GARDEN GATES...

I have long wished to be able to write on my computer in my own hand lettering. Now, with the new iPad I've recently treated myself to, I can... if not very well yet. I'm certain I will become more facile with a stylus on its glass screen, it will take practice & more exploration of various apps to facilitate better control.

Last night saw the completion of a project to build gates for the deer fence mentioned in the previous post... this morning I "penned" several pages to share my celebration & joy at the progress:

Leo Toye Returns...

I am flummoxed how to explain from scratch who Leo Toye is… being a part of me who's been mostly retired. Long ago… about 25 years...  he came along as my doppleganger when I joined a group of artists in Sedona, Arizona to revive an Open Studio venture. We decided to publish a newspaper each month & I wanted to become a "columnist" & since I, loving that image of an inky feather quill pen, had always wanted a nom d'plume... Leo Toye became my pen name.

It seems I have always practiced calligraphy, remembering many posters made for High School campaigns & events, not to mention all the placards & signs for the department store where I worked after classes. Early on I gave-up my cursive... picking up my father's version of writing with a curious mix of upper & lower-case, mostly block letters, gradually coming to love writing all in caps, long before that became digital screaming. But then... I've always been a bit of a screamer.

 

Leo Toye's name is a literal description of my visual logo… that lion on wheels. The format was graphically columnar, of course. The medium was ink, thus the title TUSCH... meaning ink, most specifically the "india ink" with which I had a rather deep relationship, using technical pens to write my journal in that permanence.

I had danced, work/playing, with graphic design those middle years [early 80's] in Sedona, creating logos & labels for other businesses, so when we conceived making a monthly tabloid as our publicity organ, which declared a quaint anodyne to the slick-cover-magazine-culture supporting / supported by the galleries, I was there with a black & white sensitivity useful to newsprint.

 This is a drawing I made for the front page of one OPEN STUDIO issue:

Leo surfaced on my mind's drawing table & evolved in small body of work of which I've always been proud. Leo could use words in a way which mixed studious years of evolution inside the many covers of my habit to journal with something attempting visual poetry. While I was angry he could be enigmatic… I did indeed like having a doppleganger to blame for my excesses!

Three of the columns:

We eventually became mired in the publishing & the group wore itself out. Leo mostly retired, yet "we" kept writing in my journal & doing the occasional bit of calligraphy or design. I still frequently refer, in many stories & much history, to Leo Toye when I'm playing with words & ink.

Now, after some long periods of neglecting my journal, in part due to having become computer literate, as they say... believing I would journal digitally. I did not, for numerous reasons, mostly because the computer seems to lack similar intimacy as pen-in-hand fosters deeply private thinking. The keyboard supposes capability of publishing, while the ink flows from my hands in very different mental processes involving more soul somehow...

I have recently returned to that inky process which I realize as being important, if not imperative. I can only allude to the many stories I would tell, but this is still just the introduction to Leo Toye, who  seemingly spontaneously resurrected himself when I volunteered to write a publicity piece for our upcoming Spring Vashon Island Artist Studio Tour. As I began making notes for an article in pencil I quickly found myself drawing the words as interactive shapes rather than sentences.

This is Leo Toye's art, a certain visual poetry... calligraphy making a composition of literate words & drawing dancing more lively than typeset on the page.

 The work begins in pencil on paper:

Then a tracing on drafting film, also in pencil:

The drawing is then traced in ink on film:

This stage was scanned into a program & finished digitally:

Notice that the lines about "grace" were replaced by digital "ink work":

Click the "read more" button if you would like to view the columns as larger images... 

DRAWING IN CIRCLES...

While sitting inside the Heart Circles at the winter gathering of Radical Faeries at Breitnbush Hot Springs in the mountains of Oregon last weekend I made this drawing in the round book I have shared in an earlier post. These circles are sacramental events lasting three hours each morning where the center holds opportunity for individuals wishing to share their joys, or to wrestle tough questions... & too often to bring their pain for potential healing inside this cauldron of acceptance in loving safety. 

[Click on the photos to enlarge them]

 

The first morning I only made the circle of the margin as I listened, beginning the process of collecting the meditative mood I use to intuitively "translate" the ideas & words, the voices & mostly the wide range of emotions into some visual form which reflects in some abstracted manner all that which cannot be literally shared outside the confidential enclosure otherwise.

