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...

HAWAI'I: BEFORE THE YEAR ENDS...

I am aware of the date as I begin to write this somewhat after New Year...

I'm just enjoying a bit of pretense in a system older than my relationship with Monsieur Silha...

That of a tradition having a spell of deep quiet time after the studio's more external work is finished. There is a word for this quality of time: HALCYON, a mythical presence of calm seas at solstice.

These years we seem always to be rushing off earlier than my own body's timing might wish to celebrate toward more active ways what is nonetheless a poignant season.

I take my idylls now as I can find them...

This year's travel did give me a fine alternate version of that sort of celebration: we traded our smaller Island for the biggest one of Hawai'i. We flew on the 18th inside the becoming usual vicissitudes of cancelled flights & reschedules, but arrived only a few hours later than we'd expected at our Vashon friends John & Glenn's home in Captain Cook, south of Kona on the western side of the world's tallest mountain, an active volcano whose height must be measured from the ocean's floor. Whew!

As with our visit to INDIA three years ago, we observed curious juxtapositions of northern holiday paraphernalia on the tropics: Colored lights on wreaths or even garlands of pine were common, but they also hung out in palm trees! On that earlier trip, when we spent Christmas on the beaches of Goa, such things were more unexpected, but our fiftieth state could hardly be immune to such well marketed traditions. Nevertheless, my humbug is happy to be allowed to continue practicing ignoring ever more of it...

But how could even such a flaw in my character remain disgruntled when presented with the warmth, the verdant blossoms plus the visuals of even more exotically colorful fish through a snorkel mask?!?

Or decorations like this:



Unexpected examples of how the holidays coordinate with tropical fauna were the numerous poinsettias blooming in gardens & even seeming wild along the roads. The Kona side is dry, rather desert-like, being leeward of the three volcanic peaks of this mountain. These plants are Mexican in origin & love such dry tropical situations.

There is nothing quite like that color. It has an artificial quality, enhanced by that texture of flocked velvet... I found myself constantly captivated by my own weary revusion toward that most comercial holiday flower. This was my most effulgent sighting:



But, I was looking at time... timing... rhythms.

Halcyon is, by supposition, if not definition, quite damnedly ephemeral.

TEAPOT SEDONA...KATE & WILLI... KONA...

While I wait for myself to make the larger postings about Hawai'i, I will celebrate a deep friendship renewed there when we visited Willi & Kate Jacobson the 24th of December. They live near where we were visiting on the Kona coast... yes, these are friends of mine going back into the '70s. Several days later in our trip we will visit some friends of Stephen's with similar vintage...

He made this shot of Willi & me bridging deliciously dissonant color schemes:



Elliot -- whose parents made our last visit together in my first Seattle apartment, the Cabinet, on their first night away from him as a baby -- declared himself resultantly independent & went to his computer, leaving two adult couples to discover commonalities in our new & old.



Now, we are mostly comfortable in our middle aged versions of history, even as we recall what might have been more lively than we can now afford to remember... or not. We don't do life so badly now...

I remember Willi first in 1975 for some really big black gutsy pots I met early in my Sedona arrival. Later his production studio became a local institution nurturing piecework jobs for numerous folk who verged into my curass during that period. Somewhere in there I commissioned from him the tea set which we regularly love to use now on Vashon Island.



I have the first prototype cup he made for me, an archetypal form referencing the essentials of wheel thrown clay. Strength & ease... but a bit larger & more open than the final versions.



I've long loved the word Astragal which describes such horizontal ribbing. Willi explored this in the numerous manifestations as each cup took its own variation of shape & proportion. Even longer have I loved taking tea from the soulful richness of this set, particularly from those favorite cups which tuck more closely into astragalic puckering rims...



Check out Kate & Willi's collaborations in current work at:

http://www.jacobson-studio.com/

CELEBRATION AURORA...

While early mornings are not my usual
Some beings will not be denied

I was prepared with camera up near bed.

SEA HORSE BELL...

I woke early this morning & was struck by this rainy view from the bedroom of the new deck we've had built over the retaining wall, which was constructed last spring following some difficulties on our cliff during last winter's storms... we are feeling safer for that in the current rains. It was finished just before Thanksgiving so we still have to landscape it with a proper approach. For now there is a collection of potted plants as a temporary barrier for the Open Studio weekends.

A client who has been waiting for the SEAHORSE bell to arrive on my website wrote today & prompted me to make some informal photographs.

Click on any photograph to enlarge...

My light box is currently requisitioned to serve as a display of earrings for the Open Studio...



I set up a temporary background on my wax desk & used just my usual work lights with little of the usual capability to control reflection with diffusion, which makes for exposures which are a bit harsh. But it was past time to share the result of those postings last April showing the waxes for this design...



I have made a variation by adding a pendant loop to one version, changing its orientation to the cord:



The clapper for this bell is made of 3 cast pieces in order to make it flexible enough to develop a useful strike inside the narrow confines of the bell's form. The loop makes five parts to assemble this complicated design.



This bell waits with many others to be properly photographed & posted on the GRB BELLS website. "After the first of the year" is a mythic time to accomplish all sorts of my procrastinations...

Tidy Studio...

Last mid-week I had to make myself stop working at the metals bench & begin the process of cleaning the studio in preparation for this weekend's Vashon Island Artist's Holiday Open Studio Tour. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the preparation... after the messy chores are completed!

