4 Grizzly Bears and 2 open houses

I have been working on the interior areas of the bear, deepening shadows and applying hair patterns.

I'm detailing the top cub. Some of the crayon marks are to show me the fur pattern, and other marks for the bridge of the nose, which needs a bit more definition.

I bounce back and forth between various areas - a little nose carving here, a bit of eye defintion there, and then there is always fur pattern to be done.

This shot shows a bit of each cub and the mother's face.

Don and I went to Charlie Oldham's open house to see what kind of fossil and crystal goodies he had for sale ... and he has lots - fossils, dinosaur teeth, crystals, jewelry...

A couple of big kids looking for pretty rocks...

Lots of crystals at Charlie's Rock Shop...

There was lots of good food and entertainment.

After Charlies Rock shop, we visited the Studio Works open house. Located at the corner of Bardstown Rd. and Eastern Parkway in Louisville, Ky., it provides an artistic outlet for people with mental disabilities. The work is fun and inventive - these are various food items - roast turkey, banana split, etc. in glazed clay.

Installing sculptures from Yew Dell show, Art in the Highlands show

The third Yew Dell show has come down and we are removing the sculptures. Some to return home with us, others will be delivered to their new homes. The Mechanical Hand has been at Yew Dell for three years and now it's time to move on.

Demeter will be loaded onto the crane truck as there is not a lot of room on the flat bed truck because of the Hand. Derrick Sheroan of JBB inc. of Hardinsburg operates the crane.

Nexus is going to a new home too. The hook of the crane is lowered into place.

Don steadies Nexus as it is loaded onto the truck. All the sculpture will be strapped down, then we can head out to deliver the work.

Demeter has the shortest path to travel and so she is delivered first.

A footer was prepared for her by Mark Foster. It is slightly raised as there will plantings around her base and I don't want her to be overwhelmed by the plants.

Demeter installed.
The Nexus installation was a bit tricky. It went into a cool old cemetary, but the site was under a tree which made it a little difficult. Derrick and Don looked at how to approach it - there was a gap in the limbs - and slowly and carefully the sculpture was lifted up and over and then down to the site.

This is Robert Maddox, he and his family bought the sculpture as a monument for their parents. He is pictured here on the left, a passerby is standing next to him, his daughters are on the right side of the photo, petting the dog.

Talk about a small world, he is one of the donors that contributed to the commission of the sculptures I did for Home of the Innocents in Cave Hill Cemetary.

Here is nexus with a bench in the foreground.

Nexus installed!

I stopped by Art in the Highlands to check out the work of Jenni Pollard. She is the daughter of the woman who is commissioning the Grizzly for Norton Children's Hospital. I believe that this is Jenni's first weekend Art and Craft show, but she sold $1,000.00 in work. Way to go Jenni!

I ran into BobLockhart at the show too. He's a great sculptor with a number of public commissions. His animal sculptures are wonderful. In this photo he is reading my shirt, it says "Louisville Leopards". They are a percussion group which performs a great deal around Louisville and beyond and has been on HBO. My niece was in the group - kids can be in the Leopards up to the 7th grade or so.

I found this spider under the wheelbarrow. I'm pretty sure it's a black widow - so I moved her to a safer spot for her and me.

Summer's End

Tomorrow is the official equinox, and the start of the fall season.I am appyling hair texture to the Grizzly Bear stone sculpture . As I apply a finish to a sculpture, it helps me to see areas that are still high. The mother's left side is high, and I am shaving it down with a diamond wheel on a 4" grinder.

Here, I am working on the mother bear's left side - I have shaved off the area that was too high on her hip and leg and am working around towards the cub. The shoulder area is heavy, I have crayoned in the area that needs to be removed.

Meanwhile, Don was involved with 'crating and freighting' the molds for the Terre Haute commission. The first step, which involved my help, was duct taping the molds together.

