Wild Kingdom -- Creating a paper maquette

I am beginning to work on my exhibit for the 2018 -- that's right 2018 -- North Carolina Botanical Garden Sculpture Show. The concept is "Wild Kingdom -- A Wildly Colorful Collection of Critters". They will be sculpted in steel and displayed among the plant materials in the garden, similsr to my 2017 exhibit, "Facing Humanity" in the Garden.

The first step in the process is working out the design elements for the pieces. I use paper maquettes to design the sculptures prior to fabricating them in steel. I select an image of the animal's face to serve as a model, in this case a giraffe. I make several copies if the image.






I cut the images up to separate dimensions of the face.














I trace the shapes on construction paper.











The construction paper shapes are then cut out.











The elements are then reconstructed, using spacers, into a three dimensional maquette.








The maquette will be deconstructed and the elements will be used a patterns to trace onto steel to be cut with a torch for the metal sculpture.






Stay tuned...

A visit to the J. J. Audubon Center

Carol-Ann, Kathryn, Nicole and I visited Community Conservation and Education Director Amy Weidensaul at the Audubon Center in PA.

I brought Amy a giclee of a painting that I did of a Great Horned Owl inspired by an Audubon print in Birds of America.

 

We had a lovely tour Audubon's first home in the US and got to see some rehabed owls up close.

Oscar the Screetch Owl

Oscar -- Thought "he" was a boy but she laid an egg

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\Oden the Great Horned Owl -- Very talkative!

More about the Audubon Center

Making faces

Facing Humanity

For several months, I have been sculpting faces inspired by individuals in many countries around the globe.They will be an assemblage in this year's Sculpture in the Garden exhibit at the NC Botanical Garden. It is an exploration of the diversity and unity of us.

Here is how I create them.

First, I select an interesting face from a part of the world. I don't consider the face to be representative of the country. It just catches my attention. 




I make an armiture out of hardware cloth, an kind of chicken wire.




I then make a composit concrete using cement, peat moss and an acrylic fortifyer. I model and carve a likeness of the subject face.

The faces will assembled into an exhibit at Sculpture in the Garden at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

Come to the Garden and enjoy sculptures by artists from all over our state presented against wonderful plant materials.

Sculpture in the Garden

Stanley's art appreciation Renee Lammers

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Stanley's art appreciation Monet at Etretat

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Stanley's art appreciation Eugene Delacroix at Etretat

 

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Stanley's art appreciation Gustaf Courbet at Etretat

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Stanley's art appreciation Rene Magritte

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Stanley's art appreciation Franz Snyders

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Stanley's art appreciation Ivalo Nikolov

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Stanley's art appreciation George Rodrigue

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Stanley's art appreciation Manga

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Mr. Squirrel's Odyessy

In early December, I received an email from Enid, a pretty, sweet and smart young woman that I knew in college. We had not been in contact for over 50 years. She now lives in the Boston area. She was interested in adding a sculptural element to her garden, and had read about my late in life art carreer in the college alumni newsletter.


We communicated by email and phone to discuss what kind of sculpture she would like. Finally, she decided that a squirrel would best reflect the "wildlife" that inhabited her urban garden.

I began by searching the internet for some photos of squirrels, and then I fashioned an armature from recycled plastic bags and chicken wire.

I then mixed up my special mixture of cement, peat moss, acrylic fortifier and water to make a clay-like material. I modeled the resulting concrete onto the armature. I made bright eyes from commercially available glass "blobs". Enid

wanted her squirrel to be able to "nibble' on things in her garden, so I fashioned his hands to hold small flowers, nuts, seeds and other natural elements.

After a few days of curing, I applied several layers of a bronze pigment containing acrylic over the sculpture. 

I tarnished the surface with an acid containing stain. The finished sculpture needed about three weeks to completely

cure before it could be out in the cold winter weather. Here is Mr. Squirrel enjoying a lovely North Carolina February day with Stanley and me.











We now had the challenge of getting him to Massachusetts. Luckily, Enid has a good friend who spends some of the winter near Chapel Hill. Audrey agreed to come to my studio in Fearrington Village to start Mr. Squirrel on his trip home. Here she is with with her special passenger. I wrapped him up like a mummy to protect him in Audrey's trunk.

