The Monolith

Like the mysterious slab from 2001, a white wall of boxes awaits its destiny in my garage. Nineteen happy Haffie sets will embark to their new homes very soon! Stay tuned on my mailing list for the announcement post.

Barry tells me he has more sets ready to go, so another batch of sets will be available very soon after this one, too! Exciting times!

"I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works." ~ Max Ernst

The Monolith

Births A-Plenty

This is what 500 lbs of clay looks like in the trunk of a Mazda.

Big Al is scheduled to fire all 300 "Melly Tiles" on Sunday and hatch them out on Monday. Mom is going to help me pack them up and ship them off to all the anxiously waiting glazers, and then it's a free-for-all from there!

I'm so excited to see what all these creative minds do with them -- it'll be like The Mane Event!

The support for Melly and Herm has been inspiring and uplifting to me in ways I never expected. Gosh -- it just feels so good to know I'm part of a community effort to make a positive difference in their lives! Our society has become so fractured and anonymous nowadays, and here we can tap into our primeval need to be part of something good and personal. Almost tribal. I like it.

Along those lines, the Mourning Dove pair hatched their babies! The pink arrow is pointing to one of them (below). I didn't see them at first because they look just like the nest and they do not move. They're as still as stones. But Ham's sharp eye spotted the bitty beady eyes of one baby and then it all became wonderfully obvious.

Here's a close-up with my zoom lens. You can see a wee beady eye on the right, by the stick, with the head, breast and wing. They're about the size of tennis balls. They're so cute I could scream!

And of course -- our platy fish are having babies again! I spotted a tiny fry in the bottom rocks today. Our fancy male guppies fall madly in love with the female platys and I think it all goes downhill from there.

Plus, I'm getting close to releasing the first batch of Haffie sets, and I'm stoked to see how painters "dress" them in pigment! Speaking of which, I started painting a delightful Laf'n Bear Smittyn...

Here's a sneak peek of little Miss Smittyn! I'm not sure if my reference photo is of a silver or liver chestnut, but I guess I'll worry about that later. This is just a preliminary layer.

I needed something to do that I could walk away from when it came time to ship off the Melly tiles, so painting was it. The problem is that once I start sculpting, I fixate and there's only one short-term consequence to that: Procrastination with shipping those tiles. Not good. Now I really should be finishing the glazing on that Taboo, but well...this little lady was calling to me louder. Besides, I want all that terra cotta outta the ceramic studio before I touch white bisque!

But the big question now is: How long will it be 'till I finish both of them? Argh. I have piles of unfinished projects scattered all over. Dag gum. I need to work on generating the discipline to finish what I start! The inspiration of an idea demands the birth of the finished piece!

"There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start." ~ Charles Baudelaire

Births A-Plenty

Six of One, Haffie Dozen of Another!

March of the Haffies

To my great delight, Barry of Bear Cast LLC dropped off the first batch o' Haffies this afternoon. So nineteen sets will be sold soon, but I don't know when yet specifically. One set is being retained for cleaning, to be catapulted to Blackberry Lane Pottery for transformation into clinky goodness. Woot! And in theory, this set will be the fodder for Mayhem 2010! But if you need resin casting done, I highly recommend Bear Cast LLC: Top quality castings, with speedy, professional service. You won't be disappointed -- I promise.

And I was additionally thrilled to learn that Barry can do cold-cast bronze! So I'm going to have him work his magic on Reflective and Jax again, but in that beauteous stuff, which will open up whole new markets for them! We also discussed some options for my sproinging Arabian mare I'm working on in order to preserve the illusion of being airborne.

I'm also cold-painting a Laf'nBear Smittyn into some sort of sooty tastiness, and hope to have her done by Friday or Saturday, and up on Auction Barn next week. She is so fun to paint! I still have to finish glazing that Taboo, too. I love it when there's an overabundance of fun stuff to cram into each hour -- keeps me revved up!

The yin yang of Haffidom

I'm also happy to report that the sponge technique for equalizing the glaze on the tiles worked like a charm! I bought a few kinds to experiment with, but this definitely is the ticket. HIKEEBAH!