I came to so love the simple line drawing which came over the second & third days that I was loathe to add the chiaroscuro shading I usually use... but on the last morning as I listened to a particularly difficult story I came to know I could not omit the more fulsome dark which all light requires as contrast. I brought it home to finish last night. Those denser tones require delicate building up with much care on the soft texture of the rag paper's surface which the pencil lead can crush if too much pressure is used, making furrows which actually resist taking more layers of graphite. As the pattern took more form in the process I came to love the further result as much as the original simplicity.

While making these-less-than-perfect photographs I also shot one page back-lit, bringing the previous drawing into a new combination. I've had the notion of experimenting with cutting openings in pages to reveal multiple drawing in several layers. That will take gumption not yet found! I continue to explore the infinite possibilities for this book, which will, I suspect, take the rest of my life to fill all its 100 pages...

Another detail, of a previously posted page, uses the opposite effect, the shadow of the slightly folded book makes a strong abstraction, also displaying the rather heavy laid lines of the paper's manufacture which affect the heavier tones.

The page before the one I just finished is another imaginary cityscape, rather like the more elaborate one posted here...

We experienced less snow than was forecast for the time we were encamped... still the decoration was freshened each day. Sometimes it dusted just enough to heighten my enjoyment sitting in warm lithium laced mineral water caught in a rock pool perched overlooking a meadow to the river below... while flakes melted on my pate.

One afternoon I caught the late slanting sun illuminating ice on trees deep in dark woods... a challenge I did not quite do justice with the camera in my haste to grab that light.

 Now that's chiaroscuro!

DRAWINGS...

As I was preparing for the recent holidays & our travel to visit Stephen's family in Minnesota, I worked on a series of drawings for gifts. Beginning during the quiet, halcyon time around Solstice, I chose scraps of rag paper from long ago watercolor days for their intimate size & their character, with torn & decked edges. These were to be more in the style of "cards," which in the past were presented as & along with other gifts.

My own family long ago decided to forgo prescriptions for holiday gifts & instead to celebrate & gift each other in our own ways & our own time. For years we gathered at my parents home during times of the year when we could more easily be together outdoors. Christmas in July or September was more usual. I'm happy that we let go of obligatory expectations toward wrapped gifts...

So these bon mots in pencil on these paper objects seemed suitable... they were portable & I worked on finishing several of them on the plane. They became quite personal as my pencil danced inside the mythology of my relationship with each recipient. Still, on Christmas morning, hardly wrapped with only simple bows of the red string for which I have a penchant, my gifts were initially met with understandable puzzlement amid the detritus of paper & ribbon from the pile under the tree.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me explain that Stephen's family does rather more practical than frivolous gifting. Stephen & I have long encouraged re-gifting to share from our own collections & they grok that. Still there can only happily be room for some particularly special gifts. The spice of occasional extravagance is the blessing of the season. Such is what I gave, so I can only celebrate two other examples in their fortuitous harmony. Stephen's sister Alice gave him his 60th birthday present early... a strikingly handsome Native American beaded box:

Helen's gift to me is an Acoma Pueblo black pot, equally & literally handsome for being almost palm-able. The finish is so polished it's clay must be photographed like metal...

Two fragile objects to pack for the trip home! Wonderfully, they fit each other... the pot nestled snugly inside the box, wrapped to fit in my carry-on bag.

Aesthetic gifts always transcend mundane material... like life, all is mud of our earth given breath of creation. Glass beads on a woven box; highly worked clay; graphite on cotton rag paper; poetry dancing as vibrations on air...

Back to the drawings...

Later I created bits of time with each person to explain how I came to their markings...

Brother Mark & I are both Leos, sharing back-to-back birthdays, which encourages us to growl & dance together like our own versions of such cats. This is my lion for him.

Nephew Johnny has been settling-in with Kristen for a respectable while, so my drawing to them was about the work [see the shovel?] of relationship & the sometimes electrical polarity of oneness & twoness... I had difficulty understanding when I first perceived the cover-plate-ness of the image. There are pearls in there too, of course. Those beads are an archetype in my work since I was their age. These drawings take on a life of their own!

Niece Sarah is sweet, with spiraling curves & corners to turn as she changes careers & travels to follow her mate, while following her larger heart as well...

Nephew David is living quite a story for his 21 years. I followed some intuitive path to this creature, with a spine becoming a mortar board for the journey he's on... surfing seahorse & daunting dragon in his brain.

