jwm's world famous blog: Grinding into Summer

Monday, July, 5, 2021

Grinding into Summer

Stone work is slow. I started this project in the middle of April. Now it's July, and this stone is just about as far along as the last project was when I abandoned it so many years back. When the creative drive went dead, I had to let the artwork go, and move on. I like to think things happen for a reason, that there is a greater hand that guides our affairs, and a telos toward which we are moved. In retrospect, I can see where I got pulled away from art to do other things that needed to be done. But at the same time, just because there is a reason for everything that happens, that doesn't mean that everything happens for a reason.

"What's that supposed to mean, John?"

Buddy the Cat

Thoughts while working: Casey Klahn mentioned, in a comment over at American Digest, (paraphrasing, here) that an artist has to give no fucks about what anyone is going to think about what he does. We've talked about it taking some courage to dive into the work of an art project. It does take some courage, but it isn't the same kind of courage you need to climb rock faces, or surf big waves. One seldom falls to his death, or drowns as the result of a bad art project.

Even so, in my life-time, no one had ever been to the top of Everest. The god-like legends of surfing were going for twenty foot waves.

Today?

I've seen the photo of dozens of climbers, who had the stamina, and the money, lined up to take a selfie at the top of the world.

Surf spots like Nazare, in Portugal, or Jaws in Hawaii, are crowded out at forty foot.

No matter what the field of endeavor, what was once the pinnacle of achievement is now just another level on the game.

Stone work is no different. Since I began working again, I found this site. It's a small California business selling hand crafted tools from Italy, and run by two gals who carve stone in Nor Cal. It's a great source for tools, and supplies, and all the better since They send out an email every week, and include a link to an artist's yoo-toob video. Here's a great example of the extreme in stone.

It's a beautiful piece, for sure. But good heavens, a stray whiffle ball, a bump, or a knock, and the thing could shatter. (Just exaggerattin' a little, here.) All kidding aside, even before I saw work like this I always had a 'hundred year rule' when I did a stone piece. If it's too thin, too delicate, too fragile, sooner or later someone will break it. There's a ponderous quality to stone, a silent strength that each rock should retain. When the stone leaves my hands I want it to endure.

But that comes back to the issue of courage. Look at the stone, the way it's shaping up. A large, egg-shaped bowl arches up at the narrow end, then turns inside-out to form another bowl. The the lip of the upper bowl loops up like a wave, and drops though itself in a teardrop sitting in the lower bowl. Now, I could undercut that teardrop, and have it suspended free, hanging above the bottom of the bowl.

The difficulty in carving it is not the issue. Difficult is fun. It would be dramatic as all get-out, too. But that would leave a large soft stone appendage dangling there just begging to break. Not sure if I'm brave enough to risk that.