New Work, January 2012

As yet untitled, this is a work from December, 2011.  It is walnut with nails above hammered copper and fibreglass. It is about 7' tall, maybe a bit more.  The figure quotes a lot of older work, Barlach, Boccionni, Nike of Samothrace, among others.   It is a good example of what I do. 

Also untitled, with a working name of "Bronze Footed Africa", again it is mixed media, an ebony figure over wood, copper, rawhide, nails, and a bronze foot.  It is about 48" high.  Like other work of mine, it grew over several years, completed 12/2011.

Alex and summer efforts

This is an email I sent to my old pal Lon Anthony yesterday.   It sums up what I am doing these days.

"Dear Lon,

I paint, if that's what you would call it, daily as it is too hot to make sculpture, given the money involved.   So I paint, rarely using a brush other than to slush stuff around - trowels, brayers, buckets are more my thing.  This particular work, if that's what you'ld call it, is bentonite/water slurry mixed with latex paint for a ground (really thick at the bottom), followed by spar varnish (by the quart) mixed with phlatho, cerulean, and prussian blues.   I hope to get about 1/2 inch of glaze.    Might include some sheets of plexiglass in there just for bulk.    I am looking for the sort of deep  transparency of water and the roughness of earth like you get in the keys.

 I expect to use chrome paint near the horizon, and have a minimal landscape, pale turnesque sky up top later on in the week.   I try to start three canvasses a week.

Alex"

I tend to paint flat, wet, and thick, troweling and pouring, seeing what sort of action I can get out of paint as paint itself.   My works are somewhat pictorial, sea scapes I suppose, but that is really just a format, and not important in itself.    Note my trusty Morris Traveller in the background, a source of daily inspiration.  

I think this is a good example of what I am going for, maybe Alberto Burri meets Mark Rothko, Clifford Still and Barnet Newman at the beach?

80808 Gallery, June, 2011, Benedict College Faculty Exhibition

A good show with my colleagues from Benedict College.   I suspect on the Benedict website there are images of the whole show; forgive me if my blog features my work.

The above is "Proud Augusta" , carved 2008 - 2010, American Cherry.  I got back to America after decades in Japan to be astonished at the scale of American womanhood.  I wasn't trying to make any statement, just carving what I reckoned the ladies in the neighborhood might look like.   I was living in Augusta, Ga., hence the name.

"Himiko and Her Pet Sphynx go to the Art Show"   mixed media, lifesize (whatever that means for a sphynx), somewhere from 1997 - 2011.  It's sort of like George Washington's axe, or bands like Iron Butterfly.   This piece has been reconfigured  and rebuilt several times.   It is a big favorite of mine.

"Yukiko Seiza", lifesize, cast iron, 2005,  and "Sea of Japan" oil on board, 2011.  

I guess these two images together sort of sum up what I am going for.  

"Pool",  polyester resins on goatskin, 40" high, 2008

resin on goatskin.... yeah....  if it isn't experimental, and with considerable risk of failure, why even bother?   I like selling work, but the galleries always want me to make one just like the last one they sold.   Or make something "edgy" (whatever that means), or fits over the sofa...  Lord knows I try to please them, but I just can't help trying to make it better than the last ones...

So I am always experimenting, and, man, you ought to see my scrap pile!   This is an experiment.  Just that.   I like it.

  "Head of the Great Sphynx, lifesize, wood and bronze, 2002.

  Sort of the Ozymandius thing - there was an entire wood and bronze sphynx, alas too big to fit through any door in any house.   When we moved to America in 2007, I just brought the head and bronze fittingss, figuring to rebuild it.   But I'll just show the head and use the fittings on another piece later on.

"Portrait of Opia Riley"  Wood, nails, pigment, 60" tall, 2011.

"Oshiri Hibachi"  bronze, lifesize, 2004-ish    My wife Yukiko was the model.   I have always loved the full voluptuous forms of some Korean and Greek pottery.   This is a comment about that.

"Shimada san"  2004-ish   She was supposed to be a full figure sitting in meditation.   I cast her, as I do all my work, at home, by myself, homemade foundry, highly experimental system, and, well, the mold was still a bit wet deep inside, causing it to erupt like Vesuvius in my studio.   The face came out alright; might as well salvage what you can.

"Wind"  1996 - 2008 iron and copper

Typical hide and copper over wood figures

"Crow"  hide over wood and nails, 1996,  Collection of Time Warner

"Isis"  copper and hide on wood, 1999, private collection, Japan

"Decollated Stair Stepper" 2005,  Taniguchi Steel Corp., Japan

"Hippolytte" 1996,  Muse du Beaux Arts, D'uny, France

Himiko and her pet Sphynx

Himiko, lifesize, wood, pigment, copper, hide 

and 

Sphynx, wood and bronze

2003 - 2004

Not my best work, not the most ambitious, but perhaps most emblematic.

Mixed media works

Untitled work from 2006 - 2007 

Most of my work, the best stuff, is made from the scraps of the scraps in my studios.   Most good works are made of pieces of pieces, some new,  some decades old, synthesized together.

"Wind", 1991 - 2005, cast iron and copper

 The leg has been in several different 'finished' sculptures in the past.   I think this is the final form.

"Shimada" 2005, bronze 

The head is the sole surviving part of a failed casting of a full seated figure, which sat in the corner of the studio for months if not years.

Pool

Pool, 38" high, hide over wood, with fiberglass and steel.    I love to paint.   It is odd how we grow:  I draw and make etchings almost daily, but these are always figurative, from life, with considerable realism.   I paint weekly, but these are always abstract, painterly, and formal, nearly content free.   I make furniture and architecture, always well crafted, and make sculpture which is defiantly never well crafted. Don't ask me why this is so.   It has puzzled me for many years.

Sailing to Himeshima, 2008

"Sailing to Himeshima"

wood, rope and encaustic

42" high,  2008