Stephen's sister Alice & her husband John parented the 3 young ones above... they are indeed close to a perfect family, as proven by their strength holding David through the trauma of his accident, now 20 months ago. That moment forever changed their family, welding them together in creative ways. Kristen was in the car with him, but avoiding the brunt of the collision became a sturdy part of his tenuous bridge back to normal life. Sarah came home from her first job to learn her role & path into some profession more directly helpful than marketing.

This couple look to me like the archetype of a good marriage... the long linear aspect of their drawing begins with a rather stylized stamp of an interweaving knot I have often used to bring in the strength of two intersecting lines which split to join in a moment of tense harmony.

They have replicated that ideal, growing together from their different roots to repeatedly learn the grace required of parents to continue. They've done it more than once. Now they've mostly finished the form & are testing tendrils toward the new of a future back to two.

One last drawing, for a most important person, required more time than I found in the flurry of the season, so I brought it home to finish it, with Helen's playful admonition that she wanted it done well!

I could only agree to our mutual wish.

Taking lessons that the rag paper I'd chosen was rather too coarse for the effect I envisioned, I began again on paper with a smoother tooth.

This is a fantasy I have long been cogitating for my round book & I still intend to do another version there, but the moment of the turning of the year allowed me to take time meditating on details describing the imaginary history of a city or world, with Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities as inspiration. Such endeavor was so much better than beginning my year with business inventory chores! I settled into work like I've not done for some long time... with genuine pleasure. I do love to draw... & I wrote verse to make my explanation...

PLANTED IN A CRYSTAL BOWL
FLOATING SINCE SOME WISER TIME
GROWS A TREE SO ANCIENT
ITS LEAVES ARE NOW SCROLLS
FADING TO FORGETFUL INVISIBILITY

WHOSE ROOTS HAVE LONG SEEPED
DEEP BEYOND SUCH CONFINES...
TETHERING THIS CITY
CENTERING QUIET IN ITS HARBOR...
PORTAL TO A CHIAROSCURO WORLD

SOMOS UNO... WE ARE ONE...

When I mentioned my recent concentration with pencil drawings to my brother Jon, he hinted toward wanting help with the logo he's been using for his blog. It originated from a tattoo he has on his ankle & the photo is thus distorted. I've long known that I can ride the horse of energies to tackle similar projects, so a re-working of the image his tattoo artist made came rather quickly.

I have numerous layers in my historical dance as a graphic artist, from high school & college posters to my own logo, which has remained a constant all my life. My business cards were re-calligraphed for each of my points of perigrination, I drew theater bills & logos for other businesses during my Sedona years. I had an alter ego named Leo Toye... but all that is quite a different story.

BroJon tells his own about how he came to wear the notion of SOMOS UNOS here...

From his tattoo:

To my versions, first in pencil, then in other ink:

The image needed to become more clear & I love working with the rhythms of hand inked line widths to imply lively space. The idea of being one vibrates life in more than cookie cutter sameness, so I played with gesture & suggested subtle anatomy. I emphasized the circling hands with stronger connection, more like a big kiss between us all, however it also glyphs magnetism & suction. Holding the differences of circle.

My experiments with color were more of the education I need in the realm of Photoshop. He dialogued a clearer version...

Now he has colored it yet differently & to great effect, as seen on his site.

I will post other drawings soon. It feels good to be playing so deeply!

SCULPTURE IS DRAWING IN SPACE...

These images are either side of a wax
toward a bell design begun several years ago...
I have no idea whether I will ever finish it.

They become rather like "emoticons" for this post.

[There are numerous photos later in this post,
feel free to scroll down at any time you are tired of reading...
Remember: you may
click on any of these images to see a larger version.]

I've been silent of late. I arrive here now to show explanation...

Winter is design time in my calendar of decades' habit. I go quite non-verbal as I dive into form... waxing, literally, along with the requisite equivalent waning, of course.

Wax being my medium... I struggle with both it & these words.

I come to some notion that music might often exist first in the physical form of its instrument. While I do not consider the bells "musical instruments" in any strict form, they do make sound... they have voice. Voice out of numerous, inexplicably variable, qualities a particular form my wax carved imaginations might acquire translated into metal.

The very hard wax that I prefer is even so quite a non-resonant material. Still, nearly all materials have resonance at some level, be that a sustaining ring or a thud nearer to the death of sound inside near silence of plush.

Or of that deeper chthonic time-space noise which is mama magma's gift.

