Ready for finishing

This stone was a very willful one, and it seemed to defy me at every turn. I can be a bit strong-willed as well, so this was a bit of a clash. Hmm, maybe "Clash" will be its title. Anyway, after about another half hour or so of work, it will be ready for sanding. The position shown in the above photo will be its attitude when mounted, I think on a piece of black granite.

Ready for final refinements

The photo above shows only one side of the current piece, still un-named, but the other sides are also ready for finishing. My mind is already working on the next stone, so now is when I have to "grind it out" and finish and mount this one!

Still no name . . .

This is day 7 of work on this stone, and I seem to be averaging about 2-1/2 hrs. per session. Today was a day of refining existing forms. I often have a day like this somewhere around the 50-70% point - that way I don't have to do all the tedious work at one time. I've still got some forms to resolve on a couple of sides, but I have a pretty good idea of what it's final appearance will be.

The other side

Here's the same stone after a few more hours of carving. This stone is small enough that I'm not using the pneumatic hammer. It's about 12" to 14" in the longest dimension. My plan for this piece is to have the complexity of the side visible in the above photo act as a foil to the simplicity of the other sides. Hope it works . . .

What's next?

I'm currently preparing for a 2-person show due to open mid-February, 2012. So, I'm moving on right away to my next piece - another stone. This alabaster boulder had a couple of nice planar surfaces that I plan to enhance and leave as a dominant feature of the finished sculpture. As the photo shows, this will make for a fairly swift resolution of this piece, having spent only around 6-1/2 hours so far. It is, again, Colorado Alabaster, formed roughly 300 millinon years ago.

Now the other half lives . . .

Above are two photos of the recently finished piece I'm calling "Urban (Renewal?)" that is the other half of the stone I sawed in half back in mid-september. This stone, in contrast to it's other half, "Exurban", is mounted horizontally. My feeling is that the pieces are more successful apart than they would have been if I'd left them as one. What do you think? To see the whole piece before the encounter with the saw, click back to September and scroll down to the 11th.