Carnotaurus head

Carnotaurus head, prototype for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's model dinosaur line.

Carnotaurus head, then underway in Kato Polyclay. For the Carnegie Collection, produced by Safari, Ltd. This photo is considerably enlarged. Note: the teeth had to be deliberately blunted, to satisfy toy safety regulations. Though to my mind, a serious bite seemed improbable!

From an AnatomyTools.com Workshop

A section of my interpretation of a fascinating and enigmatic Creature designed by Carlos Huante especially for a workshop with Anatomytools.com. It's in medium hard Chavant clay. I highly recommend Anatomytools, run by sculptor Andrew Cawrse. The two workshops I've taken there have been amongst the best experiences I've had as an artist. The instructors, models and fellow students all inspire.

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I aim to  continue with this clay, and approach some ideas I’ve not had opportunity to express before. They may require their own Creature page here, as they’ll be of a somewhat different species than any I’ve brought out thus far.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

                                                     ~ C.S. Lewis

"To regret one's own experience is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul."

                                           ~ Oscar Wilde

Rilke says...

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

                                     ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Surprisingly, very surprisingly to myself, I seem to begin to find myself amongst some of my most ancient answers, this last while.

For the Unknown Feral

Passing grey feathers flattened in the road, I thought I would re-post the following, in honor:

Dance Upon a Chimney Pot

    Sitting in the coffee shop window this morning, thinking and planning and worrying, and drawing on a napkin, I looked out and saw against sky two pigeons silhouetted on a chimney pot.  It is a bright, frozen day, with only a distant chill whisper of spring, but one pigeon was doing his bowing dance to the other, circling and bobbing, rounding his chest, no doubt cooing his burred song.  He made me smile, and watch, and forget my thoughts.
    Soon, his lady flew away.  The pigeon paused in his dance.  I thought he would stop, or fly away, too. But after a moment of looking this way and that with his tiny head, he began his dance alone against the clear blue, turning in a pattern which, however instinctual, was a very song of delight, of joy in being, of love without care of return.
    No cramping fear of the morrow, though one pecks a meager living on a sidewalk, no shadow of foiled desire, no shame in the perception of others, indeed in a small gray bird a pure call to cast one's very soul upon the waters.