The Liberty Duck

Photo: Robert Abrams.  Spotted in Times Square.

Tom Waits: What Good Writing Is Meant To Do

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate."

--Tom Waits

(From a 2001 Vanity Fair article . . . featuring an interview between Tom Waits and J.T. LeRoy:
"Strange Innocence".)

Graves: "Heroes of the Nursery"

THE BEACH

Louder than gulls the little children scream 
Whom fathers haul into the jovial foam; 
But others fearlessly rush in, breast high, 
Laughing the salty water from their mouthes-- 
Heroes of the nursery. 

The horny boatman, who has seen whales 
And flying fishes, who has sailed as far 
As Demerara and the Ivory Coast, 
Will warn them, when they crowd to hear his tales, 
That every ocean smells of tar. 

--Robert Graves

Clay Dreams: Torso

Body English:

sculpture mix; transparent brown and shino glazing.

20-minute exercise.

Recommended Reading: Greenberg's "Four Fish"

Shell Games

Delineations

Reprise: Venus? A Muse?

Sculpture mix; brown, green, and deep blue glazing.

25-30 minute exercise with live model: years ago.

Thirsty Irish Mermaid

Windy

It's A Devil-Duck World . . . .

(Sand and pebbles from Monastery Beach.)

"Into The Blue"

The last movie Keith and I watched together. DVD (which I'd brought) in the rental condo on our last dive trip, the one for a week in Maui, that we'd planned for years. We preferred watching the director's commentary version, over and over, as we drank beer, or tequila, or rum, or whatever, and debated the states of our lives--as lifelong friends and dive buddies are wont to do--and planned the next day's diving or free diving. The trip of a lifetime. So glad we made it happen.

I miss you, man.

A Twist In Time

Wire art: two pieces, four shots.   I made these one weekend in 1996 at a point in my life between grad school and the rest of it when I didn't think I'd be teaching again.  An octopus and a merman, among others, came out of that angst.  Maybe my first move toward sculpture besides carving pumpkins, decorating Easter eggs, whittling sticks, and playing with random play-doh since childhood.

Clay came later.

Grief's Visage?

Weird brother to go with the weird sisters in Macbeth this week?

Or, Grief's Visage?
Hollow-eyed and empty-mouthed?
Can you hear the wailing?

Herald:
stoneware; sea-foam glazing.

Crime Scene?

Motley Dream

Sleeping hard.