Mid week blues

Sun, 9/25 The San Pedro is in bloom. More flowers than ever.

Sunday flowers

 

9/21/22

It's just after three in the afternoon, Wednesday, and I'm so goddamn bored I could scream. Been down with this bug since last Friday, and it's fading away  very slowly. Last night I was sure I was done with it, but by mid morning I was feeling like shit again.

 

This morning I learned that my bike club sister, Penny got kicked off facebarf again. Penny's crime was posting memes that embarrass the democrats, and especially that rancid piece of shit Biden. She posts nothing obscene, nothing that calls for violence. She found her self locked out of her account this morning. The reason given was that she posted something in a meme some months ago that violated "community standards". They wouldn't tell her what it was. Turns out anyone who posts the pic of Hunter in his underwear gets the axe. It's happened to a few of my friends, now. They will search your posts back, literally for years looking for violations of the community standards, and bust accounts for them.

Facebarf is utterly despicable. They're an internet mafia of hard left social justice warriors in service to the democrat party. They worship the Father of Lies.

 

And then it was on to the rest of the internet. Thank God for VanderLeun. He doesn't pull any punches with the awful situation we face in this country, but he tempers it with stories of inspiration and grace. Sometimes those stories are the only positive input I get.

But it's all still just depressing as hell.

I can keep an even keel when I can work. Fortunately, I put the fender bomb project  on hold so I could get all the stones ready for the show in October. I'm very glad that all that work is done. I'd be sweating it hard if I had to jump into a working burn feeling like this. But lacking the energy to carve, I'm just wasting time farting around on line.

 

 Saturday, 9/24

I called Kaiser, and had a phone appt. with the doc. It wasn't very productive. I do need to get in and get some blood work done. Every time I think this thing might be letting go, I turn out to be wrong.

And my own, often sketchy mental health is making matters worse.

 This whole fucking nightmare we've been dragged through the last three years with the coup, and the China virus has devastated large swaths of my inner landscape. I have developed a full blown phobia of masking. When I see fools slouching around in their face rags my teeth clench, and my gut tightens up like I'm facing a threat. I start feeling like I'm trapped in a horror movie, and I can't get out. It's all I can do to keep my mouth shut, and not scream at them.

Just the thought of having to put one of those filthy things on my face  sparks a rage in me, and if I had to actually wear one I'd go into a full amygdala hijack- panic attack, in other words. I'd get very unpleasant very fast. And you can't even get on a Kaiser campus without a mask.

The doc said they may be lifting the requirement sometime in the near future. Maybe. I made a request for a sedative if I need to go in for the lab work.  I hate benzo's, but I'd need a heavy hit of klonapin, valium, or xanax to make it through without causing a scene. It is embarrassing to have to admit this. My inner voice says, "Just deal with it. Act like a goddamn grown up." But it just doesn't work that way. It isn't something I can just turn off. I don't do this on purpose to get attention. I didn't get a yes or a no on the request. Just, "wait it out, and see..." I should hear from them this morning.

 

 

 Slog Sunday

Still down with something. No energy. No appetite. I got some sleep last night, but today I still feel like I got et by a coyote, and shit off a cliff. Here are the last of the stones. The first is arguably the best of my older pieces. It is certainly the largest.

 

Curvular, 2002. California alabaster

 

At this stage in the game, twenty years makes a lot of difference. Twenty years ago it was heavy. Now I can barely lift it.

This is the last of the old work. Here are the new pics of the pieces I did starting in April 2021. This first piece is the bridge from then to now. In 2003 I was about two thirds of the way done with this. I was working with the big rasp, and right in the middle of a pass something awful and strange came over me. I stopped work, set the tool down, and stepped back from the table. The Voice spoke, and all it said was, "It's over." That quickly my muse just died. For weeks, I told myself, "Get back to work." But somehow I couldn't even force myself to do it. I stuck the unfinished stone in the corner of the garage with the handful of rocks on the project pile. I put the tools in the drawer and they sat there for two decades.

A year ago last April I saw a post on Gerard VanderLeun's American Digest. The post featured ancient movie footage of some of the French Impressionists. One clip showed the sculptor Rodin working a heavy mallet and chisel at eighty years of age. Something in that couple of minutes of black and white film flipped a switch in me. Suddenly I was on fire to work again. I built a new carving table, retrieved the unfinished stone from the pile, and, well, here we are.

 

Figure in Crystal, 2021 Italian ice alabaster

Figure #2 in Crystal, 2021 Italian crystal alabaster.

