ART CHALLENGE - 5 of 5

This 5-day Art Challenge has been good for me, letting me review my move from 2D to 3D work. I've had a great time with it. The only fly in the ointment is, I haven't come up with any easy answers to the age-old question, what do I think I'm doing? With art-making, that is.

I seem to be moving back to 2D work, for reasons of convenience when traveling, and also to ease pressure on my somewhat damaged joints and tendons. But these aren't reasons - they're in the nature of sidestepping, a matter of work-arounds.

Here's the top of my 3D work to date:

Dancers, the best statement I could make in glass with the materials and tools I had to work with at the time. Photo by Pete Duvall, Anything Photographic.

These are the waxes for the Dancers. Ah, how complicated and fun, to figure out how to make these female forms. You can see they derive from the Torsos below. Just add the rest of the body and the head, and hey, how about some clothes?

Well, the depth of the kiln meant that once I allowed for the reservoir holding the glass, then a fill-tube, and the head, also the plaster of the mold, and a layer of sand and kiln-shelf and an inch of space at the bottom, there wasn't any room for the legs. I swirled the skirts to give the idea of movement in space. The waxes is a snapshot that I took in the studio before casting.

Torsos, cast in Bullseye glass. Beautiful bubbles! On the right, wiped with dark paint. I was delighted to have made them, and couldn't have gotten this far without the Washington Glass School guys.

Babies, in porcelain. Creepy, said several people, but not to my eye. I began by intending to add individual heads, for instance a different flower for each, but ended thinking they're fine as is. All different, too, though cast from the same mold.

The advantages here include light weight and opacity, and possibly they're less fragile than glass. My mold-making skill, such as it is, got a workout with these babies. More porcelain might be in my future. To make them I was able to use the DC facilities of Novie Trump, now working at Flux Studios in Jerome AZ. And now we've moved, ourselves, and are living in Rome as I write this [note: written 2015; now we split our time between Seattle and Tubac, Arizona].

Following is a piece that rather expresses my feelings about myself just now. Isn't that odd? It's maybe three years old, but still says something intrinsic, with its friendly smile, erect head, snappy horns, pink nose... Uh wait, I don't have a pink nose. Hm, no rectangular irises. But I'm friendly, usually.

Friend Goat, a linoleum cut with colored pencil.

2D work is certainly its own reward. Now I'm exclusively drawing and painting, as working studios are not available to me. Rediscovering the joys of portability and perspective, and easy sketching. Watercolor isn't easy, but I'm working on it. Forward, as we say. Onward.