dear friend and in a neighborhood who allow me this grinding noise and I try to respect their morning quiet.

I love her

She has begun. I love her. If I could have held out longer with my body and with the length of the sun in the day, I would have gone further. I love her

I saw her amongst the stones

I finally have her on my work stand. She has been in the back of the truck and every time that I have looked at her I have had such a sense that not only I have been longing to begin the process with her but she too exudes a hunger to start our relationship together. When i saw her amongst the piles and piles of rough stone, she immediately called to me and I saw her. It is the strangest and most real phenomena to see in that rough piece of stone what she is or what she feels to me like she is asking me to bring her to. So today i will begin and as always before I begin a piece, I feel anxious, excited, nervous and completely out of my mind that I am once again going to attempt this process of bringing a stone to the place that it has called out to be. It does feel a bit like going out on the basketball court, or at least the hours before a game, when I know that we are going against a team that truly is a contender. It is anxiety provoking, but once I am on the court or more now in the present, when I put my first cut into the stone, I am home.

300 llbs of stone

I found a new stone today. She is sitting in the truck right now. Being that she weighs close to 300 llbs, she'll have to stay there until I get some guys to bring her to my work station. She is beautiful though, she of course is all rough and rock looking right now, but there is a Kentucky Derby winner inside there and I can hardly wait to bring her to the finish line.

I must be crazy

I often think that I must be crazy to have chosen this life as an artist. There truly were so many other opportunities that I could have pursued. God only knows what I could have excelled at had this ever insistent demand on my heart and soul not clung to me as skin on flesh. But artist I am and chose to pursue and now I will try to explain some of the lure, the deep flavors and the lusty satisfactions such a life gives.

emergence

The clay grabbed me again today. I was once again running around my space, going from one thing to the next, feeling anxious and scattered. And it truly was as if the clay reached out and took my arm. I stopped, looked at my bag of clay, dropped everything and began to work.

I saw immediately that she was a woman. It was only after an hour or so that the wings arrived. I felt her need to feel them, to hold them, to be sure that they were still there. Of course there need be no having to explain this piece too much further. I just need to see it and feel the majesty, yes, but also the self doubt that certainly I feel in realizing that i have been given this amazing gift of art and intuition which to me are the wings. But also she is firmly linked to earth, her legs as a base of a tree. Oh, I guess it is still too close to understand how it relates to my psyche. For the moment, I will just appreciate her beauty.