Storm clean up

I haven't had a lot of time for art work this last week. A terrible windstorm blew through our area and broke twenty or so of our large trees (and many littler ones beside them were crushed under the weight when they came down). All the trees that fell into the yard have to be chopped up into logs and the branches and brush have to be raked up and burned. Some of the trees look like they were twisted where they broke, although the storm wasn't officially labelled a tornado.

It is hard to tell from the pictures, but most of these trees were at least 40 feet tall.

This one barely missed hitting the house. There were a few branches on the roof, but nothing was damaged, apart from the tree and the little cranberry bush it fell on.

This little pile of fallen trees was just one of many, and it took us two complete days to clean out the path.

We still have many days of clean up to do - we have only tackled two of five piles.

Although we lost a lot of trees, we aren't complaining. Nothing hit the house, and there was no significant damage. The storm continued on to Camrose (about 30 miles east of our house), where it killed one person and injured dozens who were attending an outdoor concert.

Earth Goddess

I made it! This art doll represents the earth element and was completed for the Art Dolls Only Elements Challenge.

This is my Earth Goddess. She is wearing a snow white gown and a spring green cape. She likes to keep her feet bare, so she can feel the grass between her toes, and she needs a crystal ball to learn the future of her planet....

Hand, hand, fingers, toes ...

...eyes and ears, mouth and nose.

I have had more than my fair share of troubles with this one, and she just didn't want to be ready for tomorrow. Perhaps she thinks it takes some of the mystery out of being the goddess of Earth if people know what she looks like.

My decisions to go outside my comfort zone and make a much larger doll, and to experiment with a new armature based on Dawn's tutorial probably didn't help much, either.

I think she will be ready for the unveilling tomorrow, though!

More encaustics

I have been enjoying playing with encaustics, in between sculpting my challenge doll, of course!), and I thought I would post a few images. These two are small (4 inches square).

This one is a bit larger (7 inches square):

They are all painted on solid board.

Art Doll Challenge

I am going to try to take part in an art doll challenge from the Art Dolls Only group. It may be difficult, because I have a lot of other committments during the same time period, so I will see how far I get, but I am excited about taking part. I started sculpting the hands out of polymer clay last night, and then went a completely different direction today and drew out a pattern for a cloth doll. I'm not sure which way I will go, but it isn't wasted effort which ever path I choose.

Charms

I put my name in a draw for Amber Dawn's International Charm Day and won a beautiful little shell charm. Amber does a wonderful job of presentation packaging as well, and included a little charm with her card. I was too late to get in on the give away this year, but I am looking forward to participating next year.

I was in Quebec city for a conference last week, and got an opportunity to slip into the museum there for a quick visit before closing one evening. I wanted to see the Egyptian mummy display they advertised, and was hoping to see one of Sekhmet's statues. Much to my amazement, one of the displays held a relatively crude terracotta goddess figure. Given the technical and artistic skill typical of the grave goods placed with mummies, this goddess figure was very rough and naive. It reminded me of the headstones I have seen on occasion in local graveyards, handcrafted by the grieving spouse from cement and steel plate.

The goddess image was about 4 inches long, with no breasts (unlike most 'Venus' figures), but she was very clearly given long curly hair and ears or earrings. The fingers were slashes cut into the end of the arm, as were the marks that form the pubic triangle. The slashes looked like they were made with a long bladed knife. The pubic area was filled with rows of dots and she had a squarish mound on the tummy area that she was kind of holding, although her fingers didn't reach that far. Archeological theory says that these were intended to represent rebirth in the afterlife, but it seems to me more like a form of sympatheic magic intended to ensure the deceased is reincarnated/reborn to a wealthy mother (hence the very wide hips and the earrings). The grave was estimated to be around 2040 to 1640 BC.

I was quite excited to finally see one of these 'goddess' images in person, although she was very different from anything I had seen before or expected to see associated with mummies. Although she was made from terracotta, I think I will have to try making one of my own.