Don built the crate, using a standard pallet as the base. He uses 2x4 braces with a 3/4" plywood skin. He is installing a deck mid-way up the box, so that the molds aren't lying on top of each other.

He gathered a pick-up load of carpet padding scraps from Fashion Floors of Brandenburg, and wrapped up the plaster and rubber molds. It's a long, bumpy ride to Art Castings in Loveland, Colorado.

Last night, we received the freight truck from R&L Trucking. The loaded crate is on our crane truck - rigged up and ready to go.

It was a happy moment to see the crate of molds, safely loaded and on their way to the foundry.

Yellowbank Creek wraps around our home property, and as I walked the banks, I spotted this carp feeding up in the shallows.

As soon as he saw me...SPLASH!!!...and he (or was it a she) was gone.

Grizzly Bears Shape Up

I shape the bears using angle grinders with diamond blades. I don't use air-hammers, except in areas where I can't get a grinder.

This is the rear-end view of the mother bear. This is where the third cub will be.

With the high temperatures, the bear needed to be moved into the new studio. But first, the rails had to be laid down properly. The weight of the bear would make this difficult, so the bear had to be removed from cart. A brick truck was hired to take it off, and then when the tracks were laid, the truck come back and returned the bear to the cart.

Don and the operator of the truck are pushing the bear into the studio where she can be worked on in relative comfort.

I make cuts where I will remove stone from around the standing cub.

I have removed some of the stone, and marked with a china marker, where the bears legs will be, though I always cut wide, to leave room if I need it. I use the maquette to eyeball points, and mark these as well. I draw on the mothers foot where different things line up - cub's belly, ear, etc. and mark a line, so I can be sure the cub is positioned properly. I do this from different angles to make sure of it's position.

The cub is beginning to be blocked in.

This is where the cub on the mother's belly will be. I use existing shapes in the stone to guide me in placing the cub. He will be on his back with his feet braced against his mothers legs, playing with his litter mate. This will be the slowest area to progress, as the faces of the two bears have to relate.

This is the sculpture from the right side. Next, I will be carving in the anatomical structure of the bear.

One of the snacks on hand is Cheezits. Each cracker has a hole in the center. This is Don as seen through a Cheezit.

Pine Ridge Road is a round about way to get home. It is a little rustic, going through three creeks - if the water's high, forget it. But it's a really pretty drive. These Swallowtail Butterflies were in one of the creek bottoms. After some mineral I suppose.

I think this is a Giant Swallowtail. The only one in the group, or is it flock of butterflies.

Light of Hope sculpture finishes, a new sculpture begins...

The sculpture is finished and I have sent photos for approval to the committee. Below are some views of the sculpture.


This the front.


This is 3/4 left of the front.


This is the back.


This is 3/4 left of the back.


The next job is a limestone mother Grizzly with 3 cubs. She is lying on her back cleaning one of her cubs. Her head is on the left side of the stone. I originally designed this piece as polar bear playing with it's foot, but then I got interested in grizzly bears and decided to change the sculpture to a mother bear with cubs.


Most people can't see the bear in this piece. I try to explain, she's on her back, cleaning a cub and there are a couple other
cubs somewhere on her belly, and the response is "yeah, I see it" but I'm not sure they do. But a woman who had purchased
a pink marble snow monkey from me could see what I was doing with the piece and asked me to do a maquette of what the bear would look like finished. So I did - it's posted in an earlier blog - and she liked what she saw, so now I'm carving this Grizzly family for Kosair Healthcare Center on Brownsboro Rd. in Louisville,KY. The second bear cub will be gripping his mothers back leg, playing with his littermate who is lying on his mothers belly.


This is the rear end view of the mother bear, the third cub will be lying on it's back playing with it's brother. You can see it, right?


I waded out in the creek the other day to visit the island. This is a view upstream.


This is the view downstream, I like the cathedral feel of the trees.


This is a guy that went past who was taking photos with his camera,just like me.