Rockfish, hand-made press mold, clay slab, hand built wall sculptrue, with shells by Tammy Vitale

I’m recycling some sculpture photos these days as I’ve been tending to throw everything up here as it’s done.  I know this one hasn’t been up in a while, so we’ll use it.  It’s from the same mold that I originally made for Chesapeake, the 7.5′ x 11′ public commission for North Beach, Md. (here right)

Rockfish are THE fish of the Chesapeake Bay so I wanted to get this sculpture right.  I went to the local fish market and told them I wanted 1/2 of a rockfish, with the full head and sliced lengthwise.  The explanation that I am an artist satisfied the first askance look.  The dog still loves that particular casting.

I figure I have to throw clay work in here somewhere because with AEM I am putting up so much of my non-commercial work.

And today I am going to fill this space of with AEM work because I really find the progression interesting.

Yesterday I spent most of my day and evening at the 9:30 club in DC.  Husband works there and Donovan (okay, you have to be a certain age to remember Donovan….see set list and more at myspace, which I will post after I finish this) was playing – a sit down at the 9:30 Club – how unusual is that (which indicates what age you have to be to remember Donovan).  So I gathered the few things that made sense to take to a space where I’m forever finding cracks and crevices to fit into to stay out of the way of people who are trying to make a living.  The show was great – Donovan still sounds good and he understands that people come to see his hits – and delivers.  Along with some great story telling in between songs. 

So I’ve found this little niche behind the amp racks back behind the monitor board to scrunch down in and work on AEM (trying not to tangle in cables as I endeavored to wake up my very asleep right foot).  Not happy, particularly with the first, I try a 2nd and then just let loose and sketch, fast without thinking – liking where I’m going more and more.  Haven’t done that since my dad bought me a ream of newsprint when I was about 8 years old and I made at least 100 horse pictures in a week and plastered them all over the basement.  It felt very free and was very fun.  I hope you enjoy.  I’m going to try to get the progression to go as it went when created.

This first piece is called Beginners Mind because of the quote:  In the beginner’s mind are many possibilites; but in the expert’s there are few.   by Shunryu Suzuki.  I think it was this quote that loosed all that followed.  Writing it down after reading it in a book I had with me was the key to the lock on the door that closes out play – and the door flew wide open and I played with no thought as to purpose or whether or not it was "good" or even "art."  Which, for me means that AEM has been a complete success!

The order, in case it doesn’t work here (and I never know because I’m afraid to check it and lose the whole thing) is:  Beginner’s Mind, 2 Angels with Hearts, 2 Women Dancing with Child, A Woman’s Face, Horse, and  Happy Singing Bird.

I’d love to get the woman’ face and the horse’s face side by side because the horse came after the woman and they remind me of each other (there was a dragon in between but I’m culling, otherwise this post, which is already long, would be really long).

thought for the day:  It was Rene Descartes who in the mid-seventeenth century "proved" by logic that only the human is a repository of a divine soul, thus reducing all other life forms to the status of organic machines.  He was said to have stood looking at animals in rapt amazement, reminding himself that they were merely machines, biological mechanisms for which pleasure, pain, and suffering held no meaning.  He might well have been amazed, for no one honestly can look into the eyes of a chimpanzee or a dolphin, or even a dog or a cat, and believe that there is nothing before him but a machine, that he is not, in Martin Buber’s terms, engaged in an I-thou relationship.  Only by the most intrusive imposition of the intellect…an imposition which Descartes worked hard to achieve, could one believe such a thing.  For ordinary persons it takes years of intensive training to achieve such a degree of callousness.   Allan Combs, The Radiance of Being:  Understanding the Grand Integral Vision; Living the Integral Life