Well!

I guess if I am going to have a blog journal, I have to write something.

Starting a blog this month happens to be a good place to begin, because September marks my emergence from a nearly year-long stepping back from sculpture. (At least I hope I am emerging.)

During this time I have been asking myself: Why equine art. Is the focus on my love of the horse enough to sustain me creatively into the future, as it has for more than 10 years now. If I move beyond the horse to other things, would there be a market, and would I even want to do it. I am not interested in contemporary or abstract art; I know I am fully grounded in realism. And animals.

This is all part of a sort of mid-life crisis I’m working through. I retired from my graphic design career in January ’06. At age 48 and no kids, I still have a huge amount of life and time to fill, and the only thing I do know for sure that I have this need to be doing something artistic with my life. This past year was a good experience; to not start anything and take a good hard look around. See what it felt like not to have a horse sculpture on the armature sitting in the studio looking at me. To not have something engaging me artistically in that way, or a new piece completed to look forward to.

What I learned, is that I do miss it. By last month, I was craving to get back to it and almost impatient with all the other things going on (vacations, summer tennis league matches, other work, etc.). I found I had this little running list in the back of my mind, of things I wanted to do in sculpture. Another horse. More tiles. A dog. A dog tile!

I also determined that having the kiln is going to be my lifeline to a happy creative future. I love working with ceramics and glazes and I am going to be expanding my horizons within that realm exclusively. That means no more work cast in resin from me—or at most just a couple pulled from waste molds I will have to make on my clay sculptures anyway. I don’t personally care for the resin material, and I don’t think much of the market for them any more. I might as well produce my work in a media I personally love, especially if the economy is going to be weak!!

I had to find a new resource for casting my existing sculptures in their molds (that were in England), when the previous company was sold. I have got that all sorted out, happily, and now will be able to order those horses again until the molds are played out. Look for newly glazed colors of “Boreas”, “Optime”, “Streetwise”, and “Caprice” to come out starting this fall.

I am getting one of the two Boreas molds sent here from England, and I am going to learn how to slip-cast earthenware in it, so I can make custom unique alterations to the casts. That will be a learning curve of indeterminate length for me, but I am hoping for successful finished pieces in ’08! I also want to sculpt small ceramic items that can be cast by me in simple molds. I hope that the key to staying interested and excited about my work is to have a lot of different things going on and in the kiln at any given time, so I don’t feel stale or stuck on just one thing.

Now, as your “reward” for sticking with me this long, and for even checking out my sparkly new bloggie, is a sneak peek photo of the sculpture I just started today. I have always loved this phase of the canter and is about time I sculpted it. It only represents an afternoon’s work, I’m not sure where I’m going with it, and is far away from being anything much, but I am so pleased to have even felt the desire to start it at all! !

And here is a china “Meribel” that I glazed to this pretty pinto for a customer this past month:

The “Meribel” in bone china is still available to be ordered from Horsing Around of the U.K. (Edition of 50). And I’ll glaze it for you to your color choice, if you want. Just email me for a quote. (You can contact me via my website in my profile.)

Well, thanks for reading, and wish me Bon Voyage as I chart my way through my next creative life stage!