Play-Date: Fish and Octo

Old clay pieces out in the world.
My version of building sand-castles, I guess.

Prepping for Class

Shakespeare's Macbeth, of course.

Clay Play: Blue and Brown

Missing clay-time.
Samples from 2013: Strawberry Creek play.

Underwater Yoga

(Clay Exercise:
20-minutes with live model.)

Captain: A Sequence

Captain, sleeping: arms and legs in the air.

A silly sequence of a lovable boy.

For JW.

Reading Properly: All In Play and At Play

Ideally, reading properly
is much like living properly:

moment by moment,
responsively;
attuned to everything
but also with due consideration for weight and strength and flow patterns;
aware of the past without being chained by it;
aware of the future without being dismayed by it;
and with heart and mind and soul
all in play and at play.

Wool-Gathering

Yesterday's product of idle hands:

just hanging out in the studio,
watching clay -- figures and bowls -- dry . . .
I pulled out a bit of wet clay for play's sake,
and this fellow made himself apparent,
made himself present.

Pacific Swimming On A Grey Day

Went swimming off Lindamar Beach, Pacifica CA, with the surfers. Mask & snorkel; fins; wetsuit; squid-lid; camera. Visibility, as you'd expect at a sandy beach, was almost nil in the water.

Four porpoises cruised through the line-ups, though I didn't get any shots myself. Two were within a dozen feet of me, but I didn't have the camera ready in time.

Have to do better next time.

Age is a number, just a number, they say.  Just the passage of time, wayward time.

I say, time to wend my way back into shape.

Crime Scene?

Fish in the Rain

With Luck, Puck

Always a welcome sight.

Joy, Puck's Twin

Foreground; Background

Me: Scotch On The Rocks. You?

Thinking about Macbeth and Macbeth.

Yeats and Pound: "Lake Isle" Poems

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats      (1892)


THE LAKE ISLE


O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop, 
With the little bright boxes
               piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragment cavendish
               and the shag, 
And the bright Virginia
               loose under the bright glass cases, 
And a pair of scales not too greasy, 
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, 
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, 
Lend me a little tobacco-shop, 
               or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing, 
               where one needs one's brains all the time. 

--Ezra Pound     (1915)

Blue Kraken Rising

Please note the play of light and color as the creek flows over the creature.

(Click on the photos and consider the enlargements for best effects.)

My Pal Puck

Sentinels in Blue and Green

Sentinels of the imagination?  Guardians of the bookshelf?  Okay, so they aren't the Ruritanian palace guard nor Strider's ancestors guarding the river approach to the southern kingdom . . . .

Greeters?  "Hello, fellow reader!  Pick a book, any book.  Or, we can suggest one for you, if you'd like?"  That's the duck talking.

The dragon?  I'd like to say he'd caution you against dog-earring favorite pages, but I do that myself.  He may look somewhat goofy, but he does have teeth and fire at hand--as do most books, the ones worth your time; or they should do, if you're lucky.

Welcome to the Gates of Ivory and Horn.

Self-Portrait #50: sculpture mix; blue (with a bit of green) glazing, layered.
Green Dragon (Somewhat Goofy): sculpture mix; green glazing, layered.

Ragnar, Ethelred, and Robin

Playing with clay.

Pygmy Pachyderm

Elephant (Tiny Tantor): recycled studio mixed clay; unglazed.

I make and use such pieces to keep track of my projects in the studio.  Once you cover the bowls or sculptures with plastic, one bat looks much like another.  My duck-heads, birds, and elephants stand out  in such company, and they lead me to my own work . . . as well as warn off others that this bat-ful of clay is not theirs.  (That's the theory, anyway.)

One more for the menagerie.