Friday, December 26, 2014

250th Blog Post

Since this milestone blog post also lands near the end of the year, I'm going to do something I've never done before: show all the sculptures that I've made over the course of a year, in the order that they were created.
 We had an unusually cold winter, so I stayed in by the fire and tried my hand at something new; making life-sized figures from concrete.  "Invocation" was my first attempt; this was for fun rather than for commercial purposes.
 My next effort was this "Happy Monk".  I made these figures to feed and water the wildlife - as well as "people" the landscape around the studio.
 As spring approached, I made this wire figure, "Tree of Life", for honeysuckle vines to fill in and make a living sculpture.  (I've yet to actually put it out into the sculpture garden - 1 year later...)
 When the weather warmed in March, I returned to the stone studio.  I made this piece, called "Levitation", with LED neon to give my sculptures a night life.
Next, I made this podium, called "Earth and Sky", using the gnarliest piece of limestone that I've ever seen.
 This "Battery Bench" employed a wide variety of textures - the intent was to create tactile and visual interest as people rested and 'recharged'.
 I made a fountain called "Been There, Done That".  It's not finished - I never hooked it up to a pump and will probably add a vertical element for the center sometime in the future.
 The concept behind "Fly Like an Eagle" is the delicate tightrope walk that artists take between Freedom and Security.
 This craggy bird feeder was a commission.
 Having spent the first half of the year with smaller experimental pieces, I shifted gears in June to create this monumental sculpture "Harmony" from an 8 foot tall 10,000 lb. quarry block.
 When it was raining and couldn't work on "Harmony", I made this "Winged Vessel" inside the studio.
 I spent Fall finishing "Harmony" and making this "Comet Bench".
...and finishing the year off with this "Bubble Bench".   What will next year bring?

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Bubbles and a Charlie O. Christmas

The weather for December, so far, has been the typical
"Cold, Dark and Wet".
 I've made great progress on my Bubble Bench - it is basically formed, needing only the endless fussy hours of cleaning up all the creases and polishing the spheres.
 This is the back view.  If you look closely in the 2 views, you can see all the places where I've pierced the form - under the bench piece and between some of the bubbles.
 Saturday, we went to Charlie Oldham's Rock Shop Christmas Sale.
 I treated myself to this group of Fluorite crystals from the Annabel Lee Mine near Cave-In-Rock, Illinois.
Calico Cougar...or delusions of grandeur.