Internal Winter Weather...

 ...remember you may click & click again on the photos to enlarge them...

My lifelong habit prefers to work in the studio during the long winter nights. This nocturnal mode sometimes allows me to see sunrise on my way to sleep...

Sunset seems always to follow too quickly, but can reward us on these short days, if the weather is clear enough to see Tahoma [the mountain most know as Mt Ranier] with the alpenglow reflecting raspberry colored light in our eastern view. The spine of the island prevents any direct view of sunset from our aspect...

The last full moon rose dramatically just as I was on the beach, fortunately with my camera, even as I'd thought about leaving it at home when I left at dusk for a quick walk. I'd not been paying attention to its cycle & was surprised to wonder at its unexpected light rising behind trees on the horizon...

Later I took the tripod out onto the Prow Deck to make some longer exposures as that orange orb climbed high enough to make a causeway of reflected light in cooler coloration...

So my internal weather is affected by that of the external... deep, creatively dark, lit dramatically... productive, even as I am also feeling less than "on top" of the schedule finishing one year's business & moving into the next, which speeds along. Now it is Imbolc, St Bridget's celebration, when diurnal time begins again to balance day & night.

There are additional stories, explaining somewhat more mundane matters of weather on the "read more" button below:

TIME FRACTURED... SOLSTICE...

[CLICK & CLICK AGAIN ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM]

An accident occurring just two days before the Open Studio saw the door, which would soon need to welcome our visitors, broken into a million-pieced jigsaw puzzle... giving my camera's eye some wild visuals... while being accompanied by a curious soundtrack of crackling pings & tinkles which went on for several hours as the tempered glass continued its slow disintegration. It held in its suspension of gravity for most of a day before falling into a fine mess needing careful attention toward clean-up!

But for those hours I enjoyed views seeming quite decorative & festive, even inside the frustration of a difficult situation. I was sad when I opened it one time too many for its fragile state... as it fell into a heap of sparkling shards. I'd wanted to make even more photographs, although you might not want so many as even these!

Fortunately the inside pane was intact because it wouldn't get replaced until Solstice Eve. The door functioned fine during the two weekends of the event, which was slower than I had hoped, due to weather matching that adventure. Yet, in the end, we wrote a respectable business even so. The bells do love ringing their role as holiday treats!

This self-portrait suggests my own fracturing during this busy time... holding on while letting go.

While our weather was too overcast to view last night's rare Solstice eclipse... this morning's dawn was happily dramatic. A great beginning of the new year!

Solstice is the real deal of this season, as I've noted for many years. Test-able... as the light seems already to be changing, if simply because the gallop toward shorter days has reached its ultimate exhaustion. While the pace in their lengthening will not seem quick enough I love the turning toward the light which this... the real holiday... promises.

I am exhausted in tandem... the season in the studio is mostly finished. Christmas always seems a bit anti-climatic to me & our New Year is a tardy event waiting for the calendar to catch up with the astronomical fact.

While I remember years ago having a studio rush well into Christmas Eve... selling gold earrings to guys shopping last minute presents for their ladies, while I poured liberal shots of brandy to lubricate easier choices...

These days my clientele has it already wrapped up... Hurrah!

So I am holding the day in peace & quiet, sending those qualities to all who appreciate its inherent joy! Our Lady Tahoma, seen here several evenings ago, is a fine teacher of such sentiment... I never tire of her lessons. Perhaps she offers wisdom even at distance...

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.