Thanks for stopping by. The WFB is my 'whatever I happen to be in to at the moment' corner of the web. I have two other Blogger sites which are far more interesting. 

The Lost Canyon Project

is the chronicle of my work photographing and cataloging the life's work of artist Pete Hampton (1940-2018)

The Lost Era Transcripts

Is the fruit of the Lost Canyon Project. It is a re-creation in book form of Pete's unfinished master work, The Lost Era. This is a good candidate for the finest work I have ever done.

 

Thoughts Post Project 

Just as a sideline, here,  before I get into bloggin'...

Sweden? Seriously?

I was looking at the stats for this blog, and they show a handful of hits from facebarf, and the few friends  who drop by here, but it also shows thousands of hits from Sweden. Now when you get "views" from China, or anywhere in Asia, you just figure they're bots crawling Blogger looking for anything they can spam, plagiarize, or steal. But Sweden? Maybe the Swedes are interested in what I'm doing. Who knows? If any of those views are actually from real Swedes I'd love to hear. Update: I read a post on another Blogger account where the author mentioned the Swedish rush on his stats. Apparently there is a bot from Sweden prowling all the sites on Blogger. And here I thought I was getting all world-famous. Oh, well...

 

Anyway, here's a preview of the next project. This chunk of silver anhydrous alabaster is a little harder than the crystal, and much more dense. The crystal stone weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. This stone is a little over half the size of the crystal. Nonetheless, it weighs in at right around seventy-five pounds. It polishes up to a glassy, metallic sheen. I'll get rolling on it in a day, or so.

 

 

The big stone has been on the shelf for a few days, now,  doing what stones do best, which is collect dust. When the alien archeologists arrive in their flying saucers, they'll determine that dust was the most important of all things to this odd race of beings. Why else would they make such elaborate devices for gathering it?

 

Part of me wants to jump straight in, and start grinding again. That's how I worked before. I'd put a finished piece on the shelf, and start in on a new one the next morning. But "before" was twenty years ago, when I was not quite fifty. Now, I'm just about seventy. I'm not jumping anywhere. My needle is on "E". The tank is dry. Right now, I'm  catching my psychic breath, allowing the spirit to recharge, and also taking a break from the physical grind of working hard, six days a week.

And the big stone? Nunya Bidnez skewered it in the comments.  I did a whole post on watching out for free association. But it bit me in the butt again. Here's what I mean.

The planning for this piece began in my head long before the stone came out of the garage. I was largely focused on the problem of having the stone pierce through itself without creating a fork, or a cleavage. Too, I wanted the form passing through itself, but I didn't want to do something suggesting anatomy, or having erotic overtones. Not that I'm averse to doing either; it just- how do I put it? wasn't where I was at- you know?

So, in the quiet space before sunrise, with my eyes  closed, and coffee jump starting consciousness, I imagined the form of a leaf,  then pulled the stem around, and poked it through the 'palm' of the middle of the leaf to form a loop. This notion eventually became  the foundation for the design, and later morphed into the upper bowl. 

 The raw form of the stone lent itself to to the egg shape below.  I saw that egg shape, and the concave arch extending from the narrow end as having the potential to show off the clarity and translucence of the material. It would be a big glowing pearl bowl, gracefully arching up, turning inside out, arching back again, and finally dropping down through the  top bowl, and  into the lower. Sort of a Mobius effect.

But of course, the conceptual stuff is all conceptual. Everything changes once it hits the rock. The stone doesn't care about ideas.  A rock is a hard, fixed place. Either the idea fits inside, or something has to change. The stone had a few very cool natural features that I was tempted to exploit. I worked through, and discarded several ideas, all of which involved some degree of flamboyance. But, just like the erotic thing. Nothing against flamboyance. Done right, it's great. But still; not where I'm at- you know?  

 Whether I'm dreaming it into being in the early morning dark, or rasping away at the table, the whole dialectic between me and the stone takes place pretty deep down in the brain. I get so locked in on task that I can't see past it. Sometimes it feels like being on auto-pilot.

But anyway, I started by mentioning free association, and the comment from Nunya Bidnez. Here it is:

a Swan?
an Ampersand?

very beautiful, sir ...

Nunnya Bidnez, jr.

Once again, Thank you. I appreciate the kind words. 

My work has always had that quality of a three-dimensional Rorschach test. The stones suggest different things to different people, and different images at different angles. The shapes and forms emerge in the process of carving. I don't plan them. 

Now, the ampersand is kind of cool. It would be a fun, and whimsical notion to carve a punctuation mark out of stone.... &

But the swan.

 *ouch* 

I hate to admit this. It did not even occur to me. I was well into the stone, fully committed to the 'egg, and arch' form before I realized that I was doing the swan. It's a visual cliche. Just like every plastic lawn decoration, or cheap terra-cota pot from the swap meet. Like pink flamingos on the lawn. Just like the ice carving at the cruise ship buffet. Just like inflatables for the pool.

I'm not kidding, it feels like pouring your heart into writing the all time greatest love poem ever, and then realizing you just rhymed 'moon and June', 'fire and desire', 'sorrow and tomorrow'. It's all sorta' been done before.

I just had to laugh. And then, my old pal Mike points out the sombrero guy:

Top picture makes me think of the classic Mexican seated with his arms around his legs and back to a cactus, minus the cactus!  

I swear, sometimes, I just can't win.

As a final note, I just realized that I may be in danger of being taken too seriously. I'm having a laugh at my own expense, here. Truth to tell, I am very pleased with the work. If someone sees a swan, I'm cool with that. 

But the sombrero guy? Aye caramba!

JWM