Inspiration and Process

I'm still thinking about the willow tree and it's pending doom. Year before last we cut one branch off the tree and made a salvaged bird house from a branch with a hole in it. This year blue birds made a nest in this salvaged bird house.


Originally I was going to make a tree shaped sculpted vase from a slab impressed into the willow bark. Perhaps adding some broken branches jutting forth from the trunk. Like the salvaged bird house we made from the branch we cut off the willow.


For the past three years the same starling has made a nest in another hole in the tree and I've seen three sets of baby birds fledge from the nest. This year one baby wouldn't leave the nest and the mother kept calling to it and finally it flew out of the nest to follow the rest of the brood. If you look closely you will see a leaf pointing to the hole in the trunk where the starling makes her nest.


Last night I thought about sculpting the torso of a woman using a willow bark impressed slab. I drew a rough sketch trying to visualize how this torso would look with the impressed clay. The slab looks a little narrow for the torso I have imagined. This is one of the things I like about working with clay. I have a couple of ideas and then I begin working with the clay. Sometimes the form comes out exactly as I imagined and sometimes it becomes something completely different.

Stay tuned for what my clay slabs become. Hopefully I will have a bit of time this weekend to work on them. For now they're under plastic staying nice and soft.