MOMAsculpture

Latest Oil

Ginger and Triumph

After I completed most of my got-to stuff today, I made time to paint this afternoon. I can't stop thinking about this project! I redid the brown and white underpainting, as I didn't like the composition of the first one.

Then I started laying in the colors. You'll see what I mean when you look at the progression of the segments, going from left to right.

I also drew out a really quick sketch of the sculpture so you can see the original idea. This, amazingly enough, is all I will go by during the entire process of creating the sculpture.

All I need for a guide are a couple of very basic lines - the ones that express emotion are the spine and the arms for the human, and the legs, spine and position of the head for the animal. Anything else is flexible, according to the medium in which I am working.

If this piece was stone, the legs would have to be way heavier, as little spindly legs like these would collapse with the weight on top.

In bronze, I can create it so there is extra reinforcement within the piece that will help it support itself. I can also create it so that the body of the horse is narrow from side to side, eliminating much weight from an otherwise blocky animal. You'll see as we go along how I deal with each possible problem.

New Painting

Well, it starts with one little movement, doesn't it? All I did was agree with myself that I'd do a sculpture, and all of a sudden the flood gates opened.

Now it seems there is a series of paintings to do, and a bunch of drawings. Whew! I'm keeping notes so I can remember all the things I've been dreaming up -

I went to the store to get some wax to carve, and found it was so expensive that I decided to wait until I could find it elsewhere a little less dear.

Of course, the good thing about wax is that it can be remelted and carved again - not like stone. But still, it was twice what it ought to be.

So instead of carving today, I drew out and started a new painting that had been in the works back in my brain for about a year - the first of a series of flowers with local backdrops. Subtle colors, old-timey kind of feel.

In the 30s and 40s, there was a color that is never made anymore because the formula has lead in it - Hookers Green. There are a few pretty bad imitations, but no one can seem to manufacture a good likeness. You'll see the darker shades of the color in the older cowboy and Indian paintings of the southwest - it was used a lot for very rich night scenes - deep shadows that fairly vibrated; and with white and yellowish tones in daytime skies used against golden clouds. It's a glorious color, and I'm going to attmpt to emulate it in some of this new series. Feels realy good to paint again - I hadn't picked up a brush in a couple months.

I don't paint colors right on my blank, white canvas. I don't like how the white canvas shows through the colors - I think it looks unfinished and washed out.

I use an Old Master process, first priming my canvas with a mid-tone coat of burnt sienna. I add yellow to brighten up the light. Then I sketch the objects, shapes and forms out lightly with a pencil.

I Dare Me! An Old Dream....

Recently, I dared myself to do some things I was afraid of. Today, as I looked back on these things - that I had accomplished in a surprisingly short time - it struck me how easy those things had been to do, once I had decided to do them! What I had set out to do had taken time, but was not inherently difficult.

So I thought OK, what is it that I had not done that I still wanted to do but hadn't dared? What was an old Dream I had stuck away in the back recesses of my mind, and never dared do yet?

Here it is: I have, for years, secretly wanted a piece of my sculpture in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

There! I said it! Scary as hell. I first saw this particular piece in my head in 1985 - 22 years ago. I was 39 years old. I knew next to nothing about bronze sculpture. I knew - and really, to be honest, I still know - nothing about how to get a piece into the MOMA.

That's OK. I still get to have the Dream.

All those things people said to me in the past are flying by my eyes - "who do you think you are?" "Why do you think you can get a piece into MOMA?" "Your work isn't good enough!" and so on and so on....

That's OK, too. It's not the destination, it's the Journey. Thus it begins.

I'm inviting you to come along with me in this process. Start to finish, mistakes, celebrations, mis-steps, successes, goofs, victories, by-blows, magic and all. It's quite a process from start to finish. I kind of take it for granted because I'm so familiar with it, but a friend tonight told me to record it for people like her for whom the creation of such a thing is pretty much a mystery. So, here we go!

The sculpture you see above (named Ku'ulei, which means "Beloved" in Hawaiian) was one I did when I lived on Oahu, in Hawaii, in 1986. It's not even close to the one I want to do now, but gives you an idea where I was at at that time. You can see how heavy, rounded, and compressed the style is. The new one will be quite different. Next time I post, I'll include a sketch for you of what I see in my mind.

Ku'ulei was originally carved from California soapstone. When I saw the stone at the stone yard, my first reaction to it was alarm, because I knew the stone was upside down, and I could just imagine what it must have been like for it to lie there with its blood running into its head for god knew how long. Yeah, I know, weird. But that's what I felt.

I have a visceral relationship with stone. I can look at it, and, without even touching it, know what it will feel like under my hand, how soft or hard it is, how difficult to carve, how it will look once carved and polished (or not), and more. It's as if my hands have eyes and hearts and can feel and know all at once. I remember it being that way snce I was little, when we went on earth science trips in 8th grade—my teacher would ask us questions and I always felt the answers in my hands.

When I started carving stone in 1986, I carved using hand tools for the first ten years. I used a square metal hammer weighing about a pound, and wood or stone chisels. I finally got to the point where I felt ready to move as fast as air tools would allow/force me to move, and went to Lucca, Italy to study with Profesore Roberto Bertola, carving marble with air (pneumatic) tools.

It was such an amazing turn on. With one swipe of the tool, I could clear away a path that would have taken me fifteen minutes by hand. The power of such force has its hazards, though, since in stone, once carved, that's it. Very little forgiveness.

One small goof and a nose pops off, an armpit or an eye is too deep, and that's that. Hours or days of work, destroyed irreparably forever. So despite the power and the force of air tools, I learned how to work delicately if I needed to, forcefully where appropriate. It's an incredible feeling, knowing you have in your hands a machine that revolves at thousands of revolutions per second that can rip your finger or arm off if you're not careful.

I went back again a couple years later, this time studying with another Maestro in Pietra Santa, the same town in Tuscany where Michaelangelo carved his famous David. It's situated below the town of Carrara, where he got the marble for that famous piece. I'll tell you more about that visit another time.

The piece I want to place at MOMA will be bronze. I had at first thought it might be a blondish travertine, but the design I have for it won't bear its own weight if I do that. It will have to be bronze. You'll see as it progresses from drawing to wax to mold to bronze.