The Summer issue of The Boat is shaping up nicely, and I was given stewardship of the new RESS blog, which has been really fun to develop. And if you notice at the bottom of this blog, and the RESS blog, there are nifty Amazon widgets that link you directly to recommended resources. This new feature hopefully can be useful to you at some point in your own art career.

To cap off a perfect day, I saw three baby squirrels in my back yard! YES. I leave lots of food out for them so they gets bigs n' blobby, and it'll be so fun to watch these wee ones cavort about! And that Mourning Dove pair should be hatching their eggs any day now!

Exciting times!

"If art takes up much of the artist's time, then it makes sense that she/he be 'lost' in the euphoria of creating. Isn't that one of our ultimate purposes in life?" ~ Harley Brown

Six of One, Haffie Dozen of Another!

Singed but Singing for Joy

Elsie & Oliver, Haflinger mare and foal

I feel like I've run a creative triathlon, completing this pair and metaphorically collapsing at the finish line and gasping for air. I swear -- I seriously thought I'd never finish them. Considering that I first started them in 2008 (Oliver in July 2008 and Elsie in August 2008), my life has been defined by these two for some time. The long days melted into each other as self-doubt alternately snuffed out and rekindled my determination. Blorg. So these two weren't only a test of my skills, but of my character, too. And I'm happy to say I survived the gauntlet bloodied, but unbowed.

Some have asked why my ordeal with these munchkins became a kind of gruesome self-punishment when they surely were good enough long ago. Well, we're all our own worst critics and my problem is that "good enough" really isn't good enough. It was imperative I reach my goals with these pieces because that compels me to push myself. If I'm not evolving creatively, I'm not growing as an artist and so, to me, the primary goal of each piece is to grow and explore.

Now that said, I'm not sure of your expectations with this pair after all this time. But I was struck by the phenotypic diversity in the breed when I was amassing reference materials. Some individuals were so different, you'd think you were looking at Half-Arabs or pygmy Belgians! But I chose to focus on the semi-feral Haffie type, which you can see reflected in the mare, most obviously. And remember -- she's a 12-14 year old broodmare. And any Mom will tell you that pregnancy changes the body -- and lots of pregnancies really change the body. And I think that's cool, which is why I think broodmares are gorgeous, especially the older they get, just as I think Moms become more beautiful as they age. Moms are like fine wine.

So in a nutshell, this set was designed to speak not only to true horse lovers, but to Moms, too. Mares don't care how they look -- disheveled and ungroomed, they're inherently beautiful. And in many ways, I think this kind of au naturel motherhood makes them even more beautiful because we see the pure, unadulterated equine beauty come out. Similarly, we women have so much annoying baggage piled on us by society to look a certain way, even if we become mothers. I say -- remember the mare! Beauty is beauty. So be comfortable in your own skin, even if your hair is a mess. You're already beautiful just as you are. So my hat's off to Moms everywhere!

But enough yappin' -- here are the pix of Elsie, Oliver and together as a set.

"I am often helplessly confronted by the picture... filled with suspense. What I have drawn suddenly seems to have developed its own dynamic - one that is not always necessarily kind to me. It is a genuine struggle and challenge." ~ Simone Bingemer

Singed but Singing for Joy

A Well-Used Eraser

I just finished struggling with a "Lighthouse" installment for the Winter 2010 issue of The Boat, so now it's up to the proofers to hack away at it. This particular column is devoted to the contemplations we realistic artists might face in our work -- the difficulties, the triumphs, the confusions and our moments of "ah HA" in order to try and put it into a kind of useful context.

