One of my sculptures is featured on Hugh McKay’s newly redesigned CastGlassForms website AND that same piece, Shemwindow’s Wife 1 , will be in the Unclad show in Stanwood opening March 11 and running for a week, open from 11 to 5 every day. This same piece was shown in Edmonds at Semantic Gallery part of last year.

I think my work at John Sisko’s Sunday Club is getting better – at least I can tell what I like and create it more often. And I sold a painting there last year too!

Just took four new small horses out of the kiln. I’m not going to do too many more of those. Can’t afford to make them for the prices I can get right now. Later in my career, well… !
[get your bargains now]

Right now I’m feeling pretty good about my art “career” – in two galleries, on someone else’s great web page, and all three existing pieces from my “Heroes” collection have been juried into Pacific Northwest art exhibits.
(2 more – BIGGER – pieces are in clay right now)!!!

Larry Jeffers also took three scarabs. Very Exciting!

I’m also spending a little time every Sunday early evening with Lorri, Wayne, Peter, Monet, Jenny, Bill and a few other sculptors at John Sisko’s gallery drawing live models. Even more exciting, plus it’s developmental and productive (would make my mother proud!)

Last week I started my new crusade: To go where many men have gone before: galloping into galleries, proffering my paintings and submitting sculptures for critique and, hopefully, for inventorying. Met a very nice man who said, “Yes” just date and sign the pieces (sculptures) and a space is yours…

<Ahem>

I signed. On the foot of one and on the base of the other.

But I’m thinking of creating a brand or stamp, like I used when I was a Boy Scout Exec.

Some were drawing classes. Some were painting classes. Some were ceramic and/or sculpture classes. I don’t remember being taught in ANY of them, how, when, or where to sign a three-dimensional piece. In fact, when I was in design school learning to create things for people to buy and use – “products,” I was taught to think of myself as anonymous hands connected to a mind’s eye; the manufacturer could brand, but I daren’t attach my name.

Now that I practice as a sculptor, mostly of figurative work, I’ve noticed (in retrospect) that at no time, in any class, was mentioned my signing and numbering. In painting classes, yes; in sculpting classes, never. I remember an anecdotal story of Michelangelo, I think, sneaking into a Papal chapel to sign a sculpture to assert its provenance.

I wonder:
What ARE the customs, the expectations, the “correct” procedures and content for today’s sculptors. Who teaches these? When? Where?

I am one of the featured artists in the 2010 Unclad Exhibition in Stanwood WA.

I’m so excited that I’ve been over-investing myself in mold compounds for days!
The website has all the works of the 108 artists represented this year from all over the USA, but my entry is on this page: http://www.uncladart.com/nggallery/page-7/page-4/

The figure, Mwindo, respresents my first in a series of characters from the Clyde Ford book, Hero With An African Face, whose father, Shemwindo has decreed that no child of his many wives is to be a son. Mwindo is therefore an abomination and a miracle.

The show opens March 13 and runs till March 28, 2010

Here’s the map:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=8700+271st+St+NW+Stanwood+WA+98292&ie=UTF8&om=1&hq=&hnear=8700+271st+St+NW,+Stanwood,+Snohomish,+Washington+98292&ll=48.244568,-122.351389&spn=0.063447,0.118446&z=13

I have the kernel of a PLAN for this year. We’ll see.

More, Later…

It was quite an experience. I can say that the show itself, The Kirkland Art Studio Tour (KAST), was a great experience! I want to publicly thank my friend Nicki Smith for inviting me to show with her at her studio site. What a hostess!

We had fun, and met many many, really nice people (and I had so many chances to laugh and talk). Many friends came out to say hello too! Great!

We were so ‘wore out’ afterwards I couldn’t even cry.
We left the parking lot later and even forgot my car until we got home. Setup, Show, Take-down.

The most important thing, since we didn’t really sell much, was testing the market and listening to would-be customers/patrons. I’ll keep you posted on what changes and what works.

It has been a hectic three weeks of preparation, and I don’t think I like it. I like doing the work. I should work at this pace much of the time, but I don’t. What I have trouble with, what drives me to scream with anger and frustration is the iterative conformation – doing over and over again the interrupting chores required for successful selling – how much, how many, how to show, how to describe, how to/when to/where to promote, and cetera, and cetera.

Of course I don’t know yet whether it will BE successful selling or merely hopeful marketing. The same, or at least a similar uncertainty surrounds the creation of the art itself, but I seldom chafe at the artistic uncertainty whereas I rave against the nuisances of the mercenary. 

Poor Jocelyn. 

All the work has brought inspiration to new projects – a couple paintings, a sculpture or two, and

More, later… 

Thanks to Sharon for prodding me into another post.I draw all the time. I think about painting… all the time. I think I agree with Jocelyn, that it’s an experienced ‘skill’ thing. When I draw there is seldom much difference between what I meant to ‘say/show’ and what is evident from the work. My paintings don’t yet measure up to that standard as often as I’d like. Therefore I do fewer paintings because they ‘worry’ me with their lack of congruency.

Anyone who, as an adult, has studied a new language should recognize the experience. In the beginning, pronunciation is so poor and vocabulary so small that you don’t talk much – there’s all that ‘judgement’ out there (and all that ego in here). However, when our children are learning language, we think their mistakes are cute. We laugh or smile, and so do they.

When we, as adults, can only string simple words together, often incorrectly, our egos are wounded by the laughter even when we survive the scrutiny. I think we encounter some of the same hurdles as we develop art skills.

The trick, I’m beginning to understand, is to come from behind the ego and blurt out all those sincere mispronunciations and misunderstandings we commit to canvas and board, and enjoy the attention while we absorb the corrections.

Several plants from my garden of artists (that’s a retro-interpretation of “cohorts”) have become successful participants in this year’s Unclad Exhibition: Ellen Borison, Joe Mac Kechnie, Dan Riley, Lisa Seminoff, Lee Berry, Linda Demtre, Lyla Jacobsen, Diana Shyne, Barbara Fugate, and prolly a few others I haven’t mentioned only because I don’t vex them as regularly as I do these.

Congratulations All! 

I’m back to the ‘stones’ project as well as a new wax figure (I’ve also still got the ‘old’ project waiting for completion) using Heather as model, even though I haven’t completed the earlier figure.

I took a successful workshop from Diana Shyne last month, and because of it I have three acrylic backgrounds started for new pastels I’ve planned.

More, later…