Sculpturing

I am again supervising the Open Studio sessions for the Beginning Sculpture Class for LdM (Lorenzo de Medici) Florence Campus. The course is actually led by my friend and colleague, Neal Barab, but once a week during the school semester I watch over the additional laboratory or open studio making sure that the students are following the safety guidelines and to assist with moving stone or helping with the equipment.

While it's usually well-attended, warm weather might mean that there are just a few students and on those days, it's slow enough that I can also sculpt a bit.

Today was such a day and I worked a small broken piece of a slab of a kind of reddish travertine I found in the trash pile on the road, left over from someone's bath or kitchen project.  It was about 2" thick and roughly triangular in shape--but not for long. After about an hour with a hammer and a chisel and another with the rotary grinder, I'd roughed out this serpentine form.

Once I can get another day in it should look more like an earthworm and less like dog feces.


This other one was from earlier in the semester. I think it's Pietra Serena, a local soft, gray stone. I wanted to make something that seemed bigger and monumental and that is a rough study for perhaps a larger sculpture. It's a footed piece but I still need to better define the "feet" and finish smoothing the curves.

Both of these are small--less than 8" in length but they feel "bigger" and I think they'll look good when they're actually finished.