Beginnings and Endings and Everything In between

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DSC02089This past weekend I finished The Gentle Angles of Grief and gave him a lovely black box from which to gaze downward upon his sadness.

I am quite satisfied with this sculpture. The finish is exactly how I envisioned it; the looseness of the stain compliments the sketching nature of the sculpting. This will be one which I use as reference for keeping it loose and emotive going forward.

And so I continue…

GlancingThoughtI’ve been working on this Portrait of the Artist’s Husband for a couple weeks. It has been a bit of a struggle in that it is my husband, and my husband is an artist, and the artist has a critical eye. So my normal “What do you think?” requests for feedback received more than their fair share of response. It looks like Andrew and yet not… quite…

The photos I took of Andrew were when he had just gotten out of bed. His hair was standing on end and he had quite normal 49 year old bags under his eyes. You know, those bags we all have now, at this certain age. I captured his mouth and the shape of his skull but his eyes are eluding me. As I dry him slowly I will make a few changes but he has run his course for the most part. There is a point in a piece that it says “I am done” and efforts to mess with it tend to mess with it. Ha!

I will have to start thinking of finishes for him while I deal with a few submissions to upcoming exhibits, wonder on who I should sculpt next (I will stay away from relatives for a while) and get on with work and life, all the while wishing I could be in the studio all day, every day. Sigh. Life.

Finishing

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Little Walter Tell gets his final coat

The finishing process of each sculpture is akin to creating an entire piece in and of itself. Like a painting on top of a sculpture. Once the piece has been sculpted, hollowed out and fired, a lot of work has already gone into it. The final finishing step is therefore a bit intimidating. What if I mess it up and waste all that time? What if it is just OK and I’ve put so much time into an OK piece? What if…!?

Up until Walter, I haven’t been all that pleased with the finish on my pieces (well, there have only been 2 others so what am I complaining about?!). With Walter, I spent a lot of time thinking, visualizing and researching how I would finish him while he was drying and being fired. I only started my next sculpture when I’d done this creative and brain work. So when it came to finishing him, it went kind of… smooth. So far I’ve chosen to paint the pieces rather than put glazes on and have them fired again. I’m not patient or practiced enough to do this quite yet.

I an very happy with how Little Walter Tell came out and I learned a few tricks which I will use on The Gentle Curves of Grief.

What’s next?

My initial plan was to start on a female expressive sculpture to match and compliment The Gentle Curves of Grief. However, my darling husband has been not so subtly inviting me to sculpt him. And so, when he rounded the corner out of the bedroom on Sunday morning with his hair sticking straight up, a lovely layer of stubble covering his chin and some almost-49-year-old sleepy bags under his eyes, I thought to myself – what a great sculpting subject! There you go, plans change, ideas take shape and off we go into another sculpture. It is not my intention with this one to make it a perfect likeness of Andrew, rather to follow my desire for expression. We’ll see how he feels about that!

Sculpting is very exciting.

Gentle Angles of Grief

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Searching for Expression

This past weekend I finished the above sculpture, entitled Gentle Angles of Grief. This is my third portrait sculpture outside of class and the first to meet my goal of expressing emotion. Inspired by the image of a man in the first throes of grief as he was told his father had died, I wanted to capture at least some of what I felt when looking at this man’s reaction. Sadness, longing and a kind of letting go of the heart.

The technique I used in this sculpture was different from the rest. Yes, the basic forms and measurements were done but when it came to building up the shape of this particular person, I did something different. I went fast. And I mean, feeling like I’d had too much coffee, fast. I worried less about the finer details of shape and nothing about the smoothness of the texture. Rough and ready – the clay was just going on! (Hopefully there won’t be an air bubble!)

In 4 or 5, two hour sessions I went from the basic bones to the finished piece. Working in short bursts allowed me to progress and contemplate, progress and contemplate. The texture I achieved at the end wasn’t quite what I had hoped. It was in between the entirely smooth feel I’ve done so far and the very rough feel I wanted. So I am happy with it. Perhaps a subsequent sculpture will go there but this one just wanted to be what it is.

This piece now has to dry a bit before hollowing. I pick up Little Walter Tell from being fired later this week so I’ll set about painting and finishing him. And think about what’s next to come.

I love sculpting. Love it. Love.