There was a chilling frost this morning when I arrived at the studio here in Squamish BC.
My goal for today was to finish making a cedar box that will be used for the base for my most recent marble sculpture of two humpback whales. This is one of the last things for me to do before moving this thousand pound sculpture out and into the gallery later in the week. I have been pushing to get this piece out of my studio now so I can ‘clear the room’ and begin focusing more on my current projects again. I started carving this whale piece now 4 and half months ago.
I decided it would be easier to cut a large section out of my tarped wall to get the bobcat in to move the sculpture than to try and pull up what is usually my front entrance which I reinforced this winter to prevent wind damage after going through some intense west coast arctic wind storms last year.
So today was more a maintenance day than a carving day. But its all an important part of the creative process.
Before I left, after cleaning out the scraps and sawdust form the mornings cedar box/project, I swept the area clean and moved a block of Italian alabaster up onto my carving table in anticipation of getting into it tomorrow. It’s about 75lb. I had 2 this size and the last one I decided that I would move through it quickly to see how that goes and now am deciding on the approach for this one. The previous stone which is the other half of this new stone had a beautiful color and I am expecting the same with this one, though I am debating whether or not to carve hair details into this one in which case the stone color would not really be seen in the end.
I have really only carved full hair details in my bears 2 or 3 times out of the 100+ works I have created over the years. Its nice to do that every once and a while and add something like this to my body of sculptures. Ultimately I am sure someone will connect with it and it will be the right piece for them.
Time will tell.