Bird form emerging

I am beginning to really enjoy this now and have forgotten my frustration over the aluminium. The belly is curling upwards and will resolve in different ways on either side. The resemblance to a whether vane cock is clear and I remain unclear as to weather I should embrace this or not. I think probably I shall move a little further towards abstraction with the completion of the unfinished end but perhaps I will feel differently tomorrow.

The Art Room fundraiser

A short deviation from carving stone. I have been asked to create something for a charity auction for a great cause. The project appealed too. They provided an aluminium and wood chair to make something from. Each participating artist has been given a chair to ‘work on’. I spent ages getting angry with the aluminium legs. I tried chopping them and bending them but broke everything and wore out dozens of cutting discs. I tried welding it but failed to make any thing but a mess. I have now given up on the legs and am using only the wooden components. I am much more at home with wood so give myself at least half a chance of making something interesting. There is not much wood so I am cutting everything very thin. All the resulting objects are to be hung in Selfridges atrium in London which should be quite a sight.

Deeper

It took a long while to stand the sculpture vertically yesterday. I was glad however to get a chance to have a good look at it in that position as I realised that I had been a little timid with the cutting out of the slots. Today I re-cut most of the slots, pushing them another half inch deeper on each of the twisting facets. I can see already that there is now a lightness that was not there before. Much better. The marble has a very subtle shifting coloration running through it hard to see here but quite evident especially when wet. No two blocks are alike I suppose, just like people.

Standing now

A bit of a jump from my last post. That long thin block is now worked into it’s twisting segments. Here I am fixing it to it’s base. A stainless steel sleeve is glued into the sculpture and a stainless pin sticks out of the base. Whilst the glue is setting I can move the carving around to ensure that the carving is perpendicular by the time that the glue goes off. You can see that my gantry is not tall enough to lift such a tall sculpture and it is held up with blocks. Very bad practice! Naughty boy! It would be a good idea to make some extra long legs for it sometime.

Commission started

Actually I have been working on this for a few days and removing quite a bit of excess material. Here you see the block as it arrived from Portugal before I had begun any work. On the far left there is a very strong vein which whilst not a crack does tend to represent a weakness. I removed this to make sure that it does not give us problems later. The carving is just under three meters long and will eventually stand vertically.

Off to Malvern

Four new sculptures have gone to an exhibition at my old school. Here is the large Portuguese ring (now called Corinth) on its Kilkenny limestone base. I think I will do a larger version of this carving at some point. I really think the markings here are beautiful.