More About Art
My philosophy of color can be summed up by saying, “there’s no such thing as too much” (which, incidentally, I also apply to daffodils and daylilies, 2500+ and 100+ respectively in a half-acre garden, and growing). (If you've made it this deep into the website, you should not be surprised.)
(This is what one corner of a yard filled with 2500+ daffodils looks like in the middle of March:
.)
While I admire and respect sculptors who work in marble and metal, I could never commit to those palettes for a lifetime of work. Having to carve and finish a “canvas” before getting to the painting step is very limiting, and I continue to experiment with various techniques to add color to carvings that take less time than a 400-grit finish. In addition, I started painting to take some of the pressure off coloring the carvings. While painting does not allow the same room for expression of tangible shape, it is a quiet art and can be practiced on Sunday mornings when the neighboring churches are in session.
Textiles are included on this site to honor the output, although the works are not for sale. (Trades for art with equivalent hours invested can be discussed.) I can’t remember not knowing how to knit but remember beginning to knit seriously 1986 as an attempt (eventually successful) to stop smoking. I knit continuously until 1999, when I finished a lace tablecloth as a wedding present that took six miles of thread. I didn’t touch a needle for the next four years. In hindsight, the hiatus allowed the sculpture to be born; knitting was bleeding off enough creativity that there wasn’t enough left to overcome the fear of learning a new medium. In January 2004, I looked at my yarn stash and thought “that would be fun to knit…” and Red Stripe took shape. Now I practice knitting restraint by not shopping for a new project until the current one is completely finished. Some days the saws leave my hands too worn out to knit, but it is helpful to have a portable art form when it’s too late to run a saw.
When one's taste in jewelry clearly exceeds one's income, and said one is an artist, the solution is obvious: make your own. Public reaction to some very personal pieces has encouraged me to develop a line of jewelry for sale. My materials are beads, found objects, and polymer clay, and as with most of the art, the colors are bright.