And this particular installment was about realism -- what it means, what it means to an artist and how we can keep perspective on the whole messy concept. I became inspired to tackle this subject at Brookgreen Gardens, because there, in one collection, were perfect examples of what I wanted to discuss. I actually started it over Thanksgiving, tappin' away on my trusty Mac laptop in the hotel room, and cogitated it on the five hour trip back home, then wrapped it up this morning. But my struggle wasn't because I didn't know what to say, it was because I didn't quite know how to say it. Now for years I've heard the assertion that realism is difficult to pin down, and that's true, but only true to a point. A rather finite point, actually. After twenty years in this biz, I realize it's actually pretty easy to pick out those pieces that are more successful in that department...but only when you understand what "reality" means. That's the tricky part.

The problem comes when having to describe in words what precisely makes a piece realistic. I discovered it's actually darn well near impossible because what is realistic is something we determine when seen, not when described. We can yap for days about the muscle groups attached to the femur in great detail, but until we see it and make our own comparisons can we actually begin to get it. This is why such attempts fail and why learning realism in this way is incomplete, and why I wasn't going to touch that task with a ten-foot pair of calipers. But this not only makes life challenging in the studio, it makes for a kicker of a conundrum when writing about it!

This brings me to my well-used eraser. The process of attaining more realism in my work has been littered with pieces I wish would be erased from existence. I think we all have those floating around in our past. But from my vantage point now, I realize that mistakes are part of the process, so with a bittersweet smile, I tolerate them. But I do admit that I'm desperately curious to know how I'll see my current work ten years in the future. I do hope I have that same bittersweet smile.

Anyway, I remember in a drawing class in junior high, the teacher -- I'll call her Mrs. T -- reiterated again and again, "Don't be afraid or ashamed to use your eraser! It's there for a fabulous reason and isn't it wonderful to erase your mistake and start over fresh? You get to change your mind as often as you want!" That has perhaps been the one thing that has stuck in my mind from junior high. Not math. Not English. Certainly not French. The eraser bit.

I do love my eraser -- it is my freedom and my power. I use it with abandon and I'm never ashamed when I do. I'm wary of the drawing that wasn't liberally erased in various areas. I distrust it. It's too confident, it's too bloated with its own certainty. When that happens, I know I've royally hosed something up somewhere!

And so it was with the Haffie mare. Lo - I thought she was near done, but something nagged at me. Something just didn't seem right -- you know the feeling. You know in your gut when something is finished. And, no -- no gut feeling yet. I think of my eraser. It's the mane. Yes. It went on too easily, with no eraser marks. It's too simple, too...what's the word...easy. So off areas must come with the eraser -- er -- dremel. We'll see where we go from there.

And so it also was with my Christmas ornament. I decided to make a rubber stamp to squish a design into a slab of clay because I simply ran out of time to sculpt something, make a mold of it and figure out tile pressing all in one go. But for two weeks I've hashed out designs and wrestled with ideas, creating intricate compositions and complex lay-outs to the point where I drew myself into a tight, uncomfortable corner. None of them seemed right. None of them screamed, "I'm the one and you know it four-eyes!" Argh! This doesn't have to be so difficult! Why is it so difficult?!

Ah. The eraser. Wipe the slate clean and start again.

So there I sat, with a clean slate and a fresh open mind. I thought -- this whole stamp and slab-rolling thing is a rather spontaneous idea. Kinda on the fly. Why not have the design be something equally impetuous? I decided to play a game with myself -- whatever I drew in one go would be it. It doesn't have to be realistic, it doesn't have to be what I've done before, it doesn't have to be inside my comfort zone and it doesn't even have to be pretty -- it can be something totally new, weird and wild.

Ten minutes -- done. And it's shouting, "Hey four-eyes! I'm the one!" YES.

"A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes." ~ Mark Twain

A Well-Used Eraser

Another Hafie Mare Sneak Peeker

Ta-dah! Ok...sorry for the lousy, fuzzy photo but my camera is acting goofy and I'm too lazy to grab the manual. But you get the idea. I still have some minor adjustments to make on her, but the light is now visible at the end of the tunnel. Once I get some shipments out and some things in the kiln, I can get back to finishing her in earnest. It'll all be a very good distraction from being sad about little Eppie. I just can't stop thinking about him.