Mr Squirrel spent the rest of the New England winter in Audrey's care. When the weather finally turned warmer, Enid took him home. Here she is after transferring Mr. Squirrel's mummy to her car.




Finally, Enid and a gardening friend installed Mr. Squirrel in her back yard garden, where he will be very busy entertaining her friends and family.

He looks very happy doesn't he.

Stanley's art appreciation Andy Goldsworthy

The Chatham Artists Guild is having a picnic today at Jordan Lake. We will make an Andy Goldsworthy style ephemeral sculpture.In honor of the event, Stanley has inserted himself in one of Andy's assemblages.

Look at Andy's video Rivers and Tides:

Stanley's art appreciation Paul Gauguin Two Women

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Stanley's art appreciation Kate Ladd

Good friend and well known Chatham artist Kate Ladd has just completed another of her popular "sofa" paintings. Stanley approves.

Stanley's art appreciation Collette Pope Heldner

Collette Pope Heldner is one of my favorite artists. When I was at Tulane, I spent a lot of time in the swamps and bayous. She was an important painter there, specializing in French Quarter and bayou scenes. We could not afford one then and we certainly can’t afford one now. I have done several of my own remembrances of the bayous as homages to her. Here Stanley has inserted himself into one of Heldner’s and one of mine.

Heldner

Me

Stanley's art appreciation Michelangelo

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Stanley's art appreciation JMW Turner

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Stanley's art appreciation Pierre Auguste Renoir

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Stanley's art appreciation Psychedelic pop music poster Strawberry Alarm Clock

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UNG student Mary Glen Hatcher made this video

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A Cedar Hatchling installed in the...

Forrest Dweller Sculpture Garden

Stanley's art appreciation Milt Kobayashi

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Things that God doesn't even notice

Athletes
crossing themselves
before taking their foul shots or
attempting field goals tricky dives fancy twirls
hail Mary passes heavy lifts gallant saves Lottery tickets
rolling dice card cuts sprinting ponies point spread game scores
Math test scores IQs class rankings SATs performance evaluations
community standings annual incomes Dow Jones Industrial Average Gross
Domestic Product globalization angst Cholesterol ratios bad hair days common
colds seasonal allergies influenza epidemics chronic emphysema terminal cancer
myocardial infarction sudden death infant mortality School yard killings heroin
overdoses drive by shootings racial conflict ethnic cleansing Abusing priests
disintegrating families corrupt politicians collapsing infrastructure WMD
shock and awe Tsunamis hurricanes earth quakes draughts wild fires
global warming radioactive waste famine species loss Dead Jews
Armenians Cambodians Serbians Croatians Rwandans
Darfurians Iraqis Evangelists profits jihadists
popes Sermons scriptures epiphanies
revelations fatwas
Prayers

Stanley's art appreciation John Lavery

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Now -- the cosmos and me

Bang,
energy
infinitely
expanding, particles
or waves, it’s not certain,
voided a black nothing. Lusting
attraction forced elemental marriage, molecular
gathering.  Gaseous worlds, clotting, exploding, flaming,
captured lesser spheres spinning in their influence. On one such
orb, cooling in its unique place, condensing gasses rained upon the surface,
conjuring ever increasing complexity. In this water world, solid masses drifted. In
the ooze, creating itself in its own image, the helical first, base pairs zippered, directed
invisible architecture. Tiny spheres begat tiny spheres, begat spheres of spheres, begat tubes
of spheres, begat tubes within tubes, begat swimmers, crawlers, flyers, runners, climbers. Tooth
and claw, the fittest, fastest, hungriest, sexiest and brainiest prevailed. They were fruitful and filled the orb and subdued it, and had dominion over the swimmers and over the flyers and
over every living thing that moved. Honoring various gods or various one gods, they
slaughtered the unbelievers, built monuments to various gods or to various one
gods, or to themselves. And unto themselves, they erected great cities,
devised great technologies, diversified great cultures. They
painted on cave walls, printed on papyrus, cast
in stone, iron, bronze and cathode, sent
texts bursts of ones and twos,
 all this so I can utter
 these words
to you,
now.

Read this book

Stanley's art appreciation Paul Cezanne

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Stanley's art appreciation Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

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Stanley's art appreciation Sergey Loginov contemporary artist

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