Dryad: First Pulp

First pulp applied over the papered skeleton. I don't know how hard it's going to be to get the level of finish I'm seeing in my head, but I have to say in terms of building up coarse form quickly I could get into this. It's certainly quicker than cutting it out of a tree. Funny how some of the paper that went into the pulp dissolved completely and others are still there jutting out awkwardly.

Dryad Day 2,3

So tinkering along with this project. Have a vague intention to do the underbody in paper and paste, modeling in puree and then to paper a smooth skin over it all. We'll see how that goes. Coat 1 is down at any rate. I'm going to need more paper...

Day 2, under body assembled (I have no idea what I'm doing.

Day 3 a first coat of paper (I still have no idea what I'm doing).

Day 1, Day Goodness Knows

Two works in progress, one just started, one who knows how many years in the making, with its origin near 7 years ago.

Temporarily untitled large scale dryad, about 2 hours in.

Reliquary for a found object, not quite nearing completion, but sort of getting toward it.

Lake George II

Now alas moved on from the Openings artist residency at Lake George to BOSC conference in Boston. But some pictures of what I got done while there. made some good progress on The Magic Mirror, for #occupycommonground showing in Sept at the church of St Paul the Apostle in NYC.

The real product.

Lake George

Setting up shop on day one.

I'm up at Lake George for the Openings Collective's Artist Residency. Has been a great opportunity to hang out with some amazing fellow artists and get some carving done.

Trees.

Day one's progress.

CCCXLVI: To Be Continued...

"To the people who fully understood the story, the virtues of oak pointed out what was virtuous for men."
-William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization

I'm bad with numbers. In spite of my current post number, a year ago today I didn't plan to, but I spent the whole day standing in the rain, watching the Cedar lane oak come down. The inability to find a conclusion to the story has strung a death vigil into a year of mourning. The mourning may not be done, but I'm sensing this project is. I sort of knew I'd never find a conclusion in my own words, I have little trust for words, and little facility with them.  I recently read the poem below for the first time, and thought that I'd found words as close as I was going to come to a final statement.  This isn't the last you'll see of The Tree, there are projects to be built from its wood, sculptures to be carved, and I'm sure the light will strike the stump just so, and I'll have to share the picture. For now however, love to all who have walked this path with me.

No true story ever has a true conclusion.

'I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.'

-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge Without Music

CCCXLV: Spotlight

One was a faith in a sorrow

Two was a waste of a dream

Three was a life in a bottle

Four was the last to believe

Five was a break in the weather

Six was back to the start

Seven was the hope it would never go this far

Kasey Chambers, Nothing at All