Digging For The Light

 

Holy cow, it's November already. Eight months have passed since the burn to work re-lit. Four new projects are completed. I'm grinding away on this one, and enjoying doing it. The work is a gift for which I am most grateful. 

 

 In the last post I was considering some of the challenges that come up in shaping a chunk of stone like this one, and I referred to the work as being a kind of dialog between the ideas in my head, and the reality of the rock on the table in front of me. I mentioned that I had wanted to approach this from a set plan, but this ragged chunk of fossilized lake bed just isn't going to work that way. The stone speaks first, and sets the terms of the discussion. And in this case, the dialog with this wide-assed rock is turning into a date with a gorgeous chick who turns out to be a petulant, whiny bitch. It's too wide here, and too narrow there. Hard here, and soft there. Flat here, curvy, and convoluted there. The backside will not take kindly to being messed with at all, and the single most beautiful, jewel-like feature on the stone is exactly in a place that needs to get dug out, and excavated.. 

Even so, we are working together, staring, then planning, then working, then stopping and staring, planning...  and this whole piece has been sort of evolving. There's a ton of beauty in this chunk of California, and I'm going to bring it to the light. Maybe I can wedge that  metaphor about a "dialog with the stone" into the scene in the corny movie where the homely girl gets a make over, and goes all Cinderella on everyone.

Just havin' a ball, here y'know?

It has been a week of distractions around the suburban hermitage. Wednesday, I popped out the sliding screen doors  from the back, and took them in to get re-screened. And then the Most Mysterious Skinamakink showed up with a badly abscessed wound on his neck. Cat fight. That meant a six hundred dollar visit to the vet, and a few days of pills, and house arrest for the poor cat. And of course it was a hot two days, with no screen doors at the back so the sliding glass doors were shut, and the house got all hot, and the cat was crabby. Somehow, we survived it all. The cat is doing much better.

 Our Halloween gathering Saturday turned kind of sour, also. We're not shy about partying at all, but a couple of guys brought whiskey. Dangerous stuff.  I saw two fifths disappear within the space of an hour, and ended up with some very drunk guests. I love my weed, and I'll occasionally take a ride on the mushroom, but I do not drink, and I don't like being around folks when they're drunk. But everyone made it home OK, and as far as I know, they all escaped well-deserved hangovers.

 

So here's the progress on the stone this week. I still have a long, long ways to go, but what I'm seeing is making me happy. This form is going to have a lot of open space, and will show some beautiful translucence, and color, but the deep excavation yet to come is going to be a challenge. It's all about working the light. The deeper I dig, the more the light shines in the stone. This thing is going to glow like a lamp. My friend John is coming over Wednesday, and we're going to build a jig to do the long drilling across the wide base of this monster. All kinds of fun!