Taking a Soft Approach

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 my late friend, 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.

 

 

Taking a Soft Approach

Before:

After:

 

Well, this didn't take long. I started a post in the middle of last week, but I got too lazy to put the photographs into the computer. So I put it off a day, and then I put it off another day. Stuff came up with the stone. Stuff has a way of doing that, you know. In this case, "stuff" was the rock itself. I noted early on  that the material had areas that were quite soft, even chalky. Other layers were hard enough to work. I would like to have shaped this into something with some open work, or thin, wavy, fan-like curves, but the material won't hold an edge. Everything had to be played close to the surface. 

 
Shapes on the raw surface suggested the jigsaw curves. I hoped to cut deep enough to achieve some sense of separation between the two interlocking figures, and make the overall shapes bold enough that it would give the illusion of being two pieces. So let's go back a week to last Monday, right after I posted the last exciting adventure.

 

 

 Mary has a Tai Chi class at nine on Monday mornings, and she follows up by going out for coffee with her friends. This leaves me with the grounds all to myself. 

So, last week at this time, I re-heated my  coffee, and took a stale cup, and a fresh bud out to the gazebo to get a start on the morning.

 

 

Buddy the Cat followed me out, and came plodding across the lawn to join me. A minute later The Skinamalink came over the wall after bumming a snack from the neighbors. Buddy hopped up on the table, and  Skinnies took the chair right next to me.

 The coffee was hot, and bitter, and the morning sweet and cool. The yard was quiet. Ol' Buddy stretched out on the table, and rested his chin on my left wrist. Skinnies curled up in the chair, and snoozed. I took a sip of coffee. 

The world's in a bad way.

I know.

Yet...

Despite ...*everything*... there are still these moments when life can seem to brush up against heaven.  I have become so intensely aware of the blessings that surround me, and how very fragile they are. I am so deeply grateful for even the smallest among them. The sweetness of this is moment...

 

 I took a nip of the bud. Amazing how little it takes anymore. It takes a little while before the tweet hits home.

 Part of the job is just staring at the stone. From the gazebo I can look across the yard, and focus on the basic shape of the material I have to work with, rather than on the details of the surface. Five minutes later I was still sitting there staring at the rock. 

 

The local speakeasy had this weed as a Sativa. It passed the smell test, OK, but it's a hybrid, and I'm not all that crazy about it. 

Those who don't care about this kind of stuff can skip the next few paragraphs, while I digress.*

 

If you're not familiar with weed you may not be aware that there are many different strains of cannabis. There is also a significant difference in effects from strain to strain. In the most general sense there are three families of bud:

 Indica is the old-world strain. The smell is dank and spicy. The buzz is heavy, sleepy, and dream-like. Smoke Indica, and sit in the recliner with music.

 

Sativa takes  in the new world varieties. The smell is sharp, and close to citrus, or pine. A Sativa buzz is stimulating, and very cerebral, sort of like coffee in technicolor. A couple tweets of a good Sativa, and you're off cleaning the house, or writing the Great American novel. Sativas are pretty much all I smoke.

 

And then there are the Hybrids. Some few of them have a distinctive character. Most do not.

I'll swear, every bootleg botanist must get the same notion: I'll cross a real sleepy, couchlock Indica with a real jumpy, cerebral Sativa, and come up with a buzz that has the best features of both...

 But it seldom works that way. It's like trying to come up with purplish yellow, or greenish red. The vast majority of hybrids produce a  non-descript  buzz with the good properties of both strains cancelled out. A good sativa fires that creative energy.  I'll be out of my seat and at work before the second tweet hits home. I'll lock in on the task, and won't look up until I'm getting hungry, and hitting that pre-lunch flat spot.

This hybrid injects that indica lethargy into the stream, and just leaves the buzz dull, and flat. I sort of have to push-start the work. Once I'm moving  I stay focused, and the works goes along OK. Still, I'm not all that crazy about this weed.

 

* So enough bullshit about pot.

 

 

By Tuesday afternoon I found myself up against the limits of the material at hand. You can see in the cross section: 

 

 

The white stuff is hard. Everything else, isn't. Some areas on the surface polish up like fire opal. I don't want to sacrifice that natural rock face for a swoopy curve. I already knew that thin, wavy stuff is out. And now, deep undercutting has to go as well. The best I can do is to smooth the ridge lines, and emphasize the jigsaw contours on the chunk as it sits. If I try to get all fancy I'll either break it, or end up with something too fragile.

 

But by the end of the session Wednesday, I realized I had pretty much achieved what I set out to do, which was to take that odd shaped chunk of stone, and bring out what was best in it. The rock was telling me, "OK. This is fine. Don't take me any farther."

Thursday was wet sanding. Friday was finishing day 

 

 

...And by dinner time Friday it was done.