WINTER WAXING...

Finally! I am celebrating the creative depths which this season traditionally holds for me.

Even as I can predict a bit of reticence, & often irregular rhythms, I always worry... until I find myself in that gripping drive which plays-out in late nights of wax carving & concentrated research as I come to grips with ideas wrestling back... fantasy in dialogue with reality, something rather Montessori, if you will.

First, perhaps, some repetition of impulses toward a notion for a bell begins to tickle, whether during the highs of the holiday sales season, or waiting for that sag time after New Years.

I do have a full backlog of such notions both from others' suggestions, & from my own notions. Some have become perennial problems, like that of a HUMMINGBIRD Bell, which ephemeral action eludes my imagination to capture its hyper-movement in static wax & metal.

Yet the idea of a SEAHORSE Bell has caught my interest recently, between the aquariums in Florida last winter & in Mystic, CN last month, with a similar problematic pique to my imagination... I suspect this rather stiff, narrow form might easily result in pinched resonance. The larger wax is a first study in which I confronted sseveral such problems & I have now designed a 3 piece flexible clapper... making a "flick" of action to improve the strike.






I believe the bell will ultimately project a good voice, but one never knows for certain until the non-resonant wax is cast & assembled in metal...