Io, hand-built clay free-standing sculpture by Tammy Vitale.

Jana asked in "comments" yesterday where the concept for Women came from.  I’m going to try to track it for you here.

Io is one of several tall statues I made early on in my art career.  She’s bent to the side not so much for effect as to allow her to fit in my kiln.  Faerie (to the right here) was so tall I had to fire her with the lid open….every after I have been careful of size.

These were inspired by photos in various magazines over the years of long tall women, usually without much detail, mostly straight up and down bodies with faces.  I have always loved the energy of those figures so set out to make them my own.

When it became apparent that These weren’t going to sell well, I started looking for a way to transfer the idea to wall sculpture.  Now that I have, it seems that I should have come upon it sooner, but I didn’t, so here’s the evolution from free-standing 3D sculpture to wall sculpture.  Unfortunately I don’t have any of the inbetween failed steps to show you, or the clay that just got balled up and put back in the bin when I couldn’t get what I want.

Next came this Mermaid maid in 3 pieces (again because of kiln size).  You can see from these pictures she’s still hanging in the studio.  She’s okay, but the joining points (waist and head) aren’t as neat as I’d like them to be.

Somewhere in here, I stumbled across Totems as a way to use up shards, pieces I was tired of and work that didn’t turn out the way I’d originally planned.  Totems, since they are in small pieces, are mounted on long thin strips of wood – usually whatever I have laying around that I can cut down into a strip.  The clay pieces are mounted using Goop (the best darn stuff I’ve ever discovered, indoor or out), d-rings mounted on the back with screws and hanging wire added.  People eat these up.  Pretty much as soon as they go out, they get sold.

Then I tried figures on plaques, like 13th Moon below – that way I could break the figure into pieces small enough to fit in the kiln but mount them in a way that I got longer figures and it worked better than trying to make them fit together like Mermaid above.

Finally, and just in the last few months, I connected Totems and figures and came up with Women who are mounted on thin strips of wood.

And I’m happy with the implementation of the concept in Women and see lots of room for experimentation, like working with decals made from Lazertran as I wrote yesterday.

Think I will post about bringing my books back inside and putting them on the shelving in my room, and actually crying tears of joy over at myspace so this doesn’t get ridiculously long.  Here’s a question for you:  If you could only have 5 books, what would they be?  I’ll answer tomorrow.

Here are great blogs for and about women that have come in as a result of browsing from both the Z and W Lists: Blogs by Women and Blogher.  Just in case you have time to browse and enjoy.  There surely are amazing voices out there!  And I’m spending a lot of time trying to get to know them.  Do I have to tell you my "favorites" list is getting verrryyy long?

thought for the day: [and oh, I have so many books to choose from now for this daily ritual!][and they’re in the best order they’ve ever been in][I LOVE books]  Often people attempt to live their lives backwards:  they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.  The way it actually works is the reverse.  You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.  Margaret Young quoted in Chop Wood, Carry Water, from the editors of New Age Journal.

or, as Aphra Behn says in her Jan 2 post:  "All too often I am a human doing and I forget that I am a human being."