Full Hunter's Moon Sustainability Potluck and Moonlight Art Mosey at Bernheim

business first...

 Rainy days drove me indoors where I created this "Winged Vessel" from a block of Indiana Limestone.

 This is another view - it measures 30" x 17" x 9" and weighs about 80 lbs.
...and now for fun...

 Last night, Meg and I made the 3 hour round trip to Bernheim Arboretum with a couple of dishes for their potluck gathering.  Meg snapped this cool close-up of Crinoids on a boulder as we joined the group. (...kind of like unstrung beads, play money or tokens...)

 Claude Stephens, facilitator of outreach and regenerative design, gave talks about the various projects and approaches at Bernheim.  Claude covered many great topics - for me, the most interesting point was his discussion about art and its life as a cycle.  After its creation and life as an art object, he describes the thought that goes into its decay and transformation / recycling into another useful form for the environment.  I silently mused that stone sculpture is a little different than the temporary mediums that he was describing; what is cyclic are the human civilizations around a stone sculpture (....one day to include our own.)

 Yesterday was a 'Moon Medley', starting with the "Blood Moon" at 6 a.m.

 ...then, the rise of the Full Hunter's Moon over the rolling hills of Bernheim Forest. I'd never been to Bernheim after dark, and I was happy that I made the trip.

 The food that everybody brought to the pot luck was 'top notch'!  Afterwards, Martha Slaughter, Visual Arts Coordinator, led the group to enjoy some of their art by moonlight.  Meg snapped this photo of the Hunter's Moon as seen through a portion of Earth Measure.  The artist, Matt Weir, had also attended the event and described to the group the particulars about the project. On the way to the next sculpture, we eased around a very fluffy, white skunk with raised tail (right-of-way protocols were observed). We concluded the event by checking out Meg's sculpture "Emerging", which is aging beautifully. 

On the way to Bernheim, I'd snapped this shot of a 'temporary public art project' in front of Payneville Elementary School.  Following Claude's train of thought: after this sculpture has lived out its life as art, it becomes cow food.  (However, I'm not following the train of thought any further than when it goes into the cow...)

Comet Sculpture and Cunningham Show

The weather has continued to be incredibly good and I have worked outside almost every day.

 Here is a picture that I posted 2 weeks ago showing a 7,000 lb. block of Indiana Limestone that I preformed into a comet-shaped bench.  This sculpture was inspired by the Comet of 562 A.D.  I'm not sure what to think about what I'm finding out about this event from internet sources.  Did it really lay waste to a diagonal swath across Britain like the writings of St. Gildas suggests?  Was it responsible for the vitrified forts in Scotland - where the outer rock walls of hilltop towns were melted together by intense heat?

 The back of the piece had not been considered at all, so I tried a pillow-like bush texture to simulate the tail of the comet.

 I didn't like it (at all), so I tried a sample of spiral and circular glyphs.  This is the right direction, but it's going to need some deep carving to bring out strong shadows (to make the forms read better).

 I refined the outer curves of the blast wave and gave it a twist to make it compositionally interesting.

 This is how it looks today, with a Celtic-inspired braid in the flames.  There's a HUGE amount of work needed to get rid of the flatness in the piece and create strong movements.  It's coming to that stage where days of work will only create subtle change.

Last Friday night, Meg and I went to Bellarmine college to see Caren Cunningham's art show that featured over 1,000 individual framed images taken from freight trains that pass her house.  The samples of graffiti were quite dynamic and colorful.  Seated in the chair is Ewing Fahey (aged 92) who has been an active sculptor and proponent of the Louisville art scene longer than I've been alive.

As we left, we were met by David and Kathleen Buechler (friends we hadn't seen in 15 years).  They invited us over to their house for drinks, where we spent an enjoyable evening.  As Woody Allen said, "Half of life is just showing up".  (...and, yes, it wouldn't hurt for us to get out more often...)