Casting away!

It's been a busy week of making plaster casts for upcoming paintings. There are more sessions coming later this week and even more as soon as I get a new case of plaster bandage in. Many of these are in preparation for some upcoming shows.

I have a solo show slated for July/August at Zeitgeist gallery in Pittsfield and Helen Wassell and I have two joint shows planned there - Facing 50 and Fear Gone.

My own show is going to be a continuation of the current Passages collection (I've yet to think of a show title). I want to show a wider range of interactions and situations of an everyday level, and then work the series toward progressively transcendent themes.

Facing 50 is Helen's concept, basically showing cultural influences she's experienced in her 50 years of life so far. She at least wanted a few casts of her face, one for each era of her life, but now we're tossing around the idea of 50 faces, one for each year.

Fear Gone is a more involved installation / art combo show, chronicling her experiences with esophageal cancer.

So far this week, I've made casts of my partner, Wendy, my parents and Helen.


Wendy getting plastered.


Mom, Sophia Wessel.

Assembly stage

Started working on assembling the new painting. When I made the casts of my father's hands, I had to do the insides of his palms separately so he could get out. Now I had to put them together with extra gauze. It looks like the painting will do best at about 2 x 4 ft. I just happened to have a piece of canvas about that size and it was easy to do a trial layout of the pieces since that's also the size of my work table.

The lower entity is actually a cast of my own face and represents someone seeking guidance. The upper one (a cast of my dad) represents a guiding spirit. I've made the stretcher and will let the glue harden overnight.

In the meantime, I worked a little more on the painting with FL's cast. Since it's about letting go of past allegiances for those that are more suitable, it needed the face of the one being let go. It's a highly modified cast of my own face that I'd removed from the original version of Stellar Flame. I had padded the cheeks and nose of that one to create a slightly different face, but these remnants work well for that purpose.

I also have the sculpting stage of Joy Shared to finish. Need lots more faces for that one.

It's pretty cold down in the basement with the weather so cold outside. Even with the wood stove going, it only gets up to about 50°. It slows down the drying process. So I'll let things sit overnight.

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Rethinking Opening

Although the work schedule has prevented me from going ahead with the new painting I did casts for, I have spent some time thinking about this one - "Opening".

Although I'm happy with the sculpture side of it, I can't stand the painted aspect. I've exhibited it this way, but was really disappointed with how it looks. The colors are muddy, the linseed mix is uneven ... it's just not "there".

I'm definitely going to repaint it. Ideally, I'd chop it up into three separate pieces as well, but I'm not sure how well they'd survive coming off the stretcher and being re-stretched. It may be a total rebuild around the casts. At 4 x 9 ft., it's really unwieldy and people generally had a confused response to the same person appearing on the canvas three times.

I just can't do anything with this image. I don't want to show it, I can't get myself to make products from the image - posters, mugs, cards, etc. It's just not formed. It's probably better to risk losing it than let it continue in this malformed state.

On a side note, I saw a wonderful program on yoga yesterday. It reminded me so much of the roots of my work, that I'm thinking of looking into learning the proper practice of it. I've had Buddhist and Hindu leanings my whole life. It's time to look into the paths laid by other and see what's there.

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Starting Over

This is a new art blog. Access to the last one was lost somewhere in the change of email. Although it's been a while since I've worked on any new paintings, there are lots of them lining up at the exit doors in my head.

I'm also looking forward to collaborating with Helen Wassell (similar name, no relation), next year on her art project "No Fear". As usual, she's going to be taking us on a wild ride. :)

The previous blog can be found, frozen in time, HERE.

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