The next four stones are California alabaster from Anza Borrego. I meant these to work as a group, but I couldn't quite discern what unifying theme would emerge. I originally called the first piece, "Sangre de Anza". It sounded good at the time, but it wasn't right. The second stone was the key to the first. The theme would be elemental: Fire Water Earth Air.

Lost California #1 Fire.

 Lost California #2 Water

 Lost California #3 Earth

Lost California #4 Air
 

So that's the whole show. As soon as I can shake this bug I'll be back to work on the fender bomb project. For now, I'm taking a break.

 Lost Saturday

I didn't sleep at all last Thursday night. Yesterday I was just too burned out tired to do anything. I turned in early last night, and had another miserable long sleepless night. The bike club is cruising today, and I missed it. Just feeling like crap. So anyhow, here are a few more of the stones that will on display at the Whittier Art Gallery in October.

 

Liquid Crystal Bowl. 2001, Italian crystal alabaster

Stonetroll, 2001. California Alabaster

 

Bersquakend 2001, California alabaster

 There is one more stone from the old collection, but I'll save it for the next post. In the meanwhile I'm going to go flop.

 Just a Few Rocks

 

 

No stories or comments on this one. Here is some more of my older work. More later on.

 

 Contortion, 1998. Utah alabaster

 

Awakening, 2000 Italian Crystal alabaster
 

 Lightstone, 2000. Italian crystal alabaster

more to come

  Hairball Horror, and Passable Pic's

Oldies week

Buddy the Cat
 

 

Wed, 9/14

I got on a burn to work, and put in long days Sunday, Monday, and yesterday. I got all fifteen pieces, new and old,  cleaned up, polished, photographed, and ready for the show. Well, mostly ready. There is always something...

Like putting the house back in order... 

tomorrow

The camera is not my friend. I bought the digital SLR a few years ago to photograph Pete Hampton's work. I figured a good camera would make up for some of my lack of experience and skill.

No. Doesn't work that way. A camera is like any other instrument. It's only as good as the player. If you can't play guitar well,  a better guitar won't help. Same with a camera.

The pictures all came out OK, even though it took extensive work with Photoshop to get the .jpg's right. I can do a passable mug shot, but the stones need  real photography. This piece of Italian ice is the first 'large' (over fifty pounds)stone that I worked. I gave some of the carvings titles back then. "Rillion" just sort of popped into my head.

 "Rillion" 1997

Italian crystal alabaster

 "Radio Girl" 1998

California stone. Pink & brown alabaster

I'll have some more coming up soon. Maybe later on in the week.

Oh yeah. The hairball horror.

You want hairball? 

hang on.

Tuesday 9/13/22

Some time last week I picked up a piece of what I thought was dried mud from the floor in my den. It wasn't mud, though. It was a chunk from the sole of my slipper. I've had these slippers since forever, and they're falling apart on my feet. 

Time for a new pair. Now, this is not a particularly huge deal in the mostly uneventful stream of events that makes up my life. I looked on Amazon, Saturday morning, and ordered a pair of Minnetonkas. Got next day delivery, and on a Sunday, to boot!

I has been hot, and Mary and I have been sleeping on top of the covers with a fan blowing over us all night. My dear old pal, Buddy the Cat has claimed the space just above my head, settling in between the pillow, and the cool wall. Saturday night, as I drifted off, "new shoes tomorrow" was tumbling around with all the other stuff in that dim cascade of  thoughts that precedes sleep.

I'm an early riser. I opened my eyes at 4:30 Sunday morning. I rolled up into a sitting position, and my first murky thought was, "This will be the last day I use those old slippers." I bent down, and groped around in the dark until I found one. I took hold of the slipper and got a grip on something squishy, cold, and hideously wet and slimy.

Goddamn cat pitched the hairball from hell right into my slipper.

I went "YAAARRRGGGHHH," and said the "F" word. 

Loud. 

And then I made a mess of retching and gagging noises. 

There are advantages to being hard of hearing.

 Mary slept through it. 

I threw the slippers, hairball and all, into the trash.

So there I was in the kitchen, making coffee in my bare feet. Buddy the Cat, and the Skinamalink showed up to beg for some fish.

"MEOW."

 I was in no mood to humor the cats.

But I looked down and got that 'poor hungry cat' look. I caved, and they got their damn fish. I sat in the green chair in the living room waiting for the coffee to brew. Buddy the Cat came in wanting pets and scratches. He butts his head against my leg. "Meow. I though you said you didn't need the slipper anymore..."

