Tuesday, November 10, 2009

They'll Be Lining Up


Here finally, is the finished sad dog piece. This guy went through a number of changes before I settled on what you see here. First was a minor catastrophe when I took him out of the kiln for what I thought would be the last time, and I looked on in horror as his "skin" was popping off in large flecks before my eyes. So the really crusty, kind of amazing surface treatment you see on this guy now is a result of me frantically rubbing off all the slip that was going to shed, and hitting the bare spots with an iron oxide stain, and throwing him back into the kiln one day before he was supposed to be shown. Luckily, that all worked out and he serendipitously looks better than I had hoped!
The second change was a departure from my original idea, which was to have malicious little puppies chewing on his house while he sat stoically. So he was displayed a few times on a large wooden platform with these puppies rolling around and bits of glass and "wood" from the house around them. But it was just too much and the puppies were goofy looking. Finally I decided that his pained expression, sturdy posture, and the decay of the house told the same story without the pups. I have a picture from one of those early showings so I'll post that and see what you think, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do much about it if you think I'm wrong since those pups are now somewhere in the garbage.

And here's the back view. Here you can really see the straining of the house on his muscles and skin, and the broken roof and beams. This is where the puppies were chewing and playing, but it just looked silly.

Seen Show Update!

So the show at The Seen Gallery in Decatur went really well. We had a big turn out on Halloween eve and I had a chance to meet a lot of new fans. We've had a few pieces sell already, and hopefully more to come!
Next up is the annual Callanwolde Holiday Sale starting Friday night Nov 20 and ending the following Sunday. I will have a few new pieces in this one, and the Seen has graciously let me borrow back some from them, so if you missed it there you can still see 'em at Callanwolde!
And finally, I just got my photos back from Walker Montgomery and he's done a bang-up job once again. I can't seem to create a link to his name without resigning to all italics. Hmm... Anyway, I'll be posting new pics again soon now that these are done. Enjoy!