I am happy to report that both of my entries to the 62nd Annual Glendale Arts Council Juried Art Show were juried in. Since the first time I successfully entered this show was either 1974 or 1975, I can now say proudly that I have been a part of this prestigious event for more than 50 years. Being a loyal son of my home town of Glendale, Arizona, that means a lot to me.
for the birds
nana rests on the rest of the block of clay she rode in on.
grandpa is on the potter’s wheel, giving me the stink-eye.
the two of them took about an hour and a half to make.
“i didn’t ask to be hatched,” grandpa seems to be saying, but his daughter is less harsh
and pleads with me wordlessly to give her at least nine eggs to nurture.
they are unfinished, and i will spend more time than i usually do to spruce them up.
i suspect grandpa wants to be admired.
his daughter wants chicks.
i will see what i can do.
I have three major projects: Chess Pieces, Exotic Birds of No Known Species, and Some Assembly Required. All are represented in this photo, but the Some Assembly Required piece is the most imposing.
Today I sculpted these two birds, imagining the psyches of me and my sweetheart Donna inhabiting them.
Hurt Transitory
A shadow dot moves across the sun. The innermost planet, Mercury, is transiting. It is throwing its huge little shadow across us, two planets out.
Fallen Rome left us wisdom in her death throes: Sic [Thus] transit [it passes,] gloria [the glory] mundi [of the Earth].
¿Que pasa? ask my Hispanic friends. And one answer was my junior college newspaper, El Tiempo Pasando.
Children are wasting away in at least three global regions. Something is frightfully wrong with the way various influencers are conducting themselves, since this very moments there is so much abundance of foodstuffs that no one on Earth need go hungry.
Some of us hurt, and some of us want to hurt others of us. “That is the way of the world,” we hear. But the world is brave, and the world is new, and the way of the world is as it has never before been.
¿Que pasa?
It it up to us billions.
Today I sculpted a chess-piece perched bird, a pawn, the pawn that remembers Emily Dickinson’s description of Hope as “the thing with feathers.” And if my pawn of Hope makes her transition to the other end of the chessboard, she may transform,
Actualize,
And free us.
gather round the watering bowl
the clay-form array on the ware board looked as if
they were waiting for some water in brother bowl
..
the chess pieces are bone dry
the bowl and birds were just made
and are still wet
..
when all are dry they will be bisque fired
and then glazed and glaze fired
a continuance of a tradition
that began millennia ago
..
and when the glazed ware emerges from the kiln
perhaps there will be another gathering
around the bowl
..
perhaps some non-canterbury tales told
perhaps love made
been away from the studio &
three pieces needed glazing
so i did them all in atlantis aqua
a pawn a bishop and a knight on a dragon
then looked for clay of mine and found some
and made a bird with four variably-sized eggs
there’s an hour of session time left
but wrapping things up now
makes for a leisurely cleanup and a sooner reunion
with a sweetheart who’s waiting at home
Last week, hastily I turned a lump of clay into a semblance of a bird, then wrapped it to slow its drying. When I took it out this morning I decided to finish sculpting it with no help from any tools. As ways the goal is to become a better sculptor.
The clay is firm but still has some flex to it. I was able to change the overall shape with careful squeezing compression with two hands. It was possible to remove a small amount of clay from the (unreal) tail section, making eyeballs for the lady’s head, but I then faced the challenge of affixing them, and I didn’t want to use saliva, finding the prospect literally distasteful. Luckily I had a small amount of perspiration around my temples, and I harvested as much of it as I could, and now I need a shower. 🙂
Fingernails came in handy for making curves curvier and sun shapes less ambiguous. I’m not too obsessed with perfection–Nature herself is loaded with imperfections–but it improves a work of art to reduce, if not eliminate, internal inconsistency.
Here’s bird-eyedly looking at you, Friends!
I now have dozens of chess pieces to arrange and otherwise play with. This gives me a greater understanding of the appeal of playing with dolls. They have the potential of spring boarding countless stories.
One with Clay, Image and Text 