One theme you may notice here is the reclining figure, drawn close to the axis line, with a lot of foreshortening. In the “Drawing from Life” sessions that I have been in (from which many of these drawings come), we are doing mostly around 20 minute sketches of a live model. The room is arranged […]
Clay – 17″ tall. It took me a while to decide on a title for this sculpture. I first thought of “Flight”, but the piece is more about the struggle to rise up rather than the freedom of flight. There are so many different forces which hold us down — forces which tell us there […]
Clay, 11″ We often face times in our lives when we have been torn down. But, we are not destroyed. There is life still hidden in the roots, and it will come back to live as tiny shoots… (This piece reflects a theme which has recurred over time through some of my drawings and sketches.) […]
The butterfly has long been a symbol of transformation, beauty, freedom and grace. In particular, it speaks of a transformation at the deepest level — not just a change in outlook, or a vague “hopefulness” that, “things will get better somehow”, but being fundamentally different.
This piece was a bit of an experiment in terms of technique. I do not normally use armatures in my sculptures, partly because if the technical problems of the clay shrinking and cracking when you put it over a static structure, and partly because it’s harder for me to “see” what the piece is going to look like when I just have the bare wires in front of me.
October is “costume month”, so Erin came in her new “Steam Punk” outfit, complete with a modified Nerf machinegun… and the obligitory dark goggles. This was a 2 hour class, so we had a little more time on the sketches, especially the last one (20 minute sketch)
Hope only exists in the presence of fear, uncertainty or despair. A muscle is only strengthened when it is working against some opposing force, so Hope becomes the place where we go to when we are threatened. The threat need not be huge or catastrophic, but it must be something that forces us to pause, […]
This is a series which reflects on the struggles which all of us face in our lives. The struggle may be great or small, profound or trivial, secret or public; but the reality is that none of us live without it. In a sense, our lives would be small, boring and largely meaningless if we […]
One of the realities of working with clay is… the fire. I did not set out with the intent of making a “Shattered” piece — I was just sculpting a figure. However, the creative process does not always go as we plan. At temperatures from 1607°F (875°C) to 2345°F (1285°C), there are plenty of things […]
Watching the stars… This was actually a “test” piece. When I originally bought the kiln and clay from a friend who was retiring from working with clay, there was one unidentified block of clay. I found that it fired to a rich, semi-gloss brown. I have tried to identify that particular clay body so I […]