Week Four

 This week Nick took Michael and I to the Oberlin College Library to see about repairing some damage. This little field trip was an opportunity to see some local sculpture. Inside the library were two beautiful marble statues. We marveled at the care put into carving of the chair, the carpet, and the woman’s gown and drapery. It’s in the seemingly insignificant parts of a piece that its quality is shown, and the skill of a carver is demonstrated in the fine details of a piece. 

I don't know whats the deal with the sock and shoe.

Fancy Pants Design/texture

Nice Lace

Check out them tassels

Carpeting

We are still working on the carved panels, and finally, they are nearing completion. There will be twelve panels in all, making up four columns of three panels each. We currently have ten complete and Michael and Nick will be finishing the carvings of the other two by next week.

Up until this week I have only carved the back the backgrounds and foliage, but I am now working on carving one of the characters, A fox holding a ball (The significance of the symbolism in this carving is unknown to me). The trick to carving the characters is really in being able to see the piece three dimensionally, and as in drawing, sculpting is not so much about the physical movement of the hand as it is  exercising the eyes in seeing. I am still having trouble “seeing” in three dimensions and need practice in order to gain confidence. Another aspect that makes carving the fox more difficult than the foliage is that with organic shapes such as leaves and vines you have some ability to mask a mistake (ah…..not that I have ever actually done this…) by changing the appearance of the leaf itself, but with faces and body parts there is less room for mistakes.. Apprehensively, and with some direction from Nick, I was slowly able to chip away the excess stone and Start seeing the fox.