With hope for a more peaceable kingdom all around, kindness and empathy, compassion and the seeing heart.
Silvershod, or Silver Hoof, and his friend the Cat. From the Russian tale of similar name.
For those who struggle:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Inspired by photos coming out of Kosovo circa 1999. My first 'art doll,' who went to live in Israel.
A Bright Season and Merry Christmas!
An Angel in air-dry clay, from a few years back.
Site Migration
Kind Friends, I'm just now moving this site from SquareSpace 5 to the new SquareSpace 6 platform, which has all sorts of fine advantages. Expect to see some missing links and other glitches till I've got it all set right! The archives and so on will be missing for a little while, then gain their own page. For the moment, the only "links" page that's set up is the "Artists: Doll" section, and that just barely. Much more to come. Thanks for coming along!
And yikes -- while I love most of Squarespace 6, I've not mastered the post layout blocks... they have a mind of their own and do not approve of me as yet.
And, testing slider and grid galleries within posts:
Shell-horned being, underway
Octopoid Fragment, progress
Octopoid Fragment underway
Octopoid Fragment (WIP)
Underway in Kato Polyclay
Banshee, or Bean Sidhe
Banshee, back view
Banshee is wearing a shroud, or my idea of one. As you can see from the back, walking would be difficult. I wanted to imply some other, less familiar, mode of locomotion...
Dragon Woman (work in progress)
She's in Kato Polyclay, and would stand about 10 inches tall were she a human with legs.
'Dover Beach'
In part:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
~ Matthew Arnold, 1867
Things do so call accross time, ever and again.
Marginalia, underway
Kato Polyclay with wood, paper, copper foil, gold leaf and silk ribbon.
I love the playfulness and endless invention of marginalia that climb and wriggle about the edges of medieval manuscripts. So, since I had a wee head awaiting a body (or equivalent thereof) I thought I would play likewise...
White Deer Marginalia
Banshee, work in progress
She's an 8 inch figure in Kato Polyclay, dressed in washi paper. Hair combing is something Banshees (when they are not wailing, I assume):
Banshee combing her hair
Fire on the Mountain
A heavy tanker drops fire retardant while fighting the Flagstaff wildfire on Tuesday, June 26, in Boulder." (Jeremy Papasso / Daily Camera)
There is a forest fire near enough to sting the eyes and roughen the throat, billows of smoke rolling east to be seen looking up our street this afternoon. We here, and the nearby university, should be OK. But there have already been evacuations on the mountain, and for the animals an birds... alas. Best thoughts to those fighting the fire. One of the quite heroic planes.
Just a Face Underway
She'll be a strange little bust:
Another East of the Sun, West of the Moon
A piece inspired by the work of Kay Nielsen, whose illustrations I discovered as a small child. In Premier air dry clay, about 14.5 inches tall:
East of the Sun, West of the Moon: girl on a white bear in air dry Premier clay.