Kelp and Wire: Old Art

Fresh Kelp Needed

 The Merman:
chicken-wire (1996)
and kelp (2015).

Update: Wire and Kelp

I like watching the aging process with this fellow.
Merman --
Wire figure: 1996.
Kelped: 2015.

Drought

Merman in wire and kelp:
a few weeks out of the sea.

Kelp and Wire: The Merman

Merman figure: chicken wire (1996);
kelp (2015).

Doran Beach, Bodega Bay.

The Adventures of Kelpman

Close-up: Kelpman in the surge.

Kelpman:
chicken wire figure (1996);
kelpflesh (2015).
Bodega Bay surge channel.

Sand-Encrusted Creatures As The Tide Falls Away

Barnacle and sea anemones anchored to the wall of the surge channel.  

The tide was dropping.

Two small sea anemones tightly closed and covered with sand.

The eye of the abyss . . . .

An unlikely, but definite, beauty.

Some sea anemones are still partially opened as the tide is dropping.

Surge channel.

Surging water fills the channel and covers the creatures . . . until the water recedes, drawing back for the next wave.  High tide won't occur again for hours.

Flow in action.

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.

Olympian: Wire Art

Olympian; Or, The Athlete: chicken wire.  1996.

Old Wire

Back in Summer 1996, I was feeling the blues--no teaching gig, dissertation stalled, Dante's "dark wood" looming--so I went out to the garage and started bending chicken wire into shapes.  That's a merman (see his finny back?) to the left and an octopus to the right.  I also made wire masks (crow, fool, deer), human figures, and fish.

I had no plans to do anything with such pieces; I just needed to make things and working with words had gotten far too fraught.  Chicken wire happened to be handy, I guess.  Occasionally, in the years prior, I'd carve goblin faces in buckeyes and, of course, pumpkins, but making these wire pieces was an important step in letting myself play, in letting myself make and not judge, in not over-evaluating the products or the process.

Two or three years later, I started playing with clay for the first time since childhood.

I have had this notion to drape such wire art with kelp . . . .