May. 5, 2011 at 12:11 pmImperial Black Pine Cone

“Imperial Black Pine Cone” 

     Thursday and rain, once more,  incessant winds outside my studio, perched on a plum blossom filled bluff above Puget Sound according to my anemometer are a steady icy cold 15 mph. It is 7:00 A.M. my abandoned coffee, what’s left of it in my cup, is cold and the cream a white glacial scum on top. My studio is cheerless as I sit looking at the various Dow Jones market reports on my computer. I am dressed in long winter underwear, sweaters, boots and raingear. As I look at my work boots I think of my Prada boots and the whirl of New York City last week.  I am trying to keep warm for the next phase of my morning, sculpting on the “Imperial Black pine cone”, a six hundred pound, four foot tall x thirty inch thick chunk of jadeite. This work is the result of a terrific northwest storm in which a small branch blew out of the top of a huge old pine with one little cone on it. Working with my collector, she a wonderful gardener, I suggested that we create this small cone in stone and the branch in mirror finish stainless steel. She enthusiastically supported the idea. Nature is never simple at best and to try to replicate it is beyond difficult but then I have never shied away from the near impossible. 

      Many of you have asked what, is my life as an artist like so I thought I would share with you how my life is composed at this particular moment. That last sentence is a clue, the life of the artist is never the same from day to day, at least not mine. I am a person that works on three to four commissions any given day. At one moment I might be writing a short story, the next painting sumi ink on hand made paper, the next cutting steel for sculptures, the next carving stone, the next and the next well they never stop. My life is creation and creation takes ideas and ideas take movement.

      Today it is the “Cone”. I am creating for a collector here in the Pacific Northwest and we have that most valuable event for the artist, a drop dead date for completion. Completion dates drive the creative process without them one wanders into a miasma of endless potential where on some creations I never exit.

      The stone for this commission came from the high cascades, a jadeite green conglomerate. The stone weighs around one ton and is gem like in its variations. See the attendant photos. A conglomerate is a combination of varied stones from ancient river beds held together by a matrix. Some conglomerates are loose and crumbly others are extremely hard, this one is very hard. As I carve into the varied stone I carve from one bolder to the next embedded in this ever fascinating assortment. It is a constant Rochard test. Each time I cut into the stone produces a different image.  

I had the basic cone form cut on a diamond impregnated wire saw and now I am doing the final forming and polishing. I have been working on this for two months with last week off for a trip to New York, business and pleasure. I traveled with my fiancé Jane and my dolce son Nev. We travel well together. We were entranced with the drama of Tosca at the Met opera house, superb saw Robin Williams’s new play on broad way “The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad zoo. Both I recommend. MOMA, Guggenheim, Whitney, walks in central park and sumptuous food everywhere. We had Nevs birthday celebration (20) at Aquavit.

“To those who long for the cherries to blossom

If only I could show the spring

A bird calls out”

Was that a bird or only my own wheezing breathing in the face mask. My goggles are soaked ear protectors keep my ears warm.

      Art is collage. The paper, the canvas, the stone, the meal, the garden, the mountain stillness, the oceans rage, the reflected moonlight in the water barrel are all refractions of the higher elevated awareness of creation.

        I tell myself that this is art that this is creative, that I am making something unique in the world, and I am, but my body thinks of this experience a bit differently than my brain.        

        Water flies everywhere, my nose drips, my face is wet, my hands ache my feet are cold and the wind and rain keep coming. I do this work out side doors. Passion this is what it takes. There is little that would drive me to do this except passion for creation.

All happiness,

Doug

P.S. Finished photos of the “Imperial Black Pine Cone” will follow in the next blog entry.

P.S.S. Thank you all for your kind comments on the “Krylon Lollypop Rollerblader”. It has been an instant hit. It “lives” in Puyallup in Pioneer Park.       

P.S.S.S. Photo of the painting of the newest sculpture coming up  “Rollerblader in Central Park”. What did I tell you it never stops this business of creation?