Special Carvings and New Frontiers

A while back Plans were laid before me for a wedding. my two friends were getting married in a ceremony slightly differing from the norm.
Knowing a few things about the two of them and all the things I infer about them from my archeology, scifi and fantasy addled brain I began to think of a sculpture I could carve for them.
And when doing research on vikings, stone and weddings I came across the idea of the "Quaich".

A small sharing bowl used to show unity between a group of friends, chieftains or couples. Predominating in Scotland but making inroads in the arena of non-traditional wedding ceremonies.
The cup itself is generally a shallow bowl with a small handle on either side of the bowl.
The viking stuff? That was the materials choice. Vikings used soapstone for many things. Often cooking pots, due to it's amazing heat and fire-proof properties. And the most important for me, ease of carving.
It takes a beautiful shine and is worked nicely. each time the chisels came out they cut into the stone with such rapidity that it was tempting to dig out too much stone from the piece too quickly.
Due to the nature of direct carving it was important to hold back more than when carving from a model.
It was summer and amazing out. I live near a beach. Carving cross-legged on the beach on the mornings I had free from moneying work was glorious. Getting to a few specific spots and setting up for the day, spending the time looking down at the piece as it started forming. Looking up to find the beach packed. More packed than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. Losing one of the chisels in the sand I hunted around in the area I was sitting and found first, a teaspoon and second, the chisel I had lost. the spoon joined in. It became a perfect tool for leveling of the curve on the outside of the bowl.
A man and his child asked what was being done. I showed them the stone and chisels. Handed an extra lump to them when they showed an interest in maybe trying out carving. They drifted off with another thing to make their holiday full of good memories(or so my romantical mind told me). I think that was where a nugget started forming.

Once the main structure of the bowl was made I stopped for a while and kind of soaked in the form to figure out the next parts to carve.
First the rabbit headed handles.
The rabbits heads formed up pretty quickly.

Each head was kind of modeled off of the two rabbits my friends have.




Of course an added  element of the sharing cup and something that was not too far from my mind while making it was the idea fertility and what with all the rabbit imagery it kind of goes with the tradition of the honeymoon being a time for babymaking.




Then the celtic knotwork.
The knotwork writhed in my head. I thought of saxon art and the curving playful animals, saxon  visual riddles and the interplay between pattern and symbolic representation.
Not that I  felt able to measure up to that scale of detailed work.
The base of the bowl became a triskal, a celtic symbol of unity.

each side of the bowl became a simple adapted triskal with gems carved around it. only the gems became more than that. the large two leaves of the triskal became the ears of a rabbit the lower leaf the head. the gems around the triskal became the feet of the rabbit. a simplified version of the saxon puzzle symbol imagery.




















It was hoped that the bowl would look archeologic, fantasy-like.
something passed down for generations.

When it was presented, my two friends were amazingly touched by the gesture.
More so, I was near in tears when they incorporated it into the ceremony!

As for the nugget that was growing. that's a story for another post.

Aaaarr! Treasure!

there is a treasure hunt up in Sonairte soon. My wife asked me to make some treasure for the hunt. I was going to make little animals and insects and leaves. But nothing says treasure like a pile of gold coins! Each coin has a flower on the back then on the other side there is an animal, insect, leaf, tree or seed pod. Sonairte is an ecology centre so it makes sense to have the treasure made up of things that are important to the environment. The coins are made from plaster with gold acrylic paint(non-toxic) but in the future I would like to come up with some simple way to make coins from wood and stamp them with the images or burn or cut the images in. some process that I could hand off to anyone else and they could do it easily. maybe a machine!
These were done quite quickly, I think next time I'd like to sit down and think about the links between the various elements on the coins and have a specific reason for each one to be there.

 I love the look of the coins. They taught me a few things in terms of material, manufacture, tools and calluses!

 

A is for awesome

The top one is a small plaster medallion that I made as a thank you to my wife for being awesome while I have been sick. the bottom two are the old symbol that fell off our car and the new more fun one I have made. now where's that glue?

Back to doing some art

After having been sick for a while I finally got back to making art. Wanted to try sand drawing, so on Monday I headed to the beach with a friend and we waited with rakes in hand while the tide receded. We had around four hours to work(okay, play) and when we were done we went up the top of the cliff and when we got to the spot we could see the beach from we both gasped. The drawings came out so well and were so easy to do. Definitely doing sand drawing again! I was sitting down the beach another day and picking through the stones near me and found a nice small Mudstone pebble. Then a few "tools" of concrete and hard stones. So sitting there for a while I ground out the shape I wanted from the stone, using the concrete shaped to points and curves as files, until I had the basic shape that I wanted and then used my penknife to cut out the detail. It was only a small doodle of a piece but, again, so satifying. The piece itself is inspired from a guys work on deviantART, really lovely torso work in stone and wood, very often made from quite thin pieces of wood or stone. On Friday I finally went to dip my toe back into the studio. I headed there with bigger intentions than actually happened but it was nice to start and finish something in the studio. No matter how small. I began work on an idea I spotted in my notebooks when flicking through them on Monday looking for ideas for the beach art. It was a collection of simple stylised faces in three different styles. Using a few leftovers from the plasterwork I do as a day-job I blanked out the three faces. And then began making texture on each blank. Three textures. Skin, stone and wood. I was very happy with the stone texture. Using a small wire brush like a hammer I beat the plaster until it looked like rough stone. It reminds me of Portland which isn't too surprising given that plaster(gypsum) isn't too far off being Portland stone. I had intended to work on the stylised faces on each piece quite a lot, instead it seemed to work better to use a standard mark for all the faces. Really enjoyed making everything I did this week. May the next week have more! Plenty of ideas to work on anyway!