Birds at my window

I have two windows in the studio where I work the clay.

I feed birds on one of the window sills. There's a constant shuffling of birds coming to eat sunflower seeds. These are Goldfinches still in their winter plumage. Cardinals, Chickadees and Nuthatches also visit.

The other kind of clay

This piece was made out of Chavant oil clay. This sculpture is made to be cast into bronze. It's title is "Flight" and represents man escaping earth's limitations.

Oil clay doesn't dry out when exposed to the air like water clay, though it can't be fired and made permanent. A rubber mold will be made and sent to
the foundry where it will be cast in bronze.

About the clay....

This sculpture is made of terra cotta which is water clay. It has to be
hollowed out and is fired, making it permanent.

The inspiration for this sculpture was a man standing at a bus stop on Eastern Parkway in Louisville, Ky. He was such a great character I felt I had to try to capture him in clay, so while I sat at the red light I
studied him, committing his persona to memory.

Water clay is a great deal of fun and it works very fast although it can be frustrating as it wants to slump and crack.

Now for the "scissors"

The scissors of course refer to bronze. Bronze offers what durability and
color without the weight and technical problems of stone.
This sculpture is for Veterinary College at Louisiana State University. It will be a fountain. Water will pour out of her left hand and fall into her right. Sitting across from her will be a cat and dog. The sculpture is about giving care to animals.

Next comes Rock

I met Don Lawler in 1991 when he was set up at a fair selling stone sculptures with his then partner, Bobby Howard.

"Wow!" I thought. They were making and selling sculptures made of stone. Maybe I could learn to carve stone!

No more piles of paper clippings, endless folding of paper, sore fingers from scissors. Stone didn't have to be protected in a case like paper. Months of work wouldn't be ruined because it got rained on.

Of course I discovered that stone has it's own unpleasant qualities, like weight (150 lbs. a cubic foot) unending amounts of dust ( it gets in everything and goes everywhere - it took down two of our computers) and it can be annoyingly slow as you only work stone one way, by removing material, take too much off,

well, that's too bad. So it's carve, look, carve, look from this angle, with a mirror, on and on. But overall it's a lot of fun.

This sculpture is the Waking Muse which is an earthwork and stone sculpture at the Prairie Center for the Arts in Schaumburg, IL. This sculpture was done with my partner, Don

Lawler.

How I discovered the world of sculpture through 4 mediums

This blog is about the various sculpture mediums -Rock, Paper, Scissors(bronze) and clay that I have utilized over the years.

First, how it all started. It started with paper. It was the work of paper sculptor Ajin Noda in the Magazine How that first inspired me to create 3 Dimensional works in paper. Using Mi-tientes paper, Elmers glue and scissors, I created various paper sculptures. Some of them were created
as illustrations. The one shown here was created for Presbyterian publication aimed at young people. It illustrated an article about youths and spirituality. The art director on the project was Kevin Darst. It was photographed by Geoff Carr.

The trouble with paper sculpture is that it is enormously time consuming and very fragile. It must be protected from moisture and dirt. I spent years doing paper sculpture until I discovered Rock.