I Know I Need to Blog, But I Don’t Want To!

Being a newbie to the website world, I wake up at 1:30 in the morning with ambivalent feelings about writing a blog. In my younger days with a major in journalism and the desire to do creative writing, I would spend endless hours writing poetry and short stories that ended up in a box in the closet or a dresser drawer in the bedroom. As a teenager and a young adult writing was my means of releasing my feeling, my tranquilizer, and my happy place. As the years passed and I painted with my grandmother, and later took sculpture classes at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA, I started my love affair with clay. I remember doing a male sculpture with oil based clay on an armature, and we had a nude model. We used calipers to measure the different parts of the body, The penis I left for last being a shy young girl and those calipers never ventured close to that part of his body. This was the beginning of my passionate desire to sculpt which has been with me all these year. This enthusiasm for art grew for this became my visual language, and the desire for the written word waned. So I ask myself, “Is blogging really for me?”

As my mind continues to wander as the clock approaches 3 a.m., my eyes glance at my new clay bust that I have titled “The Lady and the Dove”. She has become the new addition to my family of clay busts which I have been working on over the past two years. My clay busts are whimsical-sometimes pensive – and each have a story. I think of the conception, the creation, starting with 25 lbs. of clay and an armature. Rolled up newspaper is wrapped around the base of the armature. Then clay is rolled out in a slab and draped around the newspaper to make a base. Then the imagination comes into play, and the bird or rabbit become part of the bust. I think of how the face and bone structure comes to life as the clay is added to the different planes of the face or carved away to create an eye socket. Later the hair or headpieces are added. Then the sculpture spends a couple of weeks of first being covered with plastic being alone and hidden from her surroundings, Then the plastic comes off and when she is bone dry, she is placed in the kiln to be fired. If she survives the firing with no cracks, she then has a life of her own. This could be the end of the process, but I choose to use under-glazes for the painter within me likes to use color and the sculpture becomes more life-like.

Sculpting clay is giving birth to that clay. To give a voice-the written word-may be a good thing for they are extensions of myself and are family. As my eyes rest on a clay bust the words “Time Flies,” confronts me. If I am going to blog, this is the time.