Transitions

The sculpture gods......they whom I serve.....just a metaphor for the process of inspiration, right? Perhaps........

Inspirations.....messages from the gods......they are usually small occurances in the minds eye.....the trick is in learning to notice......and then pay attention.

Once in awhile they hit you on the side of the head with the force of a sledge hammer.

Lulu (my wife Louise) had been making Christmas presents using cigar boxes embellished with beads, glitter, and historic detritis found in our house, which has been in her family for uncounted generations. At the same time I was working on a plasticine study for a female figure, whose breasts were quartz pebbles from the beach of Gardiner's Island, where I work on dirty old buildings from time to time. I had encouraged the creative potential of the possibly tacky aesthetic of beads and glitter.....just one step removed from painting on black velvet......but it aint the stuff you use, its what you do with it. Christmas day, I open this present, and there is a Lulu watercolor of my platicine placed in a circus environment and covered with beads and glitter and plastic stars and feathers....entitled "The Beautiful Tatooed Lody." She is a bit of a mutant, having no arms.....all tits and ass; belongs in the circus.

Marching Orders. Delivered with the force of a Sledge Hammer. This was not the path back to the Angel Series. This was the start of a collaboration which is informing my work to the present.

The walnut carving of the Beautiful Tatooed Lady has a silver glitter tatoo of the crescent moon on her thigh, a silver earring , and a feather in her lackofhair. It blew me away.