Hubby is going to be gone all weekend at the big Elko "Rumble in the Rubies" Bike Rally, so it'll just be me, the ratties, my flowers and the studio. Some real "downtime" to decompress and get my bearings again. I sure need it.

"The isolation of being in my studio capsule underground is like being in bed, pulling the covers over my head and shutting out the rest of the world." ~ Shirley Erskine

Another Hafie Mare Sneak Peeker

The Calm Before The Storm

Mayhem is here! HAZZAH! Lesli is en route and on time! Everything is ready for them in the ceramic studio, bracing itself for the tornado of activity the next six days will bring! I imagine after those six days, we'll feel like Wuzzle (above)...blobbed out on our own goo that we packed on during all the good eatin' necessary to create shiny ponies.

And speaking of appetites...for a taste of things to come, Lesli has finished the first clinky Imp! How awesome is that?! I have a feeling we'll be doing lots of squinting this week!

Anyhoo, I'm adding some hair to the Haflie mare, though she isn't anywhere near done. But at least Lesli and Joan will have an idea of what I'm aiming for with her. Along the way, I'll try and post pix of the madness as it unfolds! Until then.....wheeeeeeeee!

"Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy." ~Janet Long

The Calm Before The Storm

I'm not dead. Yet.

It's The Three Amigos! They're even wearing the black and "silver" costumes Steve, Martin and Chevy wore in the film. All my Charmkins need now are sombreros and tiny six-shooters. My little clowns have grown into three rambunctious and cheery blobs, who miraculously stood still for a whopping two seconds, in "formation," so I could snap this pic.

I've finally come back to my life. Being sick with this blasted flu for nearly three weeks drove me into a hole, away from the world. I couldn't even play with my ratties for most of that time, for fear of getting them sick, too. My poor little fellas were crawling up the sides of the cage by the time I was well enough to at least scoop them out and plop them on "the rat couch" to get "the beans out." For nearly that entire time, I didn't check email or keep up with the news -- I just sat under blankets on the couch, high on meds and watched Stargate and Stargate Atlantis DVDs. Hubby took great care of me, though -- he's a textbook caregiver and, boy, am I grateful! But I've never been hit so hard by a flu before. Wow. It drained my will to do anything but stare at a TV and drool. Now I'm back (pretty much) and it feels odd -- like I came out of a dream. I'm slowing becoming aware of my life again, re-learning how to get back into the swing of things.

I have to admit, however, that the forced "leave" did clear my mind. It was a mental vacation. I realize now that my little grey cells had become clogged with too many stresses, which were impeding my progress on the Haflinger mare and other studio projects. I was able to get back into the studio last week, and re-started working on the Haflinger mare (sneek peek here, albeit bald):

Things have gone much smoother with her after my "leave," and she's just about ready for her mane, tail and feathers (one of the last things I apply to a sculpture). Ironically I was working on that troublesome left hindleg with fresh epoxy when the flu hit, so I popped her in the freezer, thinking that I'd be well enough the next day to complete it (the cure time of the epoxy I use for sculpting slows almost to a stop if frozen, which allows me to put a sculpture "away" for a short time to come back to it later). Alas, that wasn't the case -- the key term being "almost." After two and a half weeks in the freezer, it finally cured. So I had to yet again dremel it off and restart it. It's become almost funny at this point. But things are far easier now, even with that leg, so I should be able to complete her by the end of the month. I've never had a sculpture challenge me more, but I think she's not only taught me new things about sculpting, but made me aware of just how badly stress can compromise my ability to work in the studio.

Anyway, as soon as I get my head fully screwed, stapled and hot-glued back on, I'll snap pix of the new WB plaque in resin, "Reflective," and the new Jumper plaque, "Jax." I've made some changes to both since the flexible molds for resin casting allow me to play with cut-outs and undercuts more, unlike the rigid plaster molds used for ceramic casting, and I think you'll like the additional touches. This way, you'll also be able to identify a ceramic casting from a resin casting at a glance, which I think is important for collectors. I also want to dive into creating a new edition of Rune Horses and other tiles, so I can really start to use my tile press in earnest. My Sister-in-law, Megan, is cycling in the AIDS run again this year in June, too, and I'll be creating another fired item for auction to support her (HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY NOAH! I miss your face goo!).