I love having my workspace tidy & clean & organized spare following the months of ignoring the dust residual from just casual sweeping-up during projects like building the new displays & the grimy grit of even the smaller amount of polishing the studio has seen, since most of the polishing was done this season by the foundry.

The place cleans up really well & I did a more intense job of it this time, so the glow it took on came from that deeper attention. While I have never been one of those who has a precise place for every little thing & have everything in that place, I certainly have had to develop some patterns of careful organization to keep all my parts usefully at hand while still out of sight. Each of these reorganizations adds to my studio's fabric & system. Even so, I often see the joke that I seem never to be able to easily find things afterwards for all that effort!

Waxing my old wood furniture is a joy. Many of these pieces have been part of my working spaces for decades. I'm pleased to have collected them early on & they have served me so well, traveling with me in my various peregrinations. I have other, less interesting surfaces as well, of course, painted wood & Formica... in addition to the abundance of concrete as floor & walls. All benefit from the attentions of brush, broom & rag... becoming good therapy even as the process abrades & dries ones hands. I chuckle remembering the old dish soap ads about cracked skin & broken nails I saw in my youth.

I'm ready now, Mr De Mille, for the close-up of my thumb's painful pad still deep cracking open three days later...

Over many years of experience inviting folk into my workspace for Open Studio I have learned to practice not just cleaning surface but also paring down to the most spare story I can. It becomes a fine game to remove all but the essential parts most necessary to show how I work . Of course I usually work with my tools in clumps & piles only I can sort out, but that clutter would only hinder the 2 minute version I must be able to concisely tell about how the lost wax casting process works while I have a dozen folk playing in this narrow space.

So I get to embellish the newly opened surfaces more freely then, fresh with new opportunity to evolve my story much more clearly. I groom trails, with examples as I can, to draw various kinds of attentions along... samples of work in various stages, exemplary collections of tools, illustrations or objects I'm researching & those I'm simply enjoying for texture or color or form. This becomes showtime...





I've been claiming new space from the area closest the entrance to the studio which no longer is needed to store the garden tools, which have their own sheds now. I finally got rid of the unused water softener, so now there is clear space for a new workstation I've been planning & will explain another time. I loaned my polishing box to the foundry for this production season, so I cleared that workbench of the drill press, other motors & the vice to expose a surface useful to serve the drinks & nibbles, away from the crowded center of the studio, as has traditionally been the layout.

I had to scrub the wall & I covered the outlets with a backdrop of craft paper, bringing the wooden puzzles brought from Venice some years ago down from their home in the dining room window sill. They brought a very subtle holiday mood befitting the occasion. I don't go in for much traditional color or tinsel these days, although I might add some gold stars for next weekend...

Unfortunately, because both days we had wet, cold weather, there was no crowd sufficient to test that theory of arrangement so well as I might wish. I am pleased with way the table evolved, hoping for many reasons that next weekend will see a fair party develop at that end of the studio.



This, then, is my visual celebration of the studio at its most presentable...








Still it rains...

SANCTUARY... solitude

Some years ago I was gifted a piece of calligraphy by it's creator, Sally Jackson. It has mostly lived in my flat drawers along with a fair accumulation of stored drawings, watercolors, prints, the archive of my own calligraphic history... too much art to live with actively displayed... plus a quantity of various kinds of unworked paper I've collection over years.

This bit of illuminated poesy has, however, cajoled itself into freedom numerous times as I've heard its invitation to bring out this gilded "M" twining a tree not yet timber with which to build, much less to burn, more than my curiosity, perhaps.

For some reason now is one of those times I ponder such clues with an enjoyment which has only matured over a decade & a half.



My... My land...



My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Dorothy Parker
Learn about her here: http://www.davidhouston.net/page35.html

Reconnection with Sally has just today surfaced, after any number of years, finding her by email through her aunt... a bell collector. She has written to tell me news of her retirement & gives me permission to share her work here.

I'm looking now toward cautiously deciding to have it framed. It may yet go back into the drawer during the deep cleaning which is immanent to this Open Studio season. However, I might instead choose to hang it in some temporary manner, thus to help me hold its current massage...

Ive found myself making resonant confusion of Sanctuary with Solitude. No real surprise to those who know I have loved long periods of that... & still do.

Obviously I'm still celebrating enigmatic smoke from the several bridges I burned bringing me to live with my madly social partner.

Addendum -- 14 January 2008:

Sally wrote to explain about the materials in the Sanctuary piece: "The support, i.e., the paper, is a German laid paper called Niddegan. It is known for the wavy laid lines, unlike most laid papers which have straight lines. You can probably see them most clearly in a raking light, since the piece is in a mat. The lettering is in italic and was done with a sumi ink using Mitchell nibs. The trees are painted with gouache. The gilding is 23 carat gold laid on gesso in a process that has not changed since the Middle Ages."

OPEN STUDIO NUMEROLOGY...

The Island's Open Studio Tour is run by artist volunteers. I accepted this year to help accomplish the new signs. Numerals, representing each studio's position on the brochure's map, must be attached to panels displaying our logo. By the time they will have gotten to most studios anyone of our preferred clientele will have enough confidence to not need such number, but...



The wasteful backings label my studio floor with an equal efficacy...





Some time later to be swept up...



'DING!