Friday, May 20, 2011

some favorite quotes


It's another blog carnival and we are sharing some of our favorite quotes. I have several journals of quotations, and some of poetry and Haiku (yes, that little moleskine says "Recipes and Haiku"), some of my journals do double-duty. Here are some quotes and (unattributed) Haiku that I really enjoy.

"I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves." -Richard Avedon

"The only thing I know is that if I get to my studio, that means I'm alive today." -Robert Farber

"I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I come into the studio very fearfully, I creep in to see what happened the night before. And the feeling is one of, 'My God, did I do that?' ". -Philip Guston

"I see more and more that my work goes infinitely better when I am properly fed, and the paints are there, and the studio and all that. But have I set my heart on my work being a success? A thousand times no. I wish I could manage to make you really understand that when you give money to artists, you are yourself doing an artist's work, and that I only want my pictures to be of such a quality that you will not be too dissatisfied with your work." -Vincent van Gogh

"Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own." -Alice Walker

"Apathy is a vice." -Oscar Wilde.

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art." -Oscar Wilde

"What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do." -Aristotle

"I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made." -Yeats

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Thoreau

"A man is a god in ruins." -Emerson

"Art is a jealous mistress." -Emerson

"I am out of estrogen and I have a gun." -Anonymous

with the last lamp
stripping
her shadow off

not seeing
the room is white
until that red apple

loving
you
in poor light

the space
between the deer
and the shot

walking into and out of
the sound
of the brook

nailed on the door
men
out of order

Please visit my friends who are also sharing their favorite quotations:


Thursday, May 19, 2011

where have i been?

GREAT question, I apologize to my three remaining readers.

For starters, I've been working on a mosaic tile installation in the courtyard of a local middle school. The students arranged all of the glass tiles before they were glued to the cylindrical benches which are six feet in circumference, there are 5 benches in total to mosaic. I have a fabulous assistant, Rhonda Spight, she is a recent BFA graduate from the Memphis College of Art.

The first bench we've grouted, after it's been dry for a few
days I will take a steel file to the top and bottom edges.


I have also been learning to cut stones
with my friends Beth and David.

Slabbing a hunk of Australian chrysoprase.
(Slabbed by David Day, I watched.)

Two of the four slabs cut, ranging from 1/2" to over 1" thick.

Roughed out on the trim saw with more help from David
who fixed my undercutting. This piece is close to 3/4" high.

Grinding on the rough wheel with Beth.

Heating for dopping after rough grinding into a cylinder. Dopping is the process of heating both the stone and sealing wax to affix a short dowel to the bottom of the stone that acts as a handle during grinding. You remove the stone by placing it in the freezer for a little while, when you take it out of the freezer you can easily pop the stone off of the dowel.

The finished cab, I'm hooked.

I cut this rhodochrosite a few weeks ago.

At the gem show on Beth and David's equipment.

I love the military issue goggles, very comfortable.

Both cabs and a setting I'm working on, the green
stone is actually a little smaller than the pink.

I have been making new pieces for a two-week artshow.

I've also been teaching a digital photo portraiture program to teens at a local community center, they did some great work - none of these photos have been cropped.