Now back to the salt mine -- Cheerio!

"Conscious and unconscious experiences do not belong to different compartments of the mind; they form a continuous scale of gradations, of degrees of awareness." ~Arthur Koestler

I'm not dead. Yet.

Sneeky Peeks!

Phew! I've been busy in the studio, playing catch-up and starting new projects, in what can easily be described as an unabashed wallowing in a creativity hot tub. Jump in! Oooo it feels good! And just like hot water loosens the muscles, serenity loosens the artistic impulses for me...now all I need is another pair of arms! So I thought I'd post a few sneek peeks of some pieces that will be available for sale as customs or as castings.

So first, here's a peek at V.2's neat row of teensy little braids along her neck (right). I would have finished her some time ago, but I wanted to redo her eyes. Something about them wasn't quite right, so I put her away for a couple of months to refresh my eye (oh the irony!). Actually, it's always a good idea to put a sculpture away for awhile, and return to it later before considering it "done". It's amazing how this trick can illuminate what you previously overlooked. And learning is a continuum, which this practice also exploits to an artist's advantage. So I'll be popping new eyes on her soon, then off she gallops to the caster!

The next peek is "Sebastian's Muse", or "Bastian" for short, that customized MOW I mentioned on my list. Here's his hinder and tail (left).

I'm nearly done sculpting him, with only one eye to go, plus some shoe details. Then it's sand, sand, sand....and more sanding. Did I mention sanding? Ugh. But I really like how he turned out and I'm so excited to paint him! He's going to be a light dapple fleabit grey, and I'm looking forward to using some new painting techniques I learned from other artists. And Corinne Ensor's fabulous new snaffle bridle for him arrived today and wow...it looks awesome on him! I can't believe the tiiiny working buckles! To check out her fabulous tack, ooogle her website at www.shoeboxsaddlery.com.

Next, here's a peek at Vixen's hindquarter (right). Vixen is about 3 inches tall, being Taboo's lady friend, and she's full of the same pugnacious spunk, too. Birds of a feather, flock together! And as you can see, her tail is curled over, and I've given her quite the expression, too, but you'll have to wait to see her mug when she's completed. She has a bit more work to go on her legs, head and her mane and tail, but she's pretty close to done.

And I gotta tell ya...that's a marvelous thing! I was having such a bear of a time with her and her foal because, for some inexplicable reason, I kept breaking their dang little legs! I'd get a leg exactly how I wanted, then snap! I somehow managed to demolish it. So I decided to put them away until whatever gremlins were lurking about would grow bored and leave. Begone! I picked them up again, about two weeks ago, and things have been moving smoothly on them, finally. But good golly!...each of their legs has been resculpted at least twice, with some three or four times! Good practice I guess.

Which gets us to, Imp! Vixen's and Taboo's feisty little kidlet! Here's a photo of his hinder and flippy little tail (left). This wee one is only about 2 inches tall, and he's gadding about, like ol' Dad. As you can see, he has a foal coat like Pixie, only teensy tiiinier. He's been a lot of fun to create, but boy...sometimes my eyes start crossing working on his little details!

And finally, here's a sneek peek at a repainted mini, Donna Chaney's Chasing Rainbows (the landing jumper), that will be up for sale soon (below right). I've named him "Beane"...and yes, the pun is intended! And what an elegant sculpture! He's been a lot of fun to paint, with those lovely muscles and crisp head. I still have a bit more work on him to go, like his hoofies and some small details, but he's close to done. And you can probably tell that he's a chestnut sabino, and, boy, does he looks sharp in those "clothes"!

Anyhoo...back to work for me! It feels great to have my mojo back. I sure missed it! Having a "still" mind is essential for me to ease into the creative groove, and stay there. Ironically, I gotta be still to move forward.

"The monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." ~Albert Einstein

Sneeky Peeks!