Bird Cages, More Buddhas, Slate and the Paths Project

 

Wow... since the last post was early August! Oops. Well, since early August and the return of school things got hairy hectic with a few surprises added. None the less the work resumed a bit sporadically during this time. 3 projects in the works at once. The above picture is from a set I am throwing into the "Paths" project I started with the slate this past summer. Home Depot has become a great resource for materials lately. This set is somewhere around 30 right now. Roughly 5" x 8" each in size. God only knows how big I'll let this set get to.

With the "Paths" project experiment I am further exploring my obsession of rock/ dry landscape gardens and printmaking. My brain has toiled with the strangeness of these crossing into the land of being a commercial product. Something I should stay aware of as I move along I suppose. In person they almost look like book relics. The aim here is to get them to read as something more then a paving stone. Booklike is fine. But they are also, literally, pedestrian. These are intended to be walked on along a path, in a pattern, and explored in a natural garden like environment. A little note on the side: It has also been fun test driving them.

 As you will recall from the last post I started working with some recycled slate. Here is the finished set above. This is the backyard of the Blue Box print studio we love so much. They are not yet arranged in a pathlike setting but I wanted to get some sort of an idea how they could function in a garden. The test drive is pretty decent. More arranging and pushing around is definitely in order. But I think I am getting closer to merging that garden/ printmaking merger closer together.

Another detail from the slate set. With the art moving into a more tranquil setting I am also starting to investigate further the idea of bring some solitude into the world as we know it for the general public. I have noticed the I have been too wrapped up in the current politics and drudging through those interesting things life deals out to us. It is very easy to get wrapped up in it. Perhaps if I was still 19 I would still have the urge to stay in that sort of place. BUT.... NNNNNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAHHHHH! There are so many people out there to do that. I am very interested in giving folks a break from that. It is time to start putting these back out into the world. I am learning that it can be difficult to do just that though. Perhaps I just simply need to do it. HHMMMM....

And lastly for this post the above project. No name unfortunately. Just an odd little set of flags with two different images. There are 80 in total. Again exploring the idea of solitude and tranquility. The moment and time of just being. Sitting under a sweetly singing bird or under a random tree and just watching. Perhaps my Zen interest is kicking in a bit here. All the same, these just sort of happened. I am planning to put them together as one long strand and get out onto the beach in the next week. More out in the world for the folks around.

This has been a really long post so I should now shut up and go do something else.