CHTHONIC TIME...

This slicing view of Tahoma last week captures something of recent moods of intensity focused at depth, drawing down attention to discerning what might be missed with the distractions of what sometimes considers itself "whole".

Time happens for rocks as well...

While I live now on a cliff of an Island of alluvial fill left, a bit too loosely piled, perhaps, while a glacier retreatingly melted only several thousand years ago, I've spent many years earlier meditating the history written in Arizona rock cliffs... eons of alternating oceans & deserts laying down parti-colored layers of sediment & dune, water & wind. Limestone intermixing sandstone... all before having become sculpted by wind & rain over eons more to make the spectacular spires & canyons of that territory. There is then the scattering of lava from the much more recent, yet now ancient, volcanoes which are the San Francisco Peaks above Flagstaff, known these days for skiing.

Time happens at so many speeds... place finds itself only in movement.

The slice of this spell of deep time carving wax is similarly dramatic. I do not fight these yearning impulses when left to my own schedule. While Stephen has been in Philadelphia I have been waxing irregular inside the sort of time it takes to move the mountains of wax... or so it seems from inside my magnivisors, those head strapped hooded lenses I wear to bring my vision down into the macro ranges necessary to carve the wax masters for bells, or earrings or rings... one of each has been current on my bench.

To get to scale useful to my work I must admit my gargantuan sensibilities, which often prove clumsy with a ruinous stroke of the tool. I study the flow of moods as I study the flow of material... positif-negativf again.

Years ago, in Sedona, I designed a hinged lily earring in two sizes. The smaller of those has had production problems which I am aiming to solve by re carving it. I began this wax last year, but have found the focus again toward finishing it. It fits nicely on a dime, to give you some scale.

The ear wire is fat in the wax because I can more easily finish it down to size after it is cast into sturdier metal. It is quite too fragile to refine in wax.

As perhaps you can visualize, it is inserted into the lobe from the back, the wire clicking into position so as to present the flower facing forward. While they always sell, I do not wish the bother of keeping them in stock, given the problems in the original. I trust this new version will allow them to be produced more gracefully.

Another extant design, for a frog ring has long wanted to be available in larger sizes. That is an essential consideration in designing rings: fingers & hands are perhaps the next most facile parts of the body after the face for expressing individuality... coming in a variety of sizes & proportion. One size does not fit all, if you remember the rings in Cracker Jack boxes. OK, I show my age. But after years designing custom rings I am cautious about involving myself again with the vicissitudes of fitting objects so precisely to such wildly organic variety, much less matching each with its own personal taste atop that!

Part of what I like about bells is that they is not quite so specific to the body...

I have been bringing this rarefied, focus back to the THIS IS IT bell about which I've written in earlier posts, these are shots showing the subtle progression as I refine each of the 126 glyphs as sculpture to hold as legible forms against the requisite degradations of molding, casting & polishing processes of production. The better I anticipate problems the easier all that might be...

I've spent three decades trying to teach my willy-nilly artist self that... Is this it?

From the vantage of Soundcliff I collect images of goings-on. I intend one day to post showing the variety of boats which pass by. Something more than a weeks ago I heard a repeating helicopter several times before looking to realise it was hauling a secession of utility poles. By the 4th or 5th time I was ready with my camera. I read later in the local paper the rarity of such obviously expensive method.... required by the remote stretches of our coastline, reached often by narrow roads not accessible to haul such lengths by truck.

That is synchronous with the process we are going through to have a leaning pole, holding our electrical service, replaced. The truck to deliver it has made it down our short road... the pole lays in the ditch, waiting for the crew which will commandeer our lane for the several hours necessary to set it... at their whim.

What must be the logistics of flying such poles in front of my camera's eyes?

Narrow segments of intensely focused time have allowed me to begin toward harvest several designs long on my books... I still study rocks.