It’s that time of year: bunnies, candy, and hope trying to pop up through the crusty snowbanks.
For some reason, Easter seemed ridiculously early around here. It was pointed out more than once that it is
tied to Passover, which falls after the first full moon after the spring equinox. I had lunacy in mind anyway, working on
my annual contribution to the lunar calendar from Luna Press.
The calendar is full of poetry, art, and moonrise and moonset times. Living on an island, I’ve become more in tune to these daily cycles. I dashed out during the cooking of dinner last Friday to see the moonrise over the backshore.
It never ceases to amaze me.
All that moon energy got me into spring cleaning, finally! I uncovered a VERY old piece of mine, from my RISD days. back when I was an illustration student trying to figure it all out.
Not sure what I was thinking on this one, but I used every technique in my limited toolbox at the time.
I showed it to my MECA class, explaining that I didn’t know what I was doing then; and it’s important to
explore outside your comfort zone.
My students did that last week, when they tried sculpting from the model.
My good friend, Peg Astarita, and her teacher, John Read, joined my class to demonstrate their methods for working
from the model.
Here are a couple of John’s pieces.
Awesome surfaces and intense forms.
The model really had the easy part.
John worked in very wet clay, able to form a complete figurative shape in minutes.
Peg’s figures are feminine and elemental, like this glazed goddess.
Peg worked in harder clay, refining a single figure during the whole session. She does this at our life drawing group on the island
and her process fascinates me. The model changes poses, but she just keeps looking and working on one figure.
One student decided to work from the inside out, with Super Sculpy.
A splendid thing to be surrounded by people going at the same creative purpose yet with different methods.
Now all we need is spring to shape our sprouting ideas.
I’m looking for snowdrops, usually the first thing to pop before the crocuses….
Let me know when you see some!
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