Slow Progress Beats No Progress

One whole week was entirely taken up with preparations for the Solstice party we threw on Saturday, the 22nd. Cleaning the house, and grounds used to be a one day affair, two if stuff was unusually messy. We're slowing down. Mary will say, "Well, we're getting old..." 

There ain't no more gettin' about it. We're there.

But the gather was a great success. (I like to noun-ify the verb, the way Anne McCaffery did in her Pern novels.) We had our gang of friends as always, but this time we extended the invitation to the members of Whittier Art Association, and La Habra Arts as well. We had a good sized crowd, everyone loved the BBQ, and the day went off with only one small hitch. I had been cooking on the grill for a couple hours, and my glasses were all foggy from the greasy smoke. I was taking a bowl of potato salad out to the yard, and walked through the patio screen door, fell down the step, and ended up on all fours on the patio. Somehow I pulled this stunt off without spilling the potato salad, or sustaining any serious injury, but I'm still sore, and a little emabarrassed. My pal John Hill is coming over later this afternoon to help me re-screen the sliding door. 

Luz Spanks, the new president at La Habra, has been a great ally in promoting The Lost Era film. She arranged a showing at the Fullerton Museum Center on July 14. Somehow, I have a feeling that this show will be important. We'll see.

 So here is where the new stone stands. I'm working the middle section into a globe. I'll rough out the base section next, and count on some sort of inspiration to show up, and tell me where the long top section is going to go.

The process always goes like this: work a little, plan the next step. Get stuck. Stare... I've tried to begin with a sketch, and a plan. After all, that's how yer s'possed to do it: draw a picture, create a maquette, then do the real one with the maquette as a guide. I can't do much of anything with pencil and paper. The boulder has no flat surfaces; no two faces are the same. No symmetry at all. I can definitely see the advantages of working with a perfect cube of stone. But a perfect cube doesn't speak to me. A boulder has its own unique shape. I can always see some form in the irregular faces  and use that as a start. Like the last piece I did. I couldn't come up with anything until I started. Once I start I can see some thing that I like, work toward that thing, and before long I can see a way forward. So it is here.

7/2/24

Well, inconsistency is better than incontinence, but it's not a good way to create and keep a following for the blog, here. Every time I start a project I promise myself to do weekly updates, and then...

I don't. 

I see guys on instagram posting these sped up videos of doing projects, and I'll have to admit they usually hold my interest long enough to see how the stuff is going to turn out. But, too, those are all cell phone videos, and I still do not have a cell phone. I notice that it becomes increasingly inconvenient to do without one. All that does is kick in my crusty old man stubborn streak. Screw you guys, I ain't gonna get one. I am increasingly horrified by the sight of everyone and their dog running around with faces stuffed into that nasty little screen. It reminds me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

 So anyway, let's have a look at how the May Stone Project is coming along.

 We left off here:

This is another plan-as-I-go endeavor. I had a notion of what to do with the lower half of the stone, but the upper part had to wait for an idea to show up. Well, as per always, I reach a point where I'm not sure how to proceed. The solution comes during the process of taking care of what I know I'll have to do, anyway.

Here's the next step:

And the next:

Which brings us here:

I had planned on leaving some of the "natural" shape and texture in the stuff atop the globe, but  I changed my mind on that. I retained much of the raw form on the last project, but that won't work here. This is where working from a boulder is a challenge. The sides are uneven; the front and back don't match, and it's hard to take measurements. The key I've found is to scribe north/south, and east/west lines on the bottom of the base, turn those into vertical centerlines on the stone, and measure everything out from the center. Bit by bit I nudge the natural form toward symmetry.

So I'll close today's post with a preview. Check this baby:

That is not a Texas sized steak. It's 48 pounds of translucent orange alabaster. ('spensive stuff!) I'll get around to posting again, when I've made more progress on the May stone. It's going to be hard not to jam through it so I can get my hands on Big Orange. Patience...