Touching Art

Portland Cement

Touching Art: the Blog has been on summer vacation.
Carla and Touching Art have not! I have been making a lot of artwork, and doing a lot of travel and ceremony. My work has had a deep inner resonance that defied language. Therefore I was quiet most of the time.

I did complete one ambition: I learned to make sculpture using cement. Since last summer I have had the urge to make my MerQueen and Dolphin images larger. They were born as tiny porcelain bowls.
Plaster was suggested, but the material that juiced me was cement. I went online to find instructions and came upon Bo Atkinson's website. Fascinated by his structures, sculpture and passion for sharing concepts and methods, I looked up contact info, and discovered he lives in Montville, less than half hour's drive from my house.

We finally coordinated our schedules in August to spend some time learning the barest of cement forming basics.  I sand cast a 24 inch disc in a rich portland cement mix and modeled the MerQueen and Her Lover motif on its surface, shown below in progress.

I covered all with pure white cement. It needs another coat. Many thanks to Bo for the lessons, advice, and inspiration.

I have purchased bags of white cement and portland cement to make another on my own, but that will wait till I return from my journey. I am busy making small pieces to take out west with me.

I really loved working with cement. I used my hands almost exclusively, gloved for protection. I love forming the material with my hands, unmediated by tools. The scale I usually work tools are required to carve and shape the tiny spaces and textures. I'll have fun with this medium for a long time to come.

Bonus: the portland cement is made locally at Dragon Cement in Thomaston, Maine.

Silver Mermaids

Remember the dull beige PMC pendants I showed you a couple of days ago? Yes, these pieces:

I promised that in a couple of days, you'd see them fired and polished.

Through the fire, and massaged by brush and burnisher, they transform into beautiful Silver Mermaids and Lovers. 99.9% Silver, also called Fine Silver, which does not tarnish, and neither moth nor dust can corrupt.

Now I am going to bed. I spent three nights up till 3 am making porcelain and PMC buttons and pendants. The firing was very successful, and I am exhausted. This weekend we do the Long Dance, then I start over for three more intense days of creating before a road trip to visit family down South. Zoned in the Zone! I love it.

Carla is Talking about Love Medicine

39 minutes, video by Bill Anderson, bbvpress

Porcelain and Silver

On my birthday one month ago, I made my first work with Precious Metal Clay. I used PMC3. Most of those first pieces were, well, rough-- except for one, which is so beautiful and compelling it stops traffic. My most shocking discovery was that even though PMC is plastic and carvable, it does not handle like porcelain at all. Even in its clay form, it is metal, and the energy and how I respond to it is very different. My next experiment was combining porcelain and precious metal clay. The technical and aesthetic challenges are exhilarating, and I will be busy with this marriage of material for some time. I am literally making this up as I go along, so if anyone reading has some experience and would like to share, please email me! If you'd like to read more about my process, I'll be happy to post about it. For now, enjoy the pictures.

Making a Diva Bowl Parts 1 and 2

Would you like to see more about how I make art? Here are links How I do it, Part 1, and How I do it, Part 2. Feel free to comment, and if you like, share something about your creative process.