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Bronze Age III, hand and slab sculpted wall mask by Tammy Vitale

Bronze Age III is in about her 4th rendition here of finishes.  Nothing has worked so I fell back on the bronze age motif that I’ve been really successful with and I think she’s finally there.  This is not quite finished.  I had some overcoat to go on and she went into the packing yesterday still wet.

Yep, got the packing done for Pax River Annaul Craft Show this weekend.  It didn’t actually take all that long and I don’t know why I hate it so.  The car of course is filled to overflowing but I have to give it to her (the car), she sure does hold a lot of stuff with the back seat pulled out.

I went outside this morning and my light long sleeve sleeping shirt was too warm for the weather.  Hey, attention, it’s December 1 – and my potted lillies are sending up new shoots.  So after my walk I grabbed a big pot and repotted 3 of them to bring in.  They’re having all kinds of baby plants around them too.  This will probably mess up their blooming schedule.

Feels funny not to have an AEM post for today, but no, I did not go ahead and do an extra piece of art for today.  I am just aiming at getting through the show this weekend and then doing nothing but play.  I want to make some more women and may even indulge in a round of underglaze purchases.  I love the vibrant colors you can get with underglaze.  And raku.  Want to do a bunch of experimenting with Raku.  The torso I didn’t put a picture up of yesterday is made with raku clay and I’m going to try for the turqoise with her.  I hope to fire this weekend and maybe raku next week (when it is supposed to have turned cold, which will definitely affect the outcome of whatever I raku).  The thing about raku is that even if it’s cold out it’s warm around the kiln and fire and between the two one can generally shed the overcoat.

Here’s an interesting piece on clay sculptures I found yesterday while browsing, avoiding packing, excerpted.  Love the last line:

"MANY OF THE MOST TERRIFYING IMAGES OF MAN-made monsters, their movements oscillating between the human and the mechanical, their assumption of elements of self-determination, their ability to destroy the life that crated them, find their genesis in a silent film made in 1920, Der Golem. It is a version of Gustav Meyrink’s novel of 1915, itself the retelling of the fable of a rabbi who created a Golem, an effigy made out of clay that could be animated by placing a series of sacred words and phrases written on a tablet or paper, the Shem, and placed in the Golem’s mouth. This is related to ideas widespread in non-Jewish circles of the creation of a man through alchemy, a ‘homonunculus’ who could serve his master. These legends are embedded in Kabbalistic literature but in their more contemporary manifestations in Meyrink’s fiction and the subsequent film, the shift of emphasis is away from the contemplative symbolism of creation towards a much darker truth. All the elements of the legend here centre on power — the power of the creator to discover an ability to make forms, the power to give and take away animation, power to force another to do as you would wish them to do. But there is a particular feature to the nightmare atmosphere of the book and film; they rest on the uneasy feeling that it is the golem who is creating the rabbi, that the roles are reversed and that it is now the rabbi who lacks the ability to control events. This is the ambiguity of creation: the ownership of the process of making is radically unstable. In short, the implication is clear: it is dangerous to make figures out of clay."

thought for the day:  In her poem, IKathe Kollwitz, Muriel Rukeyser asks:  "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?  The world would split open."  I began to wonder:  if I used my art, my writing and my painting. to tell my story, would it, as Rukeyser asserted, change the world?  What if I could write or paint a story that illuminated the beginning of the path to "home."  What then?  Tammy Vitale, thesis (prior to clay, which has been my true way "home."