*sigh* Cats. 

Oh. I got the Minnetonkas Sunday afternoon. They're great, but I hide them from the cat.

 Late in the Week

The Most Mysterious Skinamalink

 

Thu 9/8

It's almost 7:00 in the morning Thursday. I've just made the depressing slog through news and current events. *faaahhhk*

 

'nuff said. 

Here's my 135 word  artist's statement for the October show. Having to condense everything to so few words is a good exercise. No room for the airy-fairy stuff. And Glen Eisner got this very cool pic of me working.

 

 

“It reminds me of…”

In the command of beauty, we rise to the discovery that we have been working for God.

David Warren

A figure in stone speaks without language in the same way that music conveys emotion without words.

I’m a self-taught sculptor. I have no formal training in the Arts. I carve these pieces with hand tools: saws, drill, mallet, chisels, rifflers, and rasps. The surreal shapes I create awaken a memory  in each viewer’s eye. The stones become three dimensional Rorschach figures, windows into the subconscious.

My aesthetic is pretty simple: It must be well crafted, and it’s gotta’ look cool. As an artist, I can “work in the command of beauty,” and do so with a single goal: create something wonderful that will bring joy into the world long after I’m gone. 

 

We have cooler weather, and maybe even clouds and a little rain forecast for Saturday. I was looking forward to getting down to Huntington Beach for our monthly bicycle event, but I have to miss the RatRod Ride. I'll be going over to the gallery to discuss preparation for the show.  I'll get a fix on how many pieces to bring, where, and how they'll be displayed, and all that sort of stuff. 

 

 

 

The heat over the last week has kept everything moving in slow motion, here. It's all we can do to keep ourselves fed, and cool. Even so, I've been out back working. I'm doing the fine cuts, bringing everything down to the layout lines. It's slow delicate stuff: Re-check the measurements. Get the hacksaw blade *exact-o-mentally* on the pencil line, and draw in the first scratch. Make sure everything is lined up and level, and send the saw in straight up and down. If the line starts true the groove will keep it true. I did the disc, and now I'm on the horizontal shaft, teasing  along the pencil marks with hacksaw blades, and making sure the torpedo is neatly centered in the big disc.  I got four of the eight cuts done today.  There are four more to go, and that'll be tomorrow's task. Weather forecast says we may even get a shower. Good heavens, that'd be nice.

 

 

 

 

Fri, 9/9

 It took two days to get the refining cuts done on the horizontal shaft.  It's freehand machine shop, trying to do precise work with hand tools. The cylinder is very close to right. The shaft is lined up, and of consistent height and width.

 

 

 The wafers of scrap that I'm cutting away clank like glass when I toss them on the pile. This will probably be it for this week's progress and I'm happy with the results. 

 

 Perfectly timed moments. I got the day's work accomplished, got the work area cleaned up, and sat down in the gazebo with a cold drink.Wind has been howling all afternoon, and the yard is full of sycamore leaves from the giant tree over on Jordan avenue. We got a new set of Corinthian wind bells to go with the old Woodstock chimes, and the storm is making music in the yard. 

Finally, the rain rolled in. At first it was just a maybe- one big fat drop here, another over there, but soon enough it became a real shower. The rain was so welcome in the heat  that I went over to the patio, sat out there, and just let it fall on me. The Most Mysterious Skinamalink came out of the house, and decided to join me. He hopped up on the red chair next to where I sat. It was raining on the red chair. So he tried the blue chair. It was raining there, too. So he figured that I would have the good sense not to sit in the rain, and he jumped up in my lap. Damn, but it was raining even there.

 

Saturday 9/10 afternoon

 

I just got back from the Whittier Art Gallery. Holy cow. The Whittier Artists.com group are very impressed with my work. I'll be displaying all fifteen of my large stones along with one of my Celtic graphic pieces. This is a very big deal, and I have to start getting ready. Many of these stones have been sitting in the living room ever since they were finished over twenty years ago. They all need to be cleaned up, buffed up, and waxed. Luckily, I'm nowhere near to finishing the pearlstone project. If I had the least hope that I could finish it before the show, I'd get on a frenzy, and work myself sick. Ain't gonna do it. Ain't gonna try. 

Starting Monday, I'll be putting this project on hold until all the older pieces are all clean and shiny. I'm predicting being able to finish two or three per day. We'll see.

 

So now I will finally get around to taking real photos of all these carvings. (been procrastinatin' on it since forever) And I'll be posting pics of  older work for a while. Oldies week coming. Stay tuned rock fans!