I must believe, then, that I can project, from what I feel in the "hearing bones" of my imagination, how the sound of this wax bell might resonate when cast... honed through subtle changes due to polishing of that master, then the shrinkages of second generation waxes replicated by a rubber mold... those parts of the involved translation of a production bell into my line... all resulting hopefully in a "good voice"...

That is some projection!

At this stage I am working with the visuals as sculptural form, both positive & negative versions which must consider the ways molten metal or wax will eventually flow into the several interim molds requisite for translation by the process of lost wax casting.

Ultimately it boils all down to flow...

Sound has much about flow in ephemeral ways. A tuba's sound resonates with its physical form; a fat column of thus more slowly resonant air pushed from loose lips. A clarinet's form produces a voice with a similar column of air yet quite different for its direct form... & its origination of breath through a reeded mouthpiece.

A violin, however, dances with air in different ways... horsehair scraping on gut amplified by crafty negative volume inside woodshape... more ephemerally about material vibration & less about breath.

All sound evolves from vibration of material form, columns of air, oscillating strings or the resonance resulting from a strike between two material forms... the strike of hand on a drum's head or a bell's clapper upon its sound bow.

Bell sound is then first of all... percussive.

So I play with wax as both sculpting the essential visual shape of the idea so as also to promote the flow of materials requisite for its production & then, to an even greater degree, the flow of vibration within the resultant form.

Such process rather becomes one long "negative" drawing by strokes of removal.

Drawing in three dimensions toward the center... A drawing on paper can never, no matter how many variations, accommodate very well the development of a design that must exist in fully rounded space. But by the time I have made all those drawings into my wax, I have carved a bell.

Beginning with a block of wax I "draw" first with a saw, then with files & burrs, constructing & construing a 3D "canvas" into which I can continue to draw with stylus & graver-like tools. I draw lines moving around the ever-refining wax form, erasing with broader strokes, refining surfaces for more drawing. Deeper into form then the ever more finely realized idea can find surface & form on & in which it can develop. Eye-mind-hand sees ever more completely what ultimately becomes, for me, a rather fully rounded universe.

I get to experience then how much less than god-like I am at creation. My waxes are such small universes, with such limitations. Yet they are 3D forms inviting sound... a possible fourth dimension.

I would only invite some fifth... that of delight in response to that sound... I get to observe a certain satisfactory proof of that, often while the bells collect their humans at the displays in my studio.

Drawing becomes whittling. I repeat the common story of Michelangelo explaining that his sculpture was simply removing whatever might be extraneous, releasing the form trapped inside the rough stone...

I must trust there is a bell inside my chunk of wax. I must celebrate the little bit of knowledge I have about what makes a good bell. I must draw it out... inviting solid chunk to reduce gracefully down into a shell thin enough to imperceptibly move, to vibrate pleasantly when its clapper strikes... all at miniature scale, still... audible.

So the bells have to do with time in intricate ways. Resonance, at base, is time.

Then, as I have danced with the bells these 26 years I have come to appreciate their archetypal rhythmic replication of the primitive calendar. After winter solstice comes gestation of new life toward the sexual market of spring. Then look forward to the various lessons one can take in the resultant long harvest.

So there is some pressure. My goal is now to produce what will support such ultimate harvest. What I am working on now might not come to market for a year or more. Still... I am more actively working to push it toward production in time for this season's long harvest.


The MONSTERA DELICIOSA that fascinated me in Hawai’i broke my fast into this season’s creative spell... this wax is now waiting for me to refine my touch toward finishing it.

This constricted medallion, a detail on the BON MARCHE building in Seattle has long captivated me with its simple wheat & flower forms supported by dramatic deco spirals.

The CLADDAUGH bell I carved last year was legitimately critiqued for having a four leafed clover instead of a more proper shamrock. I have set out to correct that...

I would say more about my carving ruminations but for the knowlege that those are better & best stayed, sub-verbally attempting description of subliminal experience.

Most recently a new verion of GINGKO bell has been ariving, carefully reducing this popular design slightly into more comfortable size, as well as to explore evolution rounding the "cow bell" form into an even more graceful hand & hug...

I am exploring a repetition of ribbing in these designs, a pattern which affects & is much affected by flow: of material in casting as well as the microscopic flow of molecules along surfaces during polishing...

These last views, into the developing sound chamber, show the loop from which the clapper will hang... growing out of still too thick walls...

Resonance, visual & physical. Elusive. Ephemeral...