Survey: Two Views

Clay: Figures of Speech

Exercises with models: 2008 or 2009, I believe.

Mask: Ape-Man (With Details)

 

Ape-Man: sculpture mix; emerald glaze; copper wire.

I made this mask years ago--Summer or Fall 2008?--and it's about the side of my hand with the fingers outspread.

Hunter, Bayside

Crabwise

Rhymes With Orange III

Reprise: A Favorite Wave

April 2, 2011: A good time in the water. 

I needed it.

Treasure Hunting

I took these photographs March 30, 2011, a couple weeks after returning from Alaska and the memorial for my friend Keith.  I was attempting to find comfort, frankly, looking to old magazines and books, especially the ones pictured here that day.  I'd talked with Keith at various times about the books I wanted to write, that I haven't yet written.  A crime novel with diving and sunken wrecks; a historical-fantasy of the aftermath of the fall of Troy, also with diving and sunken wrecks; among others. With both of those projects, I have found inspiration in that particular issue of National Geographic and in Kirk Russell's eco-thriller regarding abalone-poaching, Shell Games.  The Surfers Journal is just good fun, good reportage, history, and photographic illustration of watery lives.  

Solace.  Inspiration.  Reminders of debts owed.

I still owe you at least one good book, Keith.  I'm working on it.  Slowly.  

Fast Feline

Morrissey's "Clothes"

CLOTHES

Once they come undone, there's no stopping the undoing
Of all that keeps us us and not we.
From a room full of history and underwear
I throw out my diary and walk naked.

Until we're talking of weather again,
Contact shrunk back to wherever it sprang from.
And I'm begging for it all, coat, hat, gloves, scarf --
Shoes shod in iron, and a waterproof.

--Sinead Morrissey,

from There was Fire in Vancouver,
Carcanet Press Ltd., Manchester, England,
1996.

Gathering Luck

Clover Dreams

Green fellow, sleeping off the shenanigans.

Scupture mix; copper carbonate oxide.
Figure exercise w/ model: 25 minutes.

Reprise: Exercise In Blue

Salvage / Boat:
sculpture mix; blue slip; twig; string; and copper wire.

Old project; mistake, improved upon.
Still cheers me.

"Tied-Up House": Lyrics By Jackie Leven

TIED-UP HOUSE

found a little stone on a harbour wall
sea-spray-soaked and very small
big bay rough and turning brown
little shrimp boat on a dangerous sound

i can't go back to the tied-up house
tied so tight people can't get out
you can hear them wail, you can hear them shout
or they sit in chairs till the silence hurts

the ocean roars from room to room
leaving tide marks in the shallow gloom
i got cuts on my hand from i don't know where
and a sobbing hall that i just can't bear

--Jackie Leven,
from his CD Shining Brother Shining Sister

"A Jar of Pain": Lyrics By Jackie Leven

CLASSIC NORTHERN DIVERSIONS

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

I saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

I'm in huddersfield drinking in the slubber's arms

and i walked through slush by broken farms

where huddling sheep are turning grey

in the cold light of a nothing day

it took me fifty long years just to work out

that because i was angry didn't mean i was right

now i'm sitting in a bar alone

with the jukebox playing a terrible song

the bartender says I see it's you again

I been drinking deep from a jar of pain

Ch -- i remember once i went home like this

i had my mother in tears as i felt her kiss

now my mother is heavenbound

and her body lies in unmarked ground

in every heart in every home

there's a dying man who lives alone

he close the door and he turn away

and the tide rushes in on a fatal shore

i can never get too close to coal

with a glass in my hand and the ember's crack

but the fire's gone out and the chimney's closed

and there's a round jeer sticking on my back

ch --

I took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

and with chimneys leaning to the sea

i got the salt of sunderland creasing me

i took a jar of pain to the soaking field

and to the lonely seawall inn south shields

if i was a man which i am not

standing in the last of the rotten snow

i'd fall on my knees and cry out loud

to the snowy river and the icy flow

i took a train out of leeds in the smear and stain

i saw the city pass by in the shuffling rain

--Jackie Leven

from his CD Shining Brother Shining Sister

Reprise: Dona Quixote

Bowmore

Neptune: A Mask

Neptune: sculpture mix; green, denim, trans-brown, and shino glazing, layered.

Salt For The Wound

Such salt solaces -- even as it burns.

(Photos from a happier day: PG / January 20, 2013.)

Wizards / Charms

Wizard Charms: sculpture mix; trans-brown, green, and denim glazing, layered.

From "The Monkey's Raincoat"

"'Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy.' The Blue Fairy said that.  In Pinnochio."

--Elvis Cole's line on page 58
of Robert Crais' first novel The Monkey's Raincoat.


(Keith would have gotten the point of the quotation from a crime novel, would have asked at least three good questions, and then would have debated our respective positions for as long as we felt like it.  That's a good friend.)

Keith: "Ave atque Vale"

Hail, and farewell, Keith.
Two years, tomorrow.
Two years.

I miss you, man.

Study Break Is Over

Roundness

Mermaid On The Wall

Warrior Mermaid: sculpture mix; raku, but flawed -- from years ago.

The Ocean In His Eyes

Misterioso Duck: 
sculpture mix; trans-brown and denim glazing.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore; 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar: 
I love not man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
--Lord Byron,

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Canto IV, #178

Old Dive Trip: Random Shots

August 2011.