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!

 Back on the Grind

Tue, 8/30

Monday morning brought a return to normal here at the Suburban Hermitage. We returned the rental car, Mary went to Tai Chi, and I got back to work on the stone. It's still all saw and chisel work, and progress is slow. I'm taking out large chunks with rough cuts. Those cuts will be followed with finer cuts, edging more closely to the layout lines, until the basic shape of the figure is right.

 

It's the last week of Summer. Labor Day is this weekend. September is getting ready to blast us with hundred degree days, but by mid month the nights will be cool again. I got to a stopping point in the work  yesterday, put up the tools, hosed down the dust,  grabbed a tweet, and an iced coffee, and parked it in the gazebo. 

 

Both cats were dozing in the shade. The breeze came up, and stirred the wind chimes.

That's when I felt autumn. I know it's officially three weeks away, but this was the first early taste of it. There is no one thing that has changed, but I could feel the motion of shifting seasons. The angled sunlight  leaning into gold. There's an old smell in the morning air, something in the feel of the afternoon breeze on my skin. Back to school season. I can hear the kids playing on the field over at Jordan school. Mary and I both spent most of our working years employed by the school systems. Our years always begin in September, and pause for the summer in June.

 But this September I don't have to go back. Not to learn, not to teach, and not to clean up the campus in the quiet after-hours. I've been retired for  four years, now. Sometimes it still occurs to me like something new: I have the day off! yea! Hooray!

Thu 9/1/2022

 

I had to make a run to Harbor Freight for bow saw, and  hacksaw blades. I have a love/hate relationship with Harbor Freight. On the one hand, I hate working with crummy tools, and I utterly despise cheaply made Chinese junk. Most Harbor Freight crap seems designed to last about halfway through the first job it's used on.

On the other hand, for seven bucks I can get a killer sharp 15" hand saw that will tear right through the alabaster, and if it lasts for only one or two projects then it's money well-spent. And then there was the "Hacksaw combo-pack". You know the deal: a great big, awkward plastic blister package with half a dozen different blades and handles. It looks like something from the kids' toy aisle. I know in advance that it's all cheap junk that no self-respecting laborer would buy. But it has a deep hacksaw frame, and  handles for saber saw, and hacksaw blades, and it's only $13. for the whole thang...

I bought it.

Fri, 9/2

I have that show coming up in October, and there is still a lot of work to do to get ready. I have a lot of photography to do, and I have to come up with an artist's statement. That's a pain.  These things are almost always an exercise in airy-fairy nonsense buried under piles of overlong sentences full of abstract nouns, and intransitive verbs.  But I gotta' write the thing, so it's been on my mind. What do I want to say?

It is September. It is hot. This project is much more difficult than I had anticipated and, as I've mentioned frequently, progress is very slow. I was truing up the sides of the base, sawing through the rock for the zillionth time. 

Sweat is running in my eyes. My arm is sore from cranking the saw.  I manage to bark my knuckles against a sharp edge on the stone. I'm head to toe dust, working through piles of grit, and there is still a long ways to go on this cut. Then I have to do it again on the other side. And after that...

 

I put the tools down. This is hard work. Nothin' airy-fairy about it. Did I mention it's hot?

Why

 am I doing this?

Here's where we get all philosophical, and stuff.

 

Sun 9/4

I just turned seventy. I am very acutely aware of how little time I have remaining to me. I'm not here to eat food, get high, and accumulate toys. Being isn't enough. You have to do.

"The world's in a bad way... and bound to be worse before it mends

And what can I do in the face of it? Spend hours reading on the internet? Stuff my head with information? Rage about the rage in comment sections? Maybe fire off a screed that'll get me a dozen "likes"? Grab a picket sign and run out onto the highway: "STOP THIS SHIT!!!"

 

Lead us not into temptation.

 

I can't stop any of what is out there. 

But I can finish this stone. I can turn this chunk of alabaster into something beautiful. Someday, someone will acquire it, and it will bring him joy to do so. Someday this will sit on the shelf of someone I've never met. Visitors will remark on it, and the owner will take some small pleasure in that. This little chunk of desert is going to be a one channel  crystal set tuned in for joy.

(seriously?)

Holy cow, JWM, that was like the corniest line you ever wrote. yeah, maybe it was.

But then again, David Warren writes: (Click the link. I tried to quote just one line, but you can't leave any of this out. (Go ahead- click):

Beauty is not an inductive idea; it is an imperative.” 

 

Thank you for stopping by.