The Devil is in the Details

Actually, the saying is "God is in the details", but the effort that goes into creating the details is other than heavenly. For instance, Take a simple phrase like "I crated and freighted a 3,000 lb. sculpture at the beginning of this week". Sounds easy enough, but the devil was in the details. I'll spare you.

The work on the Green Bay commission focused on the detailing of the intertwining forms on both sides of the sculpture. The "clean-up" phase of finishing a sculpture is the hardest. The initial enthusiasm of any project wears off toward the end. There are endless hours of work that go into the craftsmanship of finish work. In short - it's fussy and meticulous.

The sculpture is nearly complete. There are some minor "tweaking" that I'd like to do before pinning the sculpture to it's gray/blue granite base.

It will be at least 2 weeks before the base arrives, so I will leave this sculpture alone till then. It will give me a chance to "live with it", which will help me to decide about any changes or improvements.

This is the sculpture that I will make over the next 2 weeks. It is entitled "Moments" and will be carved from a slab of Indiana Limestone approximately 6' H x 4'W. The polished ring represents 'Here and Now', the large circular form rising from the bottom is the next moment (the future) that will be the new "Here and Now". The other forms are old moments, receding into the past. Every evening, I read before going to sleep - and I can't help but think that those stories work their way into my sub-conscious, and then into my work. I just finished a book by Isaac Asimov titled Nemesis, that features someone looking from an observation dome of a space station onto a habitable world that is the satellite of a gas giant that orbits a red dwarf star. Can you see the influence?

I've been too busy this week to have any fun pictures, so I took a quick drive 2 miles down the road to snap a shot of this roadside spring. We jokingly call it "Hepatitis Spring" because years ago it was closed for use because of contamination from a nearby elementary school. While snapping shots, we heard a meowing coming from... somewhere. But from where? We walked this way and that, having difficulty pinpointing the source of the noise.
Eventually we discovered it was coming from inside a hollow tree. Someone dropped off a kitten - I guess they were thinking that someone else would take it home. I wish that I could only show you "Waterfalls and Wildflowers", but there's another side of Kentucky country life that's not so pretty. There's a type of people who will dump garbage in the prettiest places - and give no thought to dumping off unwanted animals. Over the past 14 years we have had to deal with countless drop-offs. We currently have 8 cats - all 'road waifs', and all of our friends and family have their fill, too. I will lose most of a days work tomorrow and $25 to take this girl to the Louisville Humane Society, 75 miles from here where she'll have her best